Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/967

NAME PURPLE 945 PUTNAM to study and looked far beyond his last to being, some day, a physician. This boy was Samuel Smith Purple, of Eng- lish stock, who came over in 1674. He was born to Lyman Smith and Minerva Sheffield Purple on June 24, 1822, at Lebanon, Madison County, N. Y. The father was a tanner and shoemaker, and young Samuel went to a rural school, and when his father died in 1839 he had to take over the business, pay the many debts and support the family. But he had two relatives who encouraged him to study : his grandfather. Dr. Sheffield and Dr. W. D. Purple, and when twenty-three, he had so far succeeded in business that he took a course of medical lectures at Geneva Medical Col- lege, secured free for him. There were some big teachers there and Purple returned home eager to earn money for more teaching. The gift of a free course at the University of New York from his uncle and the advantage of being under Valentine Mott (q. v.) enabled him to return home with an M. D. in 1844. Whether to be a country or a city practi- tioneer? He had a poor wardrobe and twenty-five dollars in cash. To the city he went, working on a canal boat part of the way to save fare, and entering the service of the old Marion Street Maternity, New York, until he had an appointment in the New York Dispensary. Patients came slowly, but they did come eventually, also an editor- ship — of the New York Journal of Medicine, which he held capably for ten years, his own papers in it establishing his reputation. He was president of the New York Academy of Medicine in 187S and re-elected in 1877. He worked hard for its interests and used all his influence and most of his money to secure for it a Hbrary and a home. One man lent a willing ear; this was Dr. John B. Beck (q .v), who, himself possessing a valuable library, urged Purple to avail himself of his editorship to collect old medical books, pamphlet*, and files of medical journals. Frequent dealing with old bookstores led him to begin a col- lection of books on American historical lit- erature and he helped Dr. Henry Stiles (q. v.) in editing The Neiv York Genealogical and Biographical Record. One of his "finds" he rescued from going to a paper mill. It was Dr. Samuel Bard's (q. v.) "Inquiry into the Nature and Cure of Angina SufTocativa or Sore Throat Distemper," 1771, a very accurate ac- count of what is now known as diphtheria. To the Academy library he gave that great treasure, the serial medical literature of this country, for more than one-fourth of a cen- tury ransacking every bookstore and corre- sponding with every likely person, 5,000 med- ical journals being his ultimate gift and a $75,000 donation won by his influence from Dr. Alexander Hosack (q. v.). There was so much he meant to do besides : to write up biographies for his splendid col- lection of medical portraits and increase the number of valuable works in the Academy library, but in 1899 he had hemorrhage into the posterior chamber of the eye which per- manently destroyed its sight, and he knew that he had advanced Bright's disease. He had never married, but his roof-tree sheltered his old mother, brother and brother's widow and children. He met death in the same calm, dignified way with which he had coped with early poverty, and the shoemaker's son is commemorated on a tablet in the library of the New York Academy of Medicine as its founder and president. Among his few published papers are found; "Corpeus Luteum ; Its Value as Evidence of Conception and Its Relation to Legal Medi- cine ;" "Observations on Wounds of the Heart and Their Relations to Forensic Medicine;" forty-two cases. He held, among other offices, honorary mem- bership in the Medical Society of the State of New York; corresponding member of the Epidemiological Society, London, and physi- cian to the New York Lying-in Asylum. There is an oil painting of Dr. Purple in the library of the Academy of Medicine, New York. T-. Tir Davina Wateeson. Med. Lib. and Hist. Jour., April, 1903. S. Smith. Putnam, Charles Pickering (1844-1914) Charles Pickering Putnam, well known for many years as a practitioner of medicine, in Boston, Massachusetts, but perhaps more widely known, yet not more warmly remem- bered, as a devoted worker on the broadest possible lines of social service, was born in Boston, September IS, 1844, and died, April 23, 1914, in his seventieth year. His parents were Charles Gideon Putnam and Elizabeth Cabot Jackson Putnam. His paternal grandfather was Samuel Putnam of Salem, a well-known and honored member of the Massachusetts Bar and for a long time a Justice of the Supreme Court of Massa- chusetts. His maternal grandfather was Dr. James Jackson (q. v.), of Boston. Dr. Putnam graduated from Harvard Col- lege in 1865, and from the Harvard Medical School in 1869. After this he studied abroad, giving special attention to the diseases of