Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/164

BRICKELL much information that he had gathered at first hand.

Besides his book, Brickell is said to have published, at Dublin, a "Catalogue of American trees and plants which will bear the climate of England" (1745).



Brickell, John (1749–1809)

John Brickell was born in or about the year 1749, in County Louth, Ireland, and died at Savannah, Georgia, December 22, 1809. He came to America about 1770, and it is very likely that he was the John Brickell who entered King's College (now Columbia University), New York, in 1774, but had not completed the course when the activities of the institution were suspended in 1776. Shortly afterward, during the Revolution, he settled in Georgia, and practised medicine for many years at Savannah. He was recognized as an accomplished scholar and a sincere patriot. Outside of his professional work, his chief interest was in the science of botany. He was a correspondent of Muhlenberg; and, of his five papers contributed to the earlier volumes (1798–1809) of the Medical RespositoryRepository [sic], two were devoted to descriptions of plants found by him near Savannah. Brickellia, a genus of Compositae, was dedicated to his memory by Stephen Elliott in 1823. Dr. Brickell's only surviving relative, at least in Georgia, seems to have been his brother James, to whom he left all of his property by will.



Brickner, Samuel Max (1867–1916)

Samuel Max Brickner was born at Rochester, New York, January 11, 1867, the son of Max Brickner, president of the Rochester Chamber of Commerce. He graduated from the University of Rochester in 1888, and took his medical degree in 1891, at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, where he won the first Harsen clinical prize. He did post-graduate work in Berlin, Leipzig and Vienna, and later served on the house staffs of the Sloane Maternity Hospital and of Ml. Sinai Hospital, with which he remained connected until 1913, when ill health compelled him to resign his position as associate gynecologist. As he approached middle life, he had already made his mark in obstetrics and gynecology, when he was stricken with tuberculosis and eventually compelled to give up active work. In 1914, he retired with his family to Saranac Lake, where he occupied himself with literature during the short remaining period of his life. In this field, he had had previous experience in newspaper work in his youth, as one of the associate editors of the New York Medical Journal, as a reader of manuscripts submitted to publishing houses, and as a talented writer of light verse. In 1915, he started and edited the Medical Pickwick, a literary magazine for physicians, devoted to the humorous and picturesque side of medicine, which he edited with success for a year or more. He was a man of attractive personality, quiet in demeanor, modest, friendly and charming in every way. During his last illness, he delighted his friends with his bright cheerful letters, and with brief occasional poems, of which the lines written for the unveiling of the Stevenson memorial tablet at Saranac Lake and the copy of verses entitled "The Feast" are the most remarkable. In his calm perception of the fact that death was not far off at any time and in the unfaltering courage with which he met his end, he was the "peak-faced and suffering piper" of Stevenson's lines, a cheerful, serene spirit to the last. He died on May 4, 1916, at the age of 49, and was buried from Mount Hope Chapel, Rochester, New York. He married Miss Josephine Hays, of Rochester, and was survived by his widow and two sons.

His contributions to gynecology and obstetrics include:

"A short umbilical cord as a cause of distocia, with a description of a new symptom" (1889); "On the physiological character of the pain of parturition," (1899); "Unvollständiger angeborener Querverschluss der Scheide, nebst einer Theorie zur Erklärung seines Ursprunges" (1903); "Fibroma molluscum gravidarum. A new clinical entity" (1906); "Some causes of failure in plastic operations on the female genitalia" (1907); "The unfavorable influence of pregnancy upon chronic progressive deafness" (1911).



Bridges, Robert (1806–1882)

Robert Bridges, physician, chemist and botanist, was born in Philadelphia March 5, 1806. His lineage was pure English and his ancestors were "vigorous, enterprising, intelligent and respectable." The first Edward Bridges, was a lieutenant in the English Army in 1648, another Edward Bridges settled in Philadelphia in 1739 and was in the dry goods