MEMORIAL 
OK 
FOSTER SWIFT, M.D., 
READ BEFORE THE 
NEW YORK MEDICAL AND SURGICAL SOCIETY 
AT THE MEETING HELD AT 
Sanford Hall, Flushing, June 19th, 1875, 
BY 
' (s 
WILLIAM h. draper, m.d. 
NEW YORK: 
1875. MEMORIAL 
OK 
FOSTER SWIFT, M.D., 
READ HEFORE THE 
NRW YORK MKPICAL ANP SURGICAL SOCIKTY 
AT THE MEETING HELD AT 
Sanford Hall, Flushini/ June 1 9th, 1875, 
BY 
I 
WILLIAM II DRAPER, M l) 
N K W V () K K : 
1875. MEMORIAL. 
He whose memorial you have made it my sad privilege to inscribe on the records 
of this society, lias been absent from us so long that, under ordinary circumstances, 
his membership might have been regarded as long since dissolved. But the hope 
that animated him whose death we now mourn, that he might yet return to his 
work and the fond companionship of his associates in this society, found a response 
in the hearts of all his friends ; and though he authorized me, more than three years 
ago, to present his resignation, whenever the society thought proper to replace him 
by an active member, the question of dissolving his membership has never been 
suggested, because we have never abandoned tbe hope that he might return to us. 
I have reason to know that this silent but emphatic tribute of affection and sym- 
pathy on the part of this society was a constant source of gratification and encour- 
agement to him in his long and weary struggle with disease. Almost to the last he 
cherished the hope that he might, perhaps, wrest from his relentless malady a 
shattered frame with which to exercise once more the art he so adorned, and dwell 
among those he so tenderly loved. 
Foster Swift was born at Geneva, in this State, Oct. 31st., 1833. He was 
the youngest son of General Joseph G. Swift, of the United States Army, who was 
the first graduate of West Point, and a man distinguished through a long life for 
eminent military and civil services. Dr. Swift exhibited very early in life a predi- 
lection for the medical profession, which may be said, perhaps, to have been an in- 
heritance from his grandfather, Dr. Foster Swift, whose name he bore, who was a 
Surgeon in the Army and Navy during the Revolutionary War, and afterwards a 
well-known practitioner in New London, Connecticut. 
Dr. Swift’s early education was received in his native town, and he graduated at 
Hobart College, Geneva, in 1852. During the last year of his college course he at- 
tended lectures in the Medical College at Geneva, but was dissuaded from continu- 
ing his medical studies after graduation, by his father, who thought him toodelicate, 
physically, to endure the arduous labors of a doctor’s life. To gratify his father he 
read law reluctantly for eight months, in the office of Judge Kent, in this city, and 
then, feeling the need of a more liberal classical and literary culture than he had 
obtained at Hobart College, he entered the Junior class at Harvard University, and 
graduated at that institution in the class of 1854, the subject of his inaugural thesis 
being “The InttuenceofShakspeare’s Playson the Popular Kstimation of Historical 
Characters.” Thus furnished with the broad foundation of a liberal education and 
a fine literary taste, he resolved to gratify his early inclination to study medicine. 
In the fall of 1851, he became a favorite pupil of Dr. Willard Parker, and from that 
time until the summer of 1875, when he was prostrated by the disease which finally 
destroyed him, he gave himself with untiring energy and self-sacrificing devotion 
to the study and practice of his profession. He graduated at the college of Physi- 
cians and Surgeons, in the class of 1857. He immediately entered Bellevue Hospital, 
and served during two years on the same staff with his attached friend Dr. Edward 4 
MEMORIA L. 
B. Dalton. In the spring of 1859 he established himself in private practice in this 
city. He had already passed the precarious period in the young doctor’s course, 
and had begun to lay the foundation of a brilliant career as a teacher and practi- 
tioner, when the war broke out, in the spring of 1861, and animated by a loyalty 
which with him was something more than the contagious enthusiasm which per- 
vaded the country at that time, he forsook his practice and went as Surgeon to the 
8th Regiment of New York State Militia, in response to the first call for troops to 
defend the capitol. At the battle of Bull Run he and his staff were captured while 
in the performance of their duty, and being almost the only prisoners who were not 
taken in the act of hasty retreat, they were released on parole in the city of Rich- 
mond, by Gen. Beauregard, and, after a brief detention, returned on parole to their 
homes. Thus debarred from the privilege of further service in the army. Dr. Swift 
resumed the practice of bis profession. In 1862 he married the daughter of Dr. 
Fitzhugh, of Livingston County, who with one child, a daughter, survives him. 
His success from this time was rapid and exceptionally brilliant. He was succes- 
sively appointed physician to St. Luke’s, and the Children’s Hospital; Assistant to 
the Professors of Obstetrics in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and after- 
wards Clinical Professor of skin diseases in the Bellevue Hospital College, and 
Professor of Obstetrics in the Long Island Medical College. He had thus obtained 
within the brief period of ten years, by his scholarly acquirements, by his ability as 
a teacher, and by his skill as a practitioner, a claim to the first rank in his profes- 
sion. He had scarcely begun to enjoy the honor and rewards of his well-earned posi- 
tion, when, in the summer of 1870, after a season of untiring labor and peculiarly 
trying experiences, he began to exhibit the signs of the pulmonary disease to which 
he finally succumbed. Conscious as he was of the threatening nature of his malady, 
he worked on for some time, regardless of the affectionate warnings of his friends 
and medical advisers, and only reluctantly yielded to their counsels when he 
fainted in the Theatre at the Bellevue College, in the effort to fulfil an engagement 
to lecture in the opening session of that institution in the fall of 1870. He soon after- 
wards went to Europe, but returned in the springof 1871, without material improve 
ment in health. The winter of 1871-72 he passed on the Pacific Coast, in the conge- 
nial companionship of his friend, Dr. Dalton, whose brief but brilliant career he 
there saw closed. The following winter he passed in the south of France, where, 
having procured an authorization from the French government, he hoped to prac- 
tice his profession. He returned to this country, however, in the spring of 1873, to 
visit his family, an 1 his disease having made considerable progress, he was induced 
to remain at home, instead of returning to France as he had intended. His experi- 
ence of the effects of a warm climate upon his disease not ha ving been entirely sat- 
isfactory, he resolved to try the experiment of spending a winter in the northern 
part of this State, at Morrisville, in Madison County. He was so encouraged by the 
promising effects of a cold climate, that he purchased a house at Morrisville, and 
determined to abandon, for a time, all hopes of resuming his practice, and devote 
himself to the recovery of his health. In the summer of 1874, however, it became 
evident to him anil to his friends that he was fast losing ground in the conflict with 
his disease, and last fall he decided to try again the effect of a warm climate, lie 
went to the Island of Santa Cruz, where he passed a lonely winter, separated from his 
wife and child, and sustained only by the hope, which grew fainter day by day, of 
arresting the progress of his disease. The last weeks of his life were cheered by 
the presence of a sister who, with her husband and a nephew, went to him in the 
hope of bringing him back to his home to die. This hope was not abandoned until 
a few days before his death, when he began to fail so rapidly that he realized the 
near approach of death, and met it with cheerful resignation, and in the complete 
assurance of a Christian faith. He died on the 10th of May. His remains were brought MEMORIAL. 
5 
home, and now rest in the family ground at Geneva. Such is the brief reconl of a 
life of which we all knew the promise an<l now lament the untimely end. Dr. 
Swift’s professional career, though too brief to be marked by any work which will 
perpetuate his name on the scroll of fame, was one that will leave a lasting and envi- 
able impression on the memory of all who enjoyed his friendship, or the privilege 
of intercourse with him as a teacher or physician. He possessed in a high degree 
the intellectual and moral qualities which fit a man for the responsible office of a 
physician. Love of nature and loyalty to the truth were his pre-eminent charac- 
teristics. He was imbued with the true scientific spirit, and his professional acquire- 
ments, in all departments, as far as they went, were free from the chaff of specula- 
tion and hypothesis. He hated sham wherever he found it, whether it lay in the 
conceit of those who deceived themselves, or in the dishonest practices of those who 
sought to deceive others. He had all the qualities of a successful teacher, thorough 
honesty, large experience, liberal acquirements, and literary attainments, and 
there can be no doubt that the cause of sound medical education lost one of its 
ablest and most promising exponents in his early death. As a physician, it may be 
truly said, that few men in our profession possessed or deserved in a larger degree 
than Dr. Swift the confidence and alfection of his patients. His gentle and winning 
address, his sagacity and skill as aclinical observer, his fertility of resources, and 
above all, his fidelity, commanded the alfection, respect and absolute trust of all to 
whom he ministered. His work was always thorough, and he gave to his cases a 
thoughtful and laborious study, which distinguished him from the routine practi- 
tioner. His sense of professional duty was so high that he never counted the cost to 
his health in fulfilling it, and there is little question in the minds of his friends that 
he finally fell a victim to his untiring and self-sacrificing labors. This sense of 
professional duty in Dr. Swift was not dictated simply by a sympathetic nature, 
or by a desire to please or win the confidence of his patients, but mainly by a pro- 
found conviction of the responsibility he assumed, whenever he was called to the 
bedside of those who trusted themselves to his care. But to all who enjoyed the 
privilege of Dr. Swift’s companionship, his remarkable social qualities gave a charm 
to his character which your memory of him will recall better than any words of 
mine. Who of us can forget his refined and genial presence ; his humor, that would 
illumine tears, and the wit whose shafts were never poisoned with malice, butahvays 
gleamed with mirth '! Cultivated beyond most men in our profession in general 
literature, and devoted to all that was pure and elevating in art, his conversation 
was always entertaining and often brilliant in the originality and keenness of his 
criticism. He was never commonplace, because he never borrowed his convictions 
from othur men unless they accorded with his own observation, or had been first 
subjected to his own enlightened reflection. But with all his intellectual gifts and 
accomplishments. Dr. Swift possessed a kindly and sympathetic nature that was 
quick to share the sorrows as well as the joys of his friends. As in his professional 
relations there was no self sacrifice too great for him to make in the discharge of 
what he recognized as his duty, so in his closer relations to his family and his 
friends there was a love and a loyalty that knew no bounds. The keenness with 
which he sometimes suffered from his sense of his professional responsibility was 
only exceeded by the painful sympathy with which he realized the trials of his 
'riends. To the severe strain which he suffered from both of these causes in the last 
year of his practice, his illness, as I have before suggested, was doubtless largely 
due, and while we cannot but grieve that a man of so great promise is lost so early 
to our profession, and a friend of such genial and noble nature is gone from us in 
the fullness of his manhood, we have reason to rejoice that we were permitted 
for even a brief period to enjoy the privilege of his friendship, and the precious exam- 
ple of his character.