Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/122

BIGELOW chairman of the Medical Faculty, fought bitterly. "His character showed a union of extraordinary versatility and inventiveness with dogmatism, intolerance, and lack of both progressiveness and breadth of view." President Eliot, in his annual report for the University in 1882, commented thus on Bigelow, who had resigned as professor in that year: "a clear and forcible lecturer, a keen debater, and a natural leader of men, by force of activity, ingenuity and originality." We find Bigelow opposed to allowing the visiting staff of his hospital treating their private patients in the hospital and accepting fees, thus laying the foundations for the future abuse of medical charity in Boston; also opposed to coeducation in the medical school, and to vivisection.

In personal appearance he was tall and rather slight, his elastic step betraying a nervous organization. He had well-moulded features which were unobscured even by a full beard and his agreeable voice and manner always attracted attention. He was interested in music and art, and was one of the first trustees of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Having gradually retired from practice his last two years were spent at his country place, Oak Hill, Newton, where, while driving, he was thrown from his carriage, receiving a blow on the head that was followed by a long illness. There he died, October 30, 1890, from a non-malignant stenosis of the pyloric orifice of the stomach as verified by autopsy.

Dr. Bigelow was married in 1847 to Susan, daughter of the Hon. William Sturgis. She died on June 9, 1853. One son, Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow, of Boston, survived his parents.



Bigelow, Jacob (1787–1879)

Jacob Bigelow was a great educational reformer, and one of America's most learned botanists. He was of New England ancestry, his people coming over about 1640 and settling in Watertown, Massachusetts. Jacob was the son of Jacob Bigelow, congregational minister, and graduate of Harvard, who married a daughter of one Gershom Flagg. Jacob the younger was born on the twenty-seventh of February, 1787, in that part of Watertown which is now Waltham and his childhood was passed in the country at farm-work, with scanty schooling. His father managed to send him to Harvard where he graduated in 1806, and in 1808 attended the medical lectures there while acting as pupil under Dr. John Gorham and teaching in the Boston Latin School. Then he went to Philadelphia for the lectures of Rush, Wistar, Barton and Cove and the doctor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1810. To bring himself early before the professional public he took to writing and secured the Boylston prize four successive years. So promising seemed his career that the elder James Jackson chose him as associate in practice. He was a born artist, craftsman, and inventor. When occasion came for illustrating his "Medical Botany" (1817–20) with engravings, before photography or lithographing were invented, he devised a means of illustration which proved both practical and beautiful and furnished sixty plates and 6,000 colored engravings for this monumental and now rare work. He speaks laughingly of his first lesson in botany given when as a little boy he asked a learned gentleman the name of the plant Star of Bethlehem. "That? Why that's grass, you little fool." When he wished for drawings and models for his lectures as Rumford professor he knew how to make them. In 1812 his interest in the study of botany led him to give a course of public lectures in Boston.

Botany was his great hobby, and "Florula Bostoniensis" (1814) was a charming book well known to our grandfathers. In 1815 he was appointed lecturer on materia medica and botany and two years later when he was thirty they changed his title to professor. Then, too, as first Rumford professor, it is pleasant to believe that Rumford left behind him in his native state a young disciple who fulfilled all his desires. The work which brought Bigelow into closest contact with European savants and gave him honor in his own country was the elaborate series published under the title "American Medical Botany," which, for finish and beauty and avoidance of technical terms, makes it desirable to-day. In 1820, when thirty-three, he was associated with Spalding, Hewson, Ives and Butts in editing the "United States Pharmacopœia." He followed up this labor by adding "Bigelow's Sequel," a perspicuous commentary on current remedies.

Three years previously he had married Mary, daughter of Col. William Scollay of Boston and they had five children, one son, (q.v.), becoming the noted surgeon in Boston.

When the great cholera epidemic of 1832 in