Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/129

 ARMOR I

est son, Stevenson, studied law, and became chief justice of Maryland, member of Congress and Judge of the Mississippi Territory.

Dr. Archer was not a voluminous writer; several of his papers appeared in the " Medical Repository," of New York. He introduced polygala senega as a remedy in croup.

There are several of his portraits extant: one in the court house at Belair, Harford County, Maryland, a second in the Hall of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty at Baltimore, and a third in the State House at Annapolis.

E. F. C

The Johns Hopkins Bulletin, Nos., 101-102, Aug., Sept., 1899.

Sketch of Harford Med. Soc, J. H. Bui., xiii, Nos. 137, 138, Aug., Sept., 1902. Cordell's Medical Annals of Maryland. The Medical and Chirurgical Faculty pos- sesses his academic and medical diplomas and other relics of him.

Armor, Samuel G. (1818-1885).

Samuel G. Armor was born January 29, 1818, in Washington County, Penn- sylvania, and soon after came to Ohio with his parents who were of Scotch-Irish descent.

He went first to Franklin College, New Athens, Ohio, which institution in 1S72 honored him with the degree of LL. D., then read medicine with Dr. Irvine, Millersburg, Ohio, and graduated from the Missouri Medical College in 1844. Rockford, Illinois, was chosen for his life's work, but the turning-point in his career came in 1847 when he accepted an invita- tion to deliver a short course of lectures on physiology in Rush Medical College. Later he was tendered the chair of physi- ology and pathology, but declined because of the previous acceptance of the same chair in the medical department, Univer- sity of Iowa, at Keokuk. This position was soon exchanged for the chair of nat- ural sciences in the University of Cleve- land (non-medical), in connection with which he also engaged in general practice.

In 1853 Dr. Armor was awarded a prize by the Ohio State Medical Society, which

ARMOR

held its annual meeting in Dayton, for an essay, "On the Zymotic Theory of the Essential Fevers." This paper focused the attention of the college men of south- ern Ohio on the talented young author and led to his accepting in the fall of that year, the chair of physiology and pathol- ogy in the Medical College of Ohio, where he soon fell heir to the chair of practice, made vacant by the death of Lawson.

In May,1856, he married MissHolcomb, of Dayton, and in 1861, having been ten- dered a professorship in the University of Michigan, he went to Detroit, becoming a member of the firm of Drs. Gunn & Armor. After a service of five years he accepted the chair of therapeutics, materia medica, and general pathology in the Long Island College Hospital, Brooklyn, and in the following year succeeded to the professor- ship of practice and clinical medicine made vacant by the resignation of the elder Flint.

After years of wandering this peripate- tic teacher found himself at last perma- nently anchored and retained this position until his death in 1S85.

Dr. Armor was tall and well-formed, in complexion dark, with hair straight and black as an Indian's.

He was immensely popular in college and one of the finest lecturers to whom I have ever listened. His graceful delivery and modulated voice, the rounded sen- tences of pure English, and a wealth of illustration enabled him to breathe life and beauty into the driest of medical themes and to enthuse the dullest of students.

Dr. Armor was not a voluminous writer, although his contributions covered a wide range of subjects and were valuable. Neither was he an original thinker. For years he held a position well to the fore among the medical celebrities, and yet he left behind him no lasting imprint iiim.h the doctrines of his day.

Dr. Armor died from cancer of the abdominal viscera in 1SS5 and sleeps by the side of his first wife in Woodland Cemetery. W. J. C.