Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/821

NAME MINOT 799 MINOT of birth. The remaining two per cent is largely exhausted in infancy. Therefore he concluded that "senescence is at its maximum in the very young stages and the rate of senescence diminishes with age." He protests against "the medical conception that age is a kind of disease," chronic and incurable, of any such nature as intestinal intoxication or arteriosclerosis. On the contrary, he finds that it has a cytological cause, equally operative in the lower animals which have neither in- testines nor arteries, and in man ; and he ascribes senescence to the increase and dif- ferentiation of cytoplasm as compared with nucleoplasm. In 1901 he proposed "the new term cytomorphosis to designate comprehensively all the structural alterations which cells, or successive generations of cells, may undergo, from the earliest undifferentiated stage to their final destruction." His latest works on this subject, aptly characterized as "thoughtful and suggestive," refer to cytomorphosis as a most promising field for further study, and at the time of his death, plans had been made for careful investigations to test the validity of his cytomorphic hypothesis concerning age. Altogether Professor Minot published no less than one hundred and eighty scientific notes and papers, including a considerable number of presidential and other addresses. A complete bibliography will be found in The Anatomical Record, 1916, vol. x, 156-163. Ap- preciating the value of scientific societies in promoting research, he was deeply interested in the organization and development of those in America, and at different times was chosen president of the Naturalists, the Anatomists, and the American Association for the Ad- vancement of Science. He was a member of many others, including the National and Amer- ican Academies and learned societies in Belgium, England, France, Germany and Italy. Honorary degrees were conferred upon him by Yale in 1899, Oxford (1902), tJie University of Toronto (1904) and St. Andrew's Uni- versity in Scotland (1911). Every anatomist in America will find his work facilitated by what Minot has done in inventing microtomes, developing the means of publication, and encouraging research through societies and funds. It was altogether fitting that as exchange professor to Berlin and Jena in 1912-13, he should appear as the official representative of anatomy in America, presenting the results of American investiga- tions made during the previous decade. After returning from Europe, failing health prevented the energetic activities of earlier years, but we find the same interests as in boyhood. As president of the Boston Society of Natural History, where his first paper had been presented, he continued to direct the transformation of the old collections into those which are creditable to the city, showing how much may be accomplished with inadequate endowment, if wisely managed. He took great delight in this society and in all that it represents. He was interested also in horti- culture, and in his gardens in Milton, Mass., he cultivated rare varieties of peonies with unusual success. These were all kindred in- terests — ^the natural diversions of a genuine biologist. His last days were spent in the seclusion of his suburban home, and he died at Milton on the nineteenth of November, 1914. Frederic T. Lewis. Harv. Grads.' Mag., John Lewis Bremer, 1915, vol. xxiii, 375-378. Science, Henry H. Donaldson; 1914, vol. xl, 926- 927. Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., 1915, vol. xxxv, 79-93. Science, Charles W. Eliot, 1915, vol. xli, 701-704. Anatomical Record, Frederic T. Lewis, 1916, vol. X, 133-164. Host. Med. & Surg. Journ., W. T. Porter, 1915, vol. clxxii, 467-470. Proc. Amer. Soc. Zoologists, Science, 1916. Minot, Francis (1821-1899) Francis Minot, Herscy Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic in the Harvard Medical School, was born in Boston, April 12, 1821, and died in Readville, Massachusetts, May 11, 1899. He was the son of William Minot, and was educated at the Boston Latin School and at Harvard College, where he graduated in 1841 ; from the Harvard Medical School in 1844, and after graduation studied medicine abroad. In 1860 Trinity College, Hartford, gave him her A. M. From 1859 to 1886 he was phy- sician to the Massachusetts General Hospital and from 1886 to the time of his death one of the consulting physicians there. He was instructor in the theory and practice of medi- cine in the Harvard Medical School from 1869 to 1871, assistant professor from 1871 to 1874, and Hersey Professor from 1874 to 1891. He was the first clinical lecturer on the diseases of women and children to be mentioned in the announcements of the Harvard Medical School: this was in 1871. In 1878 he gave the annual discourse before the Massachusetts Medical Society, choosing for his subject, "Hints on Ethics and Hygiene."