Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/832

NAME MONROE 810 MONROE Monroe, HolHs (1789-1861) Of Dr. Philip Monroe, father of HoIIis, I know only that he practised in Surry, New Hampshire, not far from Keene. He must have been a man of some means for his son Hollis, born in 1789, graduated at the Yale Medical School in 1819, probably attracted by the fame of Dr. Nathan Smith (q. v.), one of the great minds of American medicine. Hollis went early to Belfast, Maine, as assistant to a physician who during an epidemic of small-pox had more than he could properly attend to. Arriving there and doing his share as as- sistant Dr. Hollis Monroe found sufficient patronage to hold him firmly to Belfast the rest of his life. He was fond of botany, first as a study allied to medicine and later on as something interesting for children. From this point of view he lectured often on botany to the schools of Belfast. He was also much inclined to natural history and spoke publicly thereon at the local lyceums, then the center of New England cultivation. He was very fond of talking, but he would not tell stories. You had to talk of something profitable or it had no interest for him. He was rather of an ascetic cast of mind. He was careless about money in the extreme. Paying his own bills he never seemed to have money beyond. At times he would carry his love of silver to the extreme, bearing about with him pocketsful of the heavy stuf?. "You could see it," he said. Once he went to the bank to borrow money and they asked him why he did not spend what he had on deposit in the bank. He replied that he was actually not aware that he had any there. He was a member of the Maine Medical Society and of its successor, the Maine Medical Association, but did not often appear at their public meet- ing. He rarely wrote medical papers. He devoted himself to his practice and his pa- tients, riding thousands of miles to care for them in all sorts of weather. He and his brother lived alongside of one another very amicably for several years. In fact it was by Philip's advice that the younger brother settled in Belfast. As for Dr. Hollis he worked hard and late, grew old, caught "lung fever" after exposure amidst his outly- ing cases, and died from congestion of the lungs, June 21, 1861, aged sixty-one, leaving behind the remembrance of a worthy life in medicine, and a good image of his medical father in New Hampshire. James A. Spalding. j Monroe, Nahum Parker (1808-1873) If Dr. Hollis Monroe (q. v.) were reserved and avoiding publicity, his brother Nahum Parker was the reverse; for he shone in the light of publicity and politics all his life. Born January 4, 1808, nineteen years after his brother, the youngest and well beloved child of Philip Monroe, Nahum Parker studied medicine in Belfast with his brother, and grad- uated at the Albany Medical School in 1839. Moving to Belfast, Maine, he was soon helped into abundance of medical work by his brother who had been twenty years in the same field and knew everybody. While Hollis was purely a medical practitioner, Nahum Parker devot- ed himself as much as he could to surgery, and soon became well known in that branch of medicine. He is said to have been able to do all the operations of the day. In 1848 he married Miss Ann Sarah Johnson, of Bel- fast, and had two children. From that time on to the breaking out of the Civil War he was held in high esteem by a large clientele and by his associates in medi- cine. With the oncoming of the war he was made surgeon of the Twentieth Maine Regi- ment, and was present at many battles, in- cluding Fredericksburg. After a year of active service, during which he had a serious attack of erysipelas, he was compelled to re- sign. On returning home he was called to the capital where for a long time he was of the greatest service medically to the troops. He was made surgeon-general of Maine, and among other public offices was a representa- tive in the Legislature, doing good service for medicine there. He was a very distinguished member of the Maine Medical Association. Although naturally of great strength and physical endowment, Nahum Parker Monroe was too careless of his health. He gradually failed, moved to Baltimore in 1871, slowly developed scirrhus of the stomach and general tuberculosis and died April 23, 1873, aged only sixty-three and at a time when he seemed to have ten years more of active life before him. It is unusual for two brothers living side by side to do so well together, and to become both men of so much mark, even if we can- not positively call either of them men of great ability. The medical skill, however, of Dr. Hollis, and the surgery of Dr. Nahum Parker, entitled the Monroes to e.xcellent rank in the history of medicine in Maine. I like to think of these two excellent phy- sicians practising in Belfast, Maine, as rela-