Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/681

NAME KING 659 KING 14. In a malarial district an open fire af- fords a comparative security in and out of doors. 15. The air in cities renders malarial poi- son innocuous; mosquitoes also are less abun- dant in cities. 16. Malaria is most prevalent late in the summer and in the early autumn. 17. Malaria is arrested by trees, walls, cur- tains, gauze, veils and mosquito nets ; so are mosquitoes. King then cites Sir Francis Day, who says that travelers, besides being warned r.gainst night and morning temperature, shoufd be in- structed at night to employ mosquito curtains, "through which malaria can seldom or never pass !" Also Dr. Macculloch declares that with a gauze veil or conopeum it is possible to sleep in the most pernicious parts of- India without hazard of fever. ♦ 18. Malaria spares no age but affects in- fants less frequently. This is because they are kept in the house and are protected by a netting to keep flies away. 19. The white race is most susceptible — this is due to the acclimatization of the negro. He advises as a prophylaxis against malaria : (a) Personal protection by gauze, curtains at night, window screens, impermeable clothing, and inunctions of tlie body with a terebinthin- ate or camphorated or eucalyptol ointment. (b) Domiciliary protection by trees and walls at a distance from the house, the presence of lamps and electric lights to act as traps and pyrethrum to smoke, (c) Municipal protec- tion by drainage of swamps and pools, and the planting of forests, cordons of electric lights to attract the insects, and the destruction of the insects themselves. I a«k. could any demonstration have been more complete? The presentation of the prob- lem is perfect, and its solution lay within the easy grasp of King's contemporaries had they heeded his words. He was taken ill in his class room on December 13, 1914, and died in two days. Howard A. Kelly. Washington Med. Annals. J. Wesley Bovee, vol. xiv. No. 2, March. 1915. Portrait. Trans. Amer. Gyn. Soc. 1915, vol. i, p. 533. King, Alfred (1861-1916) Alfred King, the most resourceful surgeon of his era in Maine, was born in Portland, Maine, Tuly 2, 1861, and died there very sud- denly, Tune 2, 1916, from septic pneumonia originating in an infected tooth. He suffered from toothache on the Tuesday before his death, operated for the last time on the follow- ing Friday for abdominal cancer, took to his bed that afternoon, and departed from the scenes of his surgical triumphs on Sunday. To the community his sudden death was a ter- rible shock, and almost incredible. He was the son of Marquis Fayette and Frances Olivia Plaisted King, was educated in the public schools of Portland and obtained in 1883 an academic degree at Colby Univer- sity, where he loved historj', wrote agreeable letters and made one friendship which lasted for life, with Asher Crosby Hinds, of whom mention will be made in proper season as creating a distinct episode in the career of Dr. King. After passing the examinations at the Medical School of Maine and obtaining his doctorate in Medicine in 1886, he served 'Ss interne at the Maine General Hospital where for a year he displayed an eagerness for surgery unusual in so young a man. Leav- ing there in 1887 he was elected city physician, and began practice, obtaining success from the start. About this time, too, he married Nellie Grace True of Waterville, Maine, who sur- vived him. He was soon appointed demonstrator and instructor in anatomy at the Medical School of Maine and gradually promoted to instriic- tor and professor of surgery, winning his steps by merit and skill. As a teacher and lecturer he spoke with a melodious voice and in an attractive and enthusiastic manner. He went to Europe five or six summers, and during one of these vacations wrote to his medical friends in Portland some of the most delightful letters imaginable, concerning what he had seen in hospitals abroad. His chief descriptions refer to brain surgery un- der Sir Victor Horsley, fibroids with Keith, the electrical treatment of uterine fibroids by Apostoli, studies in skin diseases with Kaposi, microscopical analysis of the blood in Vienna, tuberculosis in Berlin in Koch's laboratory and painless surgery under Schleich. Dr. King established a private hospital in Portland in 1904, enlarged it in the next year, and up to the time of his death he had per- formed within it three thousand operations, including the most serious in modern surgery. With this was connected a training school for nurses from which more than 50 skilled wo- men were graduated, after a well formulated three years course. Mention has been made of Dr. King's ex- cellent letters and the same term will apply to his medical papers. He had an idea that diabetes, a disease from which he suffered