Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/446

NAME GARDINER 424 GARDINER spondence edited by Sir J. E. Smith. A some- what pathetic interest is attached to his Httle granddaughter named Gardenia. Her father, Garden's only son, joined Lee's Legion against the British and was never forgiven; nor was the Httle girl with the flower name ever received into the house. Tuberculosis, hitherto successfully fought, began to tell on Garden's health in 1783 and, although it was hoped that "revisiting the haunts of his youth and the pleasing recol- lections of juvenile scenes would have salutary influence in arresting the disease," nothing of the kind occurred. As far as can be seen the good times every learned man tried to give him during his progress homewards and while travelling in Europe must have consider- ably exhausted his strength. He stayed with his wife and two daughters in Cecil Street, off the Strand, London, and there, patiently realizing there was nothing to be done, he put on paper all he could of his Carolina work, enjoyed the men who flocked to him, and got ready for the last long journey. That he was ready all biographers show, and he died peacefully in London April IS, 1791. Howard A. Kelly. Some Amer. Med. Botanists, H. A. Kelley, 1914. Memorials of John Bartram and Humphry Marshall, W. Darlington, 1849. Amer. Med. Biog., James Thacher, 1828. Memoir of Dr. VV. C. Wells, 1818. Ramsay's Hist, of So. Carolina. Gardiner, Silvester (1707-1786) If you open your Virgil at the "Bucolics" you will see that the word "silvester" in the second line is spelled with an "i," and Sil- vester Gardiner in imitation of the Latin al- ways spelled his given name in that way. Some writers say that they have seen it spelled with the "y," but they forget that this occurs in documents written by others, while Dr. Gardiner never in his life wrote his name otherwise than "Silv," except just once in his will, where he signed it "Silvester" in full. A great deal has been written concerning Dr. Gardiner of Boston, as a landed magnate in Maine, but hardly anything concerning his useful career as a physician. For this reason many newly discovered facts are worth while recording in this book. Dr. Gardiner was born June 29, 1707, on what was then called "Boston Neck" in South Kingston, Rhode Island. His parents were William and Abagaili Remington Gardiner, of high standing in their little community. The father was a farmer, cordwainer and wheel- wright, glad to be busy at any trade. The boy, however, was delicate, and took early to his books. About the time that he was thirteen, there came out from the "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," Rev. James McSparran who preached with fiery eloquence first in Narragansett, and later in South Kingston, and Boston. When he married "handsome Hannah Gardiner," a sister of Silvester, the boy was taken into his home and educated classically, and as he finally showed a bent for medicine, he was sent abroad, and studied eight years in all in Lon- don and Paris. As a medical student in London, he was taken in hand by Cheselden of St. Thomas' Hospital, who in 1723 had suggested the high operation for stone, and in 1727, about the time when Gardiner reached London, the lateral operation for the same disease. The Gtntleman's Magazine for 1731 relates an in- stance in which Cheselden removed from the bladder a stone in a single minute, and prints in a later issue in 1732 a poem from the patient, grateful to Cheselden for his cure. Of the studies of Gardiner in Paris we know nothing except that in later years he spoke with fervor of escaping by hard work at his books, the licentiousness of the city of Paris under the Regency of Orleans. It woulil seem that Dr. Gardiner must have settled in Boston as early as 1734, for in 1735 he was chosen one of the vestry of King's Chapel, a position which he would not have received as a mere stranger in the town. The news- papers of 1736 contain an article on the ex- amination of physicians by a board of phy- sicians and surgeons to be appointed by the • General Court, and from the style it was probably written by Gardiner. The same may be said of another and later paper on "The Measels" from a public health point of view. About this time, also, he established a "Med- ical Society of Boston, New England," and read before it lectures on anatomy, illustrated with plates brought from Europe. And again in the presence of this Society, October 8, 1741, he performed a rapid and successful operation for stone on a boy six years of age, named Joseph Baker. The boy had had trouble from birth with symptoms of stone, and was now emaciated and slowly dying. It was death or an operation. Dr. Gardiner per- formed the lateral operation of Cheselden, and removed the stone. "Lapidis Instar Arenosi," like a sand stone, only harder and more com- pact. It was oval and measured seven inches in circumference. The urine trickled through the incision for three days, then through the natural channels, and in three weeks the flow was natural. Thus was Dr. Gardiner's