Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/336

 DANFORTH

DARBY

of Maine, and from 1S62 to 1892, was for most of the time professor of the theory and practice of medicine. He was very active in assisting in the foundation of the Maine General Hos- pital, and from its opening until ho re- tired from practice, was at the head of the medical staff.

In 1868 he was president of the Maine Medical Association, for which he wrote the annual oration, and year after year a long list of carefully written medical papers, among which were in- cluded one on dropsy, a second on the pathology of phthisis, and a very able one on pneumonia in 1S93, when he was sixty-six. He gradually became inter- ested in diseases of the heart and lungs, of which he made a specialty.

Dr. Dana twice married, first, Septem- ber 2S, 1854, to Carrie Jane Starr, and again in October 26, 1876, to Carolina Peck Lyman who cared for him de- votedly in his declining years. He had ten children, of whom three died young. The lives of three others were brought to a sudden close after reaching maturity. The last and heaviest blow of all came at a time when his health was already be- ginning to fail from advancing years, in the tragically sudden death of his son, Dr. William Lawrence Dana, who, a most promising surgeon, went home from a medical meeting in the best of health and was found dead the next morning. From that time there was to be no re- covery for the devoted father. He be- came affected about four years before his death with a gradual loss of mental power, and died April 13, 1904. J. A. S.

Trans. Maine Med. Assoc., 1904.

Danforth, Samuel (1740-1S27).

Samuel Danforth was born at Cam- bridge, Massachusetts in August, 1740. He was the son of Samuel Danforth (Harvard College, 1715), probate judge of the county of Middlesex, who married a Miss Symmes and was descended from Samuel Danforth the elder who came to Roxbury from England in 1634, and was second on the list of fellows of Harvard

College, 1650-1654, and in the college catalogue from the year 1634 to 1758.

Samuel's early life was passed in Cam- bridge. He graduated from Harvard in 1758 and studied medicine with Dr. Rand, the elder, either in Charlestown or Boston. In 1790 Harvard conferred the honorary M. D. upon him. It is probable that his medical opinions were influenced by Dr. Philip Godfrid Kast. He began to practise in Weston, Mass- achusetts, but soon removed to Newport, Rhode Island. He returned to Boston in a year or two, married a Miss Watts, of Chelsea, Massachusetts, and settled in Boston.

He was an original member of the Massachusetts Medical Society and its president from 1795 to 1798. He made no claim to a knowledge of surgery, but was a resourceful practitioner of medicine. His manners were polished but not formal, and his carriage attractive, yet com- manding. He used few remedies and those only whose effects were obvious and powerful, calomel, opium, ipecac- uanha and peruvian bark being his favorites. On one occasion he was called to visit a number of persons who had been hurt by the fall of a house frame and on arriving found another practi- tioner engaged in bleeding the injured. "Doctor," said the latter, "I am doing your work for you." "Then," said Pr. Danforth, "pour the blood back into the veins of these men."

He died November 16, 1827, at the age of eighty-seven, in his house in Bowdoin Square. His portrait by Gil- bert Stuart is in Sprague Hall in the Bos- ton Medical Library. W. L. B.

Hist. Har. Med. School. T. F. Harrington.

Genealog. Reg. of the First Settlers in N. B.

John Farmer, 1S29.

Bos. Med. and Surg. Jour., vol. i, 1828.

Com. Mass. Med. Soc, vol. iv.

Darby, John Thomson (1836-1879).

John Thomson Darby, surgeon, was born at Pond Bluff Plantation, Orange- burg County, South Carolina, December 16, 1836. His parents were Artemus Thomson Darby, a physician of some