Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/515

HARLOW wide fame among medical men, of a usually fatal wound of the brain. A young man who was tamping a hole in a rock, with an iron bar an inch in diameter and three feet seven inches long, had the bar blown through his skull by the premature discharge of a blast. The explosion drove the bar completely through his head, and high in the air. Fortunately the bar was round in shape and smoothed by use. The event occurred on the thirteenth of September, 1848, and the victim of the accident lived until May 21, 1861, when he died in San Francisco, California.

Dr. Harlow published an account of this remarkable case, entitled, "Recovery from the Passage of an Iron Bar through the Head," and the skull and bar are now in the Warren Museum of the Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Returning to Philadelphia, Dr. Harlow passed nearly three years in travel and study, and resumed practice in Woburn in the autumn of 1861, attaining a large practice and holding the following offices of trust: member of school committee, president of the Woburn National Bank, member of the Massachusetts Senate and of the Governor's Council, trustee of the Woburn Public Library and of the Massachusetts General Hospital.

He died in Woburn, May 18, 1907. He was married twice—first to Charlotte Davis, of Acton, who died about 1887; then to his second wife, Frances Kimball, of Woburn, who survived him. There were no children.



Harlow, Henry Mills (1821–1893).

Well known for his long superintendency of the Maine Insane Asylum at Augusta, Henry Mills Harlow was born in Westminster, Vermont, April 19, 1821, inheriting from his parents an excellent physical and mental constitution. He studied at the Ashby, Massachusetts, Academy and at the Burr Seminary in Vermont, teaching school when very young and studying medicine with (q. v.), of Ashby, in 1841. He then took a course of lectures at the Harvard Medical School and graduated at the Berkshire Medical Institution in 1844. He also took private instruction in nervous diseases from Prof. Rust Palmer, at Woodstock, Vermont, where he also attended lectures.

After graduating he was appointed assistant at the Vermont Insane Asylum. Busy in the study of the insane, he contributed papers of great value upon this topic to the meetings of the Maine Medical Association, of which he was President in 1861.

He was also active in the Society of Superintendents of the Insane Asylums of America, being often called upon by the law courts to advise concerning the mental condition of alleged criminals and never failing to give satisfaction to the bench, bar and jury.

Few physicians have met with as many misfortunes as did Dr. Harlow during the course of his life. He had, for instance, the misfortune to lose largely the sight of both eyes from iritis so that for a long time he was unable to read, except with the greatest difficulty. He also lost a charming daughter, and had the additional and triple misfortune to lose almost in a single day, from acute appendicitis, his eldest son, Henry Williams Harlow, a most promising medical graduate.

Dr. Harlow married Louisa Stone Brooks, of Augusta, Maine, October 14, 1852. Two children survived him, a daughter, who married Dr. Oscar Davies of Augusta, Maine, and a son, George Arthur, A. B. Amherst 1887, M. D. Harvard 1893.

At the end of thirty-two years of devoted care to the insane, Dr. Harlow resigned and retired to his homestead; attended to some small medical works, gave opinions when sought, and died one day quite suddenly, as he was dictating a letter, on April 5, 1893.



Harmon, Elijah Dewey (1782–1869).

Elijah Dewey Harmon, father of medicine at Chicago, was born at Bennington, Vermont, August 20, 1782. He was the eldest son of Ezekiel Harmon, descended from John Harmon, who came to America in 1636 and settled at Springfield, Massachusetts. The Harmon genealogy now contains more than three thousand names. Dr. Harmon studied medicine with Dr. Swift of Manchester, Vermont, and settled at Burlington, in that state, in 1806. He coninuedcontinued [sic] in practice there until 1812, when he entered the medical service of the government and served through the war. He was assistant surgeon on Commodore McDonough's flagship, the Saratoga, in the battle of Plattsburg, September 11, 1814. After the war he resumed practice at Burlington until financial reverses in 1829 brought about his removal West.

In May, 1830, he journeyed to Chicago and was installed as surgeon in Fort Dearborn. At that time and for two years he was the only physician of whom we have any