Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/584

NAME HOSACK 562 HOUGH can plants besides exotics. Douglas, the bot- anist, named the Hosackia bicolor after him. Hosack also founded the Humane Society — one branch for the recovery of persons nearly drowned and another for the relief of the in- digent poor ; the City Dispensary was re- modelled, and he instituted medical lectures to policemen. It was a matter of wonder to his friends how he managed to do as much, but Hosack knew the value of odd moments and always read or made notes when a little spare time came. The Medical and Philosophical Register (1810) was started and also edited by him ' in con- junction with John W. Francis (q.v.). and he succeeded in completing his mineralogical col- lection begun in Edinburgh and presented it to Princeton College. Dr. Hosack felt that after fifty years of practice he would be justified in retiring to his country house at Hyde Park, Dutchess County. He had married his third wife Magdalena, widow of Henry A. Coster, and with her kept up a fine old-fashioned hos- pitality, welcoming alike famous men and shy ambitious students. Three times, in spite of his busy life and large family, he adopted into his household and trained several poor but clever young men, one of them being Delale, who became superintendent of the Jardin des Plantes, Montpellier, France. In December, 1835, he seemed to have a presentiment of coming illness, apoplexy or paralysis, and began to try to write with his left hand. On the eighteenth he had an apo- plectic stroke from which he never rallied and died on the twenty-second at the age of sixty-four. Although Hosack originated no new surgical procedures, he was an excellent surgeon and introduced several desirable operations from Europe. Up to this no American had tied the femoral artery for aneurysm. HoSack did this in 1808, and introduced the method of treating hydrocele by injection as early as 1795. In operating he insisted upon the importance of leaving wounds open to the air in order to check hemorrhage — a rriethod advocated later by .Astley Cooper and Dupuytren. Dr. Hosack held the chairs of botany and of materia medica in 1796, in Columbia College, resigning both in 1797. He was pro- fessor of surgery and midwifery in the Col- lege of Physicians and Surgeons of New York, 1807-26. Union College conferred its LL. D. on him in 1818. His writings embraced a wide range of sub- jects, and the list fills two columns of the Catalogue of the Surgeon-General's Library at Washington, D. C. Some Amer. Botanists. H. A. Kelly, M. D., 1914. Med. in .mer., J. G. Mumford, Philadelphia, 1903. Amer. Med. Biog., S. D. Gross, Philadelphia, 1861. Autobiog., S. D. Gross, Philadelphia, 1887. Boston Med. and Surg. Jour., 1S68-9, vol. Ixvii. Commun. Mass. Med. Soc, Boston, 1868, vol. xi. .^mer. Med. Biog., Williams, 1845. A nortrait is in the Surg. -gen's. Lib., Washington, D. C. Hough, Benjamin Franklin (1822-1885). Benjamin Franklin Hough, physician, scien- tist, historian, statistician and "father of Amer- ican forestry," was born in Martinsburg, New York, July 20, 1822. His father, Horatio Gates Hough, fifth in descent from an Eng- lish ancestor who emigrated to America in I6l9, was born in Meriden, Connecticut. He moved to Southwick, Massachusetts, thence to Coustableville, New York, where he settled as the "first physician of the county." In 1805 he removed to Martinsburg in the same county and died there on September 3, 1836. He was of a philosophical turn of mind as shown by his writings, and an excellent physician. His biographer, portraying the scenes of those early days, wrote of him, "How often has he been seen traveling on foot with saddle bags on his shoulders, making his way through the woods by the aid of marked trees to some distant log house, the abode of sickness and distress! There he has been seen almost ex- hausted by fatigue and suffering from want of sleep and food, reaching forth his hand to restore the sick, and by his cheerful voice pouring consolation into the minds of the afflicted family." The younger Hough was graduated from Union College in 1843 and from Cleveland Medical College in 1848. He practised medi- cine in Somerville, New York, 1848-1852, de- voting spare moments to a study of the local history of the region and to its botanical and mineralogical exploration. His discovery of a new mineral which was named after him — Houghite — commemorated his name in that field of science. He was a man of splendid physique as may be inferred from the following incidents men- tioned in his autobiography. After recount- ing his visit to a locality rich in choice minerals he writes, "I found myself loaded with forty or fifty pounds of treasures with which I walked back over the twenty-five miles I had come !" In another place he mentions walk- ing all night a distance of forty-five miles to his home. He moved from Somerville to Brownville,