Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/185

 BIGELOW

by Bigelow, who, with Ware and Flint, offered his services as investigator of the conditions in New York.

Bigelow at middle age was visiting physician to the Massachusetts General Hospital, professor of materia medica at Harvard, had an enormous consulting practice, and wrote frequently for the press and keenly worked for reform in the practice of medicine. Bigelow had clear vision and for many years, in season and out of season, demonstrated the self-limited character of disease. In 1835, when he read an address with this title before the Massachusetts Medical Society, the effect was instantaneous and immense. O. W. Holmes says, "this remarkable essay had more in- fluence on medical practice in America than any other similar brief treatise." This paper is bound up in a little volume entitled " Nature in Disease and Other Writings," 1854.

His educational pamphlets caused widespread discussion at home and abroad. Lecky wrote a strong letter of dissent, but Lyell, Huxley and Spencer were vigorous in commendation, and the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology with its splendid curriculum and strong staff is a monument, in part at least, to his untiring energy.

lie did many other things in his declining years and became a most distinguished, most approachable old- tiiin oracle. He was blind at the last for nearly five years; bed-ridden, but with mind undimrned at ninety-two. "His religion, not for speech, discussion or profession, was that of a serious man living very near the realities of life!" Un- forgotten to the end, thought long inact- ive, he died January, 1897, and was buried in the beautiful Mount Auburn Cemetery, which he himself had origi- nated.

Abridged from Surgical Memoirs and Other n. Ifr. J. <;. Mumford, N. York, L908. Memoir oi Jacob Bigelow. G. E. Ellis, Cam- bridge, 1880.

Boston M. and 8. Jour., 1879, 3 s., xvii. Am. J. sei. and Art-, 1879, New Haven, :<

8., Xvii.

! BLACK

Bishop, Galen E. ( -1S99).

It has been difficult to get details con- cerning the life of Galen E. Bishop, save that he came to St. Joseph, Missouri, from New Market about 1870 and had a very large practice and a private hospital. That he was a booklover is known from the fact that his collection numbered some thousands of volumes. These included the largest collection of law books in the West, which it is said Bishop bought and studied because of the many suits brought against him. He had a habit of writing his name on the fiftieth page of his books. I have a fine first edition of Pettigrew's "Medical Portrait Gallery" which be- longed to him. After his death a dealer purchased the entire library and in 1911 had disposed of nearly all except a collection of Bibles and Testaments of which Bishop had a great many early editions in various languages.

II. A. K.

Black, John Janvier (1837-1909).

John J. Black, United States surgeon and resident physician to the Blockley Hospital, was born in Delaware City on November 6, 1837, the son of Charles H. and Anne Janvier Black, the mother coming of an old Huguenot family. lie graduated in 1859 from Princeton, New Jersey and was given its honorary A. M. in 1907. His M. D. was from the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania.

He settled in practice in New Castle, Delaware and was specially interested in the antituberculosis crusade and the care of the insane and was president of the Delaware Insane Asylum and energetic in instituting t lie Delaware State Hos- pital. As a surgeon he eagerly studied all that was new, yet on his long country- rounds of thirty to forty miles he did successful operations with the poorest accessories, a scrupulous cleanliness the only available antiseptic in those days. His skill as an obstetrician "as well known in the country round. One day I hurried with him to a ease which demand- ed Ce arean section for the patient, a de- formed, rachitic negro dwarf; he devised