Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1180

NAME TRALL 1158 TRASK from 1906 to 1908; a member of the Board of Trustees from 1908 to 1911, and secretary of the board the last two years of that period. He had been secretary of the Medical Society of the State of New York from 1896, and for twelve years previous to his death lie had been secretary of the board of trustees of the New York Academy of Medicine. He was also a member of the American Orthopedic Associa- tion and its president in 1899, and was presi- dent of the New York State Association of Railway Surgeons in 1902. He was professor of orthopedic surgery in the New York Polyclinic ; associate surgeon to the Hos- pital for Ruptured and Crippled ; orthopedic surgeon to the French Hospital, New York ; consulting orthopedic surgeon to the J. R. Smith Infirmary, Staten Island, and consulting surgeon to the Bayonne (N. J.) Hospital, and was a voluminous contributor to the literature of orthopedic surgery. A list of his writings may be found in the History of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, John Shrady, Lewis Publishing Company, N. Y., vol. i, p. 603. He was twice married. In 1887 to Mar- guerite Zewald of South Pittsburg, Tennessee, and in 1888 to Elizabeth McGunnegle Walker. She and two sons survived him. Dr. Townsend had been in bad physical con- dition for some time previous to his death, suf- fering from diabetes and frequent attacks of vertigo, and had been a victim of insomnia. It is believed that he had attempted to open the bathroom window, which was only about two feet from the floor, and seized with ver- tigo, fell to his death, during the night of March 22, 1916. Dr. Townsend was a man of great execu- tive ability and winning personality and his tragic death was a great shock to his many professional friends throughout the United States. Jour. .-Kmer. Med. Assoc, 1916. vol. Ixvi, p. 908. Hist. Coll. Phys. & Surgs., New York, J. Shrady, 1912, vol. i, pp. 602-604. Portrait. Trail, .Russell Thacher (1812-1877). Russell Thacher Trail was born in Vernon, Connecticut, August 5, 1812. He was brought up by his parents in western New York when he was a child, and for several years worked on a farm. He afterwards studied medicine, began practice and settled in New York City in 1840, where he became a hydropathist. In 1843 he founded an establishment in that city for the water-cure treatment, and opened, in connection with it in 1853, a medical school for both sexes, which was chartered in 1857, under the title of the New York Hygeio-thera- peutic college. It was afterwards removed to Florence, N. J. He edited the New York Or- gan, a weekly temperance journal, and the Hydropathic Revicu', a quarterly magazine, from 1845 to 1848; he was also the editor of other medical journals, and the author of "Hy- dropathic Encyclopedia" (New York, 18S2) ; "New Hydropathic Cook-Book" (1854); "Prize Essay on Tobacco" (1854); "Uterine Diseases and Displacements" (1855) ; "Home Treatment for Sexual Abuses" ; "The Alcoholic Contro- versy" (1856) ; "The Complete Gymna- sium" (1857) ; "Diseases of the Throat and Lung.s" (180l) ; "Diphtheria" (1862) ; "Pathol- ogy of the Reproductive Organs" (1862) ; "The True Temperance Platform, or an Exposition of the Fallacy of Alcoholic Medication" (1864- 66) ; "Hand-Book of Hygienic Practice" (1865); "Sexual Physiology" (1866; London, 1867) ; "Water-Cure for the Million" (1867) ; "Digestion and Dyspepsia" (1874) ; "The Hu- man Voice" (1874) ; and "Popular Physiology" (1875). Dr. Trail died in Florence. New Jersey, September 23, 1877. .Applcton's Cyclop, .iner. Biog., vol. vi, p. 154. Trask, James Dowling (1821-1883). James Dowling Trask, an obstetrician and a founder of the American Gynecological So- ciety, was born at Beverly, Massachusetts, on August 16, 1821. He graduated at Amherst College in 1839 and took his A. M. in 1842, and his M. D. from the University of the City of New York in 1844, immediately after be- ginning practice in Brooklyn. In 1845 he mar- ried Jane Cruickshank, daughter of Thomas O'Darrell, K. C. B., of Belfast, Ireland. From 1847 to 1859 he practised in White Plains, Westchester County, New York, then settled in Astoria, New York City, and be- came for a few years professor of obstetrics and diseases of women in the Long Island College Hospital (1861-65), unlil ever increas- ing private practice compelled him to speak to the medical world through his writings and at the various societies. His writings showed most painstaking labor and fine intellectual quality. His first, "On the Nature of Phleg- masia Dolens," America}! Journal of the Medi- cal Sciences, January, 1847, met with high com- mendation from O. W. Holmes, and the sec- ond, on "Rupture of the Uterus," in the same journal in October, 1847, presented a summary of 303 cases ; followed in July, 1856, by a se- quel with over one hundred more cases. His "Occlusion and Rigidity of the Os Uteri and Vagina," American Journal of the Medical Sciences, July, 1848, was a valuable showing.