Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/814

NAME MILLER 792 MILLER MUler, Edward (1760-1812) Edward Miller was born in Dover, Dela- ware, May 9, 1760, the son of the Rev. John Miller, of that town. His early education was excellent and after completing an academic course he took up the study of medicine with Dr. Charles Ridgely, of Dover, soon coming to believe, however, that he must not depend on books alone for knowledge, which ought to be obtained chiefly at the bedside of the sick; so a little more than two years later he became surgeon's mate in the United States Military Hospitals, serving for a year, principally in the hospital at Baskingridge, New Jersey. In 1781 he was appointed sur- geon on board an armed ship bound for France. He returned in 1782, and for the two following years attended lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, hearing Shippen, Morgan and Kuhn. In 1783, peace being declared between the United States and Great Britain, Miller's con- nection with the army and navy ended, and he began practising medicine at Frederica, Delaware, but in a few weeks moved to Som- erset County, Maryland; during his residence there he visited Philadelphia each year to keep in touch with medical progress. In 1785 he received his M. D. from the University of Pennsylvania. His inaugural dissertation entitled "De Physconia Splenica," was published in Philadelphia in 1789. Following the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, "the city of the dead," in 179.3, he addressed a letter to Rush, widely circu- lated in the newspapers, in which he asserted that the disease was of domestic origin. He wrote, also, a "Report on the Malignant Dis- ease Which Prevailed in the City of New York in the Autumn of 1805." He declared that his experience in 1805 proved that it was in no sense contagious. He wrote elabo- rately on the true nature of fever, and said that it consisted in "some pulmonary local affection"; accepting the doctrine of Brous- sais in asserting the "leading agency of the stomach in the establishment and extension of the morbid actions called febrile." In 1796 Miller had moved to New York City, and in 1797 joined Samuel L. Mitchill (q.v.) and Elihu H. Smith in conducting the Medical Repository, the first number of which appeared in August, 1797. In 1803 Miller was appointed resident phy- sician for the port of New York, the duties of whom were "to watch and give notice of the progress of malignant epidemics, and promptly to adopt such measures as exigencies may require." "A charter having been obtained for asso- ciating the physicians of New York into a college," he %vas elected professor of the prac- tice of physic in 1807; in 1809 he was ap- pointed one of the physicians to the New York Hospital, and soon after clinical lecturer there. He was among the earliest to note the advantages of clinical instruction and the im- portance of the study of pathological anatomy for the medical student; he also advocated a prolonged term of study. He introduced the plan of treating "cholera or bilious diarrhoea of infants" with minute doses of calomel. He considered the "enlargement and induration of the spleen to be almost invariably the con- sequence of intermittent fevers." In 1812 he had an attack of "pulmonary dis- ease," and died on March 17. At the desire of Benjamin Rush, between whom and Miller a strong friendship existed, his medical works were collected by his brother, Samuel Miller, D. D., and published (1814) in 392 pages after his death. The volume is reviewed at length in the North American Medical and Surgical Jour- nal, 1828, V, 127-148, and the review is the chief source of information for this sketch. Howard A. Kelly. Miller, Henry (1800-1874) In the latter part of the eighteenth century there emigrated from Maryland to Kentucky the parents of Henry Miller. Of German descent, and therefore of that sturdy char- acter which has contributed so much to the best citizenship of this country, they became one of the three original families of the town of Glasgow, in the county of Barren, where on November 1, 1800, Henry Miller was born. His early years were spent in his native vil- lage, his companions and associates the descendants of these bold pioneers. Such asso- ciations, together with the strong German blood in his veins, gave him the rugged physique and traits of character for which he was noted. He attended the schools of his native village where he acquired a good knowledge of English and subsequently of Greek, Latin and mathematics. He began to study medicine when seventeen under Drs. Bainbridge and Gist, two Glasgow practition- ers. In those days there were few drug stores, and pharmacy and dentistry were