Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/739

LOOMIS screen, thus enabling him to perform dissections of organs, such as the brain, before a class of 350, showing each and all of them every step, by means of a large picture thrown upon the screen. In his studies on electricity he went so far as to construct a new electric candle, for which he was granted a patent, May 21, 1878.

Dr. Longworth was never married.

On the fifth of January, 1879, he was taken ill with pneumonia, and died on the fourteenth.



Loomis, Alfred Lebbeus (1831–1895)

With little money and less health, Alfred Loomis began to practise in New York when only twenty-three. Tuberculosis had run rife in the family and on January 23, 1895, he himself died of it. His parents were Daniel and Eliza Beach Loomis and Alfred was born at Bennington, Vermont, on October 16, 1831, and had barely funds enough to carry him through Union College where he took his A. M. in 1856. He had his M. D. from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York in 1853. It was not long before he gave special attention to diseases of the chest, the art of auscultation and percussion, then developing rapidly, having great attractions for him. In 1864 want of money, the war, and a fire had brought the University of the City of New York to a very low ebb. Loomis brought all his energy as teacher and organizer to diagnose and heal its condition, with the result that the Loomis Laboratory was built and endowed, someone donating the sum of $100,000 through Dr. Loomis in 1886 for the building of the laboratory. He joined with Dr. Trudeau in making provision for impecunious consumptives and took keen interest in the Hospital in the Adirondacks.

He had great skill as a clinical teacher and anyone reading a "Clinical Lecture on Empyema," published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, June 26, 1879, is impressed with the happy blending of questioning of the student and demonstration by physical signs.

His great talent lay in discriminating between the patient and the disease, looking beyond the morbid process to the man fighting with it for his life. During the three days he himself lay dying, all classes came to beg to do something for him, for few men had exerted so powerful an influence in so many directions.

Among his appointments were: professor of pathology and practice of medicine, University of the City of New York; physician, Bellevue Hospital; lecturer on physical diagnosis, College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York.

His chief written work was "Lessons in Physical Diagnosis," 1868; a volume on "The Diseases of the Respiratory Organs, Heart and Kidneys," 1876; "A Text-Book of Practical Medicine," 1884; besides papers contributed to leading medical journals.



Loomis, Henry Patterson (1859–1907)

Henry Patterson Loomis, fellow of the American Climatological Association since 1896, died at his home in New York City on December 22, 1907, of pneumonia, after a short illness, in the forty-ninth year of his age and at the height of his intellectual powers and his professional work. The son of (q. v.), first president of the association, he inherited a name distinguished in the annals of medical science, and an ample fortune which might have robbed a mind less devoted to the pursuit of truth in our calling, of two. of the strongest incentives to work. Graduating from Princeton University in 1880, he took his degree in medicine from the New York Medical School in 1883; in 1887 was appointed visiting physician to Bellevue Hospital, and for a number of years was professor of pathology in the University of New York. His demonstrations, supplementing the clinical teaching of his renowned father, were always of great interest to the students. He was one of the first to attempt to clear up the confusion resulting from the application of the term "Bright's disease" to kidney affections, and to insist upon a proper classification based upon anatomical study. His article upon "Diseases of the Kidneys," written in 1896 for the "American System of Practical Medicine," leaves little to be added at this day. But it was in the field of tuberculosis that he sought and gained his highest honors, continuing the work that had been dearest to his father's heart. The Loomis Sanatorium at Liberty, New York, was one of the first institutions to treat tuberculosis "at the right time, and in the right place, and in the right way, until the patient was well" instead of in the old way—until the patient was dead.

In 1896 Loomis was made visiting physician to the New York Hospital, and in 1897 consulting pathologist to the New York