Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/601

HUNT with the conviction that much of the ordinary practice was blind and merely experimental.

In 1833 she entered the family of a Dr. and Mrs. Mott. The doctor left the care of most female patients to his wife; this care Miss Hunt shared, and by the opportunity thus afforded, supplemented theoretical knowledge by clinical observation. In 1835 she opened a consulting-room and assumed the responsibility of practising without a medical diploma— reprehensible, but a course justified by subsequent events, for when in 1847 Miss Hunt requested permission to attend lectures at the Harvard Medical School—stating "that after twelve years' practice which had become extensive, it would be evident to them that the request must proceed from no want of patronage, but simply from a desire for such scientific knowledge as could be imparted by their professors"—her request was promptly refused. After the graduation of Elizabeth Blackwell at Geneva in 1849, "Miss Hunt thought the times might be more favorable and in 1850 repeated her application at Harvard. In mobile America great changes of sentiment can be effected in three years— five out of the seven members of the faculty voted that Miss Hunt be admitted to the lectures on the usual terms. But, on the eve of success, Miss Hunt's cause was shipwrecked by collision and entanglement with that of another of those unenfranchised to the privileges of learning. At the beginning of the session two colored men had appeared among the students and created by their presence intense dissatisfaction. When, as if to crown this outrage it was announced that a woman was also about to be admitted, the students felt their cup of humiliation was full and in indignation boiled over in a general meeting. The compliant faculty bowed their heads to the storm, and to avoid the obloquy of rejecting under pressure a perfectly reasonable request, advised the female student to withdraw her petition. This she did, and the majesty of Harvard, already endangered by the presence of the negro, was saved from the further peril of the woman. Miss Hunt returned to her private medical practice which, though unsanctioned by law and condemned by learning, steadily increased and with such success that she became widely known."

In 1853 the Woman's Medical College of Philadelphia gave her the honorable M. D. In 1856 she wrote "Glances and Glimpses, or Fifty Years' Social including Twenty Years' Professional Life." She died in Boston, January 2, 1875.



Hunt, Henry Hastings (1842–1894).

This charming and attractive man was born in Gorham, Maine, July 7, 1842, fitted for college at the Gorham Academy, and graduated from Bowdoin with high honors in 1862. He immediately enlisted as hospital steward in the Fifth Battery of Light Artillery of Maine, and served through the war.

He afterwards studied medicine at the Portland School for Medical Instruction, graduating at the Medical School of Maine in 1867. He then took post-graduate courses at Philadelphia and practised at Gorham until 1882, then finding the wear and tear of country practice too hard he moved to Portland, where he rapidly obtained a choice of clientage.

In 1884 he was chosen to the chair of physiology in the Medical School of Maine, but resigned in 1891, owing to poor health. He was a member of the Maine Medical Association, of the American Medical Association, and a visiting physician to the Maine General Hospital for many years.

In 1887 he married Miss Gertrude Jewell, of Buffalo.

Henry Hunt was a type of the best class of physician, studious, tireless, patient. His opinion was always prized. As a medical writer, Dr. Hunt showed great mastery of his subject, together with taste and skill in authorship, so that it was a matter of regret that he had not time oftener to prove his capabilities in that direction. Perhaps the best of his papers was one on "Diphtheria" (1886).

For several years before his death, Henry Hunt knew that he was a victim of an incurable disease due to an injury of the spinal cord. His frequent sufferings, to which he jokingly referred as "just old fashioned rheumatism," were severe, but he kept at his work till about three months before his death.

He died November 30, 1894, much lamented.



Hunt, John Gibbons (1826–1893).

John Gibbons Hunt, physician and microscopist, was born at Darby, Pennsylvania, July 26, 1826, the son of Abram Gibbons Hunt, a farmer, and Massey Jones. He graduated M. D. at the University of Pennsylvania in