Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/483

 GRAY

in their infancy. The library con- tains over S000 books and pamphlets.

Always at work, 1848 saw the "Amer- icas Boreali-Orientalis Ulustrata," beau- tifully illustrated by Isaac Sprague. The two volumes had 186 plates, but unfortu- nately the work was not continued.

Perhaps the memory of his own de- lights and difficulties with botany when a boy made him write two charming little books — "How Plants Grow," 1858, and "How Plants Behave," 1872. "Field, Forest and Garden," 1868, proved a wonderful help to plant lovers. " His First Lesson in Botany," 1857, re-appeared, revised, in 1887 under "Elements of Botany," the two volumes being the alpha and omega of an overcrowded but fiery burning life. How much he did in the way of collecting and writing can only be estimated by those who knew how he kept in constant correspond- ing with old pupils and scientific friends. Those who are curious relative to that between Gray and Darwin will find it all in "Darwiniana," 1876, and will note that Gray, while accepting Darwin's theory, was a firm theist.

Gray was relieved from active duties in the college in 1872 and gave more time to literary work. When he was se venty-fi ve the botanists of North America gave him a fine silver vase and a silver salver in token of their universal esteem.

Jane L. Loring, daughter of the Hon. Charles G. Loring of Boston, was the name of Gray's wife, a devoted companion and assistant. They made five trips to Europe, working with De Candolle, Sir William Hooker, and with European botanists. Once they went up the Nile as far as Wady- Halfa, but "a land," said Gray "which had been cultivated five thousand years is a poor land to botanize in."

There was scarcely a society of note which did not claim Gray as active, honorary or corresponding member or give him honors. lie held the Edin- burgh LL. D. and the Oxford D. C. L., the Harvard A. M. and L.L. D.

357 GRAY

He made three trips to California with congenial friends, taking in Mexico; the last trip being in 1879 when they visited Roan Mountain and the place where grows the Shortia Galacifolia, whose romantic history and connection with Gray and Dr. Short should be read. On the twenty-eighth of November, 18S7, while working on "The Grape- vines of North America," he had an attack of paralysis and for nine weeks lingered between life and death. On the thirtieth of January, 1888, he quiet- ly passed away. His influence on the science of American botany can hard- ly be overestimated, and hundreds regretted sorely that death closed the book before the "Synoptical Flora" was all written.

D. W.

Abridged from A Notice of Asa Gray. W

Deane, 1888.

Bull. Torrey Botanical Club, Mar., 1888.

Life and Letters of Asa Gray. Pop. Sci

Mon., 1894-5.

Am. Acad, of Arts and Sci., Cam., 1888.

Proc. Roy. Soc. of London, 18S9, xlvi.

Nat. Acad, of Sci., Wash., 1S95, iii.

There is a portrait in the Surg. -gen

Library in Wash., D. C.

Gray, John Perdue (1825-1886).

The biographers of John Perdue Gray with regard to his boyhood simply state that he was born of American parents on August 6, 1825. He went to the common school in Half Moon, Center County, Pennsylvania, his birth- place, and Dickinson College, taking his M. A. in 1846. His M. D. was obtained from the University of Penn- sylvania in 1848 and the same year he became a resident physician in the Blockley Hospital, Philadelphia, and three years later third assistant physi- cian to the New York State Lunatic Asylum in Utica, finally becoming superintendent when only twenty-eight.

While editor of the first journal in America devoted to insanity — "The American Journal of Insanity" — he raised it to an enviable position both in this country and abroad by his ability and by his own writings.