Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/223

NAME CASSELS 201 CASSELS at one time, its president; a member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Oto-Laryngology ; American Clinical and Climatological Association ; of the Illinois State Medical Society; the Chicago Medical Society; Chicago Laryngological Society; Na- tional Association for the Study and Preven- tion of Tuberculosis, Chicago Academy of Sciences; Chicago Tuberculosis Institute; the Physicians Club of Chicago and fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He took an active part in the meeting of the Ninth International Medical Congress, which con- vened in 1887. Dr. Casselberry was a most energetic man, always at work and rarely deserted his pro- fessional occupation for recreation of any kind. He was a fluent speaker and a frequent con- tributor of articles to the medical journals and was able to draw many of the illustrations accompanying them. At the time of his death, which occurred on July 11, 1916, from angina pectoris, he had partly finished a book upon his specialty. In his will was a bequest of $5,000 to the American Laryngological Asso- ciation, the interest to be used for a "prize award, decoration or expense, to encourage advancement in the art and science of laryn- gology and rhinology." Obituary from the Index of Oto-Laryngology, July-August, 1916, vol. vi, 211. Trans. Amer. Climat. Asso., 1916, vol. xxxii, pp. xx.xvi-xxxviii. Portrait. ■Cassels, John Lang (1808-1879) John L. Cassels, a physician and scientist, of Cleveland, Ohio, was born near Glasgow, Scotland, September IS, 1808, and went to Glasgow schools, then on to the University. During his second year financial reverses at home campelled him to resign the career which he had chosen, and in 1827 he came to the United States with an older brother, who had lived for some years near Utica, New York. After a brief visit the young man essayed to support himself by teaching school and wan- dered fortuitously to Fairfield, Herkimer County, New York, where was situated the Col- lege of Physicians and Surgeons of the west- ern district of the state of New York. Ap- parently inspired by the genus loci, he at once decided to study medicine, and in 1830 became pupil to Dr. Moses Johnson of Fairfield. He also attended the lectures of the college, and exhibited such energy and aptness that he was speedily appointed demonstrator of anatomy by Dr. James McNaughton, then professor of anatomy. Here too began his association with Dr. John Delamater, the professor of surgery in the Fairfield College, an intimacy which greatly influenced his later life. Graduating in 1834, in the following year he began to practise in Chenango County, New York, but was almost immediately called to the chair of chemistry in the Willoughby Medical Col- lege, Ohio, a position he occupied for eight years. In 1837 Dr. Cassels, who was an expert geologist, was appointed by Go>r. Marcy first assistant geologist of the New York State Geological Survey, and succeeded to this position without interference with his college work. On the organization of the Cleveland Medical College in 1843, he cast in his lot with Drs. Delamater, Kirtland and Ackley, and accepted the chair of materia medica in the new institution. In 18S6, on the resignation of Prof. St. John, Dr. Cassels was chosen his successor in the chair of chemistry, mineralogy and toxicology, and continued to occupy this position with eminent ability and success until disabled by a stroke of apoplexy in 1873. Upon his retirement he was made emeritus professor. The popularization of science had always been one of his hobbies, and in 1839 and again in 1849 he had given popular lectures in Cleveland on chemistry. Even after his disablement, during the remaining years of his life he beguiled the tedium of confinement by the composition and publication in the journals of the day of popular lectures on various branches of science. Dr. Cassels died in Cleveland, June. 11, 1879. He married in 1838 Cornelia Olin, daughter of Judge John H. Olin of Shaftsbury, Ver- mont, by whom he had one child, a daughter. He was a member of the State Society in 1852, and was elected a corresponding member of the Geological Institute of Vienna in 1861. The degree of LL.D. was also given to him in 1859 by Jefferson College, Mississippi. Of his writings very few specimens have been preserved, excepting his official reports of the geological survey of New York. He was frequently called upon by the courts for expert testimony on questions of scientific interest and importance, and his opinions were always received with the utmost confidence. The faculty room of the Medical Depart- ment of the Western Reserve University in Cleveland contains a good portrait in oil of Dr. Cassels, and an excellent engraving may be found in the parlors of the Cleveland Medical Library Association. Henry E. Handerson. Cleave's Biographical Cyclopedia of the State of Ohio, No. I, Cuyahoga County. Philadelphia, 1875.