Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/408

NAME FISHER 386 FISHER city of New York whence he graduated in 1849 and began to practise with his former teacher. In 18S1 he removed to Sing Sing and lived there until he died, successful as a sur- geon in all the major operations, including Cesarean section, ligation of the carotid ar- tery, etc., and writing a good deal on tetrato- logy. A paper on "Diploteratology" appeared in the "Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of New York," from 1863-8, and an article on "Tetratology" in Johnson's "Uni- versal Cyclopedia," vol. iv. Thoroughly im- bued besides in medical history, he wrote "The Old Masters of Anatomy, Surgery and Medi- cine," "The Medical Men of Westchester County," and popularized S. D. Gross' "Auto- biography" by adding over four hundred il- lustrations and forty autograph letters. He began to illustrate also "The Gold Headed Cane." His collection of some four thousand books, his fine engravings of old doctors, his cabinet of over four hundred medical medals made his library a delight to his confreres and his friends. He came by his death as many another has done, by sepsis after an operation and a long- standing diabetes. He died February 3, 1893. He had many honors, among them the A. M. of Madison University; president of the Medical Society of the State of New York; physician to the state prisons at Sing Sing, and twenty years brigade surgeon. New York National Guard. He was also editor of The Physician and Pluirmacetctist, 1868-9. In "A Memorial Sketch of the Life and Character of the late John Foster Jenkins," (q. v.), (Trans. Med. Soc, State of New York, Syracuse, 1884, 369-387, G. J. Fisher), Fisher, in speaking of his friend's "biblio- mania," reveals his own love of books. It was, he says, "an innocent species of mania. It brought an ample compensation in the way of pleasant diversion for spare hours, and an ele- gant culture otherwise unattainable. Though my books were burned as a funeral fire, they have served a purpose to me quite equal to their commercial value. By researches info the period and condition of the times of medical men; "prevailing medical opinions of their era, their contributions to theory and fact ; the nature and extent of their labors and even the particulars relating to their personalities, we learned the story of our profession and traced the gradual evolution of the science and art of healing." The Fisher Colection of Portraits, numbering 498. has been presented to the Johns Hopkins Hos- pital Library. Med. Rec., New York, 1893, vol. xliii. Trans. Med. Soc. New York, Phila., 1893. Fisher, James Cogswell (1808-1880). James Cogswell Fisher, physician and edu- cator, was born in Wilton, Connecticut, April 6, 1808, son of the Rev. Samuel Fisher and Alice Cogswell. He received his early edu- cation at Bloomfield Academy, New Jersey, and when fourteen entered Yale University, graduating in 1826. He received his M. D. at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, in 1831. He went to live in St. Joseph County, Michigan, but the climate proving unsuitable, moved to Saddle River, New Jersey; in 1836 he went to New York and became professor of chemistry and miner- alogy in the University of New York. Subse- quently he took charge of a gold mine in Virginia and afterwards was associated with Rogers in surveying the James River Coal Basin. He returned to New York and worked with Morse on the electric telegraph ; then with Samuel Colt experimenting in submarine batteries. In 1845 he was principal of a grammar school in Philadelphia; from 18.SS to 1858 president of the Cooper Female Institute, Day- ton, Ohio, and later was librarian of the Acad- emy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. At the beginning of the Civil War he was commissioned surgeon of the Sth New Jersey Volunteers, then of the 2nd New Jersey Bri- gade and later was medical director of Heint- zelman's division and was on General Hooker's staff; he served in several places until honor- ably mustered out in 1865. In 1866 he re- tired to a farm in New Jersey, but ten years later settled in Washington where he died October 1, 1880. Fisher was author of a work on the Mosaic account of the creation, pub- lished in the Proceedings of ihe Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia (1854). In 1831 he married Eliza, daughter of Major Samuel Sparks, of Philadelphia, who had served in the war of 1812. Universities and Their Sons. J. L. Chamberlain, Boston, 1899, 5 vols. Fisher, John Dix (1797-1850). John Dix Fisher, founder of the Perkins Institution for the Blind, and its physician, was the son of Aaron and Lucy Stedman Fisher and was born in Needham, Massa- chusetts, March 27, 1797. He died at his home in Hayward Place, in Boston, March 2, 1850. He graduated from Brown University in 1820, then went to the Harvard Medical School from which he received his degree in 1825. In the same year he went to Paris, where he spent two years in medical study under Laen- nec, Andral and Velpeau. In 1829 he published