Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/263

NAME COLEMAN 241 COMEGYS attention to ophthalmology and oto-laryn- gology, he studied the eye for about one year at Mooriields, London. For a time he was a student at the London Hospital, and in 1870 became an M. R. C. S. Settling in Toronto, Canada, he practised there as ophthalmologist and oto-laryngologist for six or seven years, during all of which time he was surgeon to the Toronto Eye and Ear Infirmary. Later, however, he studied at Heidelberg and Vienna, and, having practised again in Canada (at St. John, N. B.), till 188S, he removed to Chicago, where he soon had a very large practice and became a leader in American ophthalmology. He was one of the founders of both the Polyclinic and the Post-Graduate Medical School, and was widely known for original and long-continued investigations into the subject of the use of electricity in eye, ear, nose and throat dis- eases. He published in 1912 an extensive treatise entitled "Electricity in Diseases of the Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat," and, in fact, wrote the articles on this subject in Wood's "System of Ophthalmic Therapeutics" and in the "Encyclopedia of Ophthalmology," Casey A. Wood. His journal articles on various subjects connected with the eye were very numerous. He was for a long time president and pro- fessor of ophthalmology in the Post-Graduate Medical School, and professor of ophthal- mology in the Illinois School of Electro- Therapeutics, and he was long a member, and once the president, of the Chicago Oph- thalmological Society. Dr. Coleman married, in 1882, at St. John, N. B., Canada, Miss Mary Winniett Hartt. He died at Federal Point, Florida, whither he had gone on a short vacation, January 22, 1917. Dr. Coleman was a small, lean man, with a ruddy complexion, and, in the later portion of his life wore a mustache and short chin beard. His rich brown dancing eyes made, in his later years, a striking contrast with his snow-white hair. He was very brisk in manner, optimistic and enthusiastic. He was a Republican, an Episcopalian; reverent, charitable, affectionate. Regarding the personal character of Dr. Coleman, the following is from a letter by C. H. Long, M.D., of Chicago : "He never grew old, and the joy of living was as keen as in earliest youth. His love of bicycling was amusing to those who gladly exchanged pedalling for the more luxurious automobile, but he had ridden 10,000 miles in the last ten years, and felt that his wheel was a first aid to perpetual youth. . . . Literature was his constant resource, books were his friends. He loved the drama and art. Both were used as constant refreshment by him, but his first love and his last was medicine. To her, to those who with him loved and served her, and to those who needed her, he gave of his very best — he gave himself." Thomas Hall Shastid. The Ophthalmic Record, Apr., 1917, p. 216. Private sources. Colhoun, Samuel (1787-1841) See Calhoun, page 192. Comegys, Cornelius George (1816-1896) Cornelius George Comegys was born July 23, 1816, on an ancestral farm, called "Cher- bourg," in Delaware. His father, one Cornelius Parsons Comegys, was governor of Delaware from 1838-1841. The family descended from Cornelius Comegys, who came from Holland to America in 1661, and settled on the east shore of Chesapeake Bay, in Kent County, Maryland. The mother of Cornelius George Comegys was Ruhamah Marim, also of Eng- lish ancestry. Cornelius George passed his early life on the farm, and after many vicissitudes and trying various trades, he matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania, where he gradu- ated in 1848. Having taken his M. D. he practised for a year in Philadelphia, then removed to Cincinnati, Ohio, where, by his successful treatment of the Asiatic cholera in the epidemic of 1849, he gained great dis- tinction. Feeling the need of a wider clinical study, he went abroad in 1851 to spend a year in the medical schools of London and Paris. In the former, his especial instruction was at Guy's Hospital ; and in Paris, he was a special student of Charcot, chief of La Charite. Upon his return to Cincinnati in 1852, he gave a course of lectures on anatomy in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and then joined in the organization of the Miami Medi- cal College as professor of the institutes of medicine. He held this same chair in the Medical College of Ohio, with which the Miami College united five years later, until 1868 (with the exception of the years 1860-4). In the year 1857 he was lecturer in clinical medicine at the Cincinnati Hospital. He was one of the founders of the Cin- cinnati Academy of Medicine, and twice served as president. He was a member of the Medico-Chirurgical Society, the Cincin- nati Medical Society, Mississippi Valley Medi- cal Association, honorary member of the