Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/657

NAME JONES 635 JONES in the sessions of 1799 and 1802. He was an active, useful, and influential member of these bodies. His speech (November 20, 1802) against the proposed appropriation to estab- lish a penitentiary, in the nature of a mild reformatory, was an argument of great force which was reported in shorthand by Joseph Gales, editor of the Raleigh Register, for the use of his paper (see issue of December 14th) and it was later re-published in a small pamphlet. The session of 1802 ended the services of Dr. Jones as a member of the House of Commons from Johnston County, but, after his removal to Raleigh, he was honored with a seat in the same body as a representative from the county of Wake. So far as is known. Dr. Jones was the first physician in North Carolina to discard the old treatment by inoculation as a preven- tive of small-pox, and to substitute therefor the new process of inoculation now known as vaccination. So up-to-date was Dr. Jones that he was extensively practising this treat- ment before the experiments of its discov- erer (Dr. Jenner) were completed in Eng- land. In 1800, while still living in Smith- field, Dr. Jones announced through the news- papers that he would begin a general prac- tice of vaccination— or inoculation as it was still called — in the Spring of the following year. Later he decided to postpone such action until he could get the benefit of reports of more recent experiments elsewhere; and he published in the Raleigh Register, of April 14, 1801, a card in the course of which he said : "The public have been taught to expect. from m.y advertisements of last year, that I shall, in the ensuing month, commence inocu- lation for the Smallpox; but I am prevented from doing this by the consideration of what is due from me to those who would have been my patients, whose ease and safety my own inclinations and the honor of my pro- fession bind me to consult." In this card. Dr. Jones further said of Dr. Jenner's discovery that eminent practi- tioners in England, Scotland, Austria, and France were using the treatment with suc- cess, while Dr. Mitchill (q. v.), of New York, and Dr. Water house (q. v.), of Massachu- setts, were among the American physicians of note who had been engaged in the same work. In conjunction with a number of other well known physicians of the State, Dr. Jones was one of the organizers of the North Carolina Medical Society in the year 1799. On the 16th of December, in that year, certain medical gentlemen met in Raleigh and per- fected an organization. Dr. Jones was elected corresponding secretary or "secretary of cor- respondence," and served in that capacity during the life of the society. This organ- ization held meetings in Raleigh during the month of December in the years 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803, and 1804. The meeting in the year last named adjourned to reconvene at Chapel Hill, the seat of the University of North Carolina, on July 5, 1804. During its short-lived existence, many enlightening med- ical essays were read before it by its learned members, and much useful knowledge was thereby disseminated. Among other things, the society collected a botanical garden and natural history museum. Many years later. Dr. Jones, on the eve of his removal to Ten- nessee in 1832, turned over to the Univer- sity of North Carolina a collection of this nature, which may have been the same. This collection contained a great variety and wide range of objects — from small botanical speci- mens to mastodon teeth and the bones of other prehistoric animals. Dr. Jones was not only an accomplished physician, but practised surgery with notable success, many of his operations being of the most delicate nature — on the eye and ear, operations now usually performed by special- ists. He was also the author of a medical work entitled "A Treatise on the Scarlatina Anginosa, or what is vulgarly called the Scarlet Fever, or Canker-Rash, replete with everything necessary to the pathology and practice, deduced from actual experience and observation, by Calvin Jones, Practitioner of Physic." This work was published at Cats- kill, New York, by the editors of the CatskiU Packet, Mackay Croswell and Dr. Thomas O'Hara Croswell, in 1794. It was about 1803 that Dr. Jones left Smith- field and took up his residence in Raleigh. A few years later he was elected mayor of the capital city — or "Intendent of Police," as the municipal chief magistrate was then called. Honors, too, came to him from the county of Wake, which he was elected to represent in the North Carolina House of Commons in 1807. For a while Dr. Jones devoted some of his time to journalism. In the Fall of 1808 he became associated with Thomas Henderson, Jr., in publishing and editing the Star, under the firm name Jones & Henderson, and later Thomas Henderson & Company. The files of the Star show the wide range of knowl- edge possessed by its editors in the various