Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/291

 CHOVET

CHRISTIAN

love of the people and state caused the entire South to mourn on May 2, 1SS0, when he died of acute pneumonia.

L. C. B.

N. Orl. M. & S. J., lS79-S0,n. s., vii.

Chovet, Abraham (1704-1799).

A dwarfish wrinkled old man, Abraham Chovet, anatomist, was on his death-bed one March morning in 1799, making a request eminently characteristic. "Do not have the passing bell tolled. I would not have sick folk disturbed by unnecessary noise." He was born in England May 25, 1704, educated in London, and in 1735 became demon- strator of anatomy in the United Com- pany of Barbers and Surgeons, the earlier part of his life being spent in studying under the ablest anatomists of Europe. Some years before the Revolution he fled to Philadelphia from Jamaica to escape an insurrection of slaves, and in 1775 it was announced in Philadelphia that "Dr Chovet will begin his course of anatomical and physiological lectures in which the various parts of the human body will be demonstrated ... on his curious collection of anatomical wax- works and other natural preparations." These lectures were seemingly popular, for Dr. John Morgan, writing on the " Art of making Anatomical Preparations by Corrosion" (17S6), says: "Dr. Chovet, now resident in this city, hath indeed a good collection of wax preparations of different parts of the human body, which he made in his younger days and brought hither from Europe." These, with the Fothergill anatomical pictures, were given to the University of Pennsylvania and some of them may still be seen.

At the time of founding the Pennsyl- vania College of Physicians, Chovet, one of its twelve founders, was over eighty, and "at such an advanced age men are not invited to join in a new enterprise un- less their qualifications are eminent in the estimation of their colleagues." Cynical and merry, Chovet was equally known as an odd character and an anatomist. In London lie saved the life

of a highwayman by opening the trachea before the hanging took place. In Phila- delphia he always wore a small cocked hat closely turned up behind and carried a gold-headed Indian cane dangling from his wrist by a black silk string. The heels of his capacious shoes, well lined in winter season with thick woollen cloth, might be heard scraping the pavement at every step as he went along, always in a chronic hurry.

In Christ Church Cemetery, Philadel- phia, Susannah Maria Penelope Abing- don, daughter of Dr. Chovet, lies buried with her father and mother, but the name of the mother is unknown. "That extraordinary man and eminent anat- omist," her hushand died, as stated, in March of 1799, of an acute disease.

His great grandaughter presented the Pennsylvania Hospital with a fine minia- ture in wax, on the back of which is scratched "Drawn May 25, 17S4, by his servant Dr. Van Eeckhout." D. W.

An account of the Institution of the Coll. of Phys. of Phila. Dr. W. S. W. Ruschenber- ger, 1886.

A portrait is in the library of the Coll. of Phys. and Surg., Phila.

Christian, Edmund Potts (1827-1896).

Edmund Potts Christian, who practised chiefly as an obstetrician, came of old Philadelphian Quaker ancestry and was born at Friendsville, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania on April 23, 1S27. Educated at a Detroit academy, he gradu- ated A. B. from Michigan University in 1847 and A. M. in 1850. To get the money for his medical course he served as clerk during the summer on various steamers and spent the winter studying, taking his M. D. at Buffalo Medical College, New York, in 1852. Five years of private practice in Detroit followed, then he went to Wyandotte, Michigan and stayed until he died.

From 1855-5S he was assistant editor of the "Peninsular Journal of Medicine" of Detroit, and a founder of the second epoch of the Michigan State Medical Society, and president of the third; also