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DR. LANDON  R. LONGWORTH,
BORN DEC. 23, 1846.
DIED JAN. 14, 1879. 
 
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DR. LANDON  R. LONGWORTH,
BORN DEC. 23, 1846.
DIED JAN. 14, 1879.
AN ADDRESS READ AT THE COMMENCEMENT EXER-
  CISES OF THE MEDICAL COLLEGE OF OHIO,
          FEBRUARY 28, 1879.
 
 
LANDON RIVES LONGWORTH.
          *H ~o'j xpiZaoov T7Jz voyev'taQ
           TO XU?M£ 7Z[id<TOZtV.
  Virtuous and noble deeds are better than high descent.

  Landon Rives Longworth was born in Cin-
cinnati, on December 25, 1S46, the second son of
Anne Maria  Rives and Joseph Longworth.  His
mother was  the  daughter  of  a physician, Dr.
Landon Rives, who for many years was professor
of obstetrics  in the Medical College of Ohio, as
well as one of the  most distinguished and success-
ful practitioners of Cincinnati.
  Dr. Longworth  inherited many beautiful qual-
ities of character,  as well as talent and  taste for
art.  The early education of our dead friend was
obtained  under the guidance  of private  tutors,
until he  became of age to prepare  for  college,
when he was sent to the  school  of Mr. Bliss, and
in 1863 was entered as freshman in Harvard Col-
lege.  He remained there until, in 1867, he re-
ceived his degree of  B. A., when  he  returned
home,  preparatory to  going abroad.  Whilst  in 
4
Landon  Rives Long-worth.
college he was particularly noted for his faculty
of correct and sharp reasoning, so that Drs. Pea-
body and Bowman, the professors of ethics and
metaphysics, frequently took occasion to laud him
publicly.  In  1868,  he went  to  Europe for  the
purpose of studying art.  He was prepared to go
through with  a  thorough course  of study, being
prompted thereto by  his love for painting and
skill  therein.   While  abroad he studied with
Hans Gude, at Carlsruhe, and became a painter
of no ordinary merit.  Returning to his home, he
found that art had not, as yet, taken  hold of the
hearts and heads of our people.  More than this ;
that he could find  no companions in  art worthy
of his respect, who  could act as a stimulus for
further exertion, development, or  suggestion, thus
helping him to  perfect himself, and  at the same
time* assisting him to bring the  beautiful  to the
thresholds of the many.  His aim was, in this
way, both to cultivate art, and give new pleasures
and  delights to many.  Finding  this impossible,
he  sought  fields in  which,  with his immense
wealth at his command, he could be the greatest
benefactor to humanity.
  It was but  natural  that,  under these circum-
stances, he should select  the  profession he did—
the one that brings man into closest contact with
poverty, destitution, pain, and misery ; the one in 
          Landon Rives  Longivorth.         5

which more occasion for doing positive  good  is
given than any other ;  the  one which requires ab-
negation of all pleasures,  a holy life in the strict-
est sense, and the greatest  amount of moral cour-
age.  We therefore find him entering the study
of medicine, under  the guidance of Dr.  Edward
Rives, in the spring of 1S70.  He then matricu-
lated in the Medical College of Ohio, but in the
fall went to New York, where he entered the Col-
lege of Physicians and Surgeons, selecting for his
preceptor Dr. H. B. Sands.   Even  whilst a  sec-
ond-course student he  proved himself possessing
more than ordinary talent and knowledge, so that,
in the absence of  the demonstrators of anatomy,
it was not uncommon  for  the  students to ask
Longworth for a  demonstration.   At the end  of
his second course  he passed  his examination for
the doctorate, showing how  much  knowledge he
had acquired in the comparatively short  space  of
time that he had devoted to medicine—two years
—and in 1S73 he graduated.  He took the faculty
prize in his class for a  thesis on " The Ligature
of the External Carotid"—a thesis remarkable
not only for its ripeness, but also for its  original-
ity.   Of this thesis, his teacher stated in the lec-
ture-room that it set forth  not only the feasibility
of the ligature of the  external  carotid,  but  also
laid down the positive indications  regarding the 
6         Landon Rives Longworth.

cases in which the operation ought to be preferred
to the ligature  of the common  carotid.   This
thesis was afterward published in the Archives of
Scientific and Practical Medicine, May, 1873, and
received favorable  comment not  only  at  home,
but also abroad.
  After having graduated he again visited Ger-
many,  going first to Vienna, where  he pursued
special  studies.   He there sat  under Hebra,  for
whom  his admiration  was unbounded ;  attended
the post-mortems of Rokitansky ; cultivated him-
self in the" use of the instruments for special diag-
nosis—the ophthalmoscope with Jaeger and Arlt,
the laryngoscope with  Shrotter and Stoerck—and
enjoyed the benefits of the many practical courses
in operatic surgery that are  delivered in the cele-
brated Vienna University.   After  remaining one
term in  Vienna, he went to Strasburg for the pur-
pose of studying histology.   There he entered the
laboratory of Waldeyer, and in addition took the
courses  delivered by v. Recklinghausen.   While
at Strasburg  he published  his  discoveries  of the
nerve terminations in the conjunctiva.  This small
article  appears in the  Archiv  f. Mikroscopische
Anatomie of Max  Schultze, and can be consid-
ered as the beginning of his  career as a micro-
scopist.
  Returning home in the fall of 1874, he was im- 
Landon  Rives Longworth.
7
mediately chosen as assistant demonstrator in the
Medical College of Ohio, and lecturer on derma-
tology  and pathologist to  the Good  Samaritan
Hospital.   From  here we  see  him  advancing
rapidly, until at the time of his death he held the
positions of professor of descriptive anatomy and
clinical surgery at  the Medical College of Ohio,
pathologist to the Cincinnati Hospital, and lec-
turer on dermatology  to  the Good  Samaritan
Hospital.  When he came  back from  Germany,
he was not only ready, but  anxious, to build up
for himself a practice, choosing as specialties sur-
gery  and dermatology, both subjects  for which
his training and education  best fitted him.  He
was anxious to do this, because he felt  a desire  to
make himself not only worthy, but also independ-
ent of all the rights that birth and social  position
gave him.  After having been eminently success-
ful in his practice, performing many capital oper-
ations with brilliancy  and excellent results, assist-
ing in doubtful cases by advice and help, never
flinching from duty nor leaving a brother prac-
titioner in distress, upon  the advice of  his  best
friends, he decided  to renounce the active  practice
entirely, and  devote himself exclusively to scien-
tific work and investigation.
  It was about this time that he received  the ap-
pointment  of pathologist to the Cincinnati Hos- 
8         Landon  Rives Longworth.
pital, an appointment for which he was not only
eminently fitted, but which  also gave  him more
abundant  material to carry out pathological re-
search  and study.  With  that  energy  character-
istic of him, he turned his whole house into a
huge medical workshop, retaining only two rooms
for non-medical  work—his  sleeping  apartment
and  a  music-room ;  the latter  a place where  all
the better  musicians  of the city were in the habit
of meeting, an open  house to them, the doors  of
which  were unlocked at all times, and where
they were always certain  to  find a cheerful wel-
come, and, if time allowed, a critical and appre-
ciative  listener.   It was here that Dr. Longworth
began  his work on  photography, injection, and
the electric  light, in  all  three  branches accom-
plishing progress in a marked degree.  The pro-
cess  of photography  of microscopic preparations
he developed, by means  of new apparatus,  to
such an extent that all his results were very sat-
isfactory—results that would have been given to
the world  in a short  time, if he had lived, in the
form of  a work on microscopic  anatomy, for
which  some  negatives had already been prepared.
The methods which  he used were described fully
in a lecture given by him before the  Cincinnati
Academy  of Medicine, May  18, 1878, entitled
" Hints on Improvements in Micro-Photography." 
           Landon  Rives Longworth.          g

   During the last year his whole time was  taken
 up by injecting and  the electric light.  He devised
 a new instrument for injecting, his injection mass
 being of his own invention as well; but the latter
 still wanting in a few minutiaj to make it perfect.
 In the last session of the College he used the elec-
 tric candle for his demonstrations in anatomy, and
 had just completed  the construction of a lantern,
 by means of which he could throw the images of
 solid bodies upon  the screen, thus enabling him
 to  perform  dissections of  organs,  such as the
 brain, before a class of 350, showing each and all
 of them every step, by means of the large picture
 thrown upon the screen.
   In his studies on electricity he even went so far
 as to construct a new electric candle, for which he
 was granted a patent on the 21st of May, 1878.
   Thus he lived and worked—life and work being
 synonymous with him—until the 5th  of Januarv,
 when he was taken  ill with  pneumonia, develop-
 ing into a typhoid form, which ended fatally upon
 the morning of the  14th of January, 1878.  There
 is no doubt but that his incessant labor and mental
 activity played an important role in producing the
fatal end, which we are  hardly accustomed to
 meet with in a man only thirty-two years old.
  In addition, it may be stated that he had, some
months previously, wounded himself at an autopsy, 
 10        Landon Rives Longworth.

 after which he had a short attack of septicaemia,
 which had, however, left no apparent traces. Beside
 which, he  had been working very much in an  at-
 mosphere  loaded with chloride of sulphur.  All
 these elements must be taken into consideration in
 order  to explain the end which gave grief not
 only  to  his  friends,  but left  a  community  in
 mourning.
   We  find  in Dr. Longworth traits only found in
 great men—reasoning faculties trained and devel-
 oped to their  utmost  capacity ;  love and taste for
 every thing beautiful; an ardor and  enthusiasm
 seemingly incessant, coupled with endurance and
 patience.
   Longworth was a cosmopolitan in the most lib-
 eral phase of the word.   In  science, in art. in re-
 ligion, nothing struck him as being strange, and
 in the shortest appreciable time he was well ac-
customed to any usage  or custom.  His knowl-
edge was by  no  means confined to medicine.  An
excellent linguist,  an eminent  physicist, an ac-
 ceptable musician,  a good painter, were united in
this one man- His piinciple was to learn ex ovo.
From this he  could deduct, in a short  time, what
it would take others some time  to acquire.  This
power, added to  a  memory that seemed  never to
 permit anything to drop its grasp, and we have
 the secret of the  immense amount of  knowledge 
          Landon Rives Longworth.        n

acquired by a man comparatively so young as Dr.
Longworth was.  He was thorough in everything
he did, and in doing he forgot himself, so that fre-
quently he would miss a meal, an experiment en-
grossing his attention, or would sit up over a book
until the gray light of dawn would give him warn-
ing of the approach of day. In his daily life  he
was modest,  unobtrusive,  quiet, indeed, some-
what of a recluse, always willing to go out of his
way to serve a friend, never thinking of himself in
giving pleasure  or comfort to  others, frequently
doing things that were most distasteful to him, in
order to please somebody whom he respected or
loved.  He was  tolerant  to an extreme, only dis-
cussing with those who had a  share upon his in-
timacy, but then entering the discussion with  all
the force and earnestness  he could  bring to bear
upon it.   He despised nothing  and nobody, being
charitable, appreciating faults, but being too mod-
est to make much of them.  It is needless to state
that he was a friend  to the poor.   The character
that has been  so briefly  sketched demands this,
however, for its completion.  His help to the  in-
digent was never given but in  a way so delicate,
so altogether unsuggestive, that the object of char-
ity  disappeared,  but was overshadowed by  the
manner in which the aid was given.  At the sick-
bed  of the poor he was  the true physician, and 
 12         Landon Rives Longworth.

 up to the last day of his activity he was engaged
 in visiting some indigent patients who  had called
 upon him for aid.
  Such was the man whom  we have lost.  To
 patients a conscientious physician, to the student
 a friend and reliable teacher, and to his colleagues
 a brother.   The scientific world has lost in him a
 man who, on  account of his love  for  truth, his
 exactness, his want of personal ambition, would,
 in a very short time, have become an honor to his
country, and a representative  American scientist.
                     F. FORCHHEIMER, M. D.
PRESS OF ROBERT CLARKE & CO. 
 
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