Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/351

 DELAMATER

DELAMATER

vocation, but a slight, though per- manent injury received in early life incapacitated him for the severe labor of the farm, and it was decided to edu- cate him for a profession. His father preferred the ministry; he himself in- clined to the law, and perhaps as a com- promise between two opinions, the boy finally decided to study medicine. Of the details of his medical education we have, however, no information. On December 1, 1806, John Delamater was licensed to practise medicine by the Medi- cal Society of Oswego County, New York, and returned immediately to Chatham, his birthplace, entering into a partner- ship with Dr. Dorr, his uncle. After a sojourn in Chatham of two and one half years, he removed to Florida, in Mont- gomery County, New York, and began a medical career, which in diversity, strenuousness and duration more than rivaled that of the famous Daniel Drake. In 1814 we find Delamater practising in Albany, New York, but in the follow- ing year he removed to Sheffield, Berk- shire County, Massachusetts, where his success brought him to the notice of the faculty of the Berkshire Medical Institute located at Pittsfield in the same county. Accordingly, in 1823 he was called to the chair of materia medica and pharmacy in that institution, and for three years de- livered the annual courses of lectures. His distinguished success as a teacher led to his call in 1827 to the chair of surgery in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the western district of New York, located at Fairfield in Herkimer County. Here for the next ten years Dr. Delamater worked and from 1837 to 1839 he lectured upon the theory and practice of physic and on female diseases, and during the session of 1839-40, on the theory and practice of physic and mid- wifery. At this time the impaired health of his family induced him to change his locality, and in 1841, he removed to Geneva, New York, where from 1S41 to 1843 he lectured on general pathology and materia medica in Geneva College. But the activity thus far

depicted by no means covers the entire facts of his medical career up to this point, and he himself says: "Within the period intervening between the years 1828 to 1S42, both inclusive, I accepted appointments and, in accordance there- with, delivered the following lectures in addition to the annual courses above named, viz.: six courses on the princi- ples and practice of physic in the Medical School of Maine, connected with Bow- doin College; one course on materia med- ica and three courses on principles and practice of physic in the Medical School of New Hampshire, connected with Dartmouth College; one course of ten weeks — twelve lectures weekly — on sur- gery and midwifery in the University of Vermont; and four courses on patho- logical anatomy, midwifery and theory and practice of physic in the University of Willoughby, at Willoughby, Ohio; and, finally, in January and February, 1838, I delivered about sixty lectures on surgery in the Medical College of Ohio, located at Cincinnati, Ohio." Truly the catalogue reads like the diary of one of the peripatetic professors of the middle ages!

During the time he was lecturing in Geneva Dr. Delamater was also occupy- ing the chairs of pathological anatomy and midwifery, or the theory and practice of physic, in the University of Willough- by, Ohio, and when, in 1843, the professors in the latter school resolved to remove to Cleveland and organize there a new medical school, Delamater was, naturally, the leading spirit in the transfer and occupied for seventeen years the chairs of general pathology and midwifery and the diseases of women in the Western Reserve College, thus founded. In 1S60, at the age of seventy-three, he resigned active and formal duty as a teacher, but occasionally filled temporary vacancies in the staff of the college until almost the close of his busy and useful life. After his death, the outlines of no less than seventy courses of lectures, in almost all departments of medicine, were found among his papers, and it is believed that