Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/32

 HOWARD

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HOWARD

same time, lie was a liard student, a profound and original thinker. As a writer ho could hardly be excelled, and the matter is a cause of regret that he wrote so very little. His friends all speak of a " fatal habit of procrastina- tion" which caused him to be forever putting ofT much work of a medico- literary character. He was a great lover of nature, of music, and of poetry. Sunsets and sunrises were almost ob- jects of worship to him, and he used to go long distances in order to find some spot from which a glorious sunrise could be observed to especial advantage. His favorite lines (and the fact is character- istic of the man) were those of Words- worth:

Here you stand. Adore nnd worship when you know it not; Piou3 beyond the intention of your thought; Devout above the meaning of your will.

He came to his death by drowning, September 5, ISSl.

T. H. S.

Trana. Am. Med. Assn., 1SS2 (J. Morris). Tr. Med. and Chir. Fac. Maryland. Bait., 1SS2 (T. S. Latimer).

Howard, Richard L. (1S09-1854).

Richard L. Howard, a prominent physician and teacher in Columbus, Ohio, was born in Andover, Vermont, in the j'ear 1809. The details of his early education are unknown, but he took his medical degree from the Berk- shire Medical Institute, at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1831. Removing to the West, he first settled in Windham, Portage County, Ohio, but after a brief stay in this place, removed to Elyria, in Lorain County, where he practised for about eight years. In 1844 he came to Columbus, Ohio, and in that city remained until his death.

In 1847 Dr. Howard accepted the chair of surgery in the Willoughby Medical College, then just removed to Columbus, and when this college was merged into the StarUng Medical College he retained the same position in the new buildins.

On the death of his colleague. Dr. John Butterfield, in 1849, Dr. Howard succeeded to the editorship of the Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal, which he continued to conduct with eminent success until 1853, when signs of failing health compelled him to re- sign his editorial duties. lie died of double pneumonia in Columbus, Jan- uary 16, 1854.

He was president of the Ohio State Medical Society in the year 1850, and was always interested in the progress of the medical profession. He is said to have been the first physician in Columbus to devote his entire time to surgery, and the first in Central Ohio to employ chloroform for purposes of anesthesia.

An introductory lecture before the medical class of the Starling Medical College in 1849 is the only product of Dr. Howard's pen which his biograph- er has been able to discover.

H. E. H.

Ohio Med. and Surg. Journal, vol. vi (1853-4), and the Columbus Medical Journal, vol. xxLx 1905).

Howard, Robert Palmer (1823-1889).

Robert Palmer Howard was dean of the medical faculty of McGill Univer- sity from 1882 until his death in 1889, and began his studies in the faculty with which his name was so intimately associated in the year 1844, graduat- ing four years later. In 1856 he was made professor of clinical medicine, and on the death of Dr. Holmes in 1860, became professor of the theory and practice of medicine, a chair which he continued to occupy until his death. In 1856 he was elected physician to the Montreal General Hospital and was twice president of the Canadian Medical Association, president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Quebec, and vice-president 'of the Association of American Physicians.

Thus all the honors in the gift of the profession came to him; but they indicate only sHghtly the place which