Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1018

NAME ROGERS 996 ROGERS of organic life, among them respiration, ani- mal heat, venous circulation, secretion, and nutrition." It was published in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences (vol. xviii, p. 277). Most attention was given the phe- nomena of respiration. It received from the faculty to which it was presented the recogni- tion it so well deserved. After the attain- ment of the doctorate it soon became apparent that the practice of his profession was not to his taste. He gave himself wholly to chemis- try, and from 1836 to 1842 served as chemist to the first Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, his brother Henry being the head of that survey. He was acting instructor of chemistry in the University of Virginia, 1841-42, when elected professor of general and applied chem- istry and materia medica in the same Univer- sity, a position he hel^ until 1852. On March 13, 1843, he married Fanny Montgomery, daughter of Joseph S. Lewis of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During this period, in conjunction with his brothers, James and William, he was active in various chemical investigations of unusual merit that were published in the scientific journals. With his brother James he com- piled, fr^m the works of Turner and Gregory, a volume designed to be a textbook on chem- istry; it included both inorganic and organic chemistry, and appeared in 1846. The first shock in the way of dissolution of the close affinity of these interesting brothers happened in 1852, when James, then professor of chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania, was claimed by death. But his work was to be transferred to a brother, for in August of the same year Robert was elected to fill his place and in 1856 became the dean of the medical faculty. In 1855 he published his American edition of Lehmann's monumental work on physio- logical chemistry. In the years immediately following he was engaged in expert work of various kinds, and from 1862 to 1863 was an acting assistant surgeon, U. S. A., assigned to the Satterlee Military Hospital in Philadel- phia, where in January of the latter year he sustained the loss of his right hand while showing a woman the dangers which beset her in feeding a steam mangle. A deeper sorrow came to him when his wife died, February 21, 1863. He remarried in April, 1866, Delia Saun- ders of Providence, R. I. About the time of the removal of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania to the west side of the Schuylkill River, certain proposed changes in the administration of the medical school caused moie or less discontent among the professors. Doctor Rogers, after serving for a period of a quarter of a century, quietly resigned, and accepted in 1877 an election to a similar chair in Jefferson Medical College. This position he held until 1884, when he be- came emeritus professor, but died shortly after, in the same year, September 6, aged nearly seventy-two years. His second wife had preceded him the year before. Doctor Rogers was a member of the Acad- emy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and was most active in its affairs. He helped to organize the Association of American Geolo- gists and Naturalists in 1840, which in 1847 became the American Association for the Ad- vancement of Science. He was a member of the American Medical Association; the Amer- ican Philosophical Society and served in the council ; a fellow of the College of Physicians ; chemist to the gas trust of Philadelphia from 1872-1884; member of the annual U. S. As- say Commission 1874-79; member of the Franklin Institute, and its president 1875-1879. Besides his literary contributions. Doctor Rogers was also "author of many inventions, notable among them, the Rogers and Black steam boiler, and of several modifications and improvements of electric apparatus." He was an original member of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Rogers was popular among men ; he was considerate of others; he had an intense interest in the welfare of his fellow beings. "He was a man of courage, ever ready to serve in any emergency, and it is no little matter to know that three times in his life he rescued, at imminent peril to himself, from certain death persons wholly unknown to him." As a teacher he was beloved by his students. His lecture-room was always crowded. His gift of diction and his dexterity in experi- ment were very superior attractions, "and, what is more, he always showed a deep, sin- cere, personal interest in the every-day life and conduct of those whom he taught." EwiNG Jordan. Lamb's Biographical Dictn'y. of the United States. Memoir of Robert E. Rogers. Dr. Edgar F. SmitVi. Read before the National Academy of Sciences, November 15, 1901. Rogers, Stephen (1826-1878). Stephen Rogers, practitioner of New York City and of Chili, South America, and author of a very early work on extrauterine preg- nancy, was born at Tyre, Seneca County, New York, in January, 1826. His parents were poor farmers and Stephen worked on the farm and finally put himself through the