Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/409

NAME FISHER 387 FISKE a book in Boston on "Confluent and Inocu- lated Small-pox, Varioloid Disease, Cow-pox, and Chicken-pox" from materials collected in Paris. It is dedicated to Dr. James Jack- son (q. v.), from whom he conceived the idea of preparing the work, and is a quarto contain- ing life-size plates made by a distinguished artist. It was a work of considerable impor- tance. Later the plates and unsold copies were destroyed by fire. Dr. Fisher was the first to introduce the education of the blind into this country. He conceived the plan of and was connected with the Perkins Institution for the Blind, at South Boston, both as visiting physician and vice- president from the beginning until his death. A committee composed of Hon. Charles Sumner, William H. Prescott, Thomas G. Cary, George N. Russell, D. Humphreys Storer (q. v.), S. G. Howe (q. v.), and Ed- ward Brooks decided to erect a monument to his memory at Mount Auburn, which was duly executed in white marble. Dr. Fisher had been elected an acting physi- cian of the Massachusetts General Hospital shortly before his death and was present at the early administrations of ether in surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital, being one of the first to use ether in child-birth. A portrait of Dr. Fisher, painted by his brother, Alvan Fisher, is in the Boston Medi- cal Library. Walter L. Burragi;. Universities and Ttieir Sons. J. L. Chamberlain, Boston, 1899, v, 5. Commun. Mass. Med. See, vol. viii, p. 123. Sketch of" the Life and Character of John D. Fisher, M. D., by Walter Channing, M. D., Boston, March, 1850. Private Memorial by George F. Fisher, a nephew, Fisher, Theodore Willis (1837-1914). Theodore Willis Fisher was born in West- borough, Massachusetts, May 29, 1837, and died October 10, 1914, at his home in Belmont, Massachusetts after several years of invali- dism. He was educated in the schools of Medway and Williston Seminary and Phillips Academy of Andover, and graduated at the Harvard Medical Scliool in 1861. During the civil war he was a surgeon of the 44th Massachusetts Regiment. From 1884 to 1888 he was clinical instructor in mental diseases ; from 1888 to 1898 he was lecturer on mental diseases in his alma mater. In 1881 he was appointed superintendent of the Boston Lunatic Hospi- tal, a position he resigned in 1895. For several years he was examiner for the Public Institutions Registration Department of Bos- ton and with a confrere committed most of the insane to the slate insane hospitals from that city, and saw many cases of mental dis- ease in consultation. In the seventies he was the leading expert in his branch in Boston, and was frequently called on to testify as a witness in court. He was active in all matters con- cerning the welfare of the insane, and earnestly advocated a new hospital for the insane in Boston. He largely planned the Danvers State Hospital and the buildings first erected by the Boston Lunatic Hospital at West Roxbury. He belonged to many medical societies and had been a member of the American Medico- Psychological Association since 1881. He was the author of a number of papers. Among these were "Plain Talks about Insanity," and "Was Guiteau Sane and Responsible for the Murder of President Garfield ?"(5o.f /on Medi- cal and Surgical Journal, 1888). He could speak with some authority on this latter sub- ject, since he was einployed as an expert in the Guiteau trial. As showing his interest in ! medical progress, mention inay be made of a paper he published in 1889 on "Cortical Lo- calization and Brain Surgery," and also a paper on "The New Psychology," in 1893. The Institutional Care of the Insane in the U. S. and Canada. H. M. Hu vol. iv, 398-99. Boston Med. and Surg. Jour., 658. Baltimore, 1917, 1914, vol. cl.xxi, Fiske, Oliver (1762-1837). Oliver Fiske was the son of the "well be- loved" Nathan Fiske, a minister in Brookfield, where Oliver was born September 2, 1762. His prompt enlistment in the patriot army in 1780, at the age of eighteen, by stimulating others to follow his example prevented a draft from the Brookfield company of militia already paraded for that purpose. After the expiration of his term of service he returned hoine and continued preparation for Harvard College, which he entered in 1783. He taught school in Lincoln during the winter vacation of 1786-87, but procured a substitute and hastened to Worcester when Shays and his men appeared there, arriving in time to make the march to Petersham with Gen. Lincoln. Returning to college he graduated with his class (1787), and after studying medicine three years with Dr. Atherton, of Lancaster, began practice in Worcester in 1790. He at once took a leading position and was active in form- ing the County Medical Society, of which he was secretary froin 1794-1802, and librarian from 1799-1804. He was the first president of the district society, counsellor of the Massa- chusetts Medical Society, and in 1811 delivered the annual address in Boston, his subject: