Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1091

NAME SMITH 1069 SMITH land from 1811 to 1817. He died at Pikes- ville, Baltimore County, Maryland, June 12, 1841. Dr. Smith's reputation rests upon his con- nection with vaccination. Although not the first to introduce it into Maryland, his use of it hegan at the Almshouse with the second supply received in Baltimore, and the date of his first case was May 1, 1801. The virus was put up for greater security in three dif- ferent ways, on the blade of a lancet, be- tween small plates of glass, or on a thread charged with it, but in any case confined in a vial well corked and sealed. Says Dr. Smith : "The physicians of Baltimore gener- ally were invited to inspect these cases and offers were made to furnish them with virus, but no one could be prevailed on to make any use of it beyond the walls of the almshouse during the whole summer, notwithstanding the small-pox was then prevailing in the city." A full account of these cases was published in the Baltimore Telegraph. An accident cut short his activities in May, 1822. Dr. Smith received no salary for his serv- ices as United States vaccine agent, and the expenses of the institution were met by sub- scriptions and donations. While he had charge he supported twenty special agents who were furnished with horses and they rendered 6,750 days' service vaccinating and distributing mat- ter gratuitously for rich and poor, and secur- ing the lives of more than 100,000 persons (Quinan). There is preserved in the archives of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty, at Baltimore, a patent for "an improvement in the art of vaccination," obtained by Dr. Smith from the government in 1822. The "improvement" con- sisted in moistening the crust and grating upon it small pieces of glass or ivory, to which it would adhere when dry and might thus be transmitted by letter to remote points. Dr. Smith speaks of the crust as "a cryptogamous plant of the order of fungi." Eugene F. Cordell. There is a fine oil Portrait of Dr. Smith in the family of Gen. Felix Agnus, of Baltimore, which has been reproduced in Cordell's Medical Annals of Maryland, 1907. For Quinan's vin- dication of Smith from the responsibility of the North Carolina outbreak of smallpox, see Maryland Medical Journal, 1883, vol. x. "The Introduction of Inoculation and Vaccination into Maryland Historically Considered." For writings see Quinan's Medical .Annals of Balti- more, 1884. Smith, Jerome Van Crowningshield (1800-1879) One of the picturesque and prominent figures in the local medical history of Boston in the early and middle nineteenth century, was Jerome Van Crowningshield Smith, repre- sentative of an old New England family. Born at Conway, New Hampshire, on July 20, 1800, the son of a physician, he early resolved to pursue his father's profession. After graduat- ing from Brown University in 1818, he received a medical degree in 1825 from the Berkshire Medical Institution, whose first professor of anatomy and physiology he then became, settling at the same time as a practitioner in Boston. In 1826 he was appointed port phy- sician of Boston and held this post until 1849. Later in life he removed to New York and became professor of anatomy and physiology at the New York Medical College. Throughout his life Dr. Smith took an ac- tive interest in medical journalism. As early as 1823 he established the Boston Medical In- telligencer, the first weekly journal in the United States, of which he remained the editor and publisher for several years. He also entered the field of general journalism and in 1825 and 1826 was editor of the Boston Weekly News Letter, the oldest newspaper in Amer- ica, founded in 1704. In 1828 the Boston Med- ical and Surgical Journal was formed by the union of the Medical Intelligencer and the Nciu England Journal of Medicine and Sur- gery, and after a few years Dr. Smith became its editor and continued in that capacity until 1855. The years of his administration were the period during which the early reputation of this journal was estabhshed, and to his efficiency much of its durable character is ta be attributed. In 1854 J. V. C. Smith was elected mayor of Boston, having previously served, in 1837 and 1848, as a member of the House of Repre- sentatives of the Massachusetts General Court. During his term of office he laid the corner- stone of the former Boston Public Library building on Boylston Street. His portrait, painted at this time, now hangs in the trus- tees' room of the present library. In 1855 Dartmouth gave him the degree of A. M. During the Civil War Dr. Smith went to Newr Orleans where he accepted the position of acting inspector-general, with the rank of colonel and was chairman of a commission appointed by General Banks to consider the sanitary condition of that city. The later years of his life were spent chiefly in New York. Dr. Smith was a voluminous writer and editor of books and contributor to general as well as medical periodical literature. The titles of his publications include: "A Class- book of Anatomy," 1830; "Life of Andrew