Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/617

IVES employers. Continuing at the same time, with the greatest zeal, his plan of self-instruction, he soon found himself sufficiently advanced to commence the study of a profession; and having chosen that of medicine, entered himself a student with (q. v.), a physician of New London. On removing to Fishkill, in the State of New York, he continued his studies with Dr. Barto White, and completed them in the office of (q. v.), graduating in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in the year 1814. He contributed largely to our medical journals; and some of his papers, especially that on "Humulus Lupulus," gained him much credit, both at home and abroad. He republished, with notes and additions, "Paris's Pharmacologia," and "Hamilton's Observations on the Use and Abuse of Mercurial Medicines," and also a description of the "Epidemic Influenza," which prevailed in the northern and eastern states in the year 1815; indeed, his whole time was spent in improving his own mind, or making himself useful to his fellow-men. Yale conferred the honorary A. M. on him in 1821.

Dr. Ives was well formed, his manners prepossessing, and he had a fund of humor and anecdote which made his company acceptable to his associates. He enjoyed a fine share of health, until he was attacked in February, 1837, with neuralgic pain about the left hip, which gradually increased in duration and violence until his sufferings, for hours together, were almost beyond endurance. About five months from the attack the hip and thigh began to enlarge, which they continued steadily to do with augmented pain till February 2, 1838, when death relieved him from his agony. On dissection a large tumor was found on the left ileum, extending downwards under the left gluteus muscle.



Ives, Eli (1779–1861)

Eli Ives was born in New Haven, February 7, 1779, son of Dr. Levi Ives (1750–1826), a physician of large practice in New Haven and a founder of the New Haven Medical Society. He entered Yale College in 1795, graduating in 1799, and then spent fifteen months as the rector of the Hopkins Grammar School, at New Haven. While thus teaching, he took up the study of medicine under his father and (q. v.), and later went to Philadelphia to attend the lectures of Rush, Wistar and Barton, at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1802 he returned and began the practice of medicine, being made a member of the Connecticut Medical Society on May 4, 1802. ThereeThree [sic] years later he again went to Philadelphia to attend the lectures there, But did not remain long enough to graduate. In October, 1811, the honorary degree of M. D. was conferred upon him by the Connecticut Medical Society.

He was prominent among those who established the Yale Medical School, being on all the committees of conference and practically at the head of the movement so far as the medical society was concerned. On the opening of the school in November, 1813, he became professor of materia medica and kept the position until 1829, when he was transferred to the chair of the theory and practice of medicine. This professorship he filled until 1852, when he took the chair of materia medica again, retaining it until his death nine years later, but being for the last eight years professor emeritus. He is described by Dr. Henry Bronson, who was once his private pupil, as "tall and spare, of a weak organization, with a pleasant countenance and mild blue eye, unceremonious and unpretending, familiar and agreeable in manners and plain in dress." He was not an eloquent instructor, but gave a good practical course. In his knowledge of botany he was ahead of his time, and, at the opening of the medical school, established, on grounds adjoining the college, a botanical garden for the benefit of his classes, which was not properly seconded as an enterprise and so perished from neglect. He gave special attention to indigenous vegetable remedies in his extensive practice, and is said to have been one of the first to employ chloroform, having prescribed it by inhalation as well as by stomach, in 1832, a year after its discovery by (q.v.) of Sackett's Harbor.

He was a member of the first convention which framed the United States Pharmacopoeia in 1820, and, at the second convention in 1830, was made the president. For three years, from 1824–1827, he was vice president of the Connecticut Medical Society. When the American Medical Association met in New Haven in 1860, he was chosen its president. He served, also, as the candidate for lieutenant-governor on the anti-Masonic ticket in 1831, and acted for many years as the president of the Horticultural and Pomological Societies. He married on September 17, 1805, Maria Beers and had three sons, who took up the study of medicine, and one daughter who