Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/11

 PREFACE.

I found while writing the life of Walter Reed, that there was need for a new biographical cyclopedia, giving a brief outline of the lives of our departed medical worthies, with references to sources for further data.

This need had not been fully met in the biographical works of Thacher, Williams, Gross, Atkinson, Watson or Stone, as in some only a few lives were taken up while in others many of the living were included. I have now been engaged in compiling such a work for five years, with the con- stant valuable assistance and sub-editorship of Davina Waterson, with- out whose fostering care I could not have carried it on.

It is my purpose in these volumes to give a brief outline of the life of every medical worthy who has lived in the United States and in Canada. I mean by worthy, a man who has been distinguished, either as an original thinker, or writer, or as a teacher or great leader in medicine in any part of the country. I have also included a number of the hardy pioneers who did great work with insufficient means and assistance in the border countries in the early days.

It has also been my aim to gather within these volumes those of our craft who after taking a degree have not practised medicine but have become eminent in some other branch of science, and I have from time to time admitted a few brief biographies of men who have done no special original work but who attained great local prominence and widely influenced their fellows by a strong personality.

I organized the work by sub-dividing so as to secure biographies from three classes of colaborers: First: Those who agreed to take charge of sections of the country, as a rule, one or more states:

New York H. A. Kelly

Pennsylvania F. R. Packard and

H. A. Kelly

Maine J. A. Spalding

Vermont C. S. Caverly

New Hampshire I. J. Prouty

Massachusetts W. L. Burrage

Connecticut and Rhode Island W. R. Steiner

Maryland E. F. Cordell

Delaware A. Robin

Virginia and West Virginia R. M. Slaughter

North Carolina H. A. Royster

South Carolina R. Wilson, Jr.