Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/707

NAME LEAMING 685 LEAVENWORTH mission of the disease by means of the mos- quito. It was, therefore, with a full knowl- edge of his danger that he allowed a mosquito which was known to have bitten a yellow- fever patient to alight upon his hand and take its fill. Five days later he was taken ill with the disease, but before he would consent to be removed to the yellow-fever hospital he made over to his colleague, Dr. Carroll, his notes on mosquito inoculation and told him of his personal experience. For three days he held his own, but then the dreaded black vom- it made its appearance, a symptom which he well knew indicated that the case was all but hopeless. Dr. Carroll, who visited him at this time, said that he could never forget the ex- pression of alarm in his eyes when this symp- tom was impending. Four days later, on Sep- tember 26, 1900, he died. Lazear's early death was a most grievous loss to his profession and to the world at large. He laid down his life before the Yellow Fever Commission had well entered upon their work, so early indeed in its career that his name ap- pears on but one of their published reports. Nevertheless, although his untimely death de- prived him of a full share in the brilliant re- sults which they achieved, he did heroic ser- vice and Walter Reed (q. v.) when speaking of him before the Medical and Chirurgical Society of Maryland, closed his remarks with these words : "It is my earnest wish that, whatever credit may hereafter be given to the work of the American Commission in Cuba, the name of my late colleague. Dr. Lazear, may always be associated therewith." Dr. Lazear is buried in the Loudon Park Cemetery at Baltimore and a memorial tablet has been erected to his memory at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He married and left two children, the younger of whom he never saw. Caroline W. Latimer. The Etiology of Yellow Fever, Reed, Carroll and Lazear, Phila., 1900. Tour. Amer. Med. Assc, Chicago, 1900. vol. xxxv. Johns Hopkins Hosp. Bull., Bait., 1900, vol. xi. Science, N. Y. and Lancaster, Pa., 1900, n. s., vol. xii. Learning, James Rosebrugh (1820-1892) On February 20, 1820, there was born at Groveland, Livingston County, New York, one James Rosebrugh Leaming, destined to help suffering humanity by his special study of chest affections. In 184S he studied under Dr. Lauderdale of Geneseo ; in 1847 matriculated at New York University, and in 1849 gradu- ated, immediately after settling down to prac- tise in that city, where his lectures in the New York clinic, of which he was president, were strikingly clear, original and useful. "Be- yond all doubt his greatest teaching was with regard to pleural pathology and the inter- pleural origin of rales. His teaching of the latter met with a storm of opposition, but he lived to see his propositions meet with wide- spread acceptancy in the profession." By common consent Dr. Leaming was credited with an ear which, in its acuteness, was al- most without a rival. He will be always re- garded as a leading diagnostician of diseases of the heart and lungs. He was so sure of his own power of detecting the occult fea- tures of cases that one of his dying regrets was the inability to sound his own chest. Curiously, his acuteness of observation seemed to extend to his quick knowledge of men, so astonishing was the accurate estimate he formed. He was physician to the Northern and to the Demilt Dispensaries and to St. Luke's Hospital. He died on December 5, 1902, aged seventy- two, after suffering heroically. Among his many memberships was that of the New York Academy of Medicine; the Pathological Society; the Medical Society of the State of New York, and the American Medical Association; and among his note- worthy writings are : "Cardiac Murmurs," New York, 1868; "Res- piratory Murmurs," New York, 1872; "Plas- tic Exudation within the Pleura, Dry Pleu- risy," Philadelphia, 1873; "Contributions to the Study of Diseases of Heart and Lungs," New York, 1884; "Significance of Disturbed Action and Functional Murmurs of the Heart," 1875. Trans. Med. Soc. New York. J. L. Coming. Phila., 1893. Med. Rec., N. Y., 1893, vol. xliii. Trans. New York Acad. Med., 1893, 1894, n. s., vol. X. Leavenworth, Melines Conklin (1796-1862) Melines Conklin Leavenworth, botanist and army surgeon, was bom in Waterbury, Con- necticut, January IS, 1796. He was the eldest son of Mark Leavenworth, a graduate of Yale, and one of the pioneers in the manufacturing business in Waterbury, a man of energy and ability, thorough and practical in the train- ing and education of his family. As a child Dr. Leavenworth showed a keen intelligence and spent many hours in reading history and the natural sciences when other children of his age were at play. When fourteen years of age he went to the Cheshire Academy and, after a year there, to the Ellsworth Academy, where he studied for three years. At the age of eighteen he began