Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/597

 WRIGHT

5.S.S

WRIGHT

Fish's School in Troy, wlicjre he was pre- pared for admission to the Rensselaser Institute where he graduated. His e(hi- cation was further completed at Yale College where he graduated in 183i ami also from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York.

He was an ardent student in, and a great lover of Natural History. At one time he had quite a museum of birds and animals which he had procured and mounted himself. Rafinesque and Au- duljon were his friends and each visited him at Troy. He referred in after years to Mount Rafinesque which he named in honor of his friend, but which is known now as Bald Mountain, about five miles northeast of Troy. Dr. Wright had a pet raccoon, a remarkably fine specimen of which Audubon made a sketch while on his visit to Troy, reproducing it in his great work on the animals of North America.

Dr. Wright was professor of natural history in the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from 1838-1845 and published a Flora of Troy and vicinity, and was associated with Prof. Amos Eaton in pub- lishing the "North American Botany," (eighth edition).

He was also on the state survey of Michigan in 1837 as state botanist and continued in that work about 2 years.

For several years he was associated in practice with Dr. Thomas C. Brins- made of Troy, a combination of talent that gave them the best kind of practice. Dr. Wright attended to the surgical cases.

On April 11, 1838, he married Mary Cottrell who died April 10, 1841. They had one son who died September 18, 1841. He married again, Catherine Wyant, December 5, 1844. He died of tuberculosis of the lungs, April 11, 1840, at Aiken, South Carolina. He was a member of the Rensselaer County Medical Society.

The full title of his book was:

A catalogue of "Plants growing with- out Cultivation in the Vicinity of Troy," by John Wright, M. D., and James Hall, A. M., Troy, 1836. S. E. J.

Wright, Joseph Jefferson Burr ilsdi 187S). A surgeon, United States Army, he graduated in arts at the Wasliington College in 1821, obtained the M. D. degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1825, and practised medicine in Ids native town mitil 1833 when he was appointed assistant surgeon in the Army of the United States, in 1844 to the rank of surgeon. Wright served with distinction during both the Mexican and the Civil War. In 1865 he was made a colonel "for faithful and meri- torious service during the war." He retired in 1876 and died two years later.

A. A. Trans. Am. Med. Ass., Phila, 1879, xxx

Wright, Marmaduke Burr (1803-1879).

Marmaduke Burr Wright, a physician and medical teacher of Cincinnati, Ohio, was born in Pemberton, New Jersey, November 10, 1803. His early educa- tion was acquired in the Trenton Acad- emy, and at the age of sixteen he began to study medicine with Dr. John Mc- Kelway, of Trenton, an alumnus of the University of Edinburgh. After attend- ing three courses of medical lectures in the University of Pennsylvania he re- ceived his M. D. there in 1823 and in the same year he settled in Columbus, Ohio, and speedily established his reputation as a skillful physician and surgeon. In 1835 he married Mary E. Olmstead, of Columbus. In 1838 he held the chair of materia medica and therajjcutics in the ]\Iedical College of Ohio, and two years later was transferred to the chair of obstetrics in the same institution. From this position he was removed by the action of the trustees of the college in 1850, a step which occasioned no little controversy and bitterness of feeling, but he was reelected to the same chair in 1860, and continued to hold this position until his retirement, with the title of professor emeritus, in 1868. During a large portion of his term of service in the IMedical College of Ohio Dr. Wright fdlcd the office of dean of the faculty.