Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/199

NAME BUSEY 177 BUSEY 1820. About a year before he had married Miss Mary Hollister, of Manchester, and in 1820, with his wife and one child, travelled on horesback from Vermont to the town of Col- lamer, Ohio, with the purpose of settling in the Western Reserve. Tradition reports that, on his arrival, he found another young physi- cian also looking for a place of settlement, and that the two young doctors settled the question who should remain in the town by the toss of a penny, in which Dr. Burton won the choice. In order to eke out the scanty emoluments of a pioneer practice, the doctor also took charge, during the first year, of the district school of his own town, teaching by day and attending the wants of the sick by night. Having established his intellectual and pedagogic supremacy by a stirring muscular debate, in which a skilful use of the argti- mcntum a fortiori resulted in depositing his antagonist, a husky, six-foot pupil, upon the smouldering backlog of the school-house fire- place, the tenderness and success displayed in healing the wounds of his late opponent won the stout hearts of the neighboring pioneers, and the doctor speedily stepped into a thriving family practice, which extended through all the adjacent towns. His popularity and the recognition of his military tastes were evi- denced by his election to the position of colo- nel of the local militia, and throughout his life Dr. Burton was held in the highest esteem, both as a physician and an intelligent and vigi- lant citizen. He died in East Cleveland, April 2, 1854. From the year 1846 Dr. Elijah Bur- ton was associated in practice with his son, Dr. Erasmus Darwin Burton, who in turn as- sociated with his own son. Dr. F. D. Burton. No portrait or likeness of any kind of Dr. Elijah Burton has been preserved, and as the greater part of his life antedated the forma- tion of medical societies in Ohio, his name is naturally absent from the rolls of such. Henry E. Handerson. A Sketch of Dr. Elijah Burton, by Dr. Dudley P. Allen's in the Magazine of Western History, vol. iv. Busey, Samuel Clagett (1828-1901) Samuel Clagett Busey, son of John and Rachel Clagett Busey, was born July 23, 1828, on a farm known as "Stony Lonesome," a few miles west of Washington. His father's an- cestors came from Scotland and settled in Maryland in 1754, while the Clagetts arrived from England as early as 1671. He was first taught by his mother, whose early widowhood compelled her, though in feeble health, to do this, and personally su- pervise the farm. She was a refined and cultivated woman possessed of great force of character and energy, qualities which she care- fully inculcated in her sons. From 1841 to 1845 the boy Samuel attended Rockville Academy, then in charge of Mr. Wright, and in 1844 was offered a cadetship at West Point. This he had greatly coveted, but his mother refused consent and insisted he should enter the medical profession, so in May, 1845, he began to study medicine with Dr. Hezekiah Magruder, of Georgetown. The following winter he attended the lectures on anatomy and operative surgery at the National Medical College, but soon discovered private teaching with text-books twenty-five years old to be far from satisfactory. Although the income from his estate was quite inadequate even in those frugal days, he went to Phila- delphia in the spring of 1846 and worked under the famous Dr. George B. Wood, and in the University of Pennsylvania where he enjoyed the teaching of such men as the elder Pepper, Wood, Gerhard, Chapman, Gibson, Horner, and Hodge. He graduated April 8, 1848. In May, 1848, he began his lifework in Washington in consulting rooms on Capitol Hill, and in the following year married Miss Catherine Posey. In the struggle for existence which confronts every beginner in a profes- sion, he earned less than a dollar a day the first year, while the receipts from his second year's practice were only $800. Thereafter his practice, his income and his influence steadily increased. In 1853 he was elected professor of ma- teria medica in the medical department of Georgetown University, but in 1858 symptoms of pulmonary disease appeared and drove him to take up the life of a farmer. He moved out to "Belvoir," near the site of what is noAv Cleveland Park, a change undoubtedly beneficial and one which added many years to a useful life. He attended professionally most of the neighboring families and kept up with the rapid advances then being made in the medical sciences, then after ten years returned to Washington, September, 1869, physically and professionally well equipped for a busy life. In that year he helped to organize a dispensary in connection with the Columbia Hospital and was placed in charge of the department of diseases of infancy and childhood. One of the blessings resulting from this connection was the establishment, Novem- ber 25, 1870, of the Children's Hospital, and when in 1872 the first post-graduate school of clinical medicine in this country was estab-