Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/310

 PICKEHLXC.

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PICKERING

sition might be evident, a double coffin, and his grave to be watched for several weeks for fear of bodysnatchcrs. lie died in Pliihulcl|ihia on December 15, 1837.

He Avas married in 1800, though little can be gleaned concerning his wife save that she was a Miss Enilen, " higlily gifted and talented," and had four children, also that Physick was "a faith- ful domestic character,"' allowing his daughters to entertain as much as they liked and only allowing himself recreation towards the end of liis life when lie loved to go with them to his summer house in Cecil County, Maryland.

He was professor of surgery, Pennsyl- vania University, 1805-19; professor of anatomy, 1819-31; president of Philadel- phia Medical Society, 1824; emeritus pro- fessor of anatomy and surgery, Pennsyl- vania University, 1831-37; member of the Academy of Medicine of P>ance, 1825; honorary fellow, Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, London, lS5(j.

D. W.

There is a portrait in the Collection of

the Surg. -gen. Lib., Washington.

Autobiograijhy, S. D. Gross.

Review of Dr. Homer's necrologic notice

of Dr. P. S. Physick, Phila.. 1838.

Notice of Dr. P. S. Physick, W. E. Horner,

Phila., 1838.

Amer. Jour. Med. Sc, (J. Randol])h,) Phila.,

1839.

Maryland Med. and .Surg. .Jour.. (.S. Collins,)

Baltimore, 1840.

Pickering, Charles (1805-1878).

Charles Pickering, known to the scien- tific world as an anthropologist and botanist, was of good New England stock, being a grandson of Col. Timothy Picker- ing, a member of Washington's military family and of his first cabinet. He was born on Starucca Creek, Upper Susque- hanna, Pennsylvania, on a grant of land owned by his grandfather. His father, Timothy Pickering, died when 30, leaving Charles and his brother Edward to the care of their mother.

He left Harvard before graduation, but took his M. D. there in 1826. In his earlier vears he used to make botanical

expeditions with one William Oakes, and when he settled in Philadelphia in 1829, he had a strong bent towards natural science, very soon being appointed one of the curators at the Academy of Natural Sciences, during this time i)ul)Iishing a l)rief essay on "The Geographical Distri- bution and Leading Characters of the United States Flora." When the United States Exploring Expedition was organ- ized in the autumn of 1838 to sail for the South Seas, Pickering was elected as the principal zoologist, and the fame of that expedition rests chiefly on the work he then did with Prof. Dana. Although Pickering retained the ichthyology, he went keenly into the geograpliical distri- bution of animals and plants; to the latter especially as affected by the opera- tions and movements of the races of man. A year after the expedition, and at his own expense, he visited Egypt, Arabia, Eastern Africa and Western and Northern India, publishing in 1848 his volume, " The Races of Men and Their Geograph- ical Distribution" (vol. ix, Wilkes' "Exploring Expedition Report"). In the fifteenth volume appeared his " Geo- graphical Distribution of Animals and Plants." He had no better luck than man\' a scientist, for, in the course of printing, Congress appropriations stop- ped and the publication of further Re- ports was abandoned. But under privi- lege, he brought out in 1854 a small edition of the first part of his essay and in 1876 a more bulky one "On Plants and Animals in Their Wild State." These writings and some contributions to scien- tific journals, notably to the "Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge," constituted his no mean help to the study of natural science, but he had been long and lovingly working on a book yet unfinished when he died, a book edited afterwards by his wife, Sarah S. Pickering, and appearing in 1879 entitled, "Chronological History of Plants, or Man's Record of His Own Existence."

Prof. Harshberger, whose biography of him I have used, says he was sin- gularly retiring and reticeiat, dry in