Walter Lincoln Burrage

“ Bard was employed by the corporation to take proper quarantine measures. Every nurse and attendant in the hospital had the disease. Thus was Bard impelled to draw up a memorial urging the expediency of providing a pest house against similar occurrences and the result was the purchase of Bedloe's Island and the building upon it, Bard becoming health officer. He was likewise appointed surgeon and agent for the sick and wounded seamen of the British navy at New York, retaining the position until he retired from practice. ”

“ Until the fall of 1774 he lived in Cambridge, taking an A.M. at Harvard; then he moved to Salem where he studied medicine, as was the custom of the day before the beginnings of medical schools in the East, living and working with his father's cousin the centenarian, Edward Augustus Holyoke (q.v.) , he who trained thirty-five practitioners in the art of medicine and was the first president of the Massachusetts Medical Society. Finishing his novitiate Dr. Appleton settled in practice in Boston and married Sarah Greenleaf, May 24, 1780. ”

“ Thus he took part in two important medical advances in his native state, the inauguration of a medical examiner system, replacing the antiquated coroners, and in the formation and perpetuation of a progressive state board of health, one that acquired an enviable reputation throughout the country. ”

“ He is known chiefly as the first person in America to inoculate for smallpox. According to his own statement ("Account of the Small-pox," 1726, p. 1) he had the diseases himself in 1702 and narrowly escaped with his life. The smallpox appeared as an epidemic in Boston in the year 1721, carrying with it great terror and alarm among the inhabitants.
The scholarly Dr. Cotton Mather received the accounts of inoculation from England and communicating them to Dr. Boylston, urged him to try it. On June 26, 1721, Boylston inoculated his six-year-old son Thomas, and two negro servants. ”

“ Heath's brigade and later deputy director to the army hospital in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, he rendered valuable service during the war.
After the death of Zabdiel Boylston, the first inoculator for smallpox in America, Dr. Aspinwall took up the business of inoculation and practised it extensively in a licensed private hospital in Brookline. On the introduction of vaccination he was present at one of Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse's demonstrations, and becoming convinced of the superiority of vaccination gave up inoculation, although at a great pecuniary loss to himself. ”

“ Gloucester, 1856, 87 pp., previously issued in the columns of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, the last being read before the Massachusetts Medical Society at its annual meeting, May 27, 1856. He confuted the theories of Sir Charles Bell and Marshall Hall as to the sensory and motor functions of the spinal nerves, believing that physiologists overlooked "the existence of a spiritual principle within the body" and that "the real cause of the production of a given phenomenon, is mental instead of physical." ”

“ In 1852 a memorial was presented to Congress, signed by 143 physicians of Boston and its vicinity, ascribing the discovery exclusively to Jackson. On the other hand a committee of the French Academy of sciences investigated the question and on their report the Monthyon Prize of 5,000 francs was divided equally between Jackson and Morton, the perpetual secretary of the academy saying that half of the prize was given to Jackson for the discovery of etherization and the other half to Morton, for the application of the discovery to surgical operations. ”

“ Dr. Brown was said to have great mechanical ingenuity in the invention and application of special surgical apparatus. He was assiduous in following up his patients, who were treated for the most part in his orthopedic infirmary, the first of its sort in Boston, and was an occasional writer for the medical journals on subjects connected with his specialty. In 1839 he republished from the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, "Remarks on the Operation for the Cure of Club-feet, with Cases." ”

“ Holyoke was president from 1782 to 1784, and again from 1786 to 1787. The other presidents during Appleton's secretaryship were Cotton Tufts, who although living in Weymouth, twelve miles away, was most punctilious in his attention to the duties of his office, and William Kneeland of Cambridge, who attended few meetings during his two years in office. A careful study of the records would lead to the belief that the society could not have existed without the fostering care of Appleton and Tufts. ”

“ Samuel White, of Taunton, speaker of the House of Representatives, and settling as a physician in the town of Dighton.
Dr. Baylies' activities in life were many. He represented Dighton in the Legislature, and in three Provincial Congresses, was a member of the State Convention that adopted the Federal Constitution; a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and for a long time register of probate, but chiefly he was a doctor, and he was much in demand as a consultant, being particularly noted for his acumen in prognosis. ”

“ Bard retired from practice and settled on a farm he owned at Hyde Park, on the Hudson, in Dutchess County, but being reduced in fortune by the Revolution he returned to New York at the peace of 1783 and resumed practice. On the establishment of the Medical Society of the State of New York in 1788 he was unanimously chosen its first president. ”

“ Greenough was acting assistant surgeon in the United States Army during the summer and autumn of 1864 and returning to Boston was house physician in the Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1865 and 1866 after graduating from the medical school he spent a year in Vienna, and in October, 1867, began to practise medicine in Boston. ”

“ A young man who was tamping a hole in a rock, with an iron bar an inch in diameter and three feet seven inches long, had the bar blown through his skull by the premature discharge of a blast. The explosion drove the bar completely through his head, and high in the air. ”

“ That his scholarship was appreciated appears from the statement of Cotton Mather, who said that when Chauncy had been a year or two in town "the church kept a whole day of thanksgiving to God for the mercy which they had enjoyed in his being there."
The good man was industrious, rising at four in the morning winter and summer and spending the morning hours in study and devotion ”

“ He was born in Boston, October 25, 1829, and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1849 and from the Harvard Medical School in 1853. He practised in Roxbury, a part of Boston, until the Civil War, when he volunteered his services to Governor Andrew. In May, 1861, he was commissioned assistant surgeon in the Seventh Massachusetts Volunteers, his first service being at Washington, where he arrived the following July. ”

“ Appointed superintendent of the state hospital for the insane at Fulton in 1891 he made a fine beginning in ridding the institution of graft, erected a much needed building and was getting the institution in efficient condition when the politicians had their way and he was replaced. ”

“ Hale settled in Gardiner, Maine, where he had a friend, Dr. Benjamin Vaughan (q. v.) , a learned English gentleman and recent settler in Gardiner, having a large acquaintance among scientific men abroad, and the possessor of a large library. Hale studied meteorological problems and wrote the "History and Description of an Epidemic Fever, commonly called Spotted Fever, which prevailed at Gardiner, Maine, in the spring of 1814." ”

“ Before going to Rockport Dr. Haskell acted as assistant physician at the McLean Hospital, Somerville, and practised two years at South Boston.
In 1839 he married Mary Jane, daughter of Amos Calef of Gloucester.
He early evinced a literary turn, for we find him contributing to the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in the year 1837 articles on "Somnambulism," vol. xvi, p. 292–302; "Animal Magnetism," vol. xvii, p. 104–111; another paper on animal magnetism, do., 366–368 ”

“ After the war he practised medicine in Woburn for four years and in Wakefield for the rest of his life. He was health officer of Massachusetts from 1882 to 1886 and secretary of the State Board of Health from its organization in 1886 up to a short time before his death, which occurred in Newton, Massachusetts, October 22, 1904. ”

“ And in the same year, "The Medical Register for the State of Massachusetts," to be followed in 1879 by "The Medical Register for New England," the eighth edition of which containing biographical notices of practising physicians, a most useful book, was published in 1895. ”

“ He settled as a physician in his native town where he passed his entire life.
From 1837 to near the close of life he was a trustee of Phillips Academy and Andover Theological Seminary. He was also a trustee of Amherst College and was one of the original trustees of Thayer Academy of Braintree. ”

“ William J. Walker, of Charlestown, before graduating from the school and after graduation served as house officer at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He began practice in Cambridge in 1838 and continued until a few years before his death, which occurred January 31, 1903, at the ripe age of ninety-one. ”

“ His published writings comprise over one thousand octavo pages. Some of the more noted are: "Physical Culture in Amherst College," "Intermarriage of Relatives," "Physiological Laws of Human Increase," "Normal Standard of Women for Propagation," "Report on Lunacy to the Massachusetts Legislature," and his best known work, "Change in the New England Population."
He married first, September 24,
1841, Sarah H. Spaulding, of Wakefield, Massachusetts. She died without children and he married a second time, May 20, 1857, Annie A. Waters, of Salem, Massachusetts, by whom he had four children. ”

“ This not proving successful he settled in Burlington, New Jersey, where he was appointed judge of the supreme court and a member of the governor's council, dying at an early age and leaving his widow, a daughter of an English physician named Marmion, with a family of seven children to educate on very slender means. ”

“ Such was his industry and tact that he soon acquired a handsome fortune and a large clientage. He was especially interested in botany and zoology and made a large collection of American plants and animals. ”

“ In 1629 he was brought before the high commission accused of asserting in a sermon that "idolatry was admitted into the church" and that "an increase of atheism, popery, and Arminianism" existed in that body. Again in 1834 he was charged with opposing the erection of an altar rail as "a snare to men's consciences." ”

“ Le Grand Atwood, pioneer neurologist and alienist of St. Louis, was born at La Grange, Tennessee, October 16, 1832. His father was N. B. Atwood, who owned a chain of wholesale drug houses, sending drugs by boat from St. Louis to New Orleans and by mule team as far west as Santa Fe. His mother was Elizabeth Le Grand of Murfreesboro, Tenn., of Huguenot descent. When Le Grand was a few months old his mother returned with him to the family home in St. Louis. There he attended the Wyman school and began the study of medicine at the early age of fifteen under his kinsman, Dr. ”

“ He represented the good old Puritan stock, for he was descended from William Haskell, a settler in Gloucester in 1643, the father of Benjamin having taken up his residence in Sandy Bay village, which was later to be known as Rockport. ”

“ Morrill Wyman, inventor of the operation of thoracentesis and son of Rufus Wyman, a physician of Chelmsford, Massachusetts, later the first superintendent of the McLean Insane Asylum, was born in Chelmsford July 25, 1812. ”

“ In 1847 appeared "The Treatment and Cure of Cretins and Idiots" and an essay on the "Pathology and Physiological Effects of Ethereal Inhalation." His best work was in club-foot, where his persistency with the clumsy methods of the day enabled him to obtain success which less painstaking surgeons did not gain. ”

“ Dr. Adams was a member and had held office in the Middlesex County and Framingham medical societies and other medical organizations. He was identified with the Framingham Hospital and numerous other institutions and had been for twelve years before his death medical examiner of the Eighth Middlesex District. ”

“ In that year he visited the southern shore of Lake Superior, explored the wilderness, and returning the next year, opened copper mines and made known to the world the rich mineral resources of that region. ”