Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/257

NAME COGGIN 235 COGGIN bold as an operator, and doing things that no other doctor in those days dared to at- tempt. He was an excellent surgeon. Some of his operations were done in his eightieth year. It may be remarked that he was ambi- dextrous with the knife, so that his opera- tions were performed rapidly and skillfully. He was also a forceful and diligent prac- titioner. His advice was greatly sought for not only as a physician, but as a man of honor and well versed in business affairs. An honorary M. D. was given him by Bow- doin College (1821), and he was a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society, president of the Maine Medical Society, and, for a long series of years, hospital surgeon for all the marine patients in the Portland district. In the papers of Dr. Jeremiah Barker (q. v.) we find him mentioned as the most skilful sur- geon east of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He had large success in tapping for dropsies, and in fractures. He did many trephinings. and in one instance performed this operation twice on the same individual with a final per- fect recovery. He also performed what we now call Chopart's amputation of the foot in a case of tetanus with fortunate results. . . . He suffered considerably with gout in the lat- ter part of his life, and it is stated in one old letter that he often used to walk in the grass when the dew was on it with good results. This would antedate Father Kneipp's treat- ment by some eighty years ! A fine-looking man, with polished manners, urbane, healthy, captivating in his behavior to everybody, his services, owing to his exceeding good health and his long experience, were valuable to the last. In 1823 and 1824 he had attacks of asthma, which terminated in a general break- ing up of his constitution. He remained in the same condition for another year, then failed rapidly and died October 18, 1826, at eighty- two, and dying on the fifty-first anniversary of the destruction of Portland, which he sur- vived so long yet remembered so clearly to the last. He had practised sixty years. James A. Spalding. American Medical Biography, James Thacher, 1828. Coggin, David (1843-1913) David Coggin, ophthalmologist of Salem, Massachusetts, was born in West Hampton, Massachusetts, August 4, 1843, the son of Rev. David Coggin and Ella Kidder Coggin, but losing his parents at an early age he was taken by relatives to Lowell, Massachusetts, where he was educated in the public schools, he be- gan the study of medicine with Dr. Savory, of Lowell, in 186S, and also attended a first. course of lectures at the Harvard Medical School. In the following year he went abroad, where among other celebrities he met Sir James Simpson, who, in his presence showed Gosselin how to utilize acupuncture, then very much in vogue. After his return, Dr. Coggin studied at the Long Island Hos- pital Medical School, and finally obtained his degree from the Harvard Medical School in 1868. In memory of his father, who was a Dartmouth graduate of 1835, Dr. Coggin re- ceived from that college the honorary degree of A. M. in 1878. He practised a while at Lowell and at Hing- ham, but finding country practice too weari- some he removed to St. Louis, where he made the acquaintance of Dr. John Green (q. v.), was his assistant in the eye and ear hospital and became a member of the state medical so- ciety, and contributed to the St. Louis Medical and Surgical Reinew a number of excellent papers. Wearying of the West, he re- turned to Massachusetts, settled at Salem, and went abroad to prepare himself to be an ophthalmic and aural surgeon. After his return, the rest of his life was devoted to these specialties. He early advocated a cot- tage hospital, and when it was finished, he was appointed ophthalmic and aural surgeon. Dr. Coggin abandoned otology in 1895 but continued in ophthalmology the remainder of his life, and not only enjoyed an excellent practice but communicated to the profession the results of his labors. For more than thirty years he wrote brief "Notes of Cases" for the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal — items of every day practice, atropine, astig- matism, iritis, glaucoma, trachoma, and new remedies. He was also an editor of the American Journal of Ophthalmology, and wrote for its columns papers on glioma and nosology. For Dr. Knapp's "Archives" he wrote on evulsion of the eyes and on exophthalmos. He was elected to the American Ophthalmological Society in 1875, and contributed to that society papers on accommodation and on other topics. Taken all in all, he wrote as many "as sixty meritorious papers on ophthalmology in the course of his career. No account of Dr. Coggin's life would be complete with- out emphasizing his famous suggestion for the detection of alleged unilateral deafness by means of the binaural stethoscope, as pre- sented by him to the American Otological Society in 1879. Late in 1890 he suffered from an attack of hemianopsia, and, as he read, unknown to his hearers, a report of his own case before the Essex South District Medical Society, of