Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/296

 CLARKE

While in Burksville Dr. Clarke received his commission as surgeon of the first Vermont Cavalry.

In April, 1866, Dr. Clarke settled in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin. The roads were rough, the weather exposure severe in day and night service, and he found that his physical powers, somewhat impaired by army life, were not equal to the large demands that were made upon him, but he struggled on doing the best he could. For thirteen years he was physician to the County Insane Asylum. In 1877 he was employed by the Pension Bureau to do special work in four differ- ent states. He worked in Sheboygan until 1895, when he was appointed, by Gen. Franklin, surgeon of the Northwest Branch of the National Soldiers' Home.

In 186S Dr. Clarke married Emma Josephine Adams who survived him. They had no children.

During the last years of his life he

spent his winters in the south and his

death (from dysentery) occurred there,

but his body was taken to Sheboygan.

E. J.C.

Clarke, Edward Hammond (1820-1877).

Edward Hammond Clarke, physician, was born in Norton, Massachusetts, Feb- ruary 2, 1S20, the ninth and youngest child of the Rev. Pitt Clarke, a congre- gational minister of Norton, descended from one of the early colonists who came from England and settled in the north of Wrentham. His mother, Mary Jones Stimson, his father's second wife, was very fond of literature and wrote many poems. Some of those preserved show, as Dr. O. W. Holmes says, a cultivated taste as well as warm affections.

On the death of Pitt Clarke his widow moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Edward was fitted for Harvard College, entering with the class of 1S-10. An attack of hemorrhage from the lungs when he was in his junior year compelled him to give up study, and this same weak health proved a hindrance for some years.

With it all he was buoyant and opti-


 * 4 CLARKE

mistic in temperament and took up the study of medicine in Philadelphia because of the less harsh climate of that city. The M. D. was conferred upon him by the University of Pennsylvania in 1846. Upon graduation he accepted an offer to travel in Europe. Here he began the study of otology, a specialty to which he devoted himself in the early years of practice. Upon establishing himself in Boston he soon assumed a prominent po- sition. His health was much improved though never strong. He is described by Dr. Holmes as having " all the qualities that go to the making of a master in the art of healing; science enough, but not so much in the shape of minute, unprofitable acquisition as to make him near-sighted; very great industry; love of his profession and entire concentration of his faculties upon it." In 1855 he was chosen pro- fessor of materia medica in the Medical School of Harvard University, succeeding the distinguished Jacob Bigelow. This office he resigned in 1S72 and was chosen a member of its board of overseers. He continued in active practice until assailed by cancer of the intestine, of which he died November 30, 1S77, after three years of almost constant suffering borne with extraordinary fortitude.

As a writer he contributed various ar- ticles on materia medica to the "New American Cyclopedia." In conjunction with Dr. Robert Amory he published, in 1872, a small volume on the "Physiolog- ical and Therapeutical Action of the Bromides of Potassium and Ammonium," and in 1876 "Practical Medicine" a brief and clear account of the progress of medi- cal knowledge in the century just finished. His essay on "Sex in Education" pro- voked sharp antagonism and was much discussed and read. Another essay, "The Building of a Brain," was widely read but called forth less comment. In his later years he gave himself more and more to literature.

He married Sarah Loring, daughter of Jacob H. Loud, of Plymouth, in 1852, who died a year before him. They had two children, Mary Stimson, who died in