Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/29

AGNEW country a regular course of instructions for students. While lecturing at the Medical College he established a laboratory on Sullivan's Island and there devoted the greater part of his time to a study of the coast fauna. Three times a week he went to town to deliver lectures on human anatomy. In the following year his professorship at the college continued, but owing to illness he could give little attention to the work. He did not teach again in a medical college. His death took place at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on December 14, 1873.

While Agassiz's influence on natural history in this country was so powerful, he exerted little or no influence on the course of medical education, except in the indirect way of inspiring teachers who could train students in biology as a basis for technical medical study.



Agnew, Cornelius Rea (1830–1888)

Cornelius Rea Agnew, surgeon, ophthalmologist and oto-laryngologist, was born in New York City, August 8, 1830, and died there April 18, 1888. In that city, too, he performed the greater portion of his work. His ancestors, Huguenot, Irish and Scotch, came to America from time to time during the 18th century. His father was William, his mother, Elizabeth Thompson Agnew.

When fifteen years of age, he entered Columbia College—an institution which, in after years, was to owe much to his labors—and, at the age of nineteen, received therefrom the •degree of bachelor of arts. In the same year he began to study medicine—after the fashion of the time—with a preceptor, Dr. J. Kearney Rodgers, who for many years was surgeon to the New York Hospital and to the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, as well as professor of anatomy in the College of Physicians and Surgeons. In the last-named institution, the subject of this sketch attended the regular course, and, in 1852, received his professional degree. Serving for a year or more as house surgeon in the New York Hospital, he proceeded in 1854 to what were then the western wilds south of Lake Superior. There for about a year he practised in a village which is now Houghton, Michigan.

Receiving without solicitation the appointment of surgeon to the Eye and Ear Infirmary of New York City, he returned to his native town early in 1855. Soon, however, he sailed for Europe to prepare himself still further for the arduous duties of his new position.

He did not, however, while abroad, confine his attention exclusively to the study of ophthalmology and otology. In Dublin, for example, though he studied under William (afterwards Sir William) Wilde, deviser of Wilde's incision for mastoid abscess, he became, at the same time, a resident pupil of the lying-in asylum. In London, a little later, though he studied under William Bowman and George Critchett, he devoted much attention to general medicine and general surgery. Finally, in Paris, where his masters in ophthalmology were no less personages than Sichel and Desmarres, he found time to attend the clinics of Velpeau and Ricord.

Returning to New York late in 1855, he entered upon a career as general practitioner, and soon was appointed surgeon-general of the state. Three years later, he was appointed medical director of the New York Volunteer Hospital.

In 1856 he married Mary Nash, daughter of Lora Nash, a New York merchant.

In his later years Agnew devoted himself exclusively to diseases of the eye and ear.

Dr. Agnew was a man of strongly marked and wholly natural executive ability. Hence it was that, first and foremost, he was a founder of institutions. He was one of four to start the Union League Club of New York City. He assisted, in 1864, in organizing the School of Mines of Columbia. In 1866, at the request of the entire faculty, he established an ophthalmic clinic in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York. Two years later he brought into existence the Brooklyn Eye and Ear Hospital, and, the following year, the ManhattenManhattan [sic] Eye and Ear Hospital of New York. He was also one of the founders of the New York Ophthalmological Society.

A part of the success of the United States Sanitary Commission must be attributed to Dr. Agnew's labors.

In 1869 he was elected to the clinical professorship of diseases of the eye and ear in the College of Physicians and Surgeons—a position which he held till his death.