Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/596

 WORMLEY

532

WRIGHT

accuracy. Never before perhaps li;ul toxicological subjects been handled with quite the high degree of Uterary skill and the miraculous care for detail and truth which appear in this volume. Tlie work soon became known throughout the lego-medical world. This famous work is dedicated "To my wife, who, by her skillful hand, assisted so largely in its preparation, this volume is affectionately inscribed." In the back of the book are fifteen pages of steel engravings, num- bering ninety-six engravings in all, each of the utmost fineness and accuracy. At the bottom of each page we read, "Mrs. T. G. Wormley, ad nat. del. et sculp." It is told by Dr. John Ashhurst, Jr., that, when the manuscript of the book was handed to the publishers, the latter declared that it would be impos- sible to find a draughtsman capable of reproducing the illustrations by which the manuscript was accompanied, so great was their exquisite delicacy. In fact, a number of engravers, to whom the matter of reproducing these illustrations was submitted, declared (according to the "American Literary Gazette") that the work, assuming that it could be done at all, would cost the engraver who did it, his eyesight. Thereupon Mrs. Wormley set herself to work to acquire the difficult art of engraving on steel. This feat she accomplished to such a degree that the desired engravings were produced by her hand and remain to this day a marvel of the steel engraver's art. Further en- graving of a highly accurate sort was done for the second edition of the book, by Dr. Wormley's elder daughter, Mrs. John Marshall.

Dr. Wormley was a man of medium height, always smooth-shaven, and had brown hair and blue eyes. He was a healthy, vigorous man, and delighted to pass the winter through without an overcoat.

He was not merely a scientist of super- abounding energy, but also a man of strong and sincere affections and senti- ments, a lover of nature, of music, and his homo.

His love of nature was more than mere enthusiasm for dry-as-dust science. This fact is shown by his wide-ranging investi- gations in other fields than that of his own particular specialty. He was inter- ested in ornithology and icthyology, in crystallography, in infusorial earth and diatoms. He discovered a species of fish (of brilliant coloring) to which he gave the name of Etheostoma Iris. He mounted many birds and fishes, which are to be found at the present moment in the Smithsonian Institution at Wash- ington. And birds and fishes, crystals and diatoms, were to him but parts of a very great and very beautiful world which he loved, and which he tried to comprehend for the reason that he loved it.

During the summer of 1896, Prof. Wormley began to be attacked by the disease which eventually ended his life. At that time he was on a farm in Berks County, working among plants and flowers, as he very much loved to do. In the fall he went back to the city and his customary teaching, but soon it became apparent that he was seriously affected with chronic Bright's disease, and the end of the great worker arrived one quiet Sunday morning, January 3, 1897. The world of legal medicine lost perhaps its clearest mind; while a very much larger and broader world was undoubtedly the poorer for the dropping out of one of the very finest examples of a quiet, unassuming scholar and gentleman.

He was co-editor of the " Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal," from 1862-4 and a tolerably full list of his writings is in the the Surgeon-general's Catalogue, Wash- ington, District of Columbia.

T. H. S.

Journal of the Am. Chemical Soc, xix, No. 4. April, 18t«7 (port.), Edgar F. Smith; Trans. Coll. of Phys. of Philadelphia, 1897. John Ashurst; Univ. Med. Magazine, 1896-97, Alumni Notes; Universities and Their Sons (Univ. of Penna.) vol. i (port.).

Wright, John (1811-1846).

John Wright was born in Troy, Febru- ary 2, 1811, the son of John Wright. His earlv education was secured at Allen