Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/524

HASKELL board until his death. After 1895 he gave up active practice.

Like all men of strong personalities, he often met opposition both personal and official, which sometimes developed into enmity, yet he had one of the kindest hearts, and was beloved by those who truly understood him, and especially by those most closely associated with him.

His advice was often sought by members of the Legislature upon questions relating to public health, and his aid was frequently requested in framing bills pertaining to legislation relating to medical affairs.

One piece of work of which he was justly proud was a paper written by him on the "Impracticability of Interstate Reciprocity," delivered before the National Confederation of State Examining Medical Boards, in Boston, June 4, 1906. This paper was a classical and logical exposition of the complicated problems involved in this important question, and was so highly regarded as to be reprinted at the expense of the American Medical Association. By competent critics this article has been termed "the argument which has never been answered."

Dr. Harvey was married in Concord, New Hampshire, July 30, 1860, to Abby Kimball Tenney. There were no children by the marriage.

He was a member of the Siloam Lodge of Masons, Westborough, and was a member of the Westborough Evangelical Church.

In a few words, it may be said that Dr. Harvey was one of those men occasionally seen among our forebears whose will and ambitions led first to a thorough preparation for a constructive and influential life and then never departed from the pursuit of achievement. He never turned his back on an opponent, and he never cringed when facing overwhelming odds, as so often happened when battling against forces that opposed good legislation.



Haskell, Benjamin (1810–1878).

During the War of 1812, or more precisely at daybreak, September 9, 1814, the British frigate Nymph lying off Rockport at the tip of Cape Ann, Massachusetts, sent ashore two barges to attack the town. They surprised and captured the small fort on Bearskin Neck and as the bell on the meeting-house began to ring the alarm one of the barges, to silence the ringing, fired at the belfry and lodged a round shot in one of the steeple posts where it may be seen today. The old white church now stands side by side with a white-painted square mansion set well back from the main street of the town at the top of a beautiful tree-dotted green lawn, edged round with granite from the quarries near at hand. The shot in its course to the belfry passed directly over the old tavern where little Benjamin Haskell, four years old, lived with his father and mother, Josiah and Rachel Tarr Haskell. There he had been born October 22, 1810. Twenty-five years later, after Benjamin had received an A. B. at Amherst (1832) and an M. D. at Bowdoin (1837) he was to settle in Rockport, to worship at this church and eventually to live in the house next door, and pass the rest of his life caring for the health of his fellow townsmen, helping in the causes of temperaancetemperance [sic], education and charity and getting himself so beloved that shortly before his death his patients presented him with a gold watch and chain as a mark of their affection. He represented the good old Puritan stock, for he was descended from William Haskell, a settler in Gloucester in 1643, the father of Benjamin having taken up his residence in Sandy Bay village, which was later to be known as Rockport.

Before going to Rockport Dr. Haskell acted as assistant physician at the McLean Hospital, Somerville, and practised two years at South Boston.

In 1839 he married Mary Jane, daughter of Amos Calef of Gloucester.

He early evinced a literary turn, for we find him contributing to the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in the year 1837 articles on "Somnambulism," vol. xvi, p. 292–302; "Animal Magnetism," vol. xvii, p. 104–111; another paper on animal magnetism, do., 366–368; "On Inflammation," do., 407–416. Nearly twenty years later he published his chief contribution to medical literature in a pamphlet entitled: "Essays on the Physiology of the Nervous System with an appendix on Hydrophobia," Gloucester, 1856, 87 pp., previously issued in the columns of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, the last being read before the Massachusetts Medical Society at its annual meeting, May 27, 1856. He confuted the theories of Sir Charles Bell and Marshall Hall as to the sensory and motor functions of the spinal nerves, believing that physiologists overlooked "the existence of a spiritual principle within the body" and that "the real cause of the production of a given phenomenon, is mental instead of physical." He supposed "the nervous system to be employed as an instrument of sensation and motion