Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1301

YATES Yandellana (James Hall); Phillips Astrea Yandelli (Dr. C. Rominger).

In all the years of his busy life, he was unresting in the labors that he loved. They were diversified, but such was the skill he displayed in each department which he adorned, that in looking at any one specimen of his work we might have supposed that one was his vocation. Whether he wrote history, essays upon geology, on medical themes, biography, the advancement of education, or the wisdom, the power and beneficence of the Creator in His works he seemed to make each theme his own, and he adorned it with life and beauty. Independently of his lectures, he wrote fully one hundred papers on the various subjects that he had studied, and they are papers of profound interest. Among his medical and general-literature papers, the best known are: "History of American Literature;" "History of Kentucky Medicine;" A Review of the Last of the "Idyls of the King," Tennyson; "The Diseases of Old Age" (completed and sent to the printer a few days before his death).

He married twice: first Susan Juliet Wendel and had six children. His second wife was Eliza Bland by whom he had no children.

His death on the fourth of February, 1878, was caused by pneumonia, after a few days' illness. Being in pain he asked his son for a portion of opium, and when laudanum was given him, in the Latin of his favorite, Sydenham, he said: "Magnum donum Dei," and these were his last words.

A list of his writings may be found in the Library of the Surgeon General's Office, Washington, D. C.



Yates, Christopher C. ( –1848)

Christopher C. Yates was born in Rensselaer County, New York State, studied medicine with Dr. Samuel Stringer, a veteran in the profession, and was probably licensed by the Supreme Court of the State, in the year 1802 or 1803. For many years he lived in Albany and at one time created great excitement in the community by exhuming, for dissection, a half-breed Indian who had died there. The public were incensed by such sacrilege, and Dr. Yates braved the storm almost at the risk of his life.

In 1812 an epidemic of bilious fever appeared in Albany, upon which Dr. Yates wrote an article which was published in the American and Philosophical Register in 1813. He attributed the prominent characteristics of the disease to derangement of the liver and regarded the malady as purely inflammatory. The article was reviewed by and  of New York (q.v.). In 1820 he took an active and decided part in the controversy on yellow fever.

In 1832 he published an article on "Epidemic, Asiatic or Spasmodic Cholera, Prevailing in the City of New York, with advice to planters in the south on the medical treatment of their slaves."

He also discussed cholera in a letter to Dr. Barent P. Staats, the health officer of Albany in 1832, and gave an account of the disease as observed by French authors. These articles are preserved in the State Library. While living in New York, Dr. Yates lost a son, Winfield Scott, a lad of eighteen, extraordinarily proficient in the various branches of learning.

Yates gave his attention to the cure of stammering, as a professional specialty, but there remains no evidence that he was particularly skilful in such cases.

He returned to Albany about 1840, but went eventually to Parrsborough, in Nova Scotia, where he passed the rest of his days, and died September 23, 1848. In personal appearance, he was tall, with a slender figure, an intelligent face, and prepossessing address.



Young, Aaron (1819–1898)

Aaron Young, senior, was born in Pittston, Maine, May 12, 1798, married a Miss Mary Colburn in 1805 and in 1819 was living in Wiscasset, Maine, where on the 19th of December of that year, Aaron Young, Junior, the last of a large family, was born. At that time his father was a surveyor of lumber. The family moved a few years later to Randolph and then to Bangor, Maine. The son, Aaron, was delicate in youth and probably affected with enlarged tonsils and adenoids, for at the age of ten he was noticeably deaf, an affliction which persisted through life. His inability to converse freely, owing to his defect, turned the boy's attention to nature, and at the age of eighteen years he became an