Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/195

 BLATCHFORD

tions; "Report on Rest and the Abolition of Pain, as Curative Remedies," 1856, besides many papers to the medical and surgical journals.

He kept a meteorological journal from the year 1824 and the testimony of his record on these subjects was regarded as conclusive in the community.

Once a party at the West had forward- ed in the winter a quantity of apples in barrels. Upon their arrival in New York they were found to have been frozen. The owner sued the company for damages alleging that they were left out, and ex- posed to injury by freezing, on a certain night. The doctor's register, produced in court, proved that it did not freeze on that night, and the amount was saved to the company.

He was connected with the Marshall Infirmary of Troy from its foundation. The Lunatic Asylum connected with the infirmary was projected by him, and will remain as a monument of his tender regard for the unhappy ones who shall be its occupants in the long future. He left his valuable medical library of over six hundred volumes to the institution.

His reputation as a man of science was recognized in the degree of A. M. by Union College in 1815; in his election as fellow of the Albany Medical College in 1834; president of the Rensselaer County Medical Society 1842-3; president of the Medical Society of the State of New York, 1845; corresponding fellow of New York Academy of Medicine, 1847; vice-presi- dent of the American Medical Association, 1856; fellow of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, 1861; honorary member of the Medical Society of New Jersey, 1861, and of the Medical Society of Connecticut, 1862.

The doctor's labors in relieving the wants of those who suffered by the great fire of 1862 were so severe that his health was thereby seriously impaired. His last illness developed itself into an attack of typhoid pneumonia which continued for fifteen days, when, having finished his

work, he fell asleep on the seventh of January, 1866.

Tr. Med. Soc. State of N. Y., Albany, 1S66 (Dr. Stephen Wickes.)

Bobbs, John Stough (1809-1870).

The first cholecystotomy was per- formed by John Stough Bobbs of Indiana June 15, 1867, a surgeon, born in Green Village, Pennsylvania on December 28, 1S09, of American-German descent. He was a man well educated in the fun- damental branches and had given at- tention to philosophical writings. When eighteen he read medicine with Dr. Martin Luther of Harrisburg and after this attended one course of medical lectures, then settled in Middletown, Pennsylvania, where he practised for four years. His final location was Indiana, following on a course of lectures in Jefferson Medical College in Philadel- phia where he graduated in 1836 after two courses of lectures and study with a preceptor, as required in those days.

He soon took high rank both as a physician and surgeon. When the Med- ical College of Indiana was organized he was elected professor of surgery and later dean of the faculty. As a practitioner one of his contemporaries states there was less sham about Dr. Bobbs than any physician he ever knew. LTp to his death he had never given a placebo and always based his treatment on rational lines. Once when called to see a patient suffering from acute malady he sus- pended all medical treatment, saying "why give medicine here without reason or purpose?" He believed strongly in an organized and united medical profession and labored to that end. He was first in the work of establishing the Marion County Medical Society in 1847, and prominent in helping to organize the State Society of Indiana in 1849, being elected president of the latter, when his inaugural address was upon "The Necessity of a State Medical Journal and College." His paper on lithotomy of the gall-bladder was published in the same volume as his presidential address.