Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/281

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worm beside him. In 1807 he gave what was then a novelty, a popular course of lectures on chemistry. He had many private pupils and ultimately established a very large practice.

He was an editor of the " North American Medical and Surgical Journal." According to Dr. George B. Woods, " perhaps no one was known more exten- sively in the city or had connected him- self by a greater number of beneficent services to every ramification of society."

The following brief character sketch of Parrish occurs in Patterson's " Memoir of Samuel George Morton."

"Elevated to his prominent position against early obstacles, and solely by force of character, industry, and probity, he was extensively engaged in practice; and, although unconnected with any insti- tution, his office overflowed with pupils. His mind was practical and thoroughly medical, and so entirely did his profession occupy it that he seemed to me never to allow himself to think upon other topics, except religious ones, in which also he was deeply interested. A strict and conscientious friend, he illustrated all the best points in that character." He died in Philadelphia, on March 18, 1840.

C. R. B.

Geo. B. Wood's "Memoir of the Life and Character of Joseph Parrish," Philadelphia, 1840.

Parry, Charles Christopher (1823-1890).

Charles Christopher Parry, botanist, was born in the hamlet of Admington, Goucestershire, England, August 28, 1823, and descended through a long line of clergymen of the Established Church.

In 1832 the family removed to America, settling on a farm in Washington County, New York. He entered Union College at Schenectady, and graduated with honors, beginning the study of medical botany in his undergraduate years, and subse- quently receiving his M. D. from Colum- bia College.

Coming west and to Davenport in the fall of 1846, he entered into practice, but soon discovered that all his natural tastes

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and instincts led directly away to the un- vexed, blossoming solitudes of nature.

His earliest collecting had been done in the attractive floral region about his home in Northeastern New York, in the summer of 1842 and the four years follow- ing; and now again, he employed much of the season of 1847 in making a collection of the wild flowers about Davenport, of which, with the dates of finding, he has left a manuscript list. Those of us who knew him well in after years can readily picture the brisk, dark-complexioned, though blue-eyed youth, symmetrically but slightly built and somewhat below the medium height, in his solitary quest by riverside and deep ravine, over wooded bluff and prairie expanse, for the treasures which were more to him than gold — for such early friends as " the prairie primrose, the moccasin-flower, and the gentian," which in later years he complained had been quite driven out by "the blue-grass and white clover."

In the course of that summer, also, he accompanied a United States surveying party, under Lieut. J. Morehead, on an excursion into Central Iowa, in the vicinity of the present state capital. From this time on (except for a short time while connected with the Mexican Boundary Survey, when he discharged the duties of assistant surgeon), the physician was merged in the naturalist. He was almost continuously in the field collecting, but Davenport remained his home. Here, in 1853, he married Sarah M. Dalzell, who, djdng five years later, left with him an only child, a daughter. But she, too, died at an early age.

In 1859 he married again; to Mrs. E. R. Preston of Westford, Connecticut, who through the more than thirty years of their union, entered helpfully into all his works and plans, assisting him in his study and often accompanying him to the field.

Dr. Parry gives in "Proc, Davenport Acad, of Sci., vol. ii," a succinct, chrono- logical account of his work up to 1878. For more than thirty years the greater part of his time had been spent in observ- ing and collecting — along the St. Peters