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PHELPS

Phares, D. L. (1817-1892).

William and Elizabeth (S tames) Phares came to West Feliciana, Louisi- ana, from Virginia, and their son was born there January 14, 1817. In 1832 he entered the Louisiana State College at Jackson, Louisiana, now Centenary Col- lege, and graduated from the Louisiana State College in 1837, and in April, 1839, from the medical department of Louisi- ana State L^niversity. "Tlie day he graduated he was elected a member of the faculty without his knowledge or consent and Dr. Barton introduced him to the other members of the faculty as one of their number." This position he declined and returned home to West Feliciana, from which place he moved to Whitestown, now Xewtonia, Wilkinson County, Mississippi, where he practised until 1880. In 1840 the degree of A. M. was conferred upon him l)y Bacon College.

In 1836, dvu-ing college vacation, he married Mary Armstrong Nesmith, of .\mite County, and had three sons and five daughters.

In 1842 he erected l>uildings for and opened the Newton Female Institute and in 1852 was largely instrumental in building the Newton College.

During the Civil War, Dr. Phares con- tinued in private work, but in 1863 he was thrown from liis l)uggy and received injuries from which he suffered for the remainder of his life.

In 1878, by request of the State Associ- ation, he prepared a report on the medical plants of the state, some seven hundred in number. He was one of the leading spirits in the founding and building of the Mississippi Agricultural and Mechan- ical College and at its opening in 1880 he was assigned the chair of biology, which he filled until 1889.

In 1881 he married Mrs. Laura Blanche Duquercron, of Starkville, Mississippi, and by her had two sons who died in infancy.

In 1889 he moved to Madison Station, Mississippi, l)ut on May 3, 1891, was stricken with jxiralysis and had a second attack October 13, 1891, dying on Sep- |

tember 18, 1892. " .\ constant student, an accurate observer, a painstaking physician, temperate in all things save work, a conscientious Christian. He was also recognized as an authority on the medical virtues of indigenous plants of the South. When he discovered and promulgated the value of viburnum prunifolium and gelsemium his name became imj)erishable and he proved him- self greater than the chieftain of many battles by placing in the hands of his comrades two weapons to wage war against the foes of flesh."

J. A. R.

Phelps, Edward Elisha (1803-1880).

Edward Elisha Phelps was born in Peacham, Vermont, April 24, 1803; his father was Dr. Elisha Phelps who moved to Windsor soon after the son's birth. The boy was educated at Norwich Uni- versity; his first course of medical lectures l)eing taken at the Dartmouth Medical School and his course completed under Prof. Nathan Smith, at New Haven, Connecticut, graduation in medicine following after this at Yale in 1824.

Dr. Phelps' health being poor he spent some time in the South, assisting in a survey of the Dismal Swamp canals, and devoting himself incidentally to botan- ical studies. He seems always to have been a student of plant life.

In 1828 he commenced to practise at Windsor, making liis home there through- out his life. He soon made a reputation for himself in the profession, and was elected professor of anatomy and surgery in the medical department of the LTni- versity of Vermont, occupying the posi- tion for two years. In 1841 he was api^ointed lecturer on materia medica, medical botany and medical jurispru- dence in Dartmouth Medical School, and held the chair of materia medica and therapeutics and lectured on botany until 1849, during this time collecting a very complete museum of medical botany for the college. In 1849 he was transferred to the chair of theory and practice of medicine which he occupied until 1871,