Page:Biographical Memoir of John C Otto MD.djvu/12

 and always in the full assurance of his earnest and faithful cooperation, and of the utmost delicacy and propriety of conduct towards those who were younger and less experienced. However superior he might be to the physician in attendance, either in point of age, knowledge, or experience, he always took special care not to exhibit, to the patient or his friends, the least evidence of a want of confidence or respect towards his colleague, or, by word or deed, to arrogate any superior merit to himself. The same modest and unpretending demeanor, which marked him in other situations, attended him on those occasions where a knowledge of his superiority was frequently the motive for seeking his aid.

As a writer, Dr. Otto is but little known. Like many of the most experienced physicians of the United States, whose opportunities for observation, combined with a sound judgment, would give weight and importance to their statements, he has contributed but slightly to the medical literature of the country. This is, perhaps, mainly owing to diffidence of his own abilities, and partly to a want of that facility in writing which is often acquired by practice, and in which men of busy occupation are not prone to engage, without a strong motive or a natural inclination.

The few communications from his pen, however, which have appeared in the Medical Periodicals, are possessed of great practical value, and cause us to regret that they were not more frequent.

In 1803, he published a short paper in the New York Medical Repository, entitled "An account of an Hemorrhagic Disposition existing in certain families;" containing some singular facts in regard to the occurrence of the most alarming, and even fatal, hemorrhagies, after slight wounds or scratches, in the male descendants of a woman named Smith, in the vicinity of Plymouth,