THE DARTMOUTH 23 Dartmouth Men in Medicine. their communities. Well educated themselves, wherever settled, they have by word and deed aided in the advancement ofeducation, general and professional. Forty-seven have been professors in medical colleges, fourteen in the Medical department of Dartmouth. Several have been non-medieal scientific teachers and writers, at least three of whom (Hall, Hadley, Shepherd) were known the world over. Though many have been con- tributors, some of them liberal ones, to medical journals and society transactions, very few have been medical authors, writers of books. Factis non verhis has evidently been their motto; lived up to in a degree much to be regretted, since of doctors, as of other professional men, the remembrance soon dies out unless there are literte scriptae to remain. Five have been medical officers of the U. S. army, (Bell, Hollenbush, Ingram, Cowles, Conner) three of the U. S. navy, (Leavitt, Clarke, Wells); and sixty-five were in brigade, regimental and hospital service as surgeons, assistant surgeons and acting assistant surgeons during the war, five of them dying. Two (Cowles, Rowe) have been superin- tendents of the Boston City Hospital, one of the few general hospitals in the United States having physicians as superintendents; nine, at least, (Bancroft, Tyler, Walker, Barstow, Clement, Godding, Cowles, Brown, Smith) superintendents of insane asylums; and one (Ordronaux) commissioner in lunacy of the state of New York, and that for a period of nine years. Three (Spaulding, Peaslee, Frost) have been trustees ofthe college. As has long been the case with medical men generally, political positions have neither been sought nor held bv them, though Hubbard (1816) was governor of Maine, Huntington (1815), lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts; Jewett (1795), member of congress, and Webster (1836), U. S. consul at Sheffield. To George C. Shattuck (1803) the college is indebted for its observatory; to Frederick Hall (1803) for the foundation of the professorship of geology and mineralogy, and to Henry By Dr. Phineas S. Conner, '59. Of the three "learned professions," medicine is the one that has always been least attractive to college-bred men. Many reasons for this have been assigned, among them the nature and extent of the preparatory studies; the wearisome delays of theearlier, and hardships, irregularities and anxieties of the later years of professional life; the social isolation and political separation that in no small measure are attendant upon active practice; and the limited, often entirely inadequate, pecuniary rewards of care and labor. The consideration of these well-known facts has doubtless some influence upon the mind of the undergraduate; but, probably, a much stronger reason why medicine is regarded with scant favor is the extremely limited instruction given in those of the natural sciences, the study of which would naturally lead up to it. Indications of approaching change in this respect are apparent on every side, and the day cannot be far distant when in all of the leading colleges biology will be an elective study thoroughly taught and largely selected. Dartmouth alumni have been no exceptions to the general rule; though, taking them alto- gether, there have been not a few who have at first believed and later known that "the profes- sion of medicine is man's noblest work, and the physician God's vicegerent on earth." Four hundred and ninety-nine of the 4608 graduates in the Academic department in the 115 years prior to 1887, studied medicine (10.8 percent ), 22 of the 330 in the Chandler department (6.6 pei' cent.), 11 of the 104 in the Agri- cultural department (10.6). Of these a cer- tain proportion, but not a large one, in time turned to law, divinity, farming, teaching or general business, but to the great majority rnedicine has been the life work. Located chiefly in New England and the Western states, they have everywhere been respect- able and respected, men of influence in 24 THE DARTMOUTH Bond (1813) for one of the largest bequests made by an alumnus, the income of which must go to the support of the library. It is a general belief that doctors are short- lived, butthe college statistics prove that this is not true of the Dartmouth men. Of the 145 who graduated in the first sixty years, all of Whom are now dead, the average age attained was 62 years, 61 of them (42 per cent.) living to 70 or over, 24 (1616 per cent.) to over 80. The average longevity of the ministers of the same sixty-year period was 67 years, and ol the lawyers 62 5-6 years. Of the 44 graduating between 1830 and 1840 the "General Catalogue" of 1890shows 30 dead at an average age of 5516 years and 14 (32 per cent.) living at an age of certainly not less than 70, so that the average age of the 44 cannot be less, and must be more, than 60 years. Of the 91 graduating between 1840 and 1850, the same catalogue shows that 55 had died at an average age of 52 years and 36 (40 percent.) were living, each 60 or more years old. Of the 61 graduating between 1850 and 1860, 22 had died at the average age of 44 years and 39 (64 per cent.) were living, each 50 or more years old. Of the 56 in the next decennial period (1860 to 1870) 9 had died at the average age of 3716 years, and 47 (84 per cent.) were living, each 40 or more years old. Of the 102 graduating in the remaining fifteen years, only four had died, at an average age of 31 years. Of the 33 graduates of the Chandler and Agricul- tural departments, 5 (15 per cent.) have died, at an average of 33 years. There have been seventeen classes of the members of which no one studied medicine (fourteen of them being in the first fifteen vears of the life of the college), and seven of which but one did so. The largest number of doctors appearing in a class list is twenty- two, 1841, 29 percent of its 78 members. Of the many who because of their labors, their teachings and their writings have achieved distinction, notice can now be taken of but four, Amos Twitchell (1802), Reuben D. Mussey (1803), Edmund R. Peaslee (1836), and Alpheus B. Crosby (1853). "Twitchell of Keene" was one of those rare men, occasionally appearing, who, like Saul, are "from the shoulders and upward higher than any of the people.'' Bv not a lew of the men of his time he was regarded as fully theequal of his contemporary Webster in strength of mind, in clearness of thought and closeness ol reasoning. Quick to apprehend the nature of a disease and the extent ol an injury, bold to under- take and skillful to execute any needed opera- tion, familiar with the effects of drugs, and ever ready to test new methods of treatment, he was for nearly half a century a power in the medical world of Northern New England. A wise and considerate counsellor, he was ever the friend and helper of his weaker and younger professional brethren. Hating shams and scorning deceit, he was the bitter and uncompromising foe of the tricky and the pretentious. Cool and without fear as an operator in the days when to the difficul- ties and dangers necessarily attending surgi- cal work there were added the agonizing cries and desperate struggles of the suffering pa- tient, he was yet, as is so often the case, as tender-hearted as a woman, when it was permitted him to be so. Unfortunately for medicine and lor his own reputation, he wrote almost nothing, and passed away leaving little record of the multitude of cases that from farand near had come under his eyes and passed through his hands. Eirst in this country and second in the world he tied the carotid artery and saved his patient, and this when he was but twenty-six years old; and-again first in this country he trephined the tibia for abscess. These operations, had he done nothing else, taking into consideration the times at which and the circumstances under which they were done, are in themselves sufficient to establish his reputation as one of America's great surgeons. Yet they were but a small part of what he did in a long life of great activity. 77/ft DARTMOUTH 25 The elder Mussey, graduating in medicine in 1806, eight years later came to Hanover as professor of the theory and practice of medi- cine in the Medical department, and remained in connection with the school until 1838, occupying the chair of anatomy and surgery for the last sixteen years. He then removed to Cincinnati, was there professor of surgery in the Medical College of Ohio for fourteen years, and in the Miami Medical College for five years. For four years just previous to his leaving Dartmouth he was also professor in Bowdoin, and for the last two of these four years also at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Fairfield, N; Y. The last ten years of his life were spent in dignified case with his children in Boston, where he died at the .advanced age of 86, leaving behind him a well-earned and distinguished repu- tation as a practitioner, investigator, experi- menter and teacher. Patient and pains- taking, a hard worker and a close student, of fixed ideas and iron will, stern and uncom- promising, peculiar in some of his notions and habits ol life, in no respect brilliant, but always reliable, he could not bnl be a leader in his profession and a marked man in the com- munity in which he lived. Such he certainly was, for he was known and honored among physicians at home and abroad, and exerted an immense influence in the regions of which Hanover and Cincinnati are the respective centres. Of his medical work reference can be made only to his experiments having regard to absorption through the skin (a part of which were made upon himself), to his success- ful ligation of both carotid arteries at close interval of time (the first operation of the kind in America and the second anywhere), to his removal of the shoulder blade and much of the collar bone, one of the first three operations of the kind, all done in New Hamp- shire and by men whose names are on the Dartmouth list, Crosby, Twitehell, Mussey, and to his writings upon the vexed question of bony union after fracture of the neck of the thigh bone. The surgical specimens that he collected through his long life of extensive practice form one of the richest private museums in our country. His writings, which were quite numerous, though chiefly profes- sional, were not altogether so, apart of them being upon such subjects as temperance, the use of tobacco, etc. In 1850 he was elected president of the American Medical Associa- tion, and in 1854 Dartmouth gave him the honorary degree of LL. D. Peaslee was one of the most scholarly men the college has sent out, one of the most learned physicians of his time, and one of the few medical authors among the alumni of Dartmouth. For thirty-seven years he wasa professor in our medical school, for seventeen years iii the Medical department of Bowdoin, for fourteen years in the N. Y. Medical College and Bellevue, and fora short time in the Albany Medical College. He wrote the first American work on Histology; his "Ovarian Tumors" is a monumental treatise on the diagnosis and treatment of a once necessarily fatal af- fection, now so generally relieved by an opera- tion first done in the backwoods of Kentucky and forced upon the attention of the world by a few surgeons in England and America, among whom he was one of the earliest and foremost. As a practitioner he was largely and widely consulted; as an operator skillful and successful; as a teacher in unusual degree thorough and instructive, as an individual upright in all his ways; as a friend kind and helpful. Ilis influence upon students was powerful, lasting and ever for good. In his walk and conversation he honored the col- lege, and the college gladly honored him in every possible way. Crosby through fifteen years taught sur- gery in Dartmouth, the University of Ver- mont, the University of Michigan, Bowdoin and the Long Island College, and for the last five years of his life was professor of anat- omy in Bellevue. In each of these chairs he acquitted himself to the satisfaction and de- 26 THE DARTMOUTH light of his classes. He operated well, and his writings (largely addresses and case re- ports) were always acceptable to hearers and readers. A most genial man, he was a charming story-teller, a ready debater, a brilliant after-dinner speaker, a universal favorite, whose life went out not in the ful- ness of years, but in mid-career. Few Dart- mouth men in medicine or out of medicine have been as much regretted as "Dr. Ben," who will long be remembered for what he did, still more for what he said.