Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/450

 GARCELON

GARDEN

degree in 1839. Not long after he re- turned to Lewiston, and began at onee an active practice which continued for sixty-seven years.

It is said of him that he did the first mastoid operation ever done in Maine, and it is also well known that he was an excellent surgeon from the begin- ning of his career, which might have been expected from the unequalled instruction received at the hands of Prof. Mussey. He soon became one of the best known medical men in Maine, and with the outbreak of the Civil War, came rapidly to the front as a most capable military surgeon. He was appointed surgeon-general of the state early in 1S61, and gave his entire time to the preparation of troops, later going himself, and being pres- ent at the first battle of Bull Run. After that he went through the Penin- sula Campaign, was at Antietam and elsewhere until, worn out with mala- rial fever, he came home for a rest. Recovering rapidly, he returned to the army and was chief surgeon at the "White House" and "City Point" in Virginia during Grant's campaigns, finally returning home after' four years of active service.

Dr. Garcelon resumed active practice at once, but gradually became again in- terested in politics. He was also elected president of the Maine Medical Associa- tion and read before it several papers of medical and surgical interest.

In 1886, when seventy-three years old, he read an excellent paper on " Disloca- tion of the Shoulder Backward." It has also been claimed that he was the first in the state to remove the thyroid gland.

The first newspaper in Lewiston was started by him and he was for a long time its chief editor in spite of many de- mands on his time as a medical man.

In 1841 he married Miss Ann Augusta Waldron, of Dover, New Hampshire, by whom he had four children. She dying in 1857, he married again in 1S59 Miss Oliva Spear, of Rockland, Maine, and had a daughter.

He was chosen governor of Maine by the Legislature in 1879.

Dr. Garcelon maintained his remark- able vitality to the last; he had neither ache nor pain to the day of his death, testifying as an expert only a few weeks before this occurred, and also made a fine address on "Preventive Medicine" be- fore the City Board of Health a few weeks before he died.

He was found dead in bed December 8, 1906, while making a visit to his daughter in Medford, Massachusetts.

In his old age he was thin and spare of feature and body, clean shaved, rather peaked face, largely free from wrinkles, and wore always an old-fashioned black stock with a high standing wide open collar which gave him a venerable ap- pearance.

J. A. S. Trans. Maine Med. Assoc., 1907.

Garden, Alexander (1728-1792).

Born about 1728, son of the Rev. Alexander Garden of Aberdeen, he not only came to the States but stayed thirty years. Yet not one in a thousand either here or in England knows after whom the Gardenia J asminoides was named.

His medical education was with the celebrated Dr. John Gregory in Edin- burgh and at Aberdeen University. He arrived in South Carolina about 1750 and settled down to practise with a Dr. Rose in Prince William parish. At once he started on his favorite study of botany, but ill health compelled a voyage north- ward and he was offered but declined a professorship in New York Medical Col- lege. Returning to Charleston, he began what was to be a very successful practice. An odd little glimpse of his life at this time is given in a letter to John Bar- tram the botanist: "Think that I am here, confined to the sandy streets of Charleston where the ox, where the ass, and where men as stupid as either fill up the vacant space, while you range the green fields of Florida." The study of zoology, especially fishes and reptiles, filled up his leisure left from a large prac-