Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1296

WYMAN ; that is, they either illustrated function or the relations of single parts without reference to the entire organism. "He would not allow his imagination to outstrip his observation."

Gray gives the following account of Wyman's character:

"His work as a teacher was of the same quality. He was one of the best lecturers I ever heard, although, and partly because, he was the most unpretending. You never thought of the speaker, nor of the gifts and acquisitions which such clear exposition were calling forth—only of what he was simply telling and showing you. Then to those, who like his pupils and friends, were in personal contact with him, there was the added charm of a most serene and sweet temper. He was truthful and conscientious to the very core. His perfect freedom, in lectures as well as in writing, and no less so in daily conversation, from all exaggeration, false perspective, and factitious adornment was the natural expression of his innate modesty and refined taste, and also of his reverence for the exact truth."

Of Wyman's mode of work in the laboratory, O. W. Holmes gives the following description:

"In his laboratory he commonly made use, as Wollaston did, of the simplest appliances. Give him a scalpel, a pair of forceps, a window to work at, and anything that ever had life in it to work on, and he would have a preparation for his shelves in the course of a few hours or days, as the case might be, that would illustrate something or other which an anatomist or a physiologist would find it a profit and pleasure to study. Under a balanced bell-glass he kept a costly and complicated microscope, but he preferred working with an honest, old-fashioned, steady-going instrument of the respectable, upright Oberhaueser pattern. His outfit for happy employment was as simple as John the Baptist's for prophecy."

To Holmes we are likewise indebted for the following personal description of Wyman:

"Jeffries Wyman looked his character so well that he might have been known for what he was in a crowd of men of letters and science. Of moderate stature, of slight frame, evidently attenuated by long invalidism, with a well-shaped head, a forehead high rather than broad, his face thin, his features bold, his expression mild, tranquil, intelligent, firm as of one self-poised; not asserting, his scholarly look emphasized by the gold-bowed spectacles his nearsightedness forced him commonly to wear; the picture of himself he has left indelibly impressed on the memory of his friends and pupils is one which it will always be a happiness to recall."

He died at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 4, 1874, of pulmonary tuberculosis.



Wyman, Morrill (1812–1903)

Morrill Wyman, inventor of the operation of thoracentesis and son of Rufus Wyman, a physician of Chelmsford, Massachusetts, later the first superintendent of the McLean Insane Asylum, was born in Chelmsford July 25, 1812.

He graduated from Harvard College in the same class as his brother (q.v.) in 1833, and received the M. D. from the Harvard Medical School in 1837. He studied with Dr. William J. Walker, of Charlestown, before graduating from the school and after graduation served as house officer at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He began practice in Cambridge in 1838 and continued until a few years before his death, which occurred January 31January 30 [sic], 1903, at the ripe age of ninety-oneninety [sic].

For a few years during his early life he was adjunct Hersey professor of the theory and practice of physic in the Harvard Medical School. From 1875 to 1889 he was an overseer of the University and in 1885 was given the LL.D. of Harvard. He was consulting physician to the Massachusetts General Hospital, to the Cambridge Hospital, in the establishment of which he was especially prominent, and to the Adams' Nervine Asylum in Jamaica Plain, a part of Boston.

In 1839 he married Elizabeth Aspinwall, daughter of Capt. Robert S. Pulsifer, a