Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1109

NAME SPITZKA 1087 SPOFFORD vice-president section of neurology of the 9th International Medical Congress, Wash- ington, 1887; chairman, section of somatology. Congress of Arts and Sciences, St. Louis, 1904. He was a member of the Society of Med- ical Jurisprudence, New York Academy of Medicine, New York Neurological Associa- tion, American Neurological Association, Asso- ciation of American Anatomists, New York Pathological Society, New York County Med- ical Society, and honorary fellow of the Chicago Academy of Medicine. Dr. Spitzka's labors were chiefly in the direction of the deep anatomy of the brain, the morbid anatomy of organic diseases of the central nerve system and the classifica- tion of mental disorders by clinical meth- ods. He published a textbook on "Insanity" in 1883 which has been succeeded by two edi- tions; and he was the author of the articles on "Chronic Spinal Diseases" and "Cerebral Abscess" in Pepper's "System of Medicine by American Authors," also of "Brain Histology" in Wood's "Reference Handbook." Among his original discoveries may be mentioned the inter-optic lobes of the Iguana, the identification of the hitherto unrecognized post-optic lobes in birds and reptiles, of the spinal course of the cortex-lemniscus in man, the marginal tract (discovered a year later by Lissauer) variously referred to as the Lissauer or the Spitzka-Lissauer tract, of the auditory tract in Cetacea, and of the super- ficial decussation of the pyramids in Pteropus. Among his voluminous writings are articles on the clinical features of grave delirium, on race and heredity as related to insanity, the historical role of mental disorders, errors regarding the alleged abnormality of crim- inals, and the legal and biological disabili- ties of natural children. In the last thirty-five years of his life Dr. Spitzka limited his professional work to the specialty of nervous and mental diseases. He had been frequently called as a medical wit- ness in cases where the mental state of a prisoner in a criminal proceeding or of a testator in civil proceedings was questionable, also in several well-known cases of alleged spinal injury. Notable among the criminal cases was that of Charles J. Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield, in which Dr. Spitzka's attitude became conspicuous, as both prosecution and defence endeavored to retain his services, but failing, secured his attend- ance through an attachment. He then testi- fied to the prisoner's insanity, and was the only expert that did so. Dr. Spitzka was a brilliant conversational- ist, rapid in thought and speech, of flashing wit and ready repartee, a prodigious reader, and endowed with a remarkable memory. His naturalistic bent was apparent early in life, and much of his youth was spent in geo- logical, floral and faunal studies in foot- excursions into the surrounding country. As an undergraduate in the City College he was summoned by the President to decide and demonstrate whether the Ichthyosaurus then purchased was a genuine fossil or a fac- simile. In his latter years his principal diver- sion was to search for and study all forms of animal life abounding in and about Shin- necock Bay. Dr. Spitzka was married in 1875 to Cath- arine Wacek, in the city of Vienna. He died at his home, January 13, 1914, of cerebral hemorrhage, after seven hours' illness, and was survived by his widow, a brother, and a son. Dr. Edward Anthony Spitzka, at one time director and professor of anatomy of the Danish Baugh Institute of Anatomy of the Jeff'erson Medical College of Philadel- phia, later practising neurology in New York City. Edward Anthony Spitzka. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, vol. xli. No. 4. April, 1914 (contains a complete list of Dr. Spitzka's published articles, arranged by Dr. E. A. Spitzka). In Meraoriam Dr. Edward Charles Spitzka, by Nathan E. Brill. M. D. Read at a meeting of the New York Neurological Society, April 7, 1914; publ. New York Medical Journal, May 9. 1914. Alienist and Neurologist, vol. xxxv. No. 1, Feb.. 1914, pp. 85-86. Spofford, Jeremiah (1787-1880) Jeremiah Spofiford, medical biographer, was born in Rowley, Massachusetts, December 8, 1787, and died at his home in Groveland, Massachusetts, where he had practised for forty-seven years, September 16, 1880, at the ripe age of ninety-two years. His ancestors were of Puritan stock and Jeremiah was sent to the district school, having besides, private instruction in Latin before he apprenticed himself in the ofiices of Dr. Israel Whiton and Dr. William Pankhurst, of Winchendon. A scanty income was eked out by teaching school in his native town and he attended medical lectures at Dartmouth, finally receiv- ing a license to practise from the Censors of the Worcester District Medical Society in 1813. After a sojourn of four years in Hamp- stead. New Hampshire, he moved to Grove- land, then known as East Bradford, and re- mained for the rest of his life. In 1813 he married Mary Ayer SpofTord, of Jaffrey, New Hampshire, and they had a happy married