Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/920

NAME PEASLEE 898 PEASLEE lett, D.D., LL.D., who later became president of Dartmouth College, and with whom he shared equal honors at the head of his class. During the year subsequent to his graduation he taught school at Lebanon, New Hampshire, after which he was called to Dartmouth Col- lege to become a tutor, a position he filled from 1837 to 1839. During these two years he studied medicine and attended lectures in the Dartmouth Medical School and became a private pupil of Dr. Noah Worcester and also of Dr. Dixi Crosby (q. v.) of Hanover, New Hampshire, and later of Dr. Jonathan Knight (q.v.) of New Haven, Conn. In 1S39 he en- tered the Yale Medical School and received his degree of M. D. in the class of 1840. After his graduation he went abroad to pursue his medi- cal studies, and in the following year was sum- moned home to give the course on anatomy and physiology at the Dartmouth Medical School to succeed Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes (q. v.). In 1841 he married Martha, the oldest daughter of Stephen Kendrick of Lebanon, New Hampshire, and settled in Hanover to teach and practise medicine. He had two children, a daughter and a son, Edward H., the latter of whom graduated at Yale Uni- versity in 1872 and in medicine at the Col- lege of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, in 1875. He was studying abroad at the time of his father's death in 1878. He practised medicine for a few years and retired to assume the duties and responsibilities of mercantile life, for which he seemed to be peculiarly fitted and in which he made for himself a dis- tinguished name in the financial world. Edmund Randolph Peaslee began his first course of lectures at Dartmouth College in 1841 and continued as a lecturer in the medical school for about thirty-seven years and up to the time of his death, which occurred in New York, January 21, 1878. In 1843 he received the appointment of lecturer and later of pro- fessor of anatomy and surgery in Bowdoin College, Maine. This professorship he held about fifteen years. In 1851 he was appointed professor of anatomy and physiology in the New York Medical College, and in 1853 he was transferred to the chair of physiology and gen- eral pathology, and subsequently he was again transferred to the chair of obstetrics and dis- eases of women ; the last professorship he held until 1860, when this medical school was closed. In 1858 he moved to New York City and resigned his professorship in the medical school in Maine. From this period on he gave up his entire time to the practice of medicine and surgery, which became very extensive and lucrative. He still retained his professorship at Dartmouth until his death, giving his lec- tures, often two each day, during the summer and autumnal months. In 1859 Dartmouth College conferred upon him the degree of doc- tor of laws, and in 1869 he was elected a trustee of the college. In 1872 he delivered a course of lectures on diseases of women at Hanover, and also about this time a course of lectures at the Albany Medical College, and in 1874 he was appointed professor of gyne- cology in the Bellevue Hospital Medical Col- lege, New York City, a position which he held at the time of his death in 1878. From 1858 to 1865 he was attending physician for dis- eases of women in the Demilt Dispensary in New York City, arid during the Civil War he was surgeon to the New England Hospital, and also to the New York State Hospital. In 1872 he was appointed attending surgeon to the Woman's Hospital in the State of New York. Edmund Randolph Peaslee was noted as a teacher, a writer, an operator, and a scholar. He excelled in each of these fields and has left an impression upon the medical profes- sion as a man of strong character, of erudite learning and of great surgical skill. As a teacher he was clear, concise, practical and earnest. He always commanded the greatest respect from medical students. He was an instructor in all the departments of medicine with the exception of chemistry. In this re- spect his career as a teacher is similar to that of his predecessor, Nathan Smith, the founder of the Dartmouth Medical School. His record for regular attendance upon his lectures was most phenomenal, since he seldom if ever missed a lecture in his whole life. He believed that a teacher should never absent himself from his class except in. cases of illness in his family, and never for a lucrative fee. His standard of duty was a feature in his character. There are few medical men in this country who have had such a wonderful rec- ord for punctuality and regularity in the dis- charge of duty in its relation to teaching and lecturing to medical classes. To have lectured for about thirty-seven years without interrup- tion is a record which of itself demonstrates the highest ideal of a teacher. As a writer he was known throughout the civilized world. In 1848 he published "A Synopsis of the Course of Lectures on General and Human Physiology." In 1849 he con- tributed a paper on Rupture of the Bladder. In 1851 he published a paper entitled "Necro- scopic Tables for Post-mortem Examina- tions," a contribution of great value in those