Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/34

 HOWK

its president for three years, was born in llopkinton, Massachusetts, Novem- ber 26, 1792.

He graduated from Harvard College in 1S15 and from the Harvard Medical Scliool in ISIO and studied as a private pupil under Dr. John C. Warren.

Admitted as a fellow of the Massachu- setts Medical Society in 1823, he founded the Norfolk District Medical Society, a branch of the Massachusetts Medical Society, in 1850. On com- pleting his medical studies he settled for the rest of his life in South Wey- mouth.

He married twice, first to Harriet, daughter of Eliphalet Loud in 1821, then to Ehza, daughter of Joseph Loud, in 1850. His first wife died childless, but by his second he had two children.

Howe held office in the state militia between 1822 and 1840 and was major general of Division, and in 1840-1841 he represented his district in the State Senate.

He was a man of decided opinions and as a practitioner he exhibited good judgment, being neither timid nor rash. In his religious views he held to the great facts and principles of divine revelation with a tenacious grasp, and was a liberal supporter of public worship, yet from a strange self-distrust he never publicly united with the Christian church.

He died of cardiac disease at his home in Weymouth, October 10, 1870, aged seventy-eight years.

W. L. B.

Ebenezer Alden in Bos. Med. and Surg. Jour., vol. Ixxxiii.

Howe, Samuel (1801-1876).

Samuel Howe, the first to train the blind and deaf mutes in America, was born in Boston in 1801, nine years be- fore the Harvard school removed from Cambridge. That was the year which saw the establishment in practice of Jackson and John C. Warren, and the new vaccination of Jenner intro-

18 HOWE

duced to these shores. There was little wealth in Howe's family, and the little there was dwindled sadly during the war of 1812; for his father, Joseph N. Howe, a ship owner and maker of cordage, trusted the federal govern- ment for naval supplies, and it failed him. The unhappy merchant was brought nearly to ruin, and his family grew up in poverty. In spite of this there was money supplied for sending one of the boys to college, and Samuel was selected. He went to Brown University and graduated in 1821 when twenty, a mature age for graduation in those days.

After leaving Brown he returned to Boston and studied medicine with Jacob Bigelow at the same time attending the lectures in the Harvard school, and the clinics at the Massachusetts General Hos- pital, finding as instructors Jackson, J. C. Warren, Parkman, and Ingalls. Such men could appreciate a promising stu- dent, and were foretelling an unusual future for Howe, when suddenly he as- tounded them and the Boston commun- ity by announcing that he was going to Greece. No one encouraged him except one eminent man — Gilbert Stuart, the artist, now growing old, who faltered that his heart also was in the venture if only the times were still young for him. He helped Howe to go, and Howe worked out there through the insurrectionary times when Greece fought against Turkish rule. In 1832 he settled down in Boston and began his best known work, the education of the blind.

He was fortunate enough to secure the sympathy and support of Dr. John D. Fisher, a yovmg man, one year his own junior — himself a philan- thropist and with a private fortune. With Fisher's aid Howe took up the problem of teaching the blind and be- gan his studies by visiting Europe again to investigate the Valentine Hauy methods then emploj^ed in Ger- many and France.

Howe was no dreamer. He was a