Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/158

 BARTRAM

BARTRAM

Government of Marine Hospitals," 1N14; " Vegetable Materia Medica of the United States," ISIS; "Compendium Flora? Philadelphia:, " ISIS; "A Flora of North America" (with colored plates), 1821.

In 1842 Barton was appointed chief of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery of the Navy Department, which position he held until 1S44 when he was retired. He died in Philadelphia, the city of his birth, March 27, 1856. His bust in life size is shown in the Army Medical Mu- seum at Washington. A. A.

N. York J. M., 1S56, 1. Bradley, J, Ass. Mil - Surg., Carlisle, Pa., 1901-2, X.

Bartram, John (1699-1778).

In his own words John Bartram shall tell how he was first led to study that science which made him in after years America's leading botanist.

"One day," he says, "I was very busy in holding my plough (for thou seest that I am but a ploughman) and being weary I ran under a tree to repose myself. I cast my eyes on a daisy; I plucked it mechanically and viewed it with more curiosity than common country farmers are wont to do and observed therein very many distinct parts, some perpendic- ular, some horizontal. What a shame, said my mind, that thee shouldst have employed thy mind so many years in till- ing the earth and destroying so many flowers and plants without being ac- quainted with their structures and their uses. ... I thought about it continu- ally, at supper, in bed, and wherever I went, ... on the fourth day I hired a man to plough for me and went to Philadelphia. Though I knew not what book to call for, I ingenuously told the bookseller my errand, who provided me with such as he thought best and a Latin grammer. Next I applied to a neigh- boring schoolmaster who in three months taught me Latin enough to understand Linnaeus, which I purchased afterwards. Then I began to botanize all over my farm. In a little time I became ac- quainted with every vegetable that grew in the neighborhood. . . . By steady

application of several years I acquired a pretty general knowledge of every plant and tree to be found on our continent. In process of time I was applied to from the old countries whither I every year send many collections."

So wrote America's earliest botanist and the founder of her first botanical garden who was born on the twenty-third of March, 1699, in Derby, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, son of William and Elizabeth Hunt Bartram the descen- dants of Richard Bartram of Derby, England, whose son, grand-father of our botanist, came over to Pennsylvania in 1682.

There was not much schooling to be had in the new colony of Philadelphia, but John was given all there was and also studied Latin and Greek. The inheri- tance from an uncle of a farm in Derby placed him a little above those petty cares which fret the heart of a scientist. Haller in his " Bibliotheca Anatomica" speaks of him as a physician and certainly he devoted much of his time to physic and surgery, obtaining some celebrity in the latter. He bought for his botanical garden a piece of land about three miles from Philadelphia on the Schuylkill and built a house with his own hands. He employed much of his time in specimen hunting and natural history research ; no dangers deterring him; summits of moun- tains were explored; sources of rivers found, and all this at a time when to travel among the aborigines was a tremendous risk. The modern explorer with his air bed, camp furniture, collapsible tent (and hopes), is a pigmy contrasted with this John setting out when seventy years old from Philadelphia to explore in Florida. It was at this time he was appointed botanist to the king and received orders to discover the source of the great river St. John. Four hundred miles he travelled and in the course of this journey made an accurate survey of the river, its lakes and branches, the soil, animals and cli- mate, which survey was published in London.

An enterprising merchant in Philadel-