Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/937

PILCHER for one or two Italian medical journals, selected a teacher, and attacked the language with his customary vigor. Happening to run across an advertisement of a book, entitled something like "Trattato della Pelle et cetera," he gave his bookdealer an order for it. The bookdealer, in a polite note, informed him that this was an expensive work, published by the Italian Government, and that it would take several weeks to import it. Piffard replied in language more vigorous than polite— "Expense be damned"; when he wanted a book he expected his dealer not to talk about it but to get it. In about two months, during which time his knowledge of Italian had rapidly increased, the book arrived and with it a bill for about $60. To his surprise and dismay he discovered at first glance that it was not a strictly dermatological work, but an elegantly bound and elaborate treatise on the tanning of hides.

Dr. Piffard died of pneumonia in New York, June 8, 1910.



Pilcher, James Evelyn (1857–1911)

James Evelyn Pilcher, military surgeon, editor, author, teacher, was born in Adrian, Michigan, on March 18, 1857; son of Elijah Holmes and Phebe Maria Fiske Pilcher. He graduated A. B. from the University of Michigan in 1879, and at once took up the further study of medicine under the direction of his brother, Dr. Lewis Stephen Pilcher, in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated M. D. from the Long Island College Hospital in 1880. He received the degrees of A. M. and Ph. D. from the Illinois Wesleyan University in 1887 and L. H. D. from Allegheny College in 1902. He was commissioned as an assistant surgeon in the United States Army in 1883 and became major and brigade surgeon, U. S. V., in 1898. He was retired on account of ill health in 1900. He died April 8, 1911, at Savannah, Georgia, from the effects of a diabetic carbuncle of the face. For a number of years he had been the subject of gradual failure of vision, consequent upon the retinal hemorrhages of chronic diabetes, and for the two years previous to his death had been nearly totally blind.

From boyhood Dr. Pilcher was interested in typographical and journalistic work, and throughout his life continued to display his interest in that branch of effort, and to give to his colleagues the benefit of his unusual abilities in that direction.

In the very beginning of his medical career he was an important factor in the establishment of the Annals of Anatomy and Surgery, the publication of which ceased upon his appointment as a military officer in the Army. It was due to the work of that journal that in the following year the Annals of Surgery was instituted under the direction of his brother, Dr. Lewis S. Pilcher. As secretary of the Military Surgeons of the United States he organized and carried on, as a monthly publication from 1901 to 1906, the Journal of the Association of Military Surgeons, which in 1907 became the Military Surgeon, of which he continued to be editor until he was compelled by his increasing blindness to give up all such work in 1909.

During his early army career he was transferred from army post to army post in the usual manner. In 1890 he was on duty at Fort Ringgold, Texas, near the Mexican Border. During his term of service there an epidemic of Dengue fever, of a severe type, spread throughout all that region, and he was the only physician within a radius of 100 miles. The entire responsibility and labor of giving medical advice throughout this whole region, both to the members of his garrison and the civilians, fell upon him. To this work he devoted himself most assiduously. Near the close of the epidemic he himself suffered from the disease, and those that were with him at the time relate with admiration the manner in which, while sick, he had himself carried to his carriage and made long journeys to give advice to those who were dependent upon him, returning in a state of utter exhaustion to his own quarters. From the effects of this labor and disease-attack he never fully recovered. From that time began the train of digestive disturbances which culminated in the frankly expressed diabetes which ultimately cut short his career. He summoned all his energies together, however, for the performance of the duties attending his work as a brigade surgeon of volunteers during the Spanish American War, during which in connection with the seventh Army Corps he was in command of the army medical supply depot at Savannah, Georgia. He threw himself with his customary ardor into the duties of his position, notwithstanding his poor health, but when the special demand for