Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/541

 HOBBINS

HODGE

As a general practitioner, Dr. Hobbins worked in Wednesbury, England, Brook- line, Massachusetts, and in Madison, where he soon attained his chief reputa- tion. He not only loved his profession and stood stoutly on its old-time code of ethics, but also had a keen appreciation for the best in art, literature and science. Of old English authors he was especially fond and also sang the old English and Scotch ballads with power and sweetness. Many of his addresses on horticultural and medical topics reach a high degree of literary style.

As a practical horticulturist he did much to encourage the planting of trees and shrubbery to beautify the city streets, and in the Northwest he was known as the "Father of Horticulture."

When the War of Secession broke out, he was prominent as a supporter of the Union and organized the medical corps at Camp Randall, where he had charge of 3,000 sick Confederate prisoners.

He had the old-time hospitable habit of the English, loving to see his friends around him. He died at Madison Jan- uary 24, 1 S94 , a t the age of seventy-eight.

The first wife of Dr. Hobbins died at Madison December 13, 1870. On April 16, 1S72 he married Mary McLane, daughter of Louis McLane of Delaware.

Three of the six children of the first marriage survived him. Louis McLane Hobbins of Madison was the only child of the second marriage.

Memberships, titles and degrees:

Member, Royal College of Surgeon-, London; Royal Geographical Society, London.

Gold medalist,. Royal School of Medi- cine and Surgery, Queen's College, Birm- ingham, England. Doctor of medicine, Columbia College, Washington, Districtof Columbia. Fellow of the Massachusetts

Medical Society; Member of Wisconsin State Medical Society. B. J.

Vfadison Literary Club Tribute to it I

I rl.ru u

Rifadison Literary Club's Anniversary Book,

L904

Portrait tate Hi I Mu

Hodge, Hugh Lenox (1796-1873).

The name of Hugh Lenox Hodge, the obstetrician, has become indissolubly connected with a pessary, and how the man came to invent the pessary, and what the instrument meant is a pleasant bit of biography. Hugh Hodge was the son of Dr. Hugh and Mary Blanchard Hodge. His father, after heroic efforts to help, fell a victim in the yellow fever epidemic of 1797 and died in 1798 leaving his wife with one boy, Charles, besides Hugh. She used fine self-denial to educate them and at fourteen Hugh entered Nassau Hall, Princeton, and studied medicine afterwards with Dr. Caspar Wistar, matriculating at the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, taking his M. D. there in 1818. Very anxious to go to Europe, he tried to get the money by taking a surgeoncy on a ship going to India but returned in two years minus the money but richer in experience through work in the cholera hospitals and study- ing tropical diseases. For one year he was exclusively physician to the Southern Dispensary and the Philadelphia Dis- pensary, then he took Dr. Horner's anatomical class while the latter was in Europe, and was later a lecturer on the principles of surgery at the Medical In- stitute. Three years after, being well established in practice, he married Mar- garet E., daughter of John Aspinwall, a New York merchant, and had seven sons.

When Dr. Deuces resigned the chair of obstetrics in the Medical Institute, Dr. Hodge was elected and also held a phy- sicianship to the lying-in department of the Pennsylvania Eospital, Yen by

year In- private practice incrcii ed unci lie began to relinquish obstetrics and devote himself almost exclusively to treating fe- male diseases and, following up Dewees'

\ .nl. in inventing and using pe aries

for uterine displacement, devoted him- self for years to the discovei y of thi prop • i materials and shapes, having hundreds

made of various kinds. The ca-e which

in i attracted his attention in the val if

mechanical support was that of a woman who in i s .;n came to the hospital ward