Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/449

 GALT

329

GARCELON

Craig, and two of their sons were physicians, one, A. D. Gait, the other, William Craik Gait, who was born in 1771, and died in Louisville, Kentucky in 1853.

Dr. Gait himself died in 1S08.

R. M. S.

Gait, John M., Junior (1819-1862.)

A son of Dr. Alexander D. and Mary Gait, he was born in Williamsburg March 19, 1819, his first instruction being received from his parents and chiefly from his mother, while he next went to the preparatory school of Wil- liam and Mary College, and later entered the college from which he graduated in 1838 with the degree of A. B. He read medicine under his father for a time, and then entered the University of Pennsylvania, receiving from this school his M. D. in 1841.

He began to practice in his native town, and must have been almost im- mediately elected superintendent of the Hospital for the Insane, the office having been created by the Legisla- ture in February, 1841, as his term of service commenced on July 1 of that year. He filled this position over twenty years; and from the time of his election until his death, Dr. Gait devoted his entire time and attention to his duties.

Dr. Gait was a member of the Medical Society of Virginia and also a member of the Convention of Medical Superin- tendents and Physicians of Asylums which became, fifty years later, the American Medico-Psychological Association. He was one of the early advocates of separate hospitals for the colored insane, a movement which originated with the late Dr. F. T. Stribling, superintendent of the Western Lunatic Asylum of Virginia.

He was a good classical scholar, and knew French, Spanish, the Koran in Arabic, and wrote several books and many articles. In person he was small in stature, of much good sense and, like his father, cared only for his work, nothing for money, refusing an in- crease of salary. His life was devoted

to the care of the unfortunates under his charge. He never married, and died at Williamsburg on May 18, 1862. For more than twenty-five years he kept a diary in which was recorded much of interest and value. In 1S43 he published " Gait's Practice of Med- icine," which was compiled from notes of and histories of cases left by his father. He published in 1843 a work entitled " Gait on the Treatment of Insanity;" in 1851, two essays on "Asylums for Persons of Unsound Mind;" in 1853, a second series on the same subject; in 1S56, "Gait on Insan- ity in Italy, " and in 1859, "Lectures on Idiocy." For medical journals he prepared many medical reviews and also wrote articles on botany. One manuscript, a " Life of Albert Gait the Sculptor, " was written but never published. R. M. S.

Garcelon, Alonzo (1813-1906).

The great grandson of David Davis, one of the earliest pioneers of New England, and a man distinguished in his native state, both medically and politically, he deserves careful men- tion. He was born in Lewiston, Maine, May 6, 1813, the son of Col. William and of Mary Davis Garcelon. As a boy he lived mostly on a farm of his father's in the outskirts of the city and worked on it tilling the soil, but he had an excellent education at the academies in Monmouth, Waterville, and New Castle, Maine, and graduated at Bowdoin College in the class of 1836, afterwards teaching school at Alfred, Maine, and Fryeburg, but study- ing medicine in the meanwhile with Abiel Hale, of the latter town, and earning enough money to attend the medical school at Dartmouth. While there, he attracted the attention of Prof. Reuben Dimond Mussey by his anatomical dissections, so much so that the professor invited him to act as his anatomical demonstrator at the Medical College of Ohio, then situated at Cincinnati, where Garcelon took his