Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/446

 FULLER

FUSSELL

sickness in Gov. Endicott's Settle- ment at Salem, in 1628 (Bradford's "History of Plymouth Plantation") it is said: "Having no physician among themselves it was fortunate for those planters that Plymouth could supply them with one so well qualified as Dr. Fuller." Fuller was undoubtedly ser- viceable to the colonists during the epidemics of typhus and small-pox in 1621. He visited the sick in Ply- mouth, where he was deacon of the Rev. John Robinson's Church, and also made journeys for the same purpose to Dorchester, Charlestown and Salem. In 1623 he was joined by his wife and daughter. Two children were born in America, Mercy and Samuel, and al- together he had seven.

Dr. Fuller wrote to Gov. Bradford under date of twenty-eighth of June, 1630: "I have been to Matapan (a part of Dorchester) and let some twenty of those people blood," and again writing to Gov. Bradford, his old friend, in 1630 he says: "I have had conferences with them all till I was weary. Governor Endicott is a goodly wise and humble gentleman and very discreet, and of a firm and good temper." It is plain that Fuller had a mighty influence for good in the affairs of the settlers and that he was a physician and not a preacher, as some- times alleged.

He died with some twenty others in the small-pox epidemic of 1633. His widow was held in high repute as a midwife, even receiving a call to settle in that capacity in the town of Reho-

both, Massachusetts, in the year 1663. She declined, however, and died the following year. Dr. Fuller's son, Sam- uel, became a clergyman and was the first minister of the church in Middle- boro, Massachusetts.

W. L. B.

Memoir by Thomas Francis Harrington, M. D., reprinted from the Johns Hopkins Hos- pital Bulletin, vol. xiv, Oct., 1903, No. 151. Genealog. Reg. of the First Settlers in N. E. John A. Farmer.

Genealog. Diet, of the First Settlers of N. E., 1860. James A. Savage. Amer. Med. Biog., 1S2S, James Thacher.

Fussell, Bartholomew (1794-1871).

Bartholomew Fussell passed his youth and early manhood in Maryland, grad- uated in medicine in Baltimore. In 1S26 he married Lydia Morris of Phila- delphia, and shortly afterwards settled at Kennett Square, Chester County, where he rapidly acquired a very large practice.

Dr. Fussell was an ardent advocate of the cause of abolition and was also one of the first to favor the study of medicine by women, and in 1840 he gave regular instructions to a class of women on medical science and in 1846 conceived the idea of establish- ing a medical college for them in Phila- delphia. From this project there arose in Philadelphia the Woman's Medical College.

Two ot Dr. Fussell's sons became physicians. One, practised at Chester Springs, Chester County, Pennsylvania, where he died, and the other was B. Lundy. G. A. L.