Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/525

 VANDER POEL

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VAN DE WARKER

VanderPoel, Samuel Oakley (1824-1886). Samuel Oakley Vander Poel came of a fam ly long distinguished in the affairs of New York. His father was also a physician at Kinderhook, Columbia County, New York, which was the doc- tor's birthplace on February 22, 1824. He took a course at the University of the City of New York, of which Theodore Frelinghuysen was then chancellor, then returned home, and for a while studied medicine with his father. This prepared him for entrance to Jefferson Medical College, in Philadelphia, from which he graduated in 1845. The ensuing two years he passed with his father, and in 1847 went to Paris. In 1850 he came home and settled in Albany, where he married.

Vander Poel had acquired a large practice when, in 1857, Governor King appointed him on his staff as surgeon- general. In 1860 he became President of the Albany County Medical Society. The duties of surgeon-general had been barely more than nominal during Gov- ernor King's administration, but in 1861, when Governor Morgan selected him for that place on his staff, the requirements and responsibility of the position were great. After the war he resumed private practice and in 1867 was chosen to the chair of general pathology and clinical medicine at the Albany Medical College, and was elected president of the State Medical Society, in 1870. While still devoted chiefly to his private practice, Governor Hoffman appointed him in 1872 health officer for New York. Quarantine matters were then in a deplorable state, and Dr. Vander Poel's powers of organization were again called into play.

During his term he filled, in 1876, the chair of the theory and practice of medi- cine in the Albany Medical College. In 1883 he was elected to a Professorship of public hygiene in the University of New York, and had an LL. D. from there in 1884.

He died in Washington, on March 12, while on the way South for his health.

Med. Rec. N. Y., 1886, vol. xxbc. Albany M. Ann., 1886, vii. Tr. M. Soc. N. Y., Syracuse. Portrait in Surg.-gen. Lib., Wash., D. C.

Van de Warker, Ely (1841-1910).

Ely Van de Warker, gynecologist, was born in West Troy, New York, Novem- ber 27, 1841. He had his early educa- tion at a private school under Mr. Arthur, father of Mr. Chester A. Arthur. He at- tended the Troy Polytechnic, and later had medical training at the Albany Medical College.

On graduation, he entered the 162nd Regiment of the New York Volunteers and served as surgeon until the close of the Civil War, attaining the rank of major. He began practice in Troy, New York, in 1865, and in the same year married Louise Gardner of Hancock, Massachusetts, who died the following year. He moved to Syracuse about the year 1870 and in 1872 married Helen A. Adams of that city who lived until 1907.

In 1908 Dr. Van de Warker retired from active practice on account of failing health, and died in 1910. He was sur- vived by two daughters and three grandchildren.

Van de Warker should be reckoned among the pioneers in American Gyne- cology as he spent a particularly useful life in diffusing the Vjenefits of modern surgery over a wide area of middle New York. One of the founders and most active members of the American Gyneco- logical Society; he was also for a consid- erable time a prolific writer and zealous in promoting the advance of his specialty from that stage which it occupied in the 70's and SO's to its present status. His writings for the most part appear in the "Transactions of the American Gyneco- logical Society;" the "American Journal of Obstetrics" and the "New York Medical Journal." He was particularly forceful and happy as a writer, and the Gynecologists of his day well remember the great interest excited by the elabor- ate consideration of the "Mechanical Treatment of Versions and Flexions of the Uterus," a theoretical and practical