Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/59

ARCHER for liberty, being a member of the local committees from November, 1774, and enrolling, as captain, the first militia company in the county, in December of the same year.

In the latter role he was forced to use a speaking trumpet on account of a severe throat affection. His sons were wont on every fourth of July to bring down this trumpet from the garret of Medical Hall and make the premises ring, but it has long been lost; his sword is still preserved in the family. In January, 1776, he was commissioned major of one of the local battalions of militia. In August following he was elected a member of the convention which framed the Maryland constitution and bill of rights.

After the Revolution he devoted himself exclusively to his professional work, including teaching. It is said that he trained about fifty students in his stone office near Medical Hall. These young men assisted him in his immense practice and compounded his prescriptions, forming a medical society, the reports of which, in manuscript, are preserved in the library of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty at Baltimore.

In 1799 he assisted in founding the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland and later became a member of its examining board and executive committee.

In 1800 he was elected a member of Congress and two years later was re-elected for a second term. It was at this time that his health began to fail, and a few years later, in consequence of a partial paralysis, he abandoned all active pursuits. He expired suddenly in his chair at his home in Harford County on September 28, 1810.

Dr. Archer married, in October, 1766, the daughter of Thomas Harris, of Pennsylvania, the family that founded Harrisburg. They had ten children, four of whom died in infancy. Of the remaining six, all sons, five studied medicine under their father, one of these dying young, the others graduating at the University of Pennsylvania. His youngest son, Stevenson, studied law, and became chief justice of Maryland, member of Congress and judge of the Mississippi Territory.

Dr. Archer was not a voluminous writer; several of his papers appeared in the Medical Repository, of New York. He introduced polygala senega as a remedy in croup.

There are several of his portraits extant: one in the court house at Belair, Hartford County, Maryland, a second in the Hall of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty at Baltimore, and a third in the State house at Annapolis.



Ardagh, John (1810–1872)

John Ardagh was born at Waterford, Ireland, in 1810. He took his degree of M.D. at Edinburgh University, and his M. R. C. S. in England in 1831. He then engaged in practice in his native place, and was for eight years physician to the House of Industry and the insane asylum there. In 1842 he made a visit to Canada, where his cousin, the Rev. S. B. Ardagh (first rector of Barrie, Ont.), had come to settle. The following year he came again and settled at Orillia, Ont., where he continued to practise until his death, August 6, 1872. He experienced all the hardships incident to the practice of medicine in the early days of the colony. He was no stranger to long, lonely horseback rides through a thinly settled country, with roads at times almost impassable, and in all sorts of weather. He was highly esteemed as a skilful physician, and was much beloved, especially by the poor, to whom in their sickness he never failed to pay the utmost attention, giving his professional services gratuitously, however far he might have to travel and however inclement the weather might be. In this way he became known in the country as the "poor man's doctor." For some years he was medical attendant to the Indians stationed on the reserve at Rama; and when the branch Lunatic Asylum was established at Orillia in August, 1861, he was appointed medical superintendent. He conducted the affairs of the institution with great judgment and unremitting attention up to the closing of the establishment in November, 1870, owing to the transfer of the patients to a new asylum then opened at London, Ont.



Armor, Samuel Glasgow (1819–1885)

Samuel G. Armor was born January 29, 1819, in Washington County, Pennsylvania, and soon after came to Ohio with his parents who were of Scotch-Irish descent.

He went first to Franklin College, New Athens, Ohio, an institution which in 1872 honored him with the degree of LL. D., then read medicine with Dr. Irvine, Millersburg, Ohio, and graduated from the Missouri Medical College in 1844. Rockford, Illinois, was