Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/507

 HAMILTON

HAMLIN

Surgeons, and in 1869 the trustees of Union College conferred upon him the degree of doctor of laws.

His conduct as consultant in the case of the lamented Pres. Garfield, at whose bedside he was a conspicuous figure, and his candor in joining in the publication of the true causes of the embarrassments in treatment, as revealed by the necropsy, have passed into the heroic annals of surgery.

Dr. Hamilton was twice married. Hi3 first wife was Mrs. Mary Virginia McMur- ran, a daughter of Isaac Van Arsdale, a planter, living near Shepherdstown, Vir- ginia. She died on April 8, 1838, leaving one son, Theodore B. He married a sec- ond time on September 1, 1S40, his bride being Mary Gertrude Hart, daughter of Judge Orris Hart, of Oswego, New York. By his second wife, who died in July, 1885, Dr. Hamilton had three children. His valuable library was purchased by Dr. J. B. Hamilton, of the United States Marine Hospital service, and his unique collection of surgical specimens was be- queathed to the Army Medical Museum in Washington, District of Columbia. He died in full possession of his faculties at his home in New York, of fibrous phthisis, on August 11, 1886, after pro- tracted suffering.

Abridged from a biog. in Med. and Surg. Rep., Phila., 1864-5, vol. xii.

Hamilton, John B. (1847-1898).

Sometime editor of the "Journal of the American Medical Association," a success- ful surgeon and writer and a fine worker for reform in the United States Marine, John B. Hamilton, was born in Jersey County, Illinois on December 1, 1847 and graduated from Rush Medical Col- lege in 1869, marrying, in 1871, Mary L. Frost and having two children, Ralph Alexander and Blanche.

He entered the Marine Hospital service by competitive examinations, where, rising rapidly to the rank of supervising surgeon-general, he reorganized the whole department and introduced the | examination of seamen and managed

campaigns against yellow fever. This surgical skill won for him a position in Rush Medical College, and while in Wash- ington he was surgeon to Providence Hospital and professor to Georgetown University, medical department, for eight years, which university gave him her LL. D. On returning to Chicago he was made professor of the principles of surgery and clinical surgery to Rush Med- ical College and the same in the Chicago Polyclinic. The great feature of his sur- gical work was accurate diagnosis and his clinic was of inestimable value to students. Among his best operations was that for hernia, he being one of the first to introduce modern methods into Chicago and improve on them.

His writings are chiefly scattered through medical journals, but he edited "Moulin's Surgery," and the "Journal of the American Medical Association" was never more successful than during his four years' editorship. A fairly full list of his writings is in the Surgeon's-gen- eral Catalogue, Washington, District of Columbia.

He died when fifty-one, of typhoid fever after an arduous life of unselfish devotion to the public good.

D. W.

Distinguished Phys. and Surgs. of Chicago.

F. M. Sperry, Chicago, 1904.

J. Am. Med. Ass., Chicago, 180S, vol. xxxi.

Med. Rec., N. Y., 1898, vol. liv.

N. Y. Med. Jour., 1898, lrvii.

A portrait in the Surg.-gen. Collection,

Wash., D. C.

Hamlin, Augustus Choate (1829-1905).

Augustus Choate Hamlin, surgeon in the United States Army, was edu- cated at Bowdoin College, from which he graduated in 1851, afterwards studying medicine at Harvard and obtaining bis M. 1'. in l s:, i an tling in Bangor, Maine, as a general practitioner. At (he outbreak of Civil War he was appointed surgeon of pita] for volunteers connected with the army of northern Virginia and later was appointed medical director of the eleventh corps. At the close of the war