Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/438

 FRANCIS

FRANKLIN

in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, though only twenty-five. In the first volume appeared Francis' "Case of En- teritis" which was really one of septic peritonitis due to strangulation of the ileum by a Meckel's diverticulum coin- cident with an appendicitis. The four volumes are full of information and owe their delightful tone to his writings.

Francis was most popular as a lecturer. Up to 1820 he was incessantly teaching, writing and practising, his receipts for that year amounting to 815,000, a large sum for a young man but nine years in prac- tice in a small city such as New York then was. His work broke him down and he went to Europe for a year, returning in 1815 and being made professor of the institutes of medicine in the College of Physicians and Surgeons; in 1817 of med- ical jurisprudence, and in 1819 of ob- stetrics.

In 1826, with Hosack, Mott, McNevin and Mitchell, he resigned from the college and organized Rutger's Medical College where he became professor of obstetrics and forensic medicine. After five years the institution was ended by legislative act and with this the teaching of Francis also.

Thirty years later this busy popular doctordiedonthe eighth of February, 1861, and Dr. James G. Mumford has given pleasant glimpses of him in his " Narrative of Medicine in America" (1903).

His writings included:

"A Case of Enteritis," 1810.

"An Inaugural Dissertation on Mer- cury," 1811.

"An Historical Sketch of the Origin, Progress and Present State of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Univer- sity of the State of New York," 1813.

"Cases of Morbid Anatomy," 1S15.

"Letter on Febrile Contagion," 1S16.

"New York During the Last Half Century," 1857.

"Reminiscences of Samuel Latham Mitchell," 1859.

Eulogy on the late John W. Francis (Valen- tine Mott), N. Y., 1861. Am. M. Month, and N. Y. Rev., 1861, vo. iv (A. K. Gardner).

Am. M. Times, N. Y., 1S61, vol. ii. Bull. N. York Acad. Med., 1862, vol. i. Med. and Surg. Reporter, Phila.. 1861, vol. v. N. Amer. M.-Chir. Rev., Phila., 1861, vol. v. There is a portrait in the Surg. -gen. Library at Wash., D. C.

Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790).

The medical side of Franklin— little known — is, necessarily, the only one to be dealt with in a book about doctors. Born on January 17, 1706, headed by a procession of fourteen little Franklins, he was followed eventually by two more, to the household of Josias and Abiah Folger Franklin of Boston, Massachusetts. The whole family some thirty years later were glorified by the fame of the member who had become statesman, diplomist, philosopher and author, and when he died in Philadelphia on April 17, at the ripe age of eighty-four, did not see him descend into the obscurity his early modesty had predicted when he wrote:

The Bodt

OF

Benjamin Franklin

Like the Cover of an Old Book

Its Contents torn out

And stripped of its Lettering and Gildino

Lies here, Food for the Worms.

But the Work shall not be lost,

For it will, as He believes appear once more

In a New and More Elegant Edition

Revised and Corrected

BT

The Author.

He married, in 1730, a widow named Read who had been one of his early loves, and had a son and daughter.

Although not a graduate of any med- ical school, he was elected member of sev- eral medical societies. In those days many practised who had no degree, and an old engraving by P. Maren has under the bust "A. Benjamin Franklin, Docteur en Medecine."

Among the many medical subjects he discussed with his doctor friends was one on which he afterwards wrote; this was "Diet and its Effect on Health and Dis- ease," in which he remarked that "in general, mankind, since the improvement of cooking, eat about twice as much as nature requires."