Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/469

NAME GOLDSMITH 447 GOLDSMITH with him a high reputation; he soon ac- quired an extensive practice. Dr. Drake (q. V.) says he had the most winning manners of any man he knew. He dressed with pre- cision, and never left his house in the morning until his hair had been powdered, or without his gold-headed cane in his gloved hand. In 1801 he introduced vaccination into Cin- cinnati, Dr. Waterhouse of Boston having brought it from Europe in the previous year. In 1803, at great expense, he dug up at Big Bone Springs, in Kentucky, the largest, most diversified, and remarkable collection of fossil bones ever disinterred at one time in the United States. These he entrusted to a Thomas Ashe, or Arville, who sold them in Europe and kept the proceeds. Dr. Goforth was the patron of all who were engaged in searching for precious metals. They brought him their specimens and generally managed to quarter themselves on his family while the necessary analyses were made. In these re- searches "Blennerism," or the turning of the forked stick, held by its prongs, was regarded as a reliable means of discovering metals, as well as water. Dr. Goforth was fond of associating with French people, and sympathized with the refugees from France. This led him to go and live in Louisiana, which had been re- cently purchased from France and was filled with French exiles. Early in 1807 he departed in a flatboat for the lower Mississippi, where he was soon after elected Judge, and subsequently chosen by the Creoles of Attacapas to represent them in forming the first Constitution of the State. Soon after he went to New Orleans, and dur- ing the invasion of the city by the British, acted as surgeon to a company of Louisiana volunteers. By this time his taste for French manners had been satisfied, and he determined to return to the city that he had left in oppo- sition to the wishes of his friends. So he quitted New Orleans, May 1, 1816, and reached Cincinnati on the twenty-eighth of December, after a voyage of eight months, to find his popularity still high. Not long, however, did he enjoy it. During his summer journey from the South he had contracted disease, and died in the following year, 1817. the second phy- sician to die in Cincinnati, Dr. Allison (q. v.) having preceded him but a year. A. G. Drury. Ohio Med. Repository, Cincin., 1826, vol. i. Goldsmith, Middleton (1818-1887) Middleton Goldsmith (born Smith), phy- sician and surgeon in Kentucky and Vermont and army surgeon during the Civil War, was the son of Dr. Alban and Talia Ferro Middle- ton Smith of Virginia. (Dr. Alban Smith's name was changed to Goldsmith by Act of the New York Legislature.) Middleton was born at Fort Tobacco, Maryland, August 5, 1818, and was educated at Hanover College, Indiana, and in 1837, when his father was called to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York, as lecturer on surgery, he accompanied him, matriculating in the same institution and graduating therefrom in 1840. For some time after his graduation Middleton acted as assist- ant to his father, but for a brief interval went to China as ship's surgeon, making a study in that country of ophthalmia. He and his father are credited with being the first practitioners in this country to adopt the prac- tice of lithotrity. During these early years of practice in New York, he acted as coroner's physician and became intensely interested in pathological anatomy. Together with his per- sonal friends. Dr. Lewis A. Sayre (q. v.) and John C. Peters (q. v.). Dr. Middleton Gold- smith founded the New York Pathological Society, in which he ever maintained a great interest. Shortly before his death he gave the Society $5,000 to endow the lectureship, which bears his name. In 1844 Goldsmith was called to the chair of surgery in the Castleton (Vermont) Med- ical College. His reputation as a surgeon was wide, his counsel largely sought throughout the state. He was president of the Vermont State Medical Society in 1851. In 1856 he was called to Louisville, Kentucky, to the chair of surgery in the Kentucky School of Medi- cine, formerly held by his father, and later he became dean of the faculty. In 1861 he entered the Federal Army as brigade surgeon and went into active service in Buell's army, participating in many engage- ments, including the battle of Shiloh. After other assignments of a supervisory character, he was placed in charge of the construction, and later became medical director in charge of the large General Army Hospital at Jeffer- sonville, Indiana. This hospital at times had as many as four or five thousand patients in its wards. Dr. Goldsmith maintained his con- nection with this hospital to the end of the war. While in charge here, he made exhaustive studies of pyemia and hospital gangrene and the action of bromine in these and kindred diseases. These studies and their practical application became widely known and the bromine treatment of hospital gangrene within, as well as outside, army circles became gen-