Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/687

NAME KIRTLAND 665 KIRTLAND lecturer in clinical surgery and demonstrator of surgery in McGill University, graduating from McGill University in the faculty of arts in 1882, and from the faculty of medicine in 1886. He acted as house surgeon to the Mon- treal General Hospital, and after a period of study in Edinburgh was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians. In 1888 he became superintendent of the Montreal General Hospital in succession to Dr. Mc- Clure, who had entered the Chinese Medical Mission Service; in 1891, assistant surgeon. Dr. Kirkpatrick was the first in Canada, and one of the first in America, to repair with success the stomach wall after perforation by ulcer; and he had a good record in the performance of the operation for resection of the bowel, and of gastro-enterostomy. He was also a competent managing editor of the Montreal Medical Journal. TTie cause of death was tuberculosis meningitis. Andrew Macphail. Brit. Med. Jour., 1898, vol. i, p. 55. Montreal Med. Jour., 1897, vol. xxv, p. 640. Kirtland, Jarcd Potter (1793-1877) .Tared Potter Kirtland, an eminent natural- ist of Cleveland, Ohio, was born in Walling- ford, Connecticut, November 10, 1793. In early life he was adopted into the family of his grandfather, Dr. Tared Potter, a physician of Wallingford. His father, Turhand Kirt- land, removed in 1803 to Poland, Mahoning County, Ohio, leaving his son Jared in the home of his grandfather. The boy received his early education in the district and aca- demic schools of Wallingford and Cheshire. Even at this period he is said to have mani- fested a predilection for the natural sciences, and studied botany and scientific agriculture systemactically. In 1811 the death of his grandfather, who left the young Jared his medical library and a sum of mpney sufficient to pay for his medical education in Edinburgh, enabled him to study medicine with Dr. John Andrews of Wallingford and Dr. Sylvester Wells of Hartford, Connecticut. At this pe- riod, too, he made the acquaintance of Prof. Benjamin Silliman (q. v.), of Yale College, who took an interest in the bright boy and of- fered him many facilities for the study of chemistry. Unfortunately the outbreak of the war with England at this time compelled the abandonment of the plan of completing his ed- ucation in Edinburgh, and in 1813 he became the first medical matriculant in the first class at Yale College. Ill health, however, compelled him to stop studying awhile, but later he took a course of lectures at the University of Penn- sylvania, but subsequently returned to Connec- ticut and graduated M. D. from Yale College in March, 1815. During his attendance at Yale he took special courses in botany with Prof. Ives (q. v.), and in mineralogy and geology with Prof. Silliman, and devoted some time like- wise to the study of zoology. Immediately after graduation Dr. Kirtland began practice in Wallingford, dividing his time between practice and the study of scientific agriculture, botany and natural history. For five years he practised in Durham, Connecticut. In the same year he married Caroline Atwater, of Wall- ingford, and had two children. The death of his wife and one of his daughters, which oc- curred in 1823, was a severe trial which un- settled him for a time and revived a desire to remove to Ohio, and in that year he set- tled with his father in the town of Poland. Here, almost in spite of himself, he found an active medical practice forced upon him, though it had been his desire and intention to devote himself to agricultural pursuits. In 1815 he married Hannah F. Toucey, of New- ton, Connecticut. At the close of a term of ser- vice in the Legislature, Dr. Kirtland resumed practice in Poland, but in 1837 became pro- fessor of the theory and practice of medicine in the Ohio Medical College at Cincinnati, a position he filled for the next five years, and in the following year, having resigned his position in Cincinnati, removed with his family to Cleveland, and accepted and filled until 1864 the chair of the theory and prac- tice of medicine in the newly organized Cleve- land Medical College. Dr. Kirtland was actively interested in the work of the Medical Convention of Ohio, and was president of that body in 1839. He was equally active in the organization of the Ohio State Medical Society, was, in 1846, its first vice-president, and its president in 1848. But in spite of his eminent medical char- acter, it was in the field of the natural sciences that Dr. Kirtland secured his most extended and most enduring fame. Even as a boy he had manifested great interest in botany, nat- ural history and scientific agriculture, and in 1834 he announced in the American Journal of Art and Science (vol. xxvi) his discovery of the "Existence of Distinct Sexes in the Nai- ads," a species of fresh water shell-fish, here- tofore believed to be hermaphrodite. This dis- covery produced a considerable sensation in that da}', and was denied by many natural- ists, but its truth was finally confirmed by Agassiz and Karl T. E. von Siebold. In 1837