Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/595

 WORCESTER

531

WORMLEY

moderate estate. He was compelled to provide largely for his education by teaching, and in this way struggled through Harvard College after an inter- rupted course of study of five years, 1827-1832; then settled in Hanover, New Hampshire, studied under Dr. R. D. Mussey, matriculated in the medical department of Dartmouth College, and graduated there in 1838. He was at once appointed demonstrator of anatomy in his alma mater, and invited by Dr. Mussey to became his assistant. When, in the same year, Dr. Mussey accepted the chair of surgery in the Medical College of Ohio, Worcester was invited to accompany him and be his partner. Soon after his arrival in Cincinnati he received the chair of physical diagnosis in the Medical College of Ohio and in 1841 visited Europe and renewed his studies in London and Paris. On his return to the United States in 1842 he married Jane Shedd, of Peacham, Vermont, an old sweetheart, well advanced in pul- monary tuberculosis, a disease which terminated her life in the following year. Grief at her loss, and the intimate association and anxiety which preceded her death, wore heavily upon the health of her husband, and from this time Dr. Worcester was always an invalid and soon developed signs of undoubted tuberculosis. He was himself a firm believer in the infectiousness of that disease. In spite of waning health and strength, he struggled bravely to fulfil the duties of his profession, and in 1843 even accepted the chair of general pathology, physical diagnosis and dis- eases of the skin in the newly organized medical college of Cleveland. He was, however, never able to perform the work in spite of the generous and hearty aid afforded by his medical colleagues. For a year or two he lectured on diseases of the skin, but soon even this labor proved too great and he retired to Cincinnati, where he died of tuberculosis in March, 1847.

We have from his pen " A Synopsis of the Symptoms, Diagnosis and Treatment

of the more Common and Important Dis- eases of the Skin," Philadelphia, 1845.

H. E. H.

From aa Address by Jacob J. Delamater, M. D., Cleveland, November 3, 1847.

Wormley, Theodore George (1S26-1897).

Theodore George Wormley, toxicolo- gist and legal physician, was born at Wormleysburg, Pennsylvania (a town named after his ancestors) on the first day of April, 1826. His people were of German descent. They were also very poor, and Wormley not only had to furnish the means for his education, but also to support his mother.

When sixteen years old, he went to Dickinson College, for three years devot- ing himself to his work with the utmost assiduity, then after studying medicine with Dr. John J. Meyers, he entered the Philadelphia College of Medicine, in Philadelphia, where he received his doctorate in 1849.

For a while he had some difficulty in finding a suitable practice. Spending almost a year in CarUsle, Pennsylvania, then a few months in Chillicothe, Ohio, he eventually settled (in 1850) in Colum- bus, where he remained twenty-seven years, rising to the top of the profession. During most of this time he was professor of toxicology in the Starling Medical School.

In 1877 he removed to Philadelphia, because elected to the chair of chemistry and toxicology in the University of Pennsylvania. It is interesting to note that for this position he competed with the famous Dr. John James Reese. This position he held almost twenty years.

Wormley was a very extensive writer, his magnum opus being a large volume entitled, "The Micro-chemistry of Poisons," 1867. Of this world-famous book it is well-nigh impossible to speak in terms of too high praise. Though the work is extensive (the .second edition contains almost 800 pages) it is very concisely WTitten, and is characterized throughout by the ripest and fullest scholarship and the most painstaking