Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/508

 HAMMER

HAMMOND

he returned to his practice in Bangor. He is the author of several medical trea- tises. In 1896 he published a book on the battle of Chancellorsville, in which he defined the conduct of the eleventh corps on that disastrous day against the accu- sations of some partial and superficial writers. Hamlin died in Bangor, Novem- ber 18, 1905.

His writings include:

"Martyria, or Anderson ville Prison," 1866.

"Transfusion, Tr. Maine M. Ass.," 1S74; Portland, 1876. A. A.

Toner, Collect. Med. Biog., Congress. Libr., Washington.

Hammer, Adam (1818-1878).

Adam Hammer was born in the Grand Duchy of Baden, Germany, December 27, 1818, and received a thorough prelimi- nary and medical education in the lead- ing German universities. I believe that he graduated at Tuebingen. He was broadly posted and an omnivorous reader, and he delighted in the philosophy of Fichte, Hegel and Kant.

He was ahead of his time, and a rare diagnostician. There is a mono- gram written by Dr. Adam Hammer detailing his diagnosis upon two living subjects of the occlusion of the coronary arteries of the heart, after- wards verified and confirmed by post- mortem evidences. Nothing can take away from him the fact that he was an efficient and daring surgeon, he did what had been rarely done before: in two cases he had removed the entire upper extremity, including the scapula. Aside from these he had performed successfully many plastic operations. A splendid pathologist, an untiring histologist and microscopist.

Dr. Hammer came to St. Louis in 1S48; he had so deplored the outrages of his mother country upon her people that he became a revolutionist, and he was not the first to find out that those who give the first shock to a state are naturally the first to be overwhelmed in its revolution. Hence he had to leave Germany, and came to St. Louis. He organized the Hum- |

boldt Medical College, and through untir- ing and earnest endeavor erected a college building, just opposite to the City Hos- pital on the corner of Soulard and Closey street. While he was absent in Europe the college was broken up. He became a professor in Missouri Medical College and afterwards, broken down in health and ambition, he left St. Louis and returned to Europe, and died there August 4,1878, about sixty years of age.

Dr. Hammer was clean and square in his dealings, free from any mixture of falsehood: he lacked discretion, but he had the hardy valor of an honorable and courageous man.

His ceaseless industry in acquiring the progressive elements of pathology, sur- gery and microscopy made him seemingly unceasingly contradictory to those quot- ing old and antiquated authorities upon these subjects. Hence he was continu- ally contradicting, and thus seemed to be seeking combat, while in reality he was aiming at the laudable purposes of sub- stantiating progress and truth.

W. B. O.

Abridged from a paper by Dr. W. B. Outten,

in the "Medical Fortnightly," 1909.

St. Louis Clin. Rec, 1S78, vol. v.

St. Louis Med. and Surg. Jour., 1878,

vol. XXXV.

Hammond, William Alexander (1828- 1900). A surgeon-general of the United States Army and an able neurologist, he was the son of Dr. John W. Hammond of Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and born at Annapolis, August 2S, 1828, re- ceiving his M. D. from the University of the City of New York in 1848 and after some hospital experience entering the United States Army as assistant surgeon in 1849. He served at various frontier stations in New Mexico, Kansas, Florida and at West Point, participating in nu- merous Indian campaigns and occupying his leisure time chiefly with physiological and botanical investigations. In 1857 he was awarded the American Medical Association prize for an exhaustive essay on "The Nutritive Value and Physio-