Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/526

 VAXDER WEYDE

468

VAN DYCK

study of the pessary, which is to l)e found in the " Gynecological Transac- tions" for 1SS3.

The paper which excited most atten- tion was "A Gynecological Study of the Oneida Community," ("American Jour- nal Obstetric," New York, 1884). Uo also wrote on the "Treatment of Extrau- terine Pregnancy by Electricity' a much mooted subjected at that time.

His literary interests were not confined to a specialty alone, as he wrote a paper on the "Abandoned Canals of the State of New York" illustrated by seven artis- tic photographs which appeared in the "Popular Science Monthly," September, 1909. He also wrote a book of 225 pages entitled " Woman's Unfitness for Higher Co-education," December, 1903, written when he was Commissioner of Schools at Syracuse, New York.

But he really began his work a decade too early to take any active part in the working out of the larger problems of gj'necologic surgery. He was the founder of the Syracuse Hospital for Women and Children where he served as surgeon-in- chief for more than twenty years. He is said to have performed over 2000 laparotomies. H. A. K.

Album of the Fellows, Amer. Gyn. Soc,

Phila., 1901.

Albany Medical Annals, Oct., 1910.

Vander Weyde, Peter H. (1813-1895).

Peter H. Vander Weyde, scientist, editor, writer and physician was born in Nymegen, Holland, in 1813, and grad- uated from the Royal Academy at Delft. He was a scientific writer and teacher in Holland, and professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at the Govern- ment School of Design. In 18-42 he founded a journal devoted to mathe- matics and physics, and in 1845 received a gold medal from the Society for the Promotion of Scientific Knowledge for a text-book on natural philosophy. At the same time he was the editor of a liberal daily paper, which waged vigorous war- fare against existing abuses in the gov- ernment.

In 1849 h(^ came to New York, and graduated from the New York Univer- sity Medical College in 1856, and prac- tised medicine until he was appointed jirofessor of physics, chemistry, and higher mathematics at the Cooper Insti- tute. He was also professor of chemistry in the New York Medical College. In 1864 the chair of industrial science was expressly created for him at Girard College, Philadelphia. This last profes- sorship he resigned a few years later, and returning to New York became the editor of "The Manufacturer and Builder," a scientific journal. He contributed many valuable articles of a scientific nature to " Appleton's New American Cyclopedia," of which he was an editor. He had more than two hundred patents on inventions of his own, mostly electrical. Besides these attainments he displayed much merit as musician, composer and painter. Med. Reg. of N. York, 1895, xxxiii.

Van Dyck, Van Alan Cornelius (1818- 1896). This erudite medical missionary was born in Ivinderhook, Columbia County, New York, on August 13, 1818, of Dutch parentage, and by dint of hard work managed to get a medical education at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, and when only twenty-one was appointed medical missionary in Syria and Palestine. From June, 1843, he taught in the newly founded Abeih Seminary, yet making long journeys to attend the sick and translating medical and religious text- books into Arabic for the students. He was equally learned in philology, mathe- matics, astronomy and medicine, and in certain branches of science gave the Arabs a scientific terminology before unknown. From 1851 his life was given more exclusively to religious work though he found time for his well- known Arabic geography. He set out in 1857, editing and completing an Arabic Bible on which a colleague had labored eight j^ears, and after another eight years' work by Van Dyck it was published in 1865. He spent some two years in New