Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/462

 GILMAN 3

editions of Dr. Theodric Romeyn Beck's celebrated "Elements of Medical Juris- prudence."

In person Dr. Gilman was tall but heavily set, of dark complexion and with jet black hair and eyes. He was careless in his dress, and unregardful of the conventions of society. He dis- played, however, to those who had fallen in the world, a deference and a courtesy which other people seldom had a chance to see in him.

In 1S63 his health again began to fail — this time permanently. A summer which he spent amid the Pompton Hills in New Jersey, was expected to improve his condition, but did not. On the evening of September 26, 1865, while all his family and a number of his older friends were sitting round about him, he seemed suddenly to fall asleep. All efforts to arouse him were availing. The good doctor had indeed gone, and in the very manner in which he had always prayed that his final departure might be permitted — "very calmly and very swiftly."

He was buried in the cemetry at Mid- dletown. T. H. S.

Doctor's Recreation Series, vol. xi. "A Biographical Cyclopedia of Medical History. " Tr. M. Soc. N. York, Albany, 1866 (W. H. Roberts).

Gilman, John Taylor (1806-1884).

The founder of the Maine General Hospital, John Taylor Gilman, son of Col. Nathaniel and Dorothy Folsom Gilman, was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, May 19, 1806; fitted for college at Phillips, Exeter Academy, and graduated at Bowdoin in the class of 1S26, afterwards studying medicine with William Perry of Exeter and tak- ing his M. D. at the Medical School of Maine in 1829. He also took addition- al instruction in anatomy and clinical medicine in Philadelphia, but began to practise in Portland, Maine, and spent the rest of his life there.

He was president of the Main Medical Association, but his fame will rest upon the foundation of the Maine General

5 GILMER

Hospital. He was a venerable gentle- man, and lived long enough to see the hospital a magnificent success to all classes of suffering people. A remark- able physician, it is difficult not to exaggerate his skill in diagnosis, or his accuracy in therapeutics. Some- times finding a patient restless, he would walk slowly round the room, looking at the pictures with a critic's eye, setting them straight if misplaced on the wall, and then gradually taking up the thread of conversation when the patient had grown quieter. He was not formal, but dignified. Al- though high strung and of a quick temper, he had great self-control. " You don't want a tonic, but a little self-reliance," were his words to a rest- less child. It pleased him, when walk- ing in the streets, to have the workmen wave their hats to him. For fifty- two years he practised in Portland, during which time he was very forci- ble in his denunciations of the filthy sanitary conditions of the so-called "dump" and did all he could to get it abolished.

He wrote an excellent paper on " Rupture of the Uterus, Twice in the Same Patient in Two Successive Deliv- eries, and Recovering after gastrotomy," 1863. He is said to have done the first Cesarean section in Maine, saving both mother and child.

Doctor Gilman married Helen Wil- liams of Augusta by whom he had a daughter.

He died gradually at the last, and departed calmly January 16, 1884. J. A. S.

Trans. Maine Med. Assoc, Portland, vol. viii ,

Gilmer, George, Jr., M. D. (1742 ).

Born at Williamsburg on the tenth of January, 1742, he was the second of the four sons of Dr. George Gilmer, a native of Scotland and for fifty years a successful physician, surgeon and druggist of that town, and Mary Peachy Walker, his second wife.