Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/405

NAME FIELD 383 FIRESTONE have attended twice as many cases of this nature as any other two physicians around. His success in this branch was largely due to his gratifying results in difficult deliveries. With fine literary taste, he enjoyed classical authors, and possessed poetical ability of high order, so that he often wrote "occasional" poems highly admired by those who heard them. He received the honorary A. M. from Bowdoin in 1852. His last illness, during the weary months of which lie was devotedly at- tended by his wife, was tedious and distress- ing. It was due to chronic enlargement of the heart, which at one time measured five and one-half inches. He suffered at times from asthma and pulmonary edema. He was early convinced of the hopelessness of his dis- ease, and in his lucid intervals asked to be al- lowed to die, but to the end he endured his sufferings heroically, dying ultimately July 29, 1887, at Bangor, much lamented and leaving the record of a very successful obstetrician and physician, and a beloved personality. James A. Spalding. Trans. Maine Med. Assoc, 1888, vol. i.x. Field, Nathaniel (180S-1888). Nathaniel Field of Jeffersonville, Indiana, was born in Jefferson County, Kentucky, November 7, 1805. His father, who was a native of Virginia and served in the Revolu- tionary war, emigrated to Kentucky in 1784. Nathaniel was educated in the best schools of the state and took his M. D. at Transylvania University, settling in Jeffersonville, Indiana, in 1829. In 1838-39 he was a member of the legislature; was one of the first antislavery men of the West and freed several valuable slaves he had inherited ; he drafted a city char- ter for Jeffersonville and had it passed by the legislature; he established the first Christian (or Campbellite) church in 1830, and in 1847 the Second Advent Christian church, serving as pastor of the first for seventeen years and of the latter for forty years, without compensation. Dr. Field held a debate, in 1852, with Elder Thomas P. Connelly on the "State of the Dead," and the arguments were published in book form. He published a humorous poem, entitled "Arts of Imposture and Deception Peculiar to American Society," 1858. Others of his writings are : a monograph on Asiatic cholera, articles contributed to the medical journals, and he had manuscript lectures on "Capital Punishment" ; "The Mosaic Record of Creation"; "The Age of the Human Race"; and "The Chronology of Fossils." During the civil war he was surgeon of the 66th regiment of Indiana volunteers; in 1869 he was president of the state medical society. Dr. Field died at his home, August 18, 1888. Appleton's Cyclop. Amer. Biog. N. Y., 1888, vol. ii, 450. Finley, Clement Alexander (1797-1879). Clement A. Finley, surgeon-general of the United States Army, was born at Newville, Pennsylvania, May 11, 1797. He was the son of Samuel Finley, a soldier of the Revolution and friend of Washington. He was educated at Washington College, and at Dickinson College where he took his A. B. in 1815 and an A. M. in 1818 and began the study of medicine under a physician at Chillicothe, Ohio, taking his M. D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1834. He entered the United States Army as assistant surgeon and served at various posts in the East and West. During the Mexican War he was medical director of Taylor's Army. In 1834 he accompanied Gen. Henry Dodge on one of the earliest expeditions to the Rocky Mountains. In May, 1861, Finley was appointed surgeon-general and served as such until April, 1862, when he retired at his own request, having served in the United States Army more than forty years. He died at Philadelphia, September 8, 1879. Albert Allemann. Trans. Amer. Med. Assoc. Philadelphia, 1880, vol. .Nxxi, 1039. Appleton's Cyclop. Amer. Biog., New York, 188S, vol. ii. Firestone, Leander (1819-1888). Leander Firestone, surgeon and gynecologist, was born in Wayne County, Ohio, April 11, 1819. Cradled in poverty and brought up as an ordinary farmer's boy, the lad fought his way steadily forward, studying at night by the light of a burning brush pile until he w-as able to attend a few sessions of the district school, then securing the direction of such a school for himself, and finally saving sufficient money from his scanty earnings to attend medical lectures, first at the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, and then in that of Cleveland. From the latter institution he graduated in 1841 and settled immediately in Congress, Wayne County, near his place of birth. In 1847 he was called to the position of demonstrator of anatomy in the Cleveland Medical College and occupied this position for six years. In those early days the duties of the modern demonstrator were largely com- bined with the more exciting adventures of the not entirely historical "resurrectionist," and Dr. Firestone is reported to have been a model demonstrator. In Wooster he enjoyed a large practice and almost monopolized surgery in the counties of Wayne, Stark, Summit, Holmes