Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1141

NAME SWETT 1119 SWIFT Swett, John Appleton (1808-1854) John Appleton Swett was born in Boston, Massachusetts, December 3, 1808. He was educated at the Boston Grammar School and at Harvard University where he graduated in 1828. He studied medicine under Jacob Bigelow (q. v.) and graduated at Harvard Medical School in 1831. He settled to prac- tise in New York "and was physician to the City Dispensary. In 1835 he went to Europe for a stay of more than a year, spending most of the time in Paris in medical studies. In 1838 he lectured on diseases of the chest at Broome Street School of Medicine, and re- peated these lectures at the spring course of the College of Physicians and Surgeons ; the lectures were published in the Nnv York Lancet, and formed the basis for his work "Diseases of the Chest" (New York, 1852). In 1842 he became a physician to the New York Hospital and held this position through- out his life. In 1853, a year before he died, he was appointed professor of the theory and practice of physic in the Medical Department of the University of the City of New York. A sufferer with Bright's disease he made a special study of the disease and to benefit his health went to Europe in 1852 and while there attended the lectures of Robin. Return- ing, he attempted to go on with work but was forced to relinquish it, and he died in New York, September 18, 1854. He bequeathed a legacy to the Society for the Benefit of Widows and Orphans of Medical Men. Biographies of Dr. Swett were written by B. W. M'Cready (New York, 1855) ; by X. Flint (In Gross's "Lives of_Eminent .'mer- ican Physicians," pp. 722-731) ; and a sketch is published in the New York Journal of Medicine, 1854. n. s.. xiii. 460-462. Swett, John Barnard (1752-1796) John Barnard Swett was born in Marble- head, Massachusetts, June 1, 1752, the son of a merchant and the grandson of Joseph Swett. who introduced foreign commerce into Mar- blehead, probably a descendant of John Swett, Newbury, freeman, May 18, 1642, first settler by that name (Savage). John Swett went to Harvard College, where he graduated in 1771. It had been intended that he should follow the ministry, but being present acci- dentally at the autopsies "on the bodies of some persons who had come to a violent death" he determined to study medicine and did so in spite of opposition on the part of his pre- ceptor, the Rev. John Barnard. On gradu- ating he studied medicine in Edinburgh, Scot- land, for three years under Dr. William Cullen. He shipped as fleet surgeon in an expedition of merchant vessels to the Falk- land Islands on completing his studies in Edinburgh and with the funds acquired in this way finished his medical education in the hos- pitals of France and England, returning to America in 1778 in season to enlist as surgeon in the Continental Army, and to take part in the expedition to Rhode Island under Gen. Sullivan. The following year he served for several months in the expedition to the Penob- scot River under the command of General Lovell. During the war he lost his valuable library and surgical instruments which he had collected abroad at great expense. In 1780 he settled in Newburyport, Massa- chusetts, as an active practitioner and during the succeeding sixteen years did a large part of the surgery of this town and the sur- rounding country. Being naturally of a social disposition and possessed of polished manners and good humor, he was a great favorite. He had a large library and a book-plate designed to represent the profession of medi- cine. It is described as follows in Currier's History of Newburyport : "At the top of the plate, resting upon a couch and attended by four Cupids or cherubs, is the body of a patient about to undergo a surgical operation, while under the name "J. B. Swett" the ser- pent Aesculapius is twisted about a rod stand- ing upright between retorts, and herbs grow- ing in flower pots." He died of yellow fever contracted in the summer of 1796 when there was an epidemic in Newburyport. He threw himself into the work of caring for the sick, and died, August 16, a martyr to the cause. Dr. Swett married Charlotte Bourne of Marblehead soon after settling in Newbury- port. They had four sons. He was an original member of the Amer- ican Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the Massachusetts Medical Society, of which he was the first corresponding secretary, 1782- 1789. Walter L. Burrage. A Genealog. Dictny. of the First Settlers of N. E., James .Savage, 1860. .mer. Med. Biog., James Thacher, M. D., 182S. Hist, of Newburyport, John J. Currier, 1909. Swift, Joseph Kinnersley (1798-1871) Joseph Kinnersley Swift was the great- grandson of Dr. Samuel Swift, a physician, who settled at Moreland, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, in the middle of the eighteenth century, where Joseph was born March 10, 1798. On his mother's side he was descended