Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/442

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the chair of materia medica and thera- peutics in the University of Maryland. His didactic and clinical instructions from this chair gave proof of original thought and wide learning and fully justified the expectation which had been formed of his success as a teacher. But his career in this new field of work was short. In attempting to give relief to a poor patient he contracted malig- nant diphtheria of which he died on March 25, 1860 in his thirty-seventh year.

In memory of his virtues and worth, his friends within and without the medical profession founded the Frick Memorial Library in the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland in his native city of Baltimore.

S. C. C.

Lives of Eminent Amer. Phys. and Surgs.

S. D. Gross.

The Med. Annals of Maryland. E. F.

Cordell.

Maryland M. J., Bait., 1S79, vol. iv, (F.

Donaldson).

Maryland and Virginia M. J., Richmond,

1860, vol. xiv.

Frick, George (1793-1870).

George Frick, the first in America to restrict his professional work to ophthalmology, author of a valuable treatise on diseases of the eye, the first work on this subject written in America, was born in Baltimore in 1793. After obtaining a broad clas- sical education he entered the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania, where he obtain- ed his M. D. in 1815, and in 1817 was admitted as licentiate of medicine into the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland. He then spent several years abroad, returning to Baltimore about 1819 to engage in the practice of ophthalmology. He was appointed surgeon to the Baltimore General Dis- pensary in 1823. In 1822 he deliver- ed clinical lectures at the Maryland Hospital.

He was a member of the various medical societies; secretary of the Med- ical and Chirurgical Faculty in 1823,

2 FRICK

and joined the Maryland Medical So- ciety in 1822. He was much interest- ed in general science, and was one of four physicians to organize a society for promoting its study in 1819.

He devoted himself to the practice of ophthalmology and to the cultivation of general scientific studies, as well as to music, for a number of years. He was unfortunate in growing very deaf before middle life, and it is probable that this interfered greatly with his practice of medicine; for somewhere about 1840 he entirely relinquished it and left Baltimore to spend most of his time in Europe, paying occasional visits to this country. He died in Dresden, March 26, 1870, aged seventy- seven. Dr. Frick never married. He was a man of very retiring and modest character and of kind disposition, a careful scientific student whose work and writings deserve high praise.

His first writing was his thesis for the degree in medicine; its subject, "On the Melee Vesicatorium " (1815). In 1820-21 his article on "Observa- tions on Cataract and the Various Modes of Operating for its Cure" appeared in the "American Medical Recorder" of Philadelphia. These articles cover over forty pages. In 1821 an article on " Observation of the Various Forms of Conjunctivitis" appeared in the same journal, and in 1S23 his paper on "Ob- servation on Artificial Pupil and the Modes of Operating for its Cure." His most important work, however, was "A Treatise on the Diseases of the Eye; Including the Doctrines and Practice of the Most Eminent Modern Surgeons and Particularly Those of Prof. Beer," which was published in Baltimore in 1S23. It was inscribed to his teacher, Dr. Physick, of Philadel- phia. It is well and clearly written, the system upon which it is classified is excellent, and no greater praise could be given it than stating the fact that it was republished three years later in London by an English surgeon, Richard Welbank, a member of the