Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/480

 GRAM

compelled him to return to Denmark to look after family affairs. He obtained a portion of his father's heritage and through the favor of Prof. Fenger, his uncle and physician-in-ordinary to the king, he was placed in the Royal Medical and Surgical Institution. Within a year from coming the king appointed him assistant-surgeon to a large military hospital. In 1814 he resigned and settled to general practice in Copen- hagen with the highest grade of merit in the Royal Academy of Surgery.

During 1823 and 1824 Gram had be- come acquainted with and thoroughly tested the principles of homeopathy, and it is probable that he was induced to stay in America, when he returned to see his family, in the hope of disseminating the doctrines of homeopathy.

It is thought he must have been an homeopathist about twelve years pre- vious to leaving Copenhagen. After stay- ing a while in Mount Desert, Maine, to help a brother, Neils B. Gram, who was in financial difficulties and who had even- tually nearly all Hans' money he began practice in New York and a few months later translated Hahnemann's "Geist der homeopathischen Heil-lehre" and pub- lished it in a pamphlet of twenty-four pages under the title " The Character of Homeopathy." The work was dedicated to Dr. David Hosack and distributed in the leading medical colleges, but Gram had nearly forgotten English and the book was difficult to understand. Hos- ack said he had not read it. Fifteen years later it was put into good English by a Dr. Scott, of Glasgow, Scotland. Its cold reception was a great disappoint- ment to Gram, but he lived to see the system firmly planted not only in New York but in many other cities. He failed in health just as this came to pass. Bro- ken in heart by the misfortunes, insanity, and death of his only brother he was attacked by apoplexy in 1838 and after many months of suffering passed away in February, 1840. He was of the Swe- denborgian faith and a man of most scru- pulously pure and charitable life.

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GRAY

The History of Homeopathy, N. York 1905

(T. L. Bradford).

U. States Med. and Surg. Jour., vol. v, 1S67.

Amer. Jour, of Homeopathy, vol. xii.

New England Med. Gaz, 1871.

Trans. N. Y. State Horn. Med. Soc, vols, i,

and viii.

Gray, Asa (1810-1888).

Born in Paris, Oneida County, New York on November 18, 1810, one of his earliest occupations was to feed the bark mill and drive the horse at his father's tannery. Though he gradu- ated M. D. at the Medical College of the Western District of Fairfield in 1831, he never practised medicine. Two years before this his interest in botany was roused by an article in " Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopedia" and he watch- ed eagerly for the first spring flower which he found to be the little Clay- tonia Virginica, named after Dr. John Clayton the botanist. The correspond- ence he had with Dr. Lewis C. Beck in regard to specimens led to a lasting friendship with Dr. John Torrey, and in 1833 he became his assistant profes- sor of chemistry and botany in the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons and issued the first century of the "North American Graminese and Cyperacese," a second century fol- lowed but the work was never finished.

Gray's next post was the curator- ship of the New York Lyceum of Natural History and his "Elements of Botany," 1836, prepared the way for his larger work, the "Botanical Text-Book." He declined two valuable appoint- ments and continued working with Dr. Torrey on parts one and two of the "Flora'of North America." Then fol- lowed visits to all the leading European botanists and after that a single-hand- ed grappling for^a time with the other numbers.

In 1842 he accepted an invitation from president Quincy to become Fisher professor of natural history at Harvard and under him grew the vast herbarium, library and garden which at the time of his going to Cambridge were still