Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1008

NAME ROBERTSON 986 ROBERTSON after a brief though useful existence, its doors were finally closed on account of lack of funds. In 1839 he served as physician at West Point ; in 1844 he was physician to the Northern Dis- pensary, having charge of the department of Diseases of Women and Children and Nervous Disorders. In 1841, for about a year, he edited the Neii' York Medical Gazette and in this are to be found two of his papers : "Contributions to the Literary History and Pathology of Cholera Infantum" and "Thymic Enlarge- ment." In 1S46 he started the Annalist, a journal which he continued to edit until 1848. His other literary efforts were the editing of four or five numbers of Wood's Addenda to the Medico-Chirurgical Review, between July, 1847, and April. 1849. and in 1834, in connec- tion with Dr. James B. Kissam, he translated Bourgery's "Minor Surgery." In 1835 he translated the work of the Chev. J. Sarlandiere, ex-surgeon French Army and of the Military Hospital of Paris, which is entitled, "Systema- tized Anatomy: or Human Organography, in Synoptical Tables, with Numerous Plates for the Use of Universities, Faculties, and Schools of Medicine and Surgery, Academies of Paint- ing, Sculpture and of the Royal Colleges." This is a large folio volume, beautifully il- lustrated with fifteen folio plates. Dr. Roberts' first monograph, a popular essay on "'Vacci- nation," appeared in 1835, signed, "A Physician." Roberts died in December, 1873, having suffered for about a year from an organic af- fection of the heart. Med. Reg. New York, New Jersey, and Connecti- cut, 1874. vol. xii. Memoir of William Roberts, 1874. G. M. Smith. Robertson, Andrew (1716-1705). This army surgeon was born in Scotland in 1716, and graduated from the University of Edinburgh, entering the British Army as a surgeon and serving three years in Flanders, and being present at the battle of Fontenoy in 1745. Ten years later he came with his regiment to America and went on the disastrous ex- pedition against Fort Du Quesne. He escaped the carnage of Braddock's defeat with twenty men, who made their way, subsisting on acorns alone, to Dunbar's camp, to which the remnant of the Army under Colonel Wash- ington had retreated. Soon after his return he resigned his com- mission and emigrated with his wife and child to Virginia, landing at Indian Banks in Richmond County, where he was enter- tained by a wealthy Scotch merchant, Mr. Glasscock. He prescribed, at the request of her father, for Mr. Glasscock's little daugh- ter, who was then sick with measles, and it is said that this, his first patient, became his fourth wife in 1771. Dr. Robertson settled in Lancaster County and for many years enjoyed an extensive prac- tice, acquiring a high reputation. In addition to fame he also acquired wealth, and was specially noted for his charity and attention to the indigent sick. He continued in active practice to the day of his death, which oc- curred on March 1, 1795. He made several contributions to medical literature, and some of his articles were pub- lished in the Medical Inquiries and Obscn.'a- tions, London. Robert M. Sl.ughter. Robertson, Charles Archibald (1829-1880). Charles Archibald Robertson, was born in Mobile, Alabama, on the fifteenth of October, 1829, being the son of Archibald T. Robert- son, of New London, Connecticut, and Sarah Carnico, of Beverly, Massachusetts. His father was of Scotch, his mother of French and English descent. He studied at the Beverly Academy and Phillips Exeter Academy, at Exeter, New Hampshire, entering Harvard College in 1846, from which he graduated in 1850. He began his medical studies at the Tremont Street Medical School, and was a special student of diseases of the chest, under Dr. Henry I. Bowditch (q. v.), when he also took up studies in skin diseases, under Dr. Silas M. Durkee. He attended lectures at and received his diploma from the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, in 1853. Returning to Boston, he studied diseases of the eye and ear at the Perkins Institution for the Blind and Massa- chusetts Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary, studies that were also pursued at Wills Hos- pital in Philadelphia. The next year and a half were spent in Europe for professional study and general travel ; for four months he was under the instructions of the noted aurist of St. Mark's Hospital in Dublin — Sir William R. Wilde. At Paris he devoted him- self to the teachings of Desmarres and Sichel, giving his time and studies to the clinics of these great masters. Robertson, on his return to this country, began practice with a preparation which is the fortune of few. The department which he selected was the diseases of the eye and ear, beginning at Boston in 1855, and soon after removing to the State of New York.