Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/853

NAME MUMFORD 831 MUMFORD the Provincial and City Hospital, Halifax, and a brief period of practice at Shelburne, Nova Scotia, he went to Edinburgh, where he subsequently took his L. R. C. S. and L. R. C. P. Returning from Edinburgh to Truro in 1877, he soon acquired an ever-increasing practice. He had one of the best libraries in the Province, and kept well abreast with medical progress. No notice of his career would be at all complete without reference to his work for the Medical Society of Nova Scotia, for under his skilful guidance its active membership more than quadrupled. He also found time to contribute frequently to the medical press, and some of his communi- cations were of unusual interest. The follow- ing are the titles of some of his papers pub- lished in the Maritime Medical News, Hali- fax: "Cocaine, Its Use and Abuses ;" "Fracture of Patella;" "Notes on Midwifery Cases;" "Therapeutics," an address before the Cana- dian Medical Association; "Thrombosis ■>{ the Vulva;" "Tuberculosis of the Arm Cured by an Attack of Erysipelas;" "Infectious Pneumonia;" "Typhoid Fever;" "Presidential Addresses" before the Colchester Medical So- ciety, and before the Maritime Medical Asso- ciation. He married Catherine, daughter of Walter Lawson, C. E., of Scotland, and had one son, who graduated M. D. and C. M. in 1906. He was a member of the Medical Society of Nova Scotia; a member of the Maritime Medical Association, and its president in 1901 ; vice-president of the Canadian Medical Association in 1890; a fellow of the New York State Medical Society. Donald A. Campbell. Mumford, James Gregory (1863-1914) James Gregory Mumford, of Boston, emi- nent as a surgeon and still more eminent as a writer, both upon pure surgery and upon a number of topics related to medicine, in a lighter vein, was the son of George Elihu and Julia Emma Hills Mumford. He was born in Rochester, New York, in 1863 and died at Clifton, New York, October 18, 1914. The Mumfords were of North of England stock, the first of the name settling at New- port, Rhode Island, in 165S. The family subse- quently moved to New London and Dr. Mum- ford's grandfather began the practice of law at Cayuga. New York, in 1795. In all these years the Mumfords were citizens of the best type. always prominent in local affairs and adding to their prestige by marrying into noteworthy New England families such as the Winthrops, Dudleys and Saltonstalls, to whose influence may be attributed many of the qualities of the subject of this sketch. Dr. Mumford prepared for college at St. Paul's School, Concord, an institution to which he was always intensely loyal and of which he eventually became a trustee. He entered Harvard as a member of the class of 1885 and graduated from the Harvard Medical School in 1890, serving as House Of- ficer at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1890-91. He had further admirable sur- gical training from acting as assistant for some years to the late Dr. M. H. Richardson (q. v.). At college Dr. Mumford enjoyed life thoroughly and was by no means a "dig," yet he gave abundant evidences of that bookish- ness that was so marked a characteristic of his later life. After the usual chances to show what was in him, ofifered by sundry out- patient appointments and as surgeon at the Carney Hospital, he was taken into the staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital and in due course of time rose to the position of visiting surgeon. His surgical work, while not of a pyrotechnic nature, was good work, tempered by remarkably sound judgment. In 1892 he was very happily married to Helen Sherwood Ford of Troy, New York. There were no children. As do most of the staff of the Massachu- setts General Hospital, Dr. Mumford taught a certain number of the students of the Harvard Medical School. He enjoyed teach- ing and apparently his students enjoyed being taught by him. While he was not one of the great teachers it is very probable that had he risen above the rank of "Instructor" his success in this field would have been much greater, for he had the rare faculty of say- ing things in the waj' to make them remem- bered. Thus far the record of Dr. Mumford's life is that of any successful surgeon. He had, however, other claims to our regard. The bookishness already hinted at felt the need of constant expression, and the dozen books and sixty or more medical articles he pub- lished in the course of twenty years attest sufficiently to the alertness of his mind ; the wide range of his taste is shown by the titles of his best known books: "Mumford Me- moirs," "A Narrative of Medicine in Amer- ica," "Clinical Talks on Minor Surgery," "Surgical Aspects of Digestive Disorders," "Surgical Memoirs and Other Essays," "Prac-