Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/790

NAME MATHERS 768 MATTHEWS two sons and two daughters. He died when seventy-two on the third of October, 1898, after an immediate illness of one week, in active service and in full enjoyment of his faculties. He was a man of most striking appearance, tall, erect and with piercing eyes. He received an LL. D. from the University of Pennsylvania, and was president of the American Surgical Association in 1890-1. His keen interest in the advance of medical science led to his founding the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons and being a promi- nent organizer of the American Genito-Urinary Association. He was also a member of the Boston Gynecological Society; of the Southern Surgical and Gynecological Association and of the Central Council of the University of Pennsylvania. His articles include : "Inguinal Aneurysm ; successful ligation of external iliac artery by means of silver wire," 1866; "Internal Ure- throtomy as a Cure for Urethral Stricture," 1871; "Chronic Urethral Discharges," 1872; "A New Method of Treating Strictures of the Urethra," 1873 ; "Subcutaneous division of Urethral Stricture," 1886. Claudius Henry M.^stin, Jr. Family Papers. Mem. Record of Alabama, vol. ii. Alabama Med. and Surg. Age. Anniston, 1895-6, vol. viii. Med. Rec. N. Y., 1898, vol. liv. Trans. Amer. Surg. Assoc, Phila., 1900, vol. xviii. Trans. South. Surg, and Gynec. Assoc, 1902, Phila,, 1903. Portrait. Mather*, George Shrader (1887-1918) George Shrader Mathers, son of Dr. Wil- liam R. Mathers, of Prosper, Texas, and a member of the medical corps of the United States Army, died while in service, in Balti- more, October 5, 1918, of pneumonia, aged thirty-one. Captain Mathers was a member of the staff of the John McCormick Institute for Infectious Diseases, Chicago, where he did notable work in isolating the streptococcus in the nervous system in poliomyelitis, in study- ing the streptococci involved in acute epidemic respiratory infections in man and in studying a remarkable streptococcus epidemic in horses, also in an extensive study of meningitis in one of the military establishments. He demon- strated that the streptococcus-like microorgan- ism occurs apparently constantly in the central nervous system in persons who have died from epidemic poliomyelitis. Captain Mathers took his college work in the University of Texas and the University of Chicago and received his medical degree from Rush Medical College in affiliation with the University of Chicago in 1913. After serv- ing a year and a half in the Cook County Hospital he began work in the McCormick Institute under a grant from the Fenger Memorial Fund and before long became asso- ciated fully with the institute. He entered service as a lieutenant in March, 1918, and was stationed at Washington, D. C, at Newport News, Virginia, and finally as di- rector of the laboratory in the Base Hospital at Camp Meade, Maryland. He gave himself complet^y to his work. In the course of his duties and while engaged in a study of the bacteriology of influenza he was stricken and died with pneumonia in a few days. Captain Mathers was a fine lofty-minded, lovable young man of rare enthusiasm for work and with remarkable efficiency. He had committed himself to research and his early death was a great loss to medicine. Science, 1918. vol. xlviii, 508, Ludvig Hektoen. Jour. Amer. Med. Asso., 1918, vol. Ixx. Matthews, James Newton (1852-1910) James Newton Matthews, poet, was born near Greencastle, Indiana, May 27, 1852. He was the son of Dr. William and Deborah S. Matthews, and was a lineal descendant of Samuel Matthews, one of the early colonial governors of Virginia, and a cousin of the historian, John Clark Ridpath. Dr. William Matthews, the father of James, was an able practitioner of medicine for nearly thirty years, and was possessed of uncommon literary abil- ity, writing forcefully for the press upon a great variety of topics. In 1858 young Matthews was brought by his parents to Mason, Illinois, and in 1868 he had the distinction of being the first student to enter the University of Illinois at Urbana and graduated there in 1872. In 1878 he gradu- ated from the Missouri Medical College and in 1894 received the degree of M. L. from the University of Illinois. After his graduation in medicine he entered active practice at Mason, Illinois, and for more than thirty years he was a typical country physician. He stood at the head of the local profession and took an active interest in the local and state med- ical societies. He was a frequent contributor to the daily and weekly papers and his writings, especially his poetry, attracted much atten- tion and found its way into the leading maga- zines of the country. In 1888 he published a volume of poems under the title, "Tempe Vale and Other Poems." In 1896-97 he de- livered lectures of a literary nature throughout Indiana, Illinois and Iowa. He was one of the founders of the Western Writers' Associa- tion and was connected with the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. In 1911 "The Lute of Life"