Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/240

 BUMSTEAD

BURBANK

Savannah Medical College and was for many years professor of surgery there. His appointments and memberships included: President of the Georgia Medical Society; honorary member, Gyne- cological Society of Boston; surgeon in the Confederate Army during the war and an organizer of the Confederate States Hospital, Richmond, Virginia. J. E. B.

Bumstead, Freeman J. (1826-1S79).

Freeman J. Bumstead was born in Boston, Massachusetts, April 21, 1826, a descendant of a New England family whose ancestors came from England and settled in Boston in 1750; his father was a prosperous merchant of Boston; his mother, Lucy Douglas Willis, the sister of Nathaniel P. Willis the poet.

He graduated from Williams College in 1847, afterwards teaching for a short time then receiving his degree of doctor of medicine from the Harvard Medical School in 1851.

A few months were spent in Paris studying venereal diseases, then in 1852 he lived in New York, being appointed surgeon to the Northern Dispensary in 1S55 and in 1S57 to the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. Early in his professional life he devoted his time to diseases of the eye and ear. In 1858 he received the degree of LL. D. from Williams College.

After 1S60 he returned to the specialty which had been his first choice, venereal diseases and genito-urinary surgery.

He was a contributor to medical journals on venereal diseases and the translator of the "Hunter-Ricord Trea- tise" on venereal diseases and Cullerier's "Atlas of Venereal Diseases;" the author of "Pathology and Treatment of Venereal Disease" and co-author with Robert W. Taylor of " Venereal Diseases."

In 1861 he married M. Josephine, daughter of Ferdinand E. White of Boston and had five children. He died November 27, 1879. J. M. W.

In Memoriam. Freeman J. Bumstead. Dr. G. A. Peters, New York, 1S80.

Burbank, Augustus Hannibal (1S25-1895).

This scientific physician, eccentric indeed, but of very unusual ability, was the son of Dr. Eleazar Burbank, who twice walked 100 miles and back from Maine to Dartmouth Medical School to attend the lectures. The father settled in Poland, Maine, in ISIS, and while still living in Poland Dr. Eleazar Burbank married Miss Sophronia Ricker, of that town, and their son, Augustus Hannibal, was born January 4, 1823.

He prepared for college at the North Yarmouth Academy, graduating from Bowdoin College in the class of 1843, obtaining his M. D. at the Harvard Medical School in 1847, and immediately beginning practice in Yarmouthville, remaining there until his death in 1S95.

He was twice married, first to Elizabeth Banks, of Portland, November 25, 1850, by whom he had one daughter. When she died he married, in 1868, Alice Mary Thompson, of Yarmouthville, and had four more children. Augustus Bur- bank was original in every respect, not greatly eccentric, but humorous; never cross, full of genuine fun, and always young. He kept posted in medicine up to the day of his death, early mastered the modern doctrine of asepsis, making extensive use of this knowledge for the benefit of his patients in his extensive obstetric practice of forty-one years.

He once said: "When I go to put a woman to bed to be delivered of a child, I say, 'show me your teeth,' and if she has good teeth, she is going to have a good deliverance, and that means a good child, but if she has bad teeth, I say to myself, 'poor teeth, poor bones, poor deliverance.' "

He was always an active member of the Maine Medical Association, and when acting as president during his term of office he would say to a member rising to speak, "Go on brother, I hope that you will have a good deliverance."

He was very independent in medicine, and had original ideas. He believed a physician had a right to terminate gestation to his own convenience. For