Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/591

NAME HOWE 569 HOWE daughters all helping by bringing plants and making his herbarium. Music, too, whiled away many a long hour, and a past generation will remember one of his songs, "The Old Arm Chair," which London took up and sang with America ; while the muscians of both armies, during the Civil War, enjoyed "The Wanderer's Dream." This musical mycologist, after seven years of physical imprisonment, was liberated into the larger life on the 2nd of March, 1899. Some Amer. Med. Botanists, Howard A. Kelly, 1914, 187-189. Howe. Samuel Gridley (1801-1876). Samuel Gridley Howe, the first to train the blind and deaf mutes in America and to call attention to the need of care for the feeble- minded, was born in Boston in 1801, nine years before the Harvard Medical School re- moved from Cambridge to Boston. That was the year which saw the establishment in prac- tice of Jackson (q. v.) and John C. Warren (q. v.), and the new vaccination of Jenner introduced to these shores. There was little wealth in Howe's family, and the little there was dwindled sadly during the war of 1812; for his father, Joseph N. Howe, a ship owner and maker of cordage, trusted the fed- eral government for naval supplies, and it failed him. The unhappy merchant was brought nearly to ruin, and his family grew up in poverty. In spite of this there was money supplied for sending one of the boys to college, and Samuel was selected. He went to Brown University and graduated in 1821, when twenty, an advanced age for graduation in those days. After leaving Brown, he returned to Bos- ton and studied medicine with Jacob Bigelow, at the same time attending the lectures in the Harvard school, and the clinics at the Massa- chusetts General Hospital, finding as instruc- tors, Jackson, J. C. Warren, Parkman, and Ingalls. Such men could appreciate a prom- ising student, and were foretelling an unusual future for Howe, when suddenly he astounded them and the Boston community by announc- ing that he was going to Greece. No one encouraged him, except one eminent man — Gil- bert Stuart, the artist, now growing old, who faltered that his heart also was in the venture, if only the times were still young for him. He helped Howe to go, and Howe worked out there through the insurrectionary times when Greece fought against the Turkish rule. In 1832 he settled down in Boston, and began his best-known work, the education of the blind. He was fortunate enough to secure the sympathy and support of Dr. John D. Fisher (q. v.), a young man, one year his junior — himself a philanthropist and with a private fortune. With Fisher's aid Howe took up the problem of teaching the blind and began his studies by visiting Europe again, to investigate the Valentine Haiiy methods then employed in Germany and France. Howe was no dreamer. He was a man of affairs ; a sane humanitarian ; a tempered enthusiast. New working machinery was nec- essary; he created it, instructing his assistants so thoroughly, that later, when the Sydenham School was established in England, a corps of Howe's former pupils were secured as teachers. He invented a novel form of raised letters for the books of the blind ; and the first product of his press was a Bible, which was published in 1843 — a book half the size, and produced at half the cost, of the Scriptures for the Blind, then recently brought out in England. To test upon himself continued blindness, he went about for weeks with his eyes ban- daged, and used the books for the blind. His best-known subject was Laura Bridgman, the famous blind deaf-mute, whom he found at Hanover, New Hampshire, brought to Bos- ton when she was a child of eight, and edu- cated at the Perkins Institute. Dickens des- cribes the girl. For forty-three years Howe was superintendent of the Perkins Institution for the Blind. He asked but was refused permission to work at the Hartford Asylum, but emerged triumphant from opposition in the founding of the Massachusetts School for Feeble-minded Children. In 1869 Howe had an experience which took him hack to the scenes of his youthful crusade of forty years before. The Cretan insurrection of '66 was becoming an international problem. Greece was taking sides with Crete against Turkey. Howe organized a relief expedition to feed and clothe the destitute people, loaded a ship with supplies, visited Crete, and saved thousands from starvation. Then he visited the Greek mainland, and learned to his de- light that he was not forgotten there. He returned with added honors to America, and promptly was called to further public work. There was serious talk of annexing the islands of the sea. Santo Domingo was their first object, and thither went Howe with other forlorn commissioners, by direction of Pres. Grant. The object was a failure, as we know. Howe came home, but went back later to