Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/163

BRICKELL who had gone from his native land to the north of Ireland, and thence to Maryland. The family settled in Mecklenburg, N. C., about 1740. Ephraim, the oldest of eight sons, had the misfortune in his boyhood to lose the sight of one eye, but this did not prevent his receiving a liberal education. He graduated at Princeton College in 1768, studied medicine, and settled as a physician at Charlotte, N. C. During the troubles preceding the Revolution several county meetings were held here, and at one, held May 31, 1775, Dr. Brevard was secretary, and prepared a series of twenty resolutions declaring the government heretofore existing now dissolved, branding as traitors those who should henceforth accept offices from the Crown, establishing a new administration for the county, and calling upon all the inhabitants of the country to unite in maintaining their rights. These resolutions were sent to the provincial congress and to the delegates from North Carolina then attending the Continental Congress at Philadelphia. They were printed on June 13, 1775, in the South Carolina Gazette in Charleston, copies of which were sent to London by the royal governors of both North Carolina and Georgia as indicating the desperate situation of affairs. Dr. Brevard and his seven brothers all served in the Revolutionary Army, and his mother's house was burned on this account by a detachment from Lord Cornwallis's army. When the Southern army was captured at Charleston, S. C., in May, 1780, Dr. Brevard became a prisoner.

When released, some months later, his health was so broken that he died at Charlotte in 1783. He was buried at Hopewell, but his grave was not marked.



Brickell, Daniel Warren (1824–1881)

D. W. Brickell, gynecologist, was born in Columbia, South Carolina, October, 1824, of Huguenot, German and Irish extraction. In 1844 he prepared to enter Yale but determining to study medicine, matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania under the private tutorship of Gerhard and received his diploma in 1847. He made a special study of gynecology, but applied for admission to the United States Navy, passing second among forty applicants. There being no vacancy for foreign service and having been assigned to duty at Pensacola, he resigned his commission as assistant surgeon and began to practise medicine in New Orleans in 1848. Teaching private classes in the Charity Hospital, he soon became known and was offered the professorial chair which he so long adorned. With Fenner, Choppin, Peniston, Picton, Axson and others he organized the New Orleans School of Medicine. He was editor of the New Orleans Medical News and Hospital Gazette, Southern Journal of Medical Sciences. He was clinical teacher of the diseases of females, and lecturer on obstetrics in Bellevue. In 1862 he was a member of the committee of safety and did what he could for the defense of the city; on its surrender he entered the service of the confederacy and served in field and hospital until the close of the conflict. In 1873 Bellevue tendered him the chair of obstetrics, which after a short while he resigned, returning to the home of his affection and there he remained until his death in December, 1881.

A wise, cautious conservative physician. A bold, dextrous and self-reliant surgeon, as lecturer, clear, cogent and terse; a successful journalist. In every phase of his multiform character, a valuable member of society.



Brickell, John (1710?–1745)

John Brickell, M. D., author of "The natural history of North Carolina" (Dublin, 1737; with altered title page, Dublin, 1743; reprinted, 1911), is believed to have been a native of Ireland, and to have returned to that island after his brief residence in America. Little is known of the details of his life. The plausible suggestion has been made that he came to North Carolina with Governor George Burrington in 1724. While in North Carolina his home was at Edenton. About 1730 he was one of a party of ten who, with two Indian guides, spent nearly two months in the exploration of the interior country of the province; they penetrated the mountains, and it has been claimed that they reached what is now eastern Tennessee. In 1731 Brickell was still at Edenton, but soon afterward left the colony.

The book upon which his reputation rests has been severely criticized, because he copied into it, without credit, a large part of John Lawson's earlier "History of Carolina" (1714). It must be remembered, however, that Lawson's book was well known, and was the only earlier work of similar scope, so that Brickell might reasonably have been expected to incorporate anything of value that it contained and may have considered the giving of specific credit under the circumstances quite superfluous; besides, Brickell added