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trouble with liis brain followed; and in 1S79 he was compelled, temporarily as it was hoped, to give up his practice. In spite of every care there was not the per- manent improvement which his friends had hoped, and death came to him quite suddenly on March 14, ISSO, in the thirty- eighth year of his age.

S. B. W.

Med. Am. .\Ibany 1S82. iii.

Tr. on Soc. N.Y. Syracuse 1881. (S.B.Ward)

Hunt, Harriot Kezia (1S05-1806-1875).

Harriot Kezia Hunt, the first woman to practise medicine in America, was a Bos- tonian, pedigreed, born and bred, the daughter of Joab Hunt and Kezia Went- worth. She was born in 1805. When her father died in 1827 his estate was found to be encumbered and self-support became necessary. A private school started by herself and sister brought money but she felt it was not her vocation. The case of her sister during a protracted illness drew her attention to medicine; she procured medical books and pursued investigations for herself with the con- viction that much of the ordinary practice was blind and merely exper- imental.

In 1833 she entered the family of a Dr. and Mrs. Mott. The doctor left the care of most female patients to his wife; this care Miss Hunt shared, and by the oppor- tunity thus afforded, supplemented theo- retical knowledge bj^ clinical observation. In 1835 she opened a consulting-room and assumed the responsibiUty of prac- ticing without a medical diploma — reprehensible, but a course justified by subsequent events, for when in 1847 Miss Hunt requested permission to attend lec- tures at the Harvard Medical School — stating "that after twelve years' practice which had become extensive, it would be evident to them that the request must proceed from no want of patronage, but simply from a desire for such scientific knowledge as could be imparted by their professors" — her request was promptly refused. After the graduation of EHzabeth Blackwell at Geneva in 1849, " Miss Hunt

22 HUNT

tliought the times might be more favor- able and in 1850 repeated her apphcation at Harvard. In mobile America great changes of sentiment can be eflfected in three years— five out of the seven members of the faculty voted that Miss Hunt be admitted to the lectures on the usual terms. But, on the eve of success. Miss Hunt's cause was shipwrecked by colli- sion and entanglement with that of an- other of the unenfranchised to privileges. At the beginning of the session two color- ed men had appeared among the students and created by their appearance intense dissatisfaction. When, as if to crown this outrage it was announced that a woman was also about to be admitted, the stu- dents felt their cup of humiliation was full and in indignation boiled over in a general meeting. The compliant faculty bowed their heads to the storm, and to avoid the obloquy of rejecting under pressure a perfect reasonable request, advised the female student to withdraw her petition. This she did, and the maj- esty of Harvard, already endangered by the presence of the negro, was saved from the futher peril of the woman. Miss Hunt returned to her private medical practice which, though unsanctioned by law and condemned by learning, steadily increased and with such success that she became widely known."

In 1853 the Womans Medical College of Philadelphia, gave her the honorable M. D. In 1856 she wrote "Glances and Glimpses" an autobiographic dealing with her social and professional Ufe,

A. B. W.

Dr. Chadwick, International Review, Oct.,

1879.

Mary P. Jacobi, in " Woman's Work in

America."

Rev. H. B. Elliot, in " Eminent Women of

the Age," 1872.

Hunt, Henry Hastings (1842-1894).

This charming and attractive man was born in Gorham, Maine, July 7, 1842, fitted for college at the Gorham Academy, and graduated from Bowdoin with high honors in 1862. He immediately enlist- ed as hospital steward in the Fifth Battery