Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/682

NAME KING 660 KING personally, was due to a germ in the blood. He made many experiments to prove his theory, wrote much about it, utilized autogen- ous vaccines successfully in many instances and thought that he was on the high road to a certain cure for this disastrous affection. He failed, however, and some critics declared that his idea amounted to nothing, forgetting that all ideas, even if they fail, have a use in lead- ing other discoverers in other directions and possibly toward a true discovery of value to humanity. A paper on "Osteopathy" had precise value, pointing out that the osteopaths lay stress on minor truths, and obscure the larger: how they decry with stony indifference all other sects, yet when in turn they are criticized, they de- clare themselves abused and injured. i As a surgeon, Dr. King was bold, daring in the extreme, and oftentimes extremely rapid. His aim was small loss of blood, and as little shock as possible. Careless in his dress, he was careful in his asepsis at operations. He had the misfortune of defending several suits for alleged mal- practice, one in which, six years after the treatment, a patient persuaded a jury that red- ness on her neck was due to the careless use of the X-rays; another in which X-rays were not utilized as they should have been in a case of fracture, and a third in which a surgical dressing was found in the abdominal cavity at a third operation. It might just as well have been left by the second operator as by Dr. King, who had the misfortune to be the first one to open the abdominal cavity. His career in politics, which would have ruined almost any other physician, seemed to have no effect upon the popularity of Dr. King except, if anything, to increase it. After the retirement of the Congressional successor to the Hon. Thomas Brackett Reed, Dr. King came vigorously forward in favor of the can- didacy of his college classmate, Hon. Asher Crosby Hinds, wrote letters favoring him as the best man for the place, and at the nominat- ing convention presented him in a very clever speech. He played the good game of politics from that time to the end of his life, and con- tinued his college friend in Congress and even nominated his successor, later triumphantly elected to Congress. He owned farms in Maine and in his vacations proved himself of personal benefit to the towns in which they were situated. Every farmer round about consulted him and got helpful agricultural advice. James A. Spalding. King, Dan (1791-1864) Dan King was born in Mansfield, Connecti- cut, January 27, 1791, and studied medicine at New Haven and in his native town. Begin- ning practice at Brewster's Neck, Connecticut, he soon removed to Charlestown, Rhode Island, where at first he eked out a precarious income by operating a small factory, making "nigger cloth." In 1841 he removed to W'oon- socket, Rhode Island, thence, in 1848, to Taun- ton, Massachusetts. In 1859 he removed to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, intending to give up practice, but on the departure of a son for the war, he went to Greenville, Rhode Island, to take the latter's practice. He died November 13, 1864 in Smithfield, Rhode Island. Dr. King's reputation is based rather upon his activity as a polemical pamphleteer and publi^t than as a practitioner of medicine. In 1857 he wrote "Spiritualism Unmasked," followed next year by "Quackery Unmasked," which is regarded as his most important work. He also wrote against tobacco and alcohol. While in the General Assembly as represcnta- time from Charlestown, Rhode Island, his state paper on the condition of the Narragansett tribe of Indians aroused interest. He was a strong Suffragist, an intimate friend of Thomas Dorr, and in 1859 published in Bos- ton "The Life and Times of Thomas Wilson Dorr, with Outlines of the Political History of Rhode Island." G. Alder Blumer. Trans, of the Rhode Island Med. Soc, vol. iv. Api)leton's Cyclop. Amer. Biog., N. Y., 1SS7. King, David (1774-1836) David King, senior, was born at Raj-nham, Massachusetts, April 2, 1774, and died at New- port, Rhode Island, November 14, 1836. He graduated with high rank from Brown Uni- versity, at that time Rhode Island College, in 1796, studied medicine for the prescribed three years with Dr. James Thacher (q. v.), of Ply- mouth, Mass., and settled in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1799. He received an appointment as surgeon at Fort Walcott, Newport harbor, and was busily engaged in combating the yel- low fever epidemic in Newport in 1819. Known as one of the earliest promoters of the Rhode Island Medical Society and its president from 1830 to 1834, he was director of the Redwood Library and a prominent physician at New- port. In 1821 Brown conferred her M. D. upon him. King's son David (q. v.) became a noted bibliophile in Newport. Appleton's Cyclop. .mer. Biog., N. Y., 1887. Hist. Cat. Brown Univ., 1764.1904.