Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/407

NAME FIRM IN 385 FISHER October 10, 1639, that Firmin asked permission to settle in another township and to sell his land. He says : "I am strongly sette upon to study divinitie, my studyes else must be lost; for physick is but a meene help." The apostle John Eliot says of him, writing Sep- tember 24, 1647, to Mr. Shepard, the mini- ster of Cambridge : "We never had but one anatomy (skeleton) in the country, which Mr. Giles Firmin, now in England, did make and read upon very well." As Dr. O. W. Holmes points out, Firmin may be regarded as the earliest lecturer on anatomy in the country. Sometime before December 26, 1639, Dr. Firmin married Susan, daughter of the Rev. Nathaniel Ward, an English barrister and for three years minister of Ipswich, author of "The Body of Liberties," a codification of the laws of the Colony, and of a satirical tract called "The Simple Cobbler of Aggawam," an early name of Ipswich. Firmin speaks of having had three of his children baptized by ministers who never looked at him as a mem- ber of their church (Sober Reply to Mr. Cawdrey, page 20). The father-in-law was very poor, resigned his pastorate and was anxious to return to England, as is shown by his letters to Governor Winthrop. Dr. Firmin sailed in the fall of 1644, leaving his wife and children to follow with her father in 1646. He was shipwrecked off the coast of Spain but reached England in (he following year, for he preached in Colchester July 30, 1645. There he was attacked for his independent views. He preached whenever the opportunity offered, engaged in theological controversies and wrote many pamphlets. He moved to Shalford in 1646, was joined by his family and was or- dained by the Presbyterians when thirty-six years old as minister of the church, only to be turned out with others of his brethren in 1662 when the Act of Uniformity went into operation, thereby losing his living and be- coming a "Dissenter." In 1672, on the Declaration of Indulgence, he set up a meeting at Ridgwell and there he continued until his death in April, 1697. Dur- ing the ten years from 1662 to 1672 Dr. Fir- min supported his family by the practice of medicine ; apparently it was now more than a "meene help," for by the Five Mile Act of 1665 dissenters were prohibited from coming within five miles of any incorporated town, or of any place where they had been settled as ministers. Calamy (Calamy's Baxter, page 244) says of Firmin : "He practised physic for many years, and yet was still a constant and labori- ous preacher, both on the Lord's days and week days too. * * * * He had one con- siderable advantage above his brethren, which was the favour and respect which the neighboring gentry and the Justices of the Peace had for him, on account of their using him as a physician * * * * fhe poor ap- plying themselves to him, had often both ad- vice and physic too for nothing; and of those who were more able, he took but very moderate fees ; whereby he lost the opportunity of getting an estate, which had been a very easy thing." Walter L. Burrace. Brief Memoir of Giles Firmin, Tolm Ward Dean. Boston. 1866. 16 pp. Thos. Hutchinson's Coll. of Orig. Papers, Mass. Hist. Soc. History of Ipswich. Essex and Hamilton. T. B. Felt. Cambridge, 1834. Ipswich in the Mass. Bav Colony. T. F. Waters. Ipswich, 1905. Memorial Hist, of Boston, Justin Winsor, Boston. 1881. Medical Essays. O, W. Holmes, Boston. IS83. Diet. Nat. Biog., New York, vol. vii, 45. Fischel, Washington Emil (1850-1914). Washington Emil Fischel, an internist and medico-legal expert of St. Louis, Missouri, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, May 29, 1850, and was graduated from the St. Louis High School in 1S6S, and in 1871 from the St. Louis Medi- cal College. The next few j'ears he spent at the LTnivcrsities of Prag'ue, Vienna and Berlin. Returning to America in 1874, he settled in St. Louis, and soon had a very large practice. He held, from time to time, a number of im- portant hospital appointments. He was also professor of hygiene and forensic medicine and professor of clinical medicine at tlie St Louis Medical College from 1881 till 1889, and professor of clinical medicine at the medical department of Washington University, from 1911 until his death, September 15, 1914. Dr. Fischel was a very kindly, courteous man, and always loyal to his friends. A man of broad interests, there was hardly a depart- ment of science which did not greatly interest him. T. H. Shastid. Jour. Mo. St. Med. Soc, Dec, 1914, p. 276. Fisher, George Jackson (1825-1893). It takes men of all kinds to make a com- plete medical portraiture of the country, and the bibliophile has his place in the collection. George Jackson Fisher, of North Castle, West- chester County, New York, where he was born, November 27, 1825, had a strong liking 'or natural history but was withal a decided booklover, a taste which his medical profession gave him ample excuse for indulging. He studied medicine first under Prof. Nelson Ni- vison in Mecklenberg and attended medical lectures afterwards at the University of the