Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/615

ISHAM the age of twenty-one. President Jackson appointed him to accompany the Cherokee Indians in their removal beyond the Mississippi, and he traveled among the Indian tribes through the Southern States. In 1841 he entered the army, after being examined by the Army Board, coming out first among fifty candidates. He was sent to Governor's Island, and from there to Fort Kent, Maine, after two years he was ordered to Copper, Lake Superior, at the time when the discovery of copper caused excitement.

In 1845 he went to Fort Niagara, New York; in 1846 he resigned his commisssioncommission [sic] and opened a private medical school in Greene Street, New York City, with (q. v.). After several changes he accepted the appointment of demonstrator of anatomy in the College of Physicians and Surgeons; later, he was adjunct professor of anatomy in the University Medical College. Between the lecture terms he served as surgeon on European steamers and thus had the chance to visit hospitals in Europe. He moved to Brooklyn in 1857 and acquired a large practice.

Isaacs is best known at home and abroad by his monograph on the structure and functions of the kidney (Tr. New York Acad. of Med. vol i, part 9), and for his researches on the pleura. The paper on the kidney was commented on by Ch. Robin of Paris, as "the most valuable contribution to structural anatomy that has been made for years."

He died of pneumonia, associated with Bright's disease, on June 16, 1860, in Brooklyn.



Isham, Asa Brainerd (1844–1912)

The Isham family is of English origin. Its ancestry in America has been traced back to 1660 when the first immigrant landed at Cape Cod. One of the descendants was the mother of Thomas Jefferson.

The grandparents of this prominent Cincinnati physician were Asa and Sarah Chapman Isham. His father, Chapman Isham, a merchant and banker, was born in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, February 15, 1814. His mother, Mary Ann Faulkner Isham, was born in Jackson, Ohio, in 1821. Her ancestry in England had been followed as far as the year 1260.

Dr. Isham was born in Jackson, Ohio, July 12, 1844. He received his preliminary education in the public schools of his native town and later graduated from Marietta (Ohio) Academy. After graduation he was employed by the Lake Superior Journal, at Marquette, Michigan, passing rapidly through the stages of printer, foreman and associate editor, his services extending from 1860 to 1862. In the latter year he became city editor of the Detroit Daily Tribune. This training in printing and editing was invaluable as a means of education and in fitting the future physician to spread before the public the results of his experience, both in his military career and in the field of his medical labors.

November 18, 1862, he enlisted as a private in the Seventh Michigan Cavalry and was assigned the duties of postmaster of the regiment, adjutant's clerk and regimental marker. Here began a most honorable military service. In January, 1863, he became sergeant of Company I.

In April and May, 1863, he participated in several skirmishes and on the fourteenth of the latter month was severely wounded in an engagement near Warrentown Junction. Reporting for duty. January 1, 1864, his regiment then forming part of Custer's brigade, he participated in the engagements of the Wilderness, Beaver's Dam Station and Yellow Tavern. At the last place he was wounded again and captured in a charge in which the Confederate General J. E. B. Stuart was mortally wounded. Isham was confined in Libby Prison until June, when he was removed to Macon, Georgia, and in August he was sent to prison in Savannah, whence he was taken to Charleston, South Carolina, and placed under the fire of the Union batteries on Morris Island, being paroled with the sick and wounded, December 10, 1864. Upon again returning to the front he was commissioned first lieutenant and discharged by a board of examiners at Annapolis, Maryland, April 14, 1865.

After the war he engaged in business in Celina, Ohio, and on June 6, 1866, he began the study of medicine with Dr. Alonzo Thrasher Keyt, in Cincinnati, Ohio. The following October he matriculated in the Medical College of Ohio and graduated in 1869 and married the daughter of his instructor, Mary Hamlin Keyt, October 10, 1870. He was professor of physiology in the Cincinnati College of Medicine and Surgery from 1877 to 1880, and in 1880–81 professor of materia medica and therapeutics, translating, as a basis for his lectures, two books from the German. Dr. Isham was pension examiner from July, 1889, to 1893, and from 1886 to 1903 he was a member of the medical board of police examiners of Cincinnati. This was the first board of medical