Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/251

 BUTTERFIELD

BUTTE RFIELD

Medical Directory." He died January 6, 1874, of pulmonary tuberculosis.

As a contributor to medical science, Dr. Butler's name is connected with the introduction into the materia medica of the hydrangea arborescens, a remedy used by the Cherokees, and the value of which has been, since his introduction of it to professional notice, fully attested by many practitioners.

Dr. Butler was a Presbyterian, an ardent advocate of the temperance movement, and a citizen worth owning. F. R. P.

Biographical Memoir from the Transactions of the Medical Society of Pennsylvania, 1S74.

Butterfield, John Stoddard (1817-1849).

John Stoddard Butterfield, a promi- nent medical teacher and journalist of Columbus, Ohio, was born in Stoddard, Cheshire County, New Hampshire on December 2, 1817 and went as a boy to the local school. He worked under Dr. Elisha Huntington, of Lowell, took one course of lectures in the Berkshire Med- ical Institute at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and finally graduated at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York City in 1841. In the latter he had as a classmate George C. Blackman, later the famous surgeon of Cincinnati. After practising for a brief period in Littleton, Massachusetts, Dr. Butterfield returned to Lowell and entered into partnership with his former preceptor, Dr. Hunting- ton. In 1843, however, on the recom- mendation of Dr. Willard Parker, he was chosen professor of the theory and practice of medicine in the medical de- partment of Willoughby University, Ohio. This medical school, disrupted by the secession of Drs. Delamater, Kirtland and other eminent teachers, who united in the organization of the Cleveland Medical College in the neigh- boring and larger city of Cleveland, was threatened with extinction. Largely by the exertions and influence of Dr. But- terfield, the Legislature of Ohio, in 1846, authorized the removal of the Will-

oughby Medical College to the city of Columbus where, in the following year, it was combined with the Starling Medical College then just organized. Dr. Butter- field retained his old chair in the new institution, and was chosen at once as dean of the faculty. Soon after, with courage and energy unabated by the manifest evidences of failing health, he founded, in the year 184S, the "Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal," in the ser- vice of which he spent the little remainder of his strength until the editorial pen fell at last from his powerless hand and he retired to Salisbury, New Hampshire, in the vain hope of recuperation by rest and change of air. Here he died of general tuberculosis, September 7, 1S49, at the early age of thirty-two. He was buried in Lowell, Massachusetts, where his medical career had begun.

Dr. Butterfield took an active part in promoting the interests of his profes- sion, and was a member of the Ohio State Convention and one of the founders of the Ohio State Medical Society in 1846.

A fluent speaker, a clear and forcible writer, Dr. Butterfield bid fair to become a power in the ranks of the medical profession of the state, until untimely death intervened. In the "Transactions of the Ohio State Medical Convention" of 1S46 are two papers from his pen; one, "A Report on Typhoid Fever" (pp. 19- 21), the other, an excellent one, on "Ob- stetric Auscultation," fully abreast with the knowledge of his day. Both are in- teresting, even at the present time. He is also said to have been preparing, at the time of his death, a work on Physical Diagnosis.

A journalist of his day sums up the character of Dr. Butterfield as follows: "lie was a ripe scholar, a popular lec- turer, a discriminating writer, a Christian without austerity and a gentleman with- out ostentation." H. E. H.

tin- < >hio Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. H, 1849.

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