Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/467

NAME GODMAN 445 GODMAN in 1854 and reading medicine with his father. His lirst course of lectures was at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York City; the next at the Medical College, Castleton, Vermont, where he took his M. D. in 1857. He then practised with his father at Win- chendon for eighteen months, until appointed assistant physician, State Hospital for the Insane, Concord, New Hampshire, and to the close of his career devoted all his time and energies, with the exception of a single year, to his great life work. He married, December 14. 1860, Ellen Rowena Murdock, daughter of Elisha Murdock, of Winchendon. In 1862 he resigned to enter private practice at Fitch- burg, Massachusetts, but in September, 1863, entered St. Elizabeth Hospital for the Insane, Washington, as second assistant physician, where he proved himself a man of great energy and industry, remaining very closely at the hospital and seldom leaving it to find recrea- tion outside, except in long country walks of which he was very fond. The history of St. Elizabeth he knew from its beginning, every stone and stump within its boundaries. A great reader of books, he accumulated those of general medicine and his specialty and the best literature of the day. He made close study of cases of special interest and wrote them up. Two good pamphlets of his are : "Two Hard Cases," Boston, 1882; and "The Rights of the Insane in Hospital," Philadelphia, 1884. In April, 1870, he was appointed superintendent of the State Hospital for the Insane, Taunton Massachusetts, which he kept up to the high- est standard of that time. On September 23, 1877, Godding returned to St. Elizabeth to take the place of the only superintendent the Government Hospital for the Insane had then known. Dr. Charles H. Nichols (q. v.). He died on May 6, 1899. Daniei, Smith Lamb. Minutes of Medical Society, Dist. Colum., May 10 and June 7, 1899. Trans. Med. Soc. Dist. Colum., 1S99, vol. iv. Proceedings of Amer. Med. Psych., Asso., 1899, vol. vi. Bull. Philos. Soc, Washington, 1895-1900, vol. xiii. Jour, .raer. Med. Asso.. 1899, vol. xxxii. iour. Mental Science. London, 1900, vol. xlvi. rational Medical Review, 1899-1900, vol. ix. Godman, John Davidson (1794-1830). The few early glimpses to be had of John D. Godman the anatomist when he fought ill health and adversity show what wonderful energy can be generated by certain circum- stances calculated to drive most men to de- spair. Born at Annapolis December 20, 1794, the son of one Capt. Sainuel Godman. his mother died before he was two, his father a year later and an aunt to whose care he was given left him more than orphanless when he was six. He says : "Before I was six I was fatherless and friendless. I have been de- prived by fraud of property which was mine. I have passed the flower of my days in little better than slavery and have arrived at what.' manhood, poverty and desolation." At the age of sixteen he was bound appren- tice to the printer of a newspaper in Baltimore and in 1814 began the study of chemistry, but during the same year enlisted in the navy as a common sailor. In 1815 he was without employment and without means to prosecute his studies. At that time he received an invitation to live and study with Dr. Luckey of Elizabethtown, Penn- sylvania, of which he immediately availed him- self, and entered into the work with great zeal. He remained five months with Dr. Luckey, then returned to Baltimore in search of greater facilities, eventually becoming the pupil of Dr. Davidge (q. v.) of the University of Maryland and attending the lectures of 1816- 17 and 1817-18, and graduating in the latter year. He began practice in the town of New Holland, but the quiet village life was not suited to his ardent temperament. He longed for and expected a professorship in the Uni- versity of Maryland. Disappointed in this, he removed to Philadelphia, where he was solicited by Dr. Daniel Drake (q. v.) to accept the chair of surgery in the Medical College of Ohio. He reached Cincinnati about November 1, 1821, and following an introductory lecture trouble arose in the faculty and he resigned. ImiTiediately afterwards he established the Western Quarterly Reporter of Medical, Sur- gical and Natural Science, the first medical journal west of the AUeghanies which got as far as number three of the second volume. In this brief time Dr. Godman contributed three hundred pages to its contents. In October, 1822, he arrived in Philadelphia, after one year in the West, just as the stu- dents were assembling for the annual course. Installing himself in rooms, Godman began a course of lectures which soon made his talents a theme of remark among medical and scientific men. His elaborate anatomical in- vestigations giving a minute account of the fasciae of the human body were published in 1824, but his stay on the banks of the Patapsco had given him chances of natural history studj-, and in Philadelphia he had an opportunity of extending his investigations as a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences. To write