Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/298

 CLEAVELAND

CLENDENIN

epidemic of ship fever occurred. Fifteen of the doctors were stricken with the dread malady, thirteen of them died, Dr. Cleaveland and one other being the only ones who recovered.

After leaving the hospital he was examining physician for the commission- ers of immigration and during this time over nine thousand immigrants passed through his hands with hardly a case of mistaken diagnosis. About this time Dr. Henry Grinnell offered him the post of physician to the relief expedition which was going out to search for Sir John Franklin. This offer he declined and after engaging for a year or two in private practice in New York City, he and Dr. Cornelius R. Agnew were appointed physicians to the Great Cliff Mine on Lake Superior, where they had some fifteen hundred miners under their charge for a year or more.

Dr. Cleaveland's work as an alienist began when he became first assistant under Dr. Gray at the Utica Asylum, where he occupied a very responsible position and did able service.

He is, however, best known for his work in connection with the Hudson River State Hospital, at Poughkeepsie, New York. He was instrumental in getting the bill for such a hospital through the Legislature, and there was no part of the work of construction or organization after he was appointed superintendent in March, 1867, that did not come under his untiring supervision.

Dr. Cleaveland was the first to suggest that the old-time designation of asylum should be changed to that of hospital, and the one offense against the rules of the institution which Dr. Cleaveland with all of his well-known kindness of heart could not be persuaded to overlook in employe' or staff officer, or anyone else under him, was that of unkindness to a patient.

The story is told of a contractor who once approached him with an offer of several thousand dollars as a commission. He was asked by the doctor if he could really afford to give all that out of his

contract, and when told that arrange- ments had been made by which it could be done, Dr. Cleaveland replied, "very well, take that amount from your con- tract and let the state have the benefit of the saving. I am paid for my work and it is my place to see to it that you are not overpaid for yours."

For twenty-five years he remained in charge of the hospital, rarely taking even a day's vacation, but resigning in March, 1893, he passed the remainder of his days in the quiet of his own home in the city of Poughkeepsie, New York, where he died on January 21, 1907, J. E. S.

Clendinen,William Alexander( 1 8 1 9-1 849).

William Alexander Clendinen gradu- ated in the medical department of the University of Maryland in 1840. He died of cholera at New Orleans in 1S49, having been seized with the disease while dis- secting a victim of the epidemic. After his graduation he traveled extensively, devoting his time to the study of medicine.

In 1847 he was "Chef de la clinique oculaire" to Desmarres in Paris.

H. F.

Early Hist, of Ophthalmology, Friedenwald. Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, 1897.

Clendenin, William (1S29-1885).

The son of William and Mary Wallace Clendenin, he was born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, his people origi- nally coming from Dumfries, Scotland. He had the hard fight which falls to the lot of many a student; he worked on his father's farm, was clerk in a dry- goods store, and finally attained his wish by being able to study medicine under Dr. John Gemmiel and, in 1S4S, to enter the Medical College of Ohio, graduating therefrom in 1850. When he settled in Cincinnati to practise he became intimate with Dr. Reuben D. Mussey and his son and was partner with young Dr. Mussey when the father retired.

In January, 1866, he married Sabra