Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1200

NAME VATTIER 1178 VAUGHAN wife, who, with six children, survived him, was a daughter of Dr. Isaac Barber, of New York, and widow of Dr. John W. Cameron. John H. B.'>lRnh.rt. Appleton's Cyclop. Araer. Biog., 1889, vol. vi. Science. 1893, vol. xxi. Bull. Torrey Bot. Cluh, 1893. vol. xx. ^ ,^.,^, Bot. Gaz., 1893, vol. xviii. (With port, and bib.) Vattier, John Loring (lSOS-1881) John L. Vattier was the son of Charles Vattier, of Le Havre, France, who emigrated to this country and came West as a member of Gen. St. Clair's Army, settling in Cincinnati and amassing a fortune in real estate. His mother was Pamela Loring, of Baltimore, Maryland, and he was born on October 31, 1808, in a little house at the corner of Front and Eastern Row, now Broadway, Cincinnati, Ohio. After going to the best schools of that day. but principally to private preceptors, he entered into the service of an apothecary, with the object of becoming a physician and in 1*27 took up medicine and matriculated in the Medical College of Ohio, under professors Whitman, Slack, and Cobb; between terms he devoted his time to the steamboat traffic, reading medicine in spare moments of long trips. He was a clerk on the Alexander Hamilton, at the time it made the first through trip of any steamboat between Cin- cinnati and St. Louis. He finally graduated in 1830 and settled in Aurora, Indiana, but the field not being attractive enough, he returned to Cincinnati and embarked in the wholesale drug business, the firm name being Ramsey and Vattier. The venture, of about four years' duration, became unprofitable and the firm dissolved, and in 1863 he returned to practise medicine in his native city, which he did to the time of his death, enjoying a suc- cessful career. At one time he was a partner of the renowned Dr. John T. Shotwell (q.v.). At the time of the Seminole War and trouble leading up to the Mexican War, he was appointed by Maj. Melancthon J. Wade as surgeon of the First Regitnent, third bri- gade, first division, Ohio Militia. In lS,i3 Vattier was appointed postmaster at Cincinnati by President Pierce and continued in office until May, 1858, and again in 18.^9 he was appointed to the same office by President Buchanan and remained there until the ad- ministration of President Lincoln. At different times he was trustee and di- rector of many institutions. Among the public ones may be stated, the City Hospital, Long- view Asylum, Cincinnati Collc.ge of Medicine and Surgery and the Medical College of Ohio ; with the last he was identified closely and did much towards bringing it into prominence. He was president of the Academy of Medicine in 1867. A curious history may be read in connection with Vattier in the "Transactions of the American Medical Association for 1881" con- cerning his membership in the Society of the Last Man, organized in Cincinnati during the cholera. The year 1832 was a fatal one in the history of the United States through the ravages of Asiatic cholera. The dreadful scourge had secured a footing in New Orleans, and was cutting a deadly swath northwards in the Mississippi Valley, its advance guard reaching St. Louis, where as it spread to the east and to the west, the victims fell by hundreds. The thirtieth of September of that year was a gloriously bright Sunday, and on the afternoon of that day were gathered in the studio of Joseph R. Mason, in Cincinnati, a prominent young artist. Dr. J. L. Vattier, Dr. James M. Mason, Henry L. Tatem, Fenton Lawson, William Disney, Jr., William Stanbery and the artist. Conversation naturally turned upon the plague and the havoc it was causing, the stalking and unconquerable phantom being the one topic everywhere. One of the number in a spirit of levity sug- gested the formation of a society to be known as the Society of the Last Man, and proposed that on each recurring anniversary of the organization a banquet should be held, at which the survivors were to attend, and when but one living representative remained he was to open a bottle of wine provided at the first meal. They came together for the first time on the night of October 6, 1832, and lots were drawn for the custody of the charge. In 1855 Henry Tatem and Dr. Vattier alone faced each other. The casket was now in the possession of the former, and two months later the fell destroyer seized him. In his delirium, he cried "Break open that casket and pour out the wine. It haunts me." The next year Dr. Vattier was alone at a banquet set for seven. Vattier died in Cincinnati in 1881. No writings of his, with the exception of a few controversial tracts, can be traced. Otto Juettner, Cincinnati Lancet and Clinic, n. s., J. H. Buck- ner. 1881, vol. vi. Tr. Amer. Med Asso., Phila., J. M. Toner, 1381, Thc° Ce^it^ Mag., H. D. Ward, June. 1908. Vaughan, Benjamin (1751-1835) So far as can he discovered, the only mem- ber of the Parliament of Great Britain and