Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1231

NAME WEBSTER 1209 WEBSTER turn in 1903, while attending a banquet given in his honor by the Cleveland Medical Li- brar-, to which he had given his books and instruments, he suffered a stroke of apoplexy. His declining years were spent at his home in Willoughby, on the piazza looking into the trees that he~ and his wife had planted. There he sat a decade long, with no repining, with no complaints, content with his home, with his family and occasional friends until he slipped away after an attack of influenza m his eighty-fifth year, March 21, 1912. Cleveland Med. Tour., Dr. J. H. Lowman. 1912, vol. xi, 2(.3-27"l; also Dr. M. Stamm, 407-415. Emin. Amer. Phys. & Surgs., R. F. Stone, 1894. Webster, James (1803-1854) James Webster was born in Washington, Lancashire, England, December 24, 1803. His parents emigrated to this country while he was still a small boy, and settled in Philadelphia, where his father became an eminent book- seller and publisher, and established the Medi- cal Recorder, of which his son later became an editor. Webster's father meant him to study law, but the boy's inclinations led to the study of medicine, which he took up first in Balti- more and then in Philadelphia, graduating at the University of Pennsylvania in 1824, at the age of twenty. He was a private pupil of J. D. Godraan (q.v.), and when the latter went to Rutgers College in 1826, he was succeeded at the Philadelphia School of Anatomy by Webster, a post retained for four years. He was a good teacher and excellent anatomist, although not so talented and energetic as some of the others who had had charge of the Philadelphia School of Anatomy. He made a practice of performing all dissections before his classes. He was thoroughly devoted to the interests of his class, and according to Dr. W. W. Keen, at one time, when there was greater difficulty than usual in getting sub- jects, he sat up night after night, watching that neither the University or any private room should obtain them till he was supplied, and gaining his point. His literary efforts while in Philadelphia were limited to editing the Medical Recorder, in 1827-29, when it was merged into the American Journal of the Medical Sciences. Dr. Keen also states that he believes that Webster was the editor of another rather pugilistic journal, which, however, was short- lived. In 1835 Webster moved to New York, where he acquired a rep'utation as a surgeon, especially of the eye and ear. In 1842 he went to Rochester as professor of anatomy in the Geneva Medical College.* In 1849 he took the chair of anatomy in the University of Buffalo, which he resigned in 1852. He was one of the most popular surgeons in western New York, cautious, yet bold. In character he is said to have been a man of gentle instincts, generous to a fault, and thoroughly likeable. At the time of his death, July 19, 1854, he was emeritus professor of anatomy at the Geneva Medical College. Charles R. Bardeen. Philadelphia School of Anatomy, W. W. Keen. Boston Med. & burg. Jour., 1854, vol. li. Trans. Med. Soc. N. Y., C. B. Coventry, I85S. N. Y. Jour. Med., 1854, n. s., vol. xiii. Webster, John White (1793-1850) John White Webster, Erving Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in Harvard Uni- versity, was the author of a standard text-book on chemistry and had taught chemistry for twenty-five years in Cambridge and at Har- vard Medical School when he came into world- wide notoriety as the murderer of Dr. George Parkman, one of his creditors, the donor of the land on which the new building of the medical school had recently been erected. The murder trial, a cause celebre, was at- tended by over 60,000 persons, and some 5,000 inspected the medical school, the scene of the murder, the building being thrown open to the public. John W. Webster was the only child of Dr. Red ford Webster, an apothecary at the north end of Boston, where John was born May 20, 1793. The father had gathered together a considerable property and at his death in 1833 it amounted to about fifty thousand dollars, a sum which was augmented by funds be- queathed John by his mother, who died soon after, altogether a large fortune at that time. It is to be noted that Redford Webster willed all his real estate to his four female grand- children and his personal estate to his wife, showing a lack of confidence in his son's judgment. John attended Harvard College, graduated in arts in 1811 and at Harvard Medical School in 1815, traveled abroad and married "an intel- ligent and well-bred lady." In 1821 he pub- lished a "Description of the Island of St. Michael," in the Azores, where he had spent some time; in 1824 he was appointed lecturer in chemistry, mineralogy and geology at Har- vard, succeeding John Gorham (q.v.) as Erv- ing professor three years later. In the mean- time he had published his "Manual of Chemis- try," 600 pages, 1826, and had acted as co-editor •Keen states that Webster was appointed to this professorship in 1830; the writer in the Boston Med- ical and Surgical Journal gives 1842 as the date when VVebster went to Rochester.