Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/13

 PREFACE iii

Aside from these acknowledgments, I have also to thank Henry M. Hurd for valuable criticism and the ready aid he has given from time to time.

F. R. Packard has also been a good friend and adviser from the outset.

Sir Wm. Osier has kindly allowed me to condense one or two of his biographical addresses.

Prof. J. Uri Lloyd has been one of my most invaluable coadjutors in securing the data about our medical botanists.

Dr. S. Weir Mitchell has given permission to use the lives he has written, sanctioning the condensations; Miss J. G. Rogers helped in getting the Louisiana data, and Dr. Robert Fletcher has shown that customary kindness which has endeared him to the entire profession of the United States, in aiding me with all the resources of the Surgeon-general's Library at Washington, and in loaning several portraits. Mr. A. T. Huntington kindly marked and gave me over a hundred volumes of the transactions of medical societies containing biographies, these proving of great value in my research work.

One of the interesting facts which developed was that several men had already begun to accumulate data for local histories: R. M. Slaugh- ter had already done a large work in writing up the biographies of the Virginia worthies. The late Leartus Connor had also written an exten- sive biography of Michigan upon which he permitted me to draw freely.

So, by conjoint labor, upwards of twelve hundred worthies have been gathered into this modest Hall of Fame, which will, I permit myself to hope, prove a handy reference work for medical generations yet unborn.

Owing to the many writers engaged in the work the biographies as a whole will be found lacking in uniformity of style and treatment. I have considered this rather an advantage than otherwise except in the in- stances in which relatively unimportant men receive a more extended no- tice than their worthier compeers. This difficulty was unsurmountable without a large amount of paring down and rearranging for which I had neither time nor inclination.

The Cyclopedia closes with the thirty-first of December, 1910.

Howard A. Kelly. Baltimore, 1912.