Page:Memoir of Isaac Parrish, M.D. - Samuel Jackson.djvu/9

 and natural philosophy. In Mr. Gummere, he had a shining example of all that is good and amiable in the human character, as also a teacher of profound wisdom and learning. The present writer had the honor of his acquaintance, and he now finds pleasure in quoting from his excellent biographer, Wm. J. Allinson—"That he had pupils from nearly all the States of this Union, as well as from some of the West India Islands, who have gone forth into the world enriched and ennobled by his wisdom and his counsels. Many of them had been for numerous successive years far from their kindred, regarding him as a kind and faithful parent; and such was the filial confidence he uniformly inspired, that it may well be doubted, whether there were any among all his disciples in whom love for him did not amount to a principle."

The little Parrish was here a distinguished favorite among his schoolmates, being naturally cheerful and happy, ever ready to indulge in the innocent sports of childhood. He excelled in the useful art of swimming, which was so much practised and so highly commended by Franklin; and, like his father, he delighted in skating, thus wisely mixing, as the philosophic poet says, the pleasing with the useful.

He began the study of medicine with his father in 1829, where most of us know that he must have enjoyed many and peculiar advantages over students in nearly all other situations. He graduated in the University of Pennsylvania in 1832, just then entering on his twenty-second year. His thesis was written on spinal irritation, and it may be fairly considered as a very respectable performance for a man so young, giving thus early a good specimen of that clearness of thought, and of that perspicuous, precise, didactic style, which distinguished the author in riper years. He had spent the last year of his pupilage in the Blockley Hospital, and his experience therein appears to have suggested to him the subject of his thesis. Having been written from nature, it proved to be of so much importance that it was honored with a place in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences for August, 1832.

[Since this memoir was read to the College in January, Joseph Carson, Professor of Mat. Med. in the University of Pennsylvania, has sent me the following:—

"Dr. Parrish was a student with me in the Philadelphia