Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/10

 Living New York Surgeons" (1866), and "Distinguished Living New York Physicians" (1867), gave a limited number of excellent biographies written from close range. My old Philadelphia friend, William B. Atkinson, published his "Physicians and Surgeons of the United States" in 1878, which has been a continual source of surprise. Marred only by the inclusion of the living, it contained among its eighteen hundred biographies a large proportion of the men who had been eminent up to that time. When hunting for data concerning some forgotten worthy the search would often end successfully in Atkinson's pages. Many of his biographies were later taken over bodily by such works as "Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography (1887) and R. French Stone's "Biography of Eminent American Physicians and Surgeons" (1894), which were also sources of our work. Atkinson was the first to try to cover the whole ground of American medical biography; Stone carried the undertaking further, after sixteen years, and produced a book that was a credit to its compiler, but here again the living and their portraits intruded. Two years later Irving A. Watson brought out his "Physicians and Surgeons of America," a volume containing a majority of unimportant men, many of them still alive, with their counterfeit presentments, and a minority of biographies not to be found elsewhere. Such standard works as the "Medical Men of the Revolution" by J. M. Toner (1876); "A Narrative of Medicine in America," J. G. Mumford (1903); the "History of Medicine in Massachusetts," S. A. Green (1881), and E. F. Cordell's "Medical Annals of Maryland" (1903) have been laid under contribution. We got much help with the Canadian worthies from William Canniff's "Medical Profession in Upper Canada, 1783– 1850" (1894). The Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office at Washington was gone through in all its volumes to trace forgotten notables who might have written something worth while; such works as the "New American Encyclopaedia" of D. Appleton & Company (1866), the "New International Year Book" of Dodd, Mead & Company (1913–18) and the "National Cyclopedia of American Biography" (1898) were studied for the same purpose. The medical periodical literature of the United States and Canada has been drawn on freely and exhaustively, and in like measure the medical histories of states, regions and communities, the medical directories, the non-medical histories, the historical catalogues of the various medical schools and the proceedings and transactions of the many medical societies and scientifiecscientific [sic] associations.

The reader will find on pages xi–xix a list of the works chiefly consulted, some two hundred titles, which it is hoped, will prove of value to those who wish to pursue this fascinating study further and who may care to compare the printed data with the references. The attempt has been made to give the references to the sources of information at the end of each biography (even though this has proved not to be feasible in some cases) so that the reader may, if he chooses, verify or disprove our statements at the source. In this way errors that may have crept in can be eliminated by future investigators.

Authors' names have been appended to the biographies where possible. A local list has been provided to aid in finding physicians from the various states and the divisions of Canada. The general index is for speedier reference as well as to furnish a guide to names mentioned but not subjects of separate biographies, either because of secondary importance or because the obtainable facts regarding them were insufficient. These are printed in italic type.

It is our pleasant task to thank our assistants who have had the same personal interest in the work that we have felt ourselves, namely, Miss Harriet Blogg and Miss Bertha F. Rowe; their constant sympathy and effective aid and often keen scent for valuable material have made our undertaking possible. We owe a debt of gratitude to many friends scattered over the country which we cannot repay with thanks: Dr. James A. Spalding has been an ever ready and inspiring helper and has written and rewritten many of the biographies; Dr. Thomas Hall Shastid has co-operated constantly from the first; Dr. Henry M. Hurd has given unsparing valuable aid in everything connected with the alienists; Dr. Fielding H. Garrison has repeatedly put at our service his incomparable judgment; Dr. Walter R. Steiner has been a mine of information in relation to the eminent physicians of Connecticut. It would have seemed impossible to handle New York State without the constant, and may I say affectionate, help of my dear friend Dr. Frederic S. Dennis. Dr. Ewing Jordan has stood by us throughout and has saved us from many a pitfall with model memoranda scarcely equalled in this generation. We are under obligations for assistance from Dr. A. G. Drury, Dr. D. Bryson Delavan, Dr. Francis R. Packard, Dr. G. W. H. Kemper, Dr. George H. Weaver, Dr. Robert Wilson, Jr., Dr. William