Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/496

 THACHER

43S

THAYER

number), sailed from Ipswich to Marble- head where Mr. Avery was to be settled. Thomas preferred to go by land. A vio- lent storm arose and Anthony's pinnace was cast away on a desolate island off the top of Cape Ann, and he and his wife alone were saved. The island carrying two lofty granite lighthouses and lights of the first class, bears the name of Thacher's Island to this day.

Before coming to America Thomas received a good school education, his father planning to send him to Oxford or Cambridge. He was educated for the ministry by Charles Chauncy, the second president of Harvard College, and, it is probable, received something of a medical education from the same source, for Chauncy was skilled in the medicine of the day. At all events Thacher was learned in many things. He was a scholar in Arabic and composed a Hebrew lexicon. Dr. Mather tells us that accord- ing to Eliot, he was a great logician, and, understanding mechanics in theory and practice, could do all kinds of clock work to admiration. He was ordained as pastor in Weymouth, second of January, 1645, and removing to Boston in 1667, was installed as the first minister of the Old South Church, February 16, 1670. The last sermon he preached was for Dr. Increase Mather.

Dr. Thacher married a daughter of the Rev. Ralph Partridge, of Duxbury, eleventh of May, 1643, by whom he had two daughters and three sons, one of the latter a noted minister. He married a second time, June, 1664, Margaret, widow of Jacob Sheafe and daughter of Henry Webb. He died of a fever, October 15, 1678, following a visit to a sick person.

The title of the publication, issued by Dr. Thacher, in the year 1677, was "A Brief Rule To guide the Common People of New England how to order them- selves and theirs in the Small-Pocks, or MeaSels." A reprint of this dated 1702 is a little pamphlet of eight pages, 5ix 3^ inches, and signed, "I am, though no PhySitian, yet a well wiSher to the Sick; And therefore intreating the Lord to turn

our hearts, and Stay His hand, I am, A Friend; Reader to thy Welfare, Thomas Thacher, 21, 11, 1677, 8." The reprint is marked, " Boston, Reprinted for Ben- jamin Eliot, at his Shop under the WeSt- End of the Exchange, 1702," and may be found in the Boston Medical Library.

W. L. B.

A Biographical Dictionary of the First Set- tlers in New England, by John Eliot, D. D., Salem and Boston, 1S09. A Genealogical Register of the First Settlers of New England, John Farmer, 1829. A Genealog. Dictionary of the First Settlers of N. E., James Savage, 1861. American Medical Biog., 1828, James Thacher, M. D.

Hist, of Medicine in the U. S., to 1800, Francis R. Packard, M. D., 1901.

Thayer, Proctor (1823-1890). Proctor Thayer, a surgeon, Cleveland, Ohio, was the son of Daniel Thayer, a farmer, and born in WilUamstown, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, Octo- ber 16, 1823. The death of his father in 1830 compelled his mother to break up her home in the East, and accept the invitation of her eldest son to live with him in Aurora, Portage County, Ohio. Here the son, Proctor, received such education as was attainable and was designed to be apprenticed to a shoe- maker of the town; but the boy rebelled and positively refused to learn this humble trade. By dint of industry and economy he succeeded in working his way through the Western Reserve Col- lege, at Hudson, Ohio, in the scientific de- partment of which he graduated in 1842, and eventually studied medicine with Dr. Delamater, of Cleveland. Here he attended medical lectures in the Cleve- land Medical College, until his gradu- ation there in 1849. In 1849 he was appointed to the charge of the cholera hospital in the city of Cleveland, and won many encomiums for his courage, skill and success. In 1852 he was appointed demonstrator of anatomy in the Cleveland Medical College, in 1856 elected to the chair of anatomy and physiology, and this was exchanged in 1862 for that of the principles and