Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/108

BECK York and of the American Therapeutic Society.

Beck was a prolific writer and published numerous articles in American and German medical journals. He is the author of the following books: "Fractures, with an Appendix on the Use of the Roentgen Rays" (1900), "Roentgent Ray Diagnosis and Therapy" (1904), "Principles of Surgical Pathology for the Use of Students" (1905) and "Surgical Diseases of the Chest" (1907).

Beck was a highly cultured man, possessed of a wide knowledge, urbane and pleasing in his manners. He was of an idealistic turn of mind. He spurned the chase after money and in his leisure hours found pleasure in the arts and in literature. He himself wrote "Der Schwabenkonrad," a novel in German, in which he described the vicissitudes of one of his ancestors during the Thirty Years' War.

Dr. Beck married Miss Hedwig Loeser in 1881 and they had two children.

He died in Pelham Heights, N. Y., June 9,



Beck, John Brodhead (1794–1851)

John Brodhead Beck, medico-legal expert, was born at Schenectady, New York, September 18, 1794. His father was Caleb Beck, his mother, Catherine, only daughter of Theodric Romeyn, D. D., one of the founders of Union College. He was a brother of (q.v.), professor of chemistry at the Albany Medical College, and  (q.v.), perhaps one of the greatest experts in legal medicine America has produced.

At the age of seven, John went to live with his uncle, the Rev. John B. Romeyn, at Rhinebeck, New York, and under his personal guidance entered upon a study of the liberal arts and sciences. In 1804 the uncle removed to New York City, taking the young man with him. In 1813 young Beck graduated from Columbia College, with the highest honors of his class, going soon after to London, where he took up the study of Hebrew, with the firm intention of eventually entering the ministry. Shortly afterward, however, he forsook theology for medicine, as better suited to his tastes and abilities.

Returning to New York, he studied the medical sciences for a time with (q.v.), then matriculated at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the same city. At this institution he received his degree in 1817. His graduation thesis, entitled, "On Infanticide," was a most remarkable production for one of Dr. Beck's years and experience. In the words of (q.v.), "It may be truly said that, in this treatise, the subject was so thoroughly presented that subsequent writers have done little more than reproduce copies, more or less imperfect, and that it is still the standard work on infanticide in the English language." The little work was subsequently incorporated by its author's brother, the famous Theodric Romeyn Beck, into the latter's monumental and enduring "Elements of Medical Jurisprudence."

Dr. John B. Beck was the author of other noteworthy books and papers, among which were "Infantile Therapeutics" and "History of American Medicine Before the Revolution."

In 1826 he became professor of materia medica and botany in the College of Physicians and Surgeons and later was appointed professor of medical jurisprudence in the same institution, holding these two professorships for many years. He was one of the founders of the New York Medical and Physical Journal and of the New York Academy of Medicine, also president of the New York Medical Society, and for ten years one of the physicians to the New York Hospital.

A man of great energy and enthusiasm, he communicated these two qualities to his students to a very remarkable degree. He was also a very courteous man, and would spend long hours with some of his dullest students, resolving their individual perplexities, and at the close of the interview insisting that they should come to him again whenever they found themselves confronted by matters which they did not understand.

He enjoyed occasionally a bit of quiet fun. To him one day in the hospital surrounded by a number of students, came a mother and her eight-year-old son. The fond parent was complaining loudly that she feared that her son was about to be sick. "His skin is just the color of ashes, doctor," she declared. "It is ashes," responded the doctor. Calling for a sponge and a basin of soap-suds, he removed the ashen-gray "complexion," revealing the ruddiest of boyish faces. Beck was an earnest and consistent Christian, keeping to his faith through his latter years, which were troubled by sickness and unremitting pain. Often urged by his friends and attendants to relieve his suffering by means of opiates and anesthetics, he would very seldom permit this. "I do not wish to die," he would almost invariably answer those about him, "either stupifiedstupefied [sic] or insane." When finally the grim and dread messenger came to summon him, the doctor passed away "not like the galley-slave," but