Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1154

NAME THACHER 1132 THACHER of a band of sharpshooters; once on the ill- fated Penobscot expedition ; then in charge of a chain of hospitals containing altogether five hundred beds, and finally he was present at the surrender at Yorktown. During that time he obtained wide experience in medicine and in military surgery. Retiring from the army, Jan- uary 1, 1783, he settled in Plymouth, Massa- chusetts, married in the following year, Susan- nah Hayward of Bridgewater, near at hand, and to the very end of his long life, continued active in practice or in medico-literary labors. In childhood he had acquired a slight deafness which gradually increased with age, yet in spite of the burden and a distressing tinnitus, he labored cheerfully to the end, devoting his declining years to the preservation of every- thing connected with the Pilgrim Fathers, and nothing pleased him more than to act as a guide to strangers in Plymouth, every historic character and mansion of which he knew by heart. There he died, May 24, 1844, when in his ninety-first year. Dr. Thacher was a voluminous writer, be- ginning as early as 1802, when he contributed a paper on the art of making marine salt from sea water, to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His "American New Dispen- satory" appeared in 1810 and a fourth edition in 1821, and "Modern Practice of Physic" in 1817, followed by a second edition in 1821. Next year came a charming book, "The Amer- ican Orchardist," in which he not only showed how to grow fine apples, pears, plums and grapes, but gave space to the manufacture of cider and of wine from apples and currants. A most interesting book was his "Military Journal during the American Revolutionary War" (1823) written day by day for nearly eight years. Amongst the many noteworthy episodes in this splendid volume are, the visit of Washington to the hospital of which Dr. Thacher had charge, his accounts of the per- sonality of our national hero at the bedside of the wounded, on horseback, or standing amidst his stafT, or at a dinner given by General and Mrs. Washington, to which Thacher was in- vited as a particular guest. Then we pass to a word picture of the capture and execution of Major Andre, the pathetic scene of the court-martial of inutineers, in the midst of winter; that silver bullet swallowed by a spy, with its incriminating letters inside, brought back to the world by Thacher's dose of tartar enetic, and personal meetings with Lafayette, who was his patient for a while. The end of this famous book is enriched with unexcelled lives of Lafayette, Steuben, and other men of army fame during the Revolution. Although Dr. Thacher wrote many papers for the medical journals of his era, on such topics as "Hydrophobia" and "Medical Plants" his magnum ol>us is the "American Medical Biography" published as two volumes in one, in 1828. This is made up of 163 biographies in 716 octavo pages, with fourteen delightful portraits of the eminent physicians of his time and of the past, the book being begun with a very readable history of medicine in America. In his preface he says : "Materials for this work have been so abundantly accumulated that the author has been obliged to suppress some memoirs, and to retrench others, lest the vol- ume should be augmented to unwieldy size." .... "This work remains the fountain head of American medical biography and a perpetual monument to the fame of James Thacher. Not only does it reveal the writer's knowledge of the character and works of the leaders in medi- cine, but it proves his wide friendship with his contemporaries, for he received assistance from a large number of the prominent men of the day, notably Hosack and Francis of New York, Mease of Philadelphia, Thomas Miner and S. B. Woodward of Connecticut, and G C. Shattuck of Boston. Other works by Dr. Thacher were, a "Prac- tical Treatise on the Management of Bees," (1829) ; "Essay on Demonology, Ghosts, Ap- paritions and Popular Superstitions," (1831); a "History of Plymouth," (1832), and "Ob- servations Relative to the Execution of Major John Andre as a Spy, in 1780," (1834). In writing even a brief notice of this once well remembered physician, we should not for- get to point out that he stood so well as a teacher in medicine that he was invited, but declined, to lecture on the theory and practice of medicine at the Fairfield Medical School, in 1813, when Dr. G. C. Shattuck resigned, owing to the difficulties of winter travel. Thacher was one of those men who love to write letters, and those of his that have been preserved, only cause regret that more were not saved, exhaling as they do the charming per- sonal traits of the writer. He believed in medi- cine, laughed at little doses, favored phlebot- omy, at least in desperate pneumonia, and gave much time to botany and its development for the uses of medicine. Harvard conferred on him her A. M. in 1808, and in 1810 both Har- vard and Dartmouth gave him their honorary M. D. To sum up in a few words the full life of this able physician it should be said that, in spite