Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/182

NAME BRYAN 160 BRYANT Bryan, James (1810-1881) James Bryan was born in Merthyr, Wales, August 23, 1810, son of John Bryan of Shrop- shire, England, and Mary Williams, of Mer- thyr. In the autumn of 1818 the family came to America, but his father died soon after their arrival and James was placed with a farmer, a Friend, in Delaware County, Penn- sylvania. When sixteen he went to Philadel- phia and apprenticed himself to a hatter, but wishing to take up medicine he gave his spare time to the classics, French and English, to fit himself for the profession. At twenty-one he had $200 and began to study with Joseph Parrish (q.v.), of Philadelphia, and in 1831 entered the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1834 with a thesis on "Epidemics." While a stu- dent at the University he was resident at the Philadelphia Dispensary. He began practising at 28 North Eighth Street, Philadelphia, and in 1835 gave a series of lectures on physiology at Franklin Insti- tute. In 1838 he was appointed by the mana- gers of the Preston Retreat to study lying-in hospitals abroad, and spent fourteen months in Europe for that purpose. The hospital which appealed most to him was the City of London Lying-In Hospital with a record of but one epidemic of child-bed fever in sixty- five years ; he suggested this hospital as a guide for the Retreat. In 1840 he was elected professor of surgery and medical jurisprudence in the medical Col- lege of Castleton, Vermont, and the same year in the Philadelphia Dispensary ; here he re- mained four years. In 1847 the City of Philadelphia appointed him on a commission to ask Congress for an appropriation for sectional floating dry docks and railways ; the appropriation was granted. From 1848 to 1853 he lectured on surgery at Geneva Medical College; removed to Syra- cuse in 1872 and became part of Syracuse Uni- versity; from 1846 to 1856 he was professor of surgery in the Philadelphia College of Med- icine; he was a founder and first president (1849) of the Medico-Chirurgical College; from 1859 to 1860 he was professor of anat- omy in the New York Medical College. He served as surgeon in the Civil War un- der McClellan in Virginia, Burnside in North Carolina, Rosecrans in Tennessee, and Grant at Vicksburg; his health failing, he was ap- pointed to hospital duty at Washington and, later, at Pittsburgh, and was honorably dis- charged in 1865. Bryan was an advocate of medical colleges for women and advised the admission of Eliz- abeth Blackwell (q.v.) as a student to Geneva Medical College. He wished to establish a veterinary college, and in consequence was called the "horse doctor." On March 19, 1852, an act was passed incorporating the Veteri- nary College of Philadelphia and among the trustees were besides Bryan, George Cadwala- der, William Gibson, George Woodward, and Bishop Alonzo Potter. In 1850 Bryan had received a silver medal from the Pennsylvania State Agricultural Society for a lecture on veterinary science. He wrote on the history and progress of medicine, on surgery, and "Anatomy, Physiol- ogy, and Diseases of the Human Ear" (1851). In 1840 he married EUzabeth T. Woodruff, of Elizabeth, New Jersey. They had one child, Mary, who married Louis W. Noe, of that city. Joseph Roberts Bryan, M. D., Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, 1889, was a nephew. Bryan moved to Elizabeth and died there November 5, 1881. Information from Dr. Ewing Jordan. Founders' Week Memorial Volume, F. P. Henry. Bryant, Joseph Decatur (1845-1914) Joseph Decatur Bryant, widely known New York surgeon, teacher and consultant, born March 12, 1845, in East Troy, Walworth County, Wisconsin, was the son of Alonzc Ambrose and Harriet Atkins Bryant. His an- cestors on both sides were English. On the maternal side Dr. Bryant was de- scended from the English family of Atkins, active in the wars of the Crusaders. His fa- ther, a native of Chenango County, N. Y., was one of twelve, none of whom died before seventy; he married in 1842, and Joseph De- catur was his only child. Joseph received his preliminary education in the common schools of his native town, and worked the farm in summer ; he also attended the high school and the Norwich Academy. Bryant began to study medicine with Dr. George W. Avery, entered Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1866, and graduated m 1868. He was an interne at Bellevue Hos- pital, 1869-1871, and from that period until the consolidation of Bellevue Hospital Medi- cal College with the New York University Medical College in 1897, held various teaching positions in that institution. From the union of the schools until death he was professor of the principles and practice of surgery. As visiting or consulting surgeon he was attached to many hospitals, among them Bellevue and St. Vincent's, in New York City. In civil and military life, he held important