Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/150

 BARKER

BARNES

we can only regret that he was unable to finish this part of his work.

Besides writing for publication, Dr. Barker corresponded actively with the learned medical men of his time, among whom may first be mentioned Dr. Ben- jamin Rush, the discoverer of forced feeding, fresh air in phthisis, and the rest cure, afterward developed by other men in later times. Others of his friends were Samuel Latham Mitchill, physician, phi- losopher and politican, who enriched the world with one hundred and eighty-nine new ideas, Lyman Spalding the founder of the "United States Pharmacopoeia," Gov. (and Doctor) John Brooks,Benjamin Waterhouse, and numerous others in- cluding the well-known Portland surgeons Nathaniel Coffin, father and son, and at Hallowell, Maine, the exiled member of Parliament, Dr. Benjamin Vaughan, and Maj.-Gen. (and Doctor) Henry Dearborn.

Dr Barker, furthermore, enriched med- ical history by visiting his medical friends all over New England and writing for posterity most instructive notes of the remarkable cases which they showed to him from time to time. The numerous papers which he contributed to medical literature at a time when American Med- ical writings wore scanty in the extreme and consisted largely of servile imita- tions of the London and Parisian fashions, prove him to have been a man with something to say. As a surgeon he was surpassed by other contemporaries, but as a physician and writer, historical investigations stamp him as a leader.

He was also an active temperance man and, although at times prescribing stimulants, believed that the doctor should be the one to decide when they were really needed. He was one of the famous " sixty-niners " of the year 1818, with which title he goes down into Maine liquor law history, meaning that he was one of the sixty-nine persons who attended in the Friends' Chapel in Port- land, the first temperance meeting ever held in Maine, the purpose of which was to prohibit the drinking of rum sold on the premises. An amusing anecdote is

told of his consulting with Dr. Nathaniel Coffin in a case of tetanus in which two clergymen protested personally at the bedside of the patient against the proposal of the doctors to give a mix- ture of rum and laudanum. The clergy said that it was sinful to the last degree that the dying man should meet his Creator, drunk with rum and poisoned with laudanum. The physicians listened respectfully, but persisted and the patient recovered. The man never forgave Dr. Barker, and as if in perpetual protest was found drowned, ultimately, in a pond of fresh water. Dr. Barker was a mem- ber of the Massachusetts Medical Society, a constant student, an omniverous reader of everything medical, read French flu- ently, and beginning his medical library at the age of seventeen, left nearly two thousand volumes at his death. Of his literary favorites, it is said that he always carried about with him a well-thumbed copy of "Rush on Fevers" and would lecture from it at the bedside. During one epidemic he did not enter his house for more than four weeks, travelling from patient to patient, eating and sleeping where he had the chance. Occupied with his books and his plans for future medical work, he kept on to the last, dying of old age, October 4, 1835.

J. A. S.

Family Records. Personal MSS. "Medical Repository," History of Gorham, Maine.

Barnes, Edwin (1844-1904).

Edwin Barnes was born in Troy, New York, July 28, 1844, his parents moving to Dutchess County, New York, when he was a mere youth.

He began the study of medicine with his uncle, Dr. Hall, of Burlington, Ohio, and matriculated at the Albany Medical College, attending lectures there when Drs. March, Armsby, McNaughton, T. Romeyne Beck and Quackenbush were at the zenith of their fame. While still a young student, yet having passed all examinations, he was appointed to mili- tary service in the United States Army, most of which service was rendered in