Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/484

 GRAY

358 GREEN

The high standard reached in New York in the care of the insane was largely due to his influence. As a medical witness in cases of interest he was widely known, notably in the trial of Guiteau and of Lincoln's assassin. In 18S2 he was shot in TJtica by a mad- man over the left malar, the bullet coming out in the right cheek, and never quite recovered from the shock. His health from other causes became seriously impaired, so he made a trip to Europe and came home better, but died from kidney disease in New York January 12, 1886.

"Dr. Gray," writes a biographer," was uncompromising, unyielding and in a certain sense coercive in his views of psychiatry. He did not recognize certain forms of insanity discerned by American and foreign alienists. With him moral insanity, dipsomania, kleptomania were psychiatric myths and misnomers invented to shield de- pravity and crime. He fought out his convictions on this line throughout a vigorous life, and, carrying these triumphantly into the forum often won there popular acquiescence, as in the case of Guiteau. To him belongs the credit of establishing in this country a microscopic study of the brain; that which made the Utica asylum a great school of instruction. His lectures at- tracted not only the students of his own college but others, as well.

He married, in 1854, Miss Mary B. Wetmore, daughter of Edmund A. Wetmore of Utica, who, with three children, Dr. John P. Gray, Jr., Wil- liam and Cornelia survived him. Three other children died in infancy.

His appointments numbered among others: professor of psychological medi- cine, Bellevue Hospital Medical College, 1874, and the same appointment to the Albany Medical College in 1876; president of the New York State Med- ical Society, of the New York State Medical Association, of the Associa- tion of Superintendents of Asylums, and honorary member of the British,

French and Italian Medico-Psycholog- ical Associations; also LL. D., Hamilton College.

His writings included:

"Thoughts on the Causation of In- sanity," 1872.

"Responsibility of the Insane," 1875.

"An Abstract of the Laws of New York — Comparisons of the Same with Those of England," 1879.

"On the Sanity of Guiteau," 1882.

"Insanity: Preventable Causes," 1885.

Albany Med. Annals, vol. vii, 1886.

Am. Jour. Insanity. N. York, 1887, voL

xliv.

Med. Legal Jour., N. York, 1886, vol. iv.

Med. News, Phila., 1886, vol. xlix.

Med. Ree., N. York, 1886, vol. xxx

Tr. Med. Soc, N. York, 1886.

Green, John (1736-1799).

John Green was the son of the Rev. Thomas Green, Baptist elder and physi- cian, one of the earliest settlers of Lei- cester (Greenville) where John was born August 14, 1836.

Instructed in medicine by his father, he came to Worcester and built his house on the eminence now known as Green Hill, which although relatively nearer town at that time, when many persons lived north of Lincoln Square and there were but seven houses on Main Street be- tween that point and the Old South Church on the common, seems yet to have been at a distance that might well make prospective patients hesitate before storming the steeps in the dead of night or in bad weather. Patients came, however; medical students also from Worcester and surrounding towns; Green Lane became a county road and, although during the latter part of his life, the office was in a little wooden affair on the present site of the Five Cents Savings Bank, the doctor always lived in the Green Hill house, and there he died forty-two years later (October 29, 1799) agep sixty-three.

An earnest patriot, he was, in 1733, a member (and the only medical member) of the American Political Society, which was formed on account of the grievous