Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/348

REDMAN in Starling Medical College from 1864 to 1871; professor of obstetrics, clinical midwifery and diseases of children in the Medical College of Ohio from 1871 to 1888 when he became professor of clinical gynecology. He was also obstetrician and surgeon to the Good Samaritan Hospital, and consulting surgeon to Christ's Hospital. He was an ex-president of the Ohio State Medical Society; of the Cincinnati Academy of Medicine; member of the Southern Surgical and Gynecological Association; the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Philadelphia.

Dr. Reamy died of chronic intestinal nephritis on March 11, 1909, at the home of his niece in Cincinnati.

H, T. B.

Tr. Am. Gyn. Soc, 1909, vol. xxxiv (Henry T. Byford) (port.).

The Reamy Birthday Dinner, Cincinnati, 1899.

Redman, John (1722-1808).

The materials for a biography of John Redman are somewhat scanty yet all writers agree he deserved to be remembered as one who did good service in Philadelphia, if only for the share he took in laboriously combating the yellow-fever epidemic there in 1792.

He was born in Philadelphia, February 27, 1722, and went for his education first to a school kept by the Rev. William Tennent and afterwards to study medicine under Dr. John Kearsley, Jr., and soon after he is heard of as in Bermuda practising as a doctor. A somewhat restless energetic man this John, for he is next seen in Edinburgh "walking" the hospitals, then on to Paris to study new methods and from there to Leyden, where he graduated M. D. in 1748. Not content with this amount of experience he returns to England and works some time at Guy's Hospital, so one is not surprised to learn that on returning to Philadelphia he "soon built up a lucrative practice." "Like most doctors of his time he believed in systems and attached himself to the teaching of Boerhaave, although his practice was formed by the rules of Sydenham, all of which means that he trusted in the healing power of nature and used a simple form of therapeutics." His paper " De Abortu" appeared in 1748; in 1751 he was elected a consulting physician to the Pennsylvania Hospital and held the position twenty-nine years, and from 1786 to 1805 was president of the College of Physicians. Redman has not left any writings except his pamphlet on the "Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1762" which he read before the College of Physicians in 1793, when a greater epidemic of it was raging, and he was attending some eighteen or twenty new cases daily. He tells he based his treatment on "purgation with Glauber's salts, sustaining the patient with cordials or wine with an antiemetic of tartar vitriolat gr. x and a half or whole drop of ol. cinnamon in a spoonful of simple mint and two spoonfuls of decoction of snakeroot every two hours." In order to lessen danger of contagion he had a bowl of vinegar kept in the room and a hot iron occasionally plunged into it; he himself when there always kept tobacco in his mouth to prevent the swallowing of saliva, the only precaution used, as he found the use of many preservatives to affect his mind "with such fears as I thought were likely to render me more susceptible of infection than the omission of them." The College of Physicians exercised the same mental therapy by ordering the tolling of bells to be discontinued as many died from fear of the fever. Redman had had two attacks of fever and in 1762 developed liver disease and was obliged to restrict his practice, but his pupils, Rush and Shippen and many others always kept a warm friendship for the old doctor.

He died in Philadelphia, March 19, 1808. D. W.

An Ace. of the Yellow Fever in Phila., 1762, Phila., 1793.

Physiology, Alex. Monro, Notes of His Lectures, 1746.

Phila. Med. Museum, 1808, vol. v. Universities and Their Sons (Phila.).

An Enquiry into the Origin of Yellow Fever, Rush, Phila., 1793.