Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/800

MEIGS College (1841–1861) he worked hard in everything connected with his branch, studying German until he was able to read with ease the most important German obstetricians.

His books, all written in the midst of most fatiguing obstetrical and general medical practice and lecturing, were a remarkable example of what the human machine can accomplish. Consistent with his idea that men ought to retire before losing the power of judging their own fitness for duty, he sent in his resignation when he was sixty-seven, a resignation unwillingly accepted by the dean, faculty and students. He had a dramatic style of lecturing that held the attention of his hearers and he lectured on the Augustan age of Roman literature as well as on obstetrics.

The doctor's robe cast off, he donned that of the bibliophile, and joyfully spent his newly acquired leisure at his country house, Hamanassett, among his old books. Blacksmithing, carpentry and drawing and painting engaged part of the attention of this versatile man. His son says that he was a good amateur at both painting and modeling in clay and wax. Gradually failing health with gastrodynia made him a not unwilling traveller, when, one night, the twenty-second of June, 1869, he set out, without waking, on his last journey.

His best known publications are: "Woman, Her Diseases and Remedies," 1847; "Obstetrics, the Science and Art," 1849; "Treatise on Acute and Chronic Diseases of the Neck of the Uterus," 1850; and "On the Nature and Treatment of Childbed Fevers," 1854. In 1851 he wrote a forty-eight page memoir of Samuel George Morton and in 1853 a biographical notice of Daniel Drake, of thirty-eight pages.

His appointments numbered among others: fellowship of the College of Physicians, Philadelphia, and presidency from 1845–1855; and professor of obstetrics and diseases of women and children in Jefferson Medical College, 1841.



Meigs, James Aitken (1829–1879)

James A. Meigs is chiefly remembered for his work during nearly a quarter of a century as one of the leading men of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. He was born in Philadelphia, July 31, 1829, of English and Scotch ancestry and after schoolboy life at Mt. Vernon Grammar School and the Central High School he began to study medicine under Dr. F. G. Smith and Dr. J. M. Allen. He graduated from Jefferson Medical College in 1851 and settling in Philadelphia, practised there until his death. He was assistant to the chair of physiology in the Pennsylvania Medical College, then lecturer on climatology and physiology at the Franklin Institute (1854– 1862), and finally in 1868 he entered the faculty of the Jefferson Medical College as professor of physiology, being one of the first to teach this subject experimentally by vivisection. "A ripe scholar, with a command of language the offspring of a tenacious memory and a well disciplined mind, he stood before his class the peer of any member of the faculty, wisely confining himself in his teaching, as Dunglison had done, to physiology. If he had one fault it was a love of detail which made him take two sessions to complete the work of the ordinary course, but can this be called a fault?" "I often urged him," says S. D. Gross, "to write an elaborate treatise on philosophy, as no man in America could better grapple with its great problems. He always said he would, but died without doing it."

Much of his leisure was spent among his beloved books and with his old parents. Mutual love could not have been stronger and he seldom spent an evening away from home except for a play, of which he was very fond. His unexpected death came on November 9, 1879, from embolism, after two or three days invalidism. His fortune of some $200,000 gained chiefly among middle class patients went to his father, who was very proud of his son and frequently went to the class room to hear him lecture. His friends had often urged him to take more time for recreation and literary pursuits, but without avail. He seldom absented himself from the city even in the heat of summer; in fact, he led what might be called a suicidal life.

Dr. Meigs' papers on Anthropology are among his best; they include: "Relation of Atomic Heat to Crystalline Form;" Cranial Characteristics of the Races of Men;" "Hints to Craniographers on the Exchange of Duplicate Crania;" "Observations on the Form of the Occiput in the Various Races of Men;" "On the Mensuration of the Human Skull;" "Observations on the Cranial Forms of the American Aborigenes" also his "Correlation of the Vital and Physical Forces."

He held many appointments besides those mentioned, notably: physician to the Howard Hospital; professor of the institutes of medicine in the Philadelphia College of Medicine; consulting physician to the Philadelphia