Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/90

BARTON writer has repeatedly searched for his grave, but can discover nothing to designate it."

He corrected the mistake of Dudley, Mather, Holmes and other colonial writers regarding the year of arrival of Gov. Winthrop at Charlestown with fifteen hundred persons, which had been given as 1630, to the true date, 1629, as shown by the original town records of Charlestown.

Dr. Bartlett's character was remarkable for industry, activity and intelligence. He never declined any duty which was assigned him, and always executed it speedily and thoroughly.

Perhaps no individual in this vicinity delivered so great a number of public orations on medical, political and literary topics. He possessed a physical constitution which promised a long as well as an active life, but he was stricken with apoplexy on March 3, 1820, and died two days later.



Barton, Amy Stokes (1841–1900)

Amy Stokes Barton, a pioneer woman ophthalmologist, was born in Camden County, New Jersey, October 1, 1841, daughter of Joseph Barton, a farmer, and Rachel B. Evans.

She graduated at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1874, and after serving a term in the hospital connected with the college, began practising in Philadelphia. She became interested in the eye, and after some difficulties, because of her sex, she was admitted to work in the Wills Eye Hospital, and assisted George Strawbridge for thirteen years, until his resignation in 1890.

She was lecturer on ophthalmology, 1885– 1890, and clinical professor of ophthalmology, 1891–1897, in the Woman's Medical College.

Dr. Barton collected the money for and founded a dispensary in connection with the Woman's College in Philadelphia, feeling that too much stress was being put upon the teaching of obstetrics and gynecology to women, and wishing a place where clinics in all branches would be held; it was opened in 1895 at 1212 South Third Street, and was later at 333 and 335 Washington Avenue, being called the Amy S. Barton Dispensary.

She was an Orthodox Friend. She died in Philadelphia, March 19, 1900, from apoplexy.



Barton, Benjamin Smith (1766–1815)

One of America's foremost botanists, Benjamin Barton, the son of the Rev. Thomas Barton, an Episcopal minister, was born on February 10, 1766, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. According to E. F. Smith, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Smith Barton was termed the father of American materia medica—an honor which no one has hesitated to accord him. The boy was only eight when his mother died and but fourteen when left an orphan. He went to live with an elder brother and was a student at the College of Philadelphia, beginning his study of Medicine under Dr. William Shippen, Jr. While still a pupil of his he journeyed with his maternal uncle, David Rittenhouse and the other commissioners appointed to survey the western boundary of Pennsylvania, and thus had his attention directed to the study of the Indian tribes, a subject which possessed the greatest interest for him throughout life. In 1786 he went abroad to pursue his medical and scientific studies, first in Edinburgh and London, afterwards going to Gottingen, where he received the M. D. degree in 1789.

His reasons for not taking the degree of M. D. to which he was entitled by his studies at Edinburgh University were set forth in a letter to his brother, written in London in 1789, in which he states that he preferred getting his diploma from Gottingen because he was dissatisfied with the discourteous manner in which two of the professors at the University of Edinburgh had treated him. He, however, when in Edinburgh received several honors, the membership of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and also from that society an honorary premium for his dissertation on "Hyoscyamus Niger." This was the Harveian prize, consisting of a superb quarto edition of the works of William Harvey.

While living in London he published a tract entitled "Observations on Some Parts of Natural History," to which is prefixed an account of some considerable vestiges of an ancient date which have been discovered in different parts of North America. This little book he afterwards characterized as "premature work" and regretted many deficiencies in it. Both Hunter and Lettsom were good friends to him and appear to have appreciated his scientific merits.

Dr. Barton returned to Philadelphia and practised medicine in 1789, being in the same year appointed professor of natural history and botany in the College of Philadelphia, a position held after the union of the college