Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1168

NAME THORNJON 1146 TIFFANY emergence from the sciatic notch for a trau- matic aneurysm in the nates. He removed a cobblestone, five inches by three, and weighing two pounds, from the peritoneal cavity, with success." He opened the gall bladder and removed calculi by incision. These feats were per- formed before the days of antiseptic surgery. A large and exacting private practice gradu- ally wore him out, sepsis from an operating wound received while performing an ovari- otomy in 1881 undermined his constitution, the end coming from a double pneumonia. One of his daughters married Dr. Herbert LesHe Burrell (q. v.), professor of clinical surgery in the Harvard Medical School, and a son, Dr. Townsend William Thorndike, was professor of dermatology and syphilis in Tufts College Medical School. TowN.SEND W. Thorndike. Bost. Med. and Surg. Jour., 1885, vol. cxii, pp. 69-70. D. W. Chcever, M. D. Hist. Bost. City Hosp., 1906. G. W. G«y, M. D. Portrait. Family records. Thornton, Matthew (1714-1803). The last name to be signed to that memo- rable document, the Declaration of Independ- ence, was that of Matthew Thornton, born in Ireland in 1714. His father emigrated to this country in 1717 and settled in Wiscasset, Maine. From there they removed to Worcester, Massacliusetts, where Matthew received his education. Here he studied medicine and set- tled in Londonderry, New Hampshire, where he acquired an extensive practice and became conspicuous for professional skill as well as the distinction of being an aggressive and pub- lic-spirited patriot. Dr. Thornton shared in the perils of the ex- pedition against Louisburg as surgeon of the New Hampshire Division of the army. When the political crisis arrived, Thornton abjured the British interests. He was a mem- ber of the convention which declared New Hampshire to be a sovereign state, and was elected its president. He served in the Continental Congress from 1776-1778, and in the latter year resigned to accept the chief justiceship of Hillsborough County. He held this position only two years, resigning to accept a position on the supreme bench of the state. In 1783 Thornton was elected a member of the State House of Repre- sentatives, and the next year a member of the Stale Senate. He wrote political articles for the papers, even after the age of eighty, and during his last davs was at work on a meta- physical article on the origin of sin, which was never published. In 1780 he purchased a farm at Merrimack, N. H., on the banks of the Merrimac river, near Exeter, and spent the remainder of his life there, dying in Newburyport, Massachu- setts, while on a visit to his daughter, on June 24, 1803. Ira Joslin Prouty. Biog. of the Signers to the Declaration of Inde- pendence, Phila, 1849. Thornton, William (1761-1828). Born on Tortola Island in the West Indies, May 27, 1761, he held the Edinburgh M. D., and after graduation continued his medical studies in Paris and traveled extensively through Europe, then came to the United States, married in 1790 and returned to Tor- tola. In 1793 he returned to Washington, and that same year published his "Elements of Written Language," and afterwards many pa- pers on other subjects, including medicine, astronomy, philosophy, finance, government and art. He was also associated with Fitch in early experiments in running boats by steam. Always inventive, he was wisely put in charge of United States patents from the passage of the Act of Congress 1802 till his death ; and during the War of 1814 was the means of pre- serving the records of the Patent Office from destruction by the British. He was the first architect of the Capitol, as also its designer, and of many buildings in the District of Co- lumbia and elsewhere. In 1704 he was appointed by Washington one of the three commissioners of the District of Columbia. He died March 27, 1828. D.NiEL Smith Lamb. Appleton's Cyclop. Amer. Biog., N. Y., 1SS9. Hist, of the U. S. Capitol, Glenn Brown, 1900. Tiffany, FUvel Benjamin (1846-1918). Flavel Benjamin Tiffany, an ophthalmologist of Kansas City, Missouri, was born at Cicero, Oneida County, New York, April 28, 1846, tha son of Ambrose and Electa Shepard Tiffany. He early removed with his parents to Rutland, Dane County, Wisconsin, and afterward to Baraboo. The following year he removed again, to Rice Lake, Minnesota, where his mother died. The war breaking out, he en- listed at the age of seventeen in Battery B, Fourth Minnesota Light Artillery, and served till the close of the strife. Returning to Minne- sota, he went to school at Faribault, living with a Dr. Bemis, and doing manual labor for his board. Before he was twenty years of age he entered the state university at Minneapolis, but could not quite complete the literary J