Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/354

 DEWEES

DkWOLF

and his handsome face and winning ways. He specialized in midwifery and did good work in days when Mrs. Gamp was nurse, the speculum unknown, and anything beyond digital examination and a pessary regarded as indelicate even by doctors. There was no syste- matic teaching in obstetrics and Dewees grew restless under this negligence, and collecting a band of pupils gave lectures on midwifery and strengthened his posi- tion in 1S06 by taking his M. D. from the University of Philadelphia with a thesis on "Moderation and Relief of Pain during Labor," he chiefly advocat- ing blood-letting. Shippen notes this thesis as marking an era in the history of medicine.

Finally, in 1810, after Wistar, James Chapman and Dewees had spent ill- spared time in pleading for it, a chair of midwifery was established with the retrogressive provision "that an at- tendance should be optional for gradua- tion."

James was chosen professor, but Dewees bore the disappointment man- fully and devoted himself more energet- ically to obstetrics.

He had married Martha, daughter of a Dr. Rogers, of New England, but she died young and in 1802 Dewees married Mary Terrain, a Philadelphian girl, and had three daughters and five sons. An attack of pulmonary hemorrhage in 1812 made him resign his work and invest his money in land at Phillipsburgh and retire there. His money was lost but his health restored and he came back poor, to speedily gain his old position and popularity, though in 1S34 he had an apoplectic attack and the next year had to resign his professor- ship. An old biographer describes this scene: Dewees invalided on the platform in the class-room; the students gathered round eyeing him regretfully, some of their number holding a large silver vase to present to him, his colleague Nathaniel Chapman standing by to voice Dewees' thanks. Then the invalid is helped from the room and the curtain

falls on his public professional life, though a sojourn at Havana restored enough health to enable him to take light duties for four years in Mobile, Alabama.

After that, home again to Philadelphia, a mere shadow of himself; not wealthy either, and with a big family. Gross says he was known as a "high liver." Williams simply speaks of his "relaxa- tion in the pleasures arising from social intercourse necessitated by want of sleep, irregular hours and laborious occupation." On the twentieth of May, 1841, worn out by anxiety and disease, he died in Philadelphia an old man of seventy-three, leaving good writings be- hind as his lasting memorial.

In 1S24 appeared his "System of Midwifery," which ran through twelve editions; "A Treatise on the Physical and Medical Treatment of Children" (ten editions), 1825; "On the Diseases of Females," 1826, also ten editions. D. W.

Medicine in America. J. G. Mumford. Samuel D. Gross. Autobiography. American Med. Biog. S. W. Williams (with portrait)

History of the Medical Profession of Phila- delphia. F. P. Henry. An Eulogium. H. L. Hodge, Phila., 1842. Am. J. M. Sc, Phila., 1841, n. s., vol. U.

DeWolf, James Ratchford (1819-1901).

James Ratchford DeWolf was born at Wolfville, Nova Scotia, in 1819. His education was obtained at Horton Aca- demy, and his professional training at Edinburgh University, from which he graduated M. D. in 1841, and in the same year obtained the L. R. C. S. (Edin- burgh).

He was in general practice at Halifax from the time of his graduation in 1S41 to the time of his appointment to the superintendency of the Nova Scotia Hospital for the Insane in 1S57, and, being fully imbued with the then de- veloping idea that kindness, tact, appeal to the patient's sense of honor and of the esthetic counted for much in pro- moting recoverv, he at once instituted