Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/724

NAME LINCOLN 702 LINCOLN but so well was he equipped professionally, and so discreet and honorable in his inter- course with medical men, that he soon gained not only their high regard but that of the citi- zens in general. He identified himself as soon as practicable, with the profession of the city by joining the Medical Society of the Dis- trict, and was its president from 1865 to 1868. He joined the Medical Association of the Dis- trict in 1843. He was one of the founders of the University of Georgetown, and filled the chair of professor of surgery from 1849 to 1853, and again from 1857 to 1861, when he resigned and was elected emeritus profes- sor. He was also a member of the first Path- ological Society of Washington, organized in 1841. He had much mechanical ingenuity, which enabled him to succeed in the treat- ment of cataract, joints and deformities. He was for over twenty years the leading oculist in Washington. He was also a member of the staff and consulting surgeon to the Provi- dence Hospital for a number of years. He married in 1841 a Miss Betzold, of Alex- andria, and had two children, a son and daugh- ter. In 1872 he retired from practice. His mental powers to the last seemed as active and strong as in middle life when de died on March 27, 1886. D.'iNiEL Smith Lamb. Personal Reminiscences, S. C. Busey, 1895. Jour. Amer. Med. Asso., 1886, vol. vii, 222. Nat. Intelligencer, 1841. Lincoln, Benjamin (1802-1835) Benjamin Lincoln, grandson of General Benjamin Lincoln, of Revolutionary fame, and son of Theodore and Hannah Mayhew Lin- coln, was born in Dennysville, Maine, Octo- ber 11, 1802, "with the forest behind him and the ocean before," as he was fond of saying. He obtained his academic degree at Bowdoin in the Class of 1823. Whatever leisure was left from college studies was occupied with investigations on sound, and iti the practice of music, to which he remained devoted throughout his life, and in the study of math- ematics. During his college course his father was asked to attend a physical examination by Nathan Smith (q.v.), then a professor at the Bowdoin Medical School, of the alleged hip- joint dislocation of Charles Lowell, plaintiff in the historic case of Lowell vs. Faxon and Hawkes (q.v.). Young Lincoln drove with his father to the curious scene and the brief hour thus spent probably turned his mind to medicine. Before beginning this study, however, he gave up nearly a year as nurse and companion to a fellow student, ill with tuberculosis, tak- ing a sea voyage to New Orleans and back, in search of health. Entering upon a three years' course and showing zeal for anatomy, he became demon- strator to Nathan Smith and to John Doane Wells (q.v.), then setting forth on his me- teoric career as a lecturer on anatomy in sev- eral medical schools. In the vacations, Lin- coln continued his studies in Boston with Dr. G. C. Shattuck (q.v.), and finally graduated in 1827, with a thesis on "Sea Sickness," in which he suggests that disturbances of the ear may have an influence in producing the malaise. Dr. Lincoln settled in Boston for practice, and continued his friendship with Dr. Shat- tuck, so that when there came a call from the medical school of the University of Ver- mont for a capable young lecturer on anat- omy and surgery, Lincoln was at once recom- mended, accepted, and gave his first course in 1828. Before leaving Boston he tried for the much coveted Boylston Prize for the best es- say of the year on medicine, and off^ercd one on "Sound," which was so mathematically ab- struse and, as the committee later acknowl- edged, so beyond their brains, and "Besides all that, it has nothing to do with medicine," that the prize went to another competitor, Lin- coln receiving respectable and honorable men- tion. He returned to his office in Boston after the opening course of lectures, and finding en- couragement in the fact that he had proved that he possessed the art of attracting the steady attention of students, and a favorable opening offering itself in Burlington, Ver- mont, for practice, he left Boston for good, and settled for practice and for a lifetime of lectures in Burlington. With a high heart and aims. Dr. Lincoln, then at the age of twenty-eight, began practice in Burlington, and also his second course of lectures, little dream- ing of the hardships before him in his lecture- ship, or in carrying into effect his ideals for improving medical education in Vermont. He discovered that the men at the two other schools at Castleton and Woodstock were im- bued with the one idea of making easy money by talking medicine to uneducated students, and by padding their catalogues for bombastic parade with the names of fictitious personages, not students at all. Such men saw nothing irregular in besieging students bound for Bur- lington with the cry that Burlington was mori- bund, but that Castleton and the Woodstock School for Clinical Medicine were alive and