Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/73

 JONES

ly applied himself in Circleville and the adjoining country, he was known as a gifted writer and debater, and the county medical society, which he help- ed organize and maintain, profited much by his experience and writings.

H. J.

Jones, Ralph Kneeland (1823-1888).

If an abundance of medical instruc- tion be of value to a physician in his practical life, then Ralph Kneeland Jones should have been a successful practitioner of medicine. As such he was generally regarded in the three localities in which he spent his busy life. He was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, July 13, 1823, the son of Samuel Jones and Abby Maria Gilbert his wife. He traced his New England ancestry back to Thomas Jones who settled in Guilford, Con- necticut, in 1639.

He studied medicine with Dr. Lucius Smith Adams of Stockbridge, and finally took his degree at the Harvard Medical School in 1847. His talents as a student were so marked that he at- tracted the attention of the faculty, and was immediately upon graduating chosen house pupil at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

When Dr. Jones finished his term of eighteen months in the hospital, he settled eventually to practice at Holme's Hole in Martha's Vineyard, and during his leisure hours he wrote some medical papers, one of which, a very curious " Case of Stone in the Bladder of a Child," was printed in the "Bos- ton Medical and Surgical Journal." He gave considerable attention to uterine diseases and always liked that branch of practice better than general practice. He married Octavia Ann Yale Norris of Tisbury, Massachusetts, who descended from the Mayhews, an old "Vineyard" family, and had four children, one of whom became a doctor.

With a view to giving his children better educational advantages, Dr. Jones

.57 JONES

moved to Bangor, Maine, in 1857, and was soon held in high esteem both as a man and as a physician. He became one of the most active members of the Penobscot County Medical So- ciety, and among other papers he com- posed for its meetings was an excellent article on "Malpractice Suits," and as orator of the Maine Medical Associa- tion he delivered a charming address on "The Limitations of Medicine," arguing that therapeutic nihilism was unfit for any one who wished to be consider- ed as a practitioner of medicine.

Dr. Jones had a serious fall upon the icy streets of Bangor in the winter of 1886, and from that time onwards he was far from strong. He attended to his patients as well as he was able, and often worked harder than he should have done. Symptoms of lat- eral spinal sclerosis became evident in the early summer of 1888, and on the twenty-eighth of August of that year he died. In a quiet way he had labored hard, and done much good as a friend and as a ph\^sician.

J. A. S.

Transactions of thf> .Maine Medical A.s.socia-

tion.

Transactions of the Penobscot County

Medical Association.

Jones, Toland (1820-1894).

Son of Thomas Jones, a native of Worcester County, Maryland, and Mary F. Truitt, a native of the eastern shore of Maryland, he was born on a farm in Madison County, Ohio, Jan- uary 10, 1820, and at the age of twenty entered Denison University, Gran- ville, Ohio, but left before the comple- tion of his course, without a degree. On leaving Denison he studied with Dr. Aquila Toland, of London, and at the end of the customary three years, matriculated in the Medical College of Ohio at Cincinnati with the intention of taking his M. D., but left the college at the close of his first year and practised in London, Ohio. Some years later the M. D. was conferred