Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/324

NAME DELAFIELD 302 DELAFIELD in contributing articles on opthalmology to medical journals. As far bade as the year 1818 he conceived the idea of a New York Eye Infirmary and talked it over with his asso- ciate Kearney Rodgers (q. v). The talk resulted in their opening two rooms, in 1820; in seven months they had treated 436 patients. The necessity for such a hospital was now obvi- ous and the surgeons who had helped in the crowded two rooms also helped in the organization of the ngw hospital of which Delafield was for thirty years visiting sur- geon. The American Ophthalmological So- ciety also owns him as one <3i its founders and elected him as first president. While deeply devoted to his ophthalmic work he held to his other subject, obstetrics, and oc- cupied the chair of obstetrics, and diseases of women and children in the College of Physicians and Surgeons thirteen years, be- ing a president of the college from 1858 to 1875. Of a very benevolent turn, he often noticed the dismal condition of shabby gen- tility to which the widows and children of his deceased confreres were reduced and this led him to found our first society for their relief. As a practitioner, Delafield possessed, in a high degree, the confidence of his patients. His medical sagacity and extensive acquirements secured him success in the management of disease, and the kindly interest and sym- pathizing care which he felt for those in- trusted to his skill gained for him their affec- tion and gratitude. In 1821, he married Elina E. Langdon El- wyn, granddaughter of John Langdon, gov- ernor of New Hampshire and president of the first Congress. They had six children, all dying before their father. In 1839 he married Julia, granddaughter of William Floyd, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He died in New York, February 13, 1875. Davina Waterson. Trans. Araer. Ophth. Soc, vol. ii. Portrait. Hubbell's ''Development of Ophthalmology." Med. Record, N. Y., 1875, vol. x. Med. and Surg. Reporter, 1866, vol. xv, 509-512. Delafield, Francis (1841—1915) There have been few men whose achieve- ments were so great that personal details of their lives are of interest to posterity; but there are many men whose influence upon their own profession or in their own circle, has been so profound that their characters be- come of great interest, as well as the methods by which and the traits through which they have been able to exert this influence. Of this type was Francis Delafield. His life was, throughout, the ideal life of a physician — devoted exclusively to the three highest func- tions of a medical man : the healing of the sick, research and teaching, and he was one of the last of the great minds in medicine that di- vided their energies impartially between these three. Francis Delafield, the son of Edward Dela- field and Julia Floyd, was born in New York City August 3, 1841. He graduated from Y'ale College in 1860, immediately entering the Col- lege of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, from which he was graduated in 1863. He continued his medical studies in Europe with exceptional diligence and steadfastness, and returned to New York one of the best equipped physicians of his day. The importance of poslmortem study was being recognized as it had not been before, owing, in great measure, to the influence of Rudolf Virchow, whose cellular pathology and whose teachings had profoundly affected medi- cal science. Delafield, already possessed of a fondness both for practice and for teaching, had ac- quired in Germany a conviction of the over- whelming importance of practical studies in pathological anatomy. He at once began to devote much of his time to work in the dead- house, and soon became recognized as an au- thority in pathology. He became curator to Bellevue Hospital in 1866, and visiting physi- cian there in 1875. He devoted himself to his professional work with remarkable fidelity, allowing no social or other attraction to draw him aside. By 1876 he already took a commanding position among the men of his own age in medicine and had becqme recognized as an able diagnostician. In that year he was made adjunct professor of pathology and the practice of medicine in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York City, and in 1882, on the retirement of Alonzo Clark (q. v.), he was made full pro- fessor. At that time pathology was not a separate department of medicine, but like etiology, prognosis or diagnosis, was merely one of the parts into which it was divided for the sake of convenience of teaching, but it was rapidly coming to attract the interest of the abler minds, who saw that it was the foundation upon which the whole science rested, and who saw too that without it, practice became little better than guesswork. Clearness of vision was one of Delafield's marked characteristics; independence of the opinions of others and unchangeableness in