Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/252

DeBUTTS 146 BUXTON DeButts, Elisha (1773-1831).

Elisha DeButts, physiologist and a founder of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, was born in Dublin, of a family among the "Landed Gentry," in the year 1773. His father, John De Butts, was an officer in the English army. In his youth his family emigrated to America and settled at Sharpsburg in Western Maryland. He attended school near Alexandria, where lived his uncle, Dr. Samuel De Butts, under whom he studied medicine. Later he entered Pennsylvania University and took his M. D. in 1805, the subject of his thesis being "An Inaugural Essay on the Eye and on Vision." After practising for several years on the Potomac, opposite Alexandria, he settled in Baltimore and was appointed professor of chem- istry in the College of Medicine of Mary- land in 1809, and held it until his death He also held the same chair in St. Mary's College, Baltimore. In 1830 he was sent to Europe by the Board of Trustees to procure chemical apparatus for the University. While abroad he lectured with great éclat before the Royal Institution in London, a copy of his address being requested. He died April 3, 1831, of pneumonia, due to exposure in attending a friend to his door on a cold day in his slippers.

Professor De Butts was tall and spare; his health never robust, and he had a cast in one eye. Besides his graduating thesis, only two short articles are known: "An Account of an Improvement made on the Differential Thermometer of Mr. Leslie" (1814), "Transactions of American Philosophical Society," 1818, pp. 301- 306, with plate. "Description of Two New Voltaic Batteries." "Silliman's Journal," viii. 1824, pp. 271-274. "The Baltimore Federal Gazette" mentions a highly important discovery in elec- tricity made by him during the session of 1823-24.

His friend, Bishop Henshaw, of Rhode Island, wrote: "As a teacher of chemistry, whether we look at the learning and perspicuity of the lectures

in which he inculcated the lessons and doctrines of philosophy or at the bril- liancy and success of the experi- ments by which he illustrated them, he was perhaps, unequalled, certainly unexcelled."

Dr. De Butts had a son, John De Butts, who became a physician of Queen Anne County, Maryland, and died in 1894. There are said to be several oil portraits of the father extant. One of these is re- produced in Cordell's "History of the University of Maryland," 1891 and 1907. E. F. C.

University of Pennsylvania" Alumni Reg- ister. Maryland. Med Jour., Sep., 1882.

Buxton, Benjamin Flint (1810-1876).

This physician was born in Warren, Maine, November 5, 1810, the son of Dr. Edmund Buxton, the first physician to settle in Warren.

The son, after an ordinary academic education, began to study medicine with his father then continued after his father's death with a physician in Waldoboro, and attended lectures at the Medical School of Maine, where he gradu- ated in 1830. He settled in his native town and soon, by his own personal force and skill, gained an enormous practice as well as the personal esteem of the entire community. No doctor could do any business in Warren after Dr. Edmund Buxton's death until his son came in and carried everything before him. A physician who will travel ten miles on snow shoes to see a patient is bound to succeed!

The year 1849 found him as busy as ever, but in some way the fever for gold which was then discovered in California seized hold of him and he left Maine for the New Eldorado.

The actual labor of mining for gold not agreeing with him, he sold supplies of all sorts to the miners, then bought a ship, and was on his way to the settle- ments in the Gulf of California when he was shipwrecked off Cape St. Lucas. Finally, all on board were rescued and taken to Apaculco, where Dr. Buxton