Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/946

PORTER He died after a lingering illness at Canandaigua, New York, November 21, 1903.



Porter, James Burnham (1806–1879)

"Dr. Jim," as he was familiarly known over a wide territory, was one of a medical family famous in Vermont for a century, and greatly missed when he died in 1879.

His father, James Porter, was one of four brothers, all medical men, and was long a Vermont practitioner. James B. Porter was educated at Middlebury College, and had his medical education at Castleton and Woodstock, graduating at the latter institution. He was long a member of the Vermont Medical Society.

He was one of the best types of the country doctor, and widely sought in consultation.

He was called to attend the man injured in the construction of the Rutland Railroad, who became the famous "crow bar case." This case was reported by (q. v.) in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, in November, 1848, and had a wide circulation in medical literature. The patient, who had an iron bar driven through his skull, lived many years, and his skull is still preserved in the Warren Museum at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Porter married, in 1834, Harriet Griggs, of Brookline, Massachusetts.

Of his four children, one, (q. v.) (1840–1909), became a surgeon and was professor of clinical surgery at Harvard from 1887 to 1903.



Porter, John Addison (1822–1866)

John Addison Porter, physician and chemist, was born in Catskill, New York, March 15, 1822. He graduated at Yale University in 1842, became professor of rhetoric and ancient and modern languages at Delaware College, and in 1847 went abroad to study agricultural chemistry under Liebig at the University of Giessen. Returning to the United States he was assistant at the Lawrence Scientific School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in 1850 accepted the chair of applied chemistry at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island; in 1852 he succeeded John P. Norton as professor of analytical and agricultural chemistry at Yale University, serving until 1856 when he became professor of organic chemistry, resigning in 1864 because of ill health. His M. D. was received at Yale University in 1855.

In 1854 Dr. Porter married a daughter of Joseph Earl Sheffield who established and endowed the Sheffield Scientific School. "The movement toward the establishment of agriculture on a scientific basis received its greatest impulse" from the labors of Porter. He wrote: "Principles of Chemistry" (1856); "First Book of Chemistry and Allied Sciences" (1857). In 1868 he published "Selections from the Kalevala," translated by himself. During the Civil War he conducted the Connecticut War Record giving news of Connecticut regiments.

He was a founder of the "Scroll and Key Society," which after his death established in his memory a prize of two hundred and fifty dollars to be given to the student of Yale University writing the best essay on a given subject.

Dr. Porter died at New Haven, August 25, 1866.



Porter, Joshua (1730–1825)

Joshua Porter, the younger son of Nathaniel Porter and Eunice Horton, was born in Lebanon, Connecticut, June 26, 1730. At the age of fourteen, as his father had died and his mother had married again, he chose his great uncle, Peter Buell of Coventry, Connecticut, as his guardian and spent the next five years on a farm in that town. Then he was prepared for Yale College, in a year, by his brother and graduated in 1754. After graduation he taught for a year in Newbern, North Carolina, then returned to Connecticut to study medicine with Dr. Josiah Rose of Coventry. He began the practice of medicine in Lebanon, but in November, 1757, moved to Salisbury, where there was a greater opening, and there spent the remainder of his life. He was one of the incorporators of the Connecticut Medical Society and became very eminent in his profession. He was also prominent in civil affairs, serving as a selectman of Salisbury for about twenty years and as a representative from that town to the general assembly for over fifty sessions between 1764 and 1801. In 1766 he was appointed justice of the peace and from 1778 to 1791 as justice of the Quorum, sat on the bench of the County Court of which he was chief judge for the succeeding seventeen years. He was likewise judge of probate for the Sharon district from 1774–1812. In 1774 he was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the 17th regiment of militia and commanded one of the State regiments in the campaign against General Burgoyne in