Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/229

 those days of high moral standards he was conspicuous for indefatigable industry, piety, and purity of life. Despite the loss of an eye, he was a profound reader and student. After graduating, he had taken pains to qualify himself under the best medical instructors he could find in America—Dr. Benjamin Gale, the smallpox expert, at Killingworth, Conn., and Drs. Morgan and Shippen at Philadelphia. He then set up in business as the first resident physician at his native village of Brookline, where his name is perpetuated in Aspinwall Avenue. His work was remarkable for promptness, fearlessness, and sound discrimination. In smallpox he was generally looked upon as the successor of the famous Boylston, and he is said to have inoculated more persons than any other doctor in the country. With children he was extraordinarily sympathetic and successful; one of his whilom patients used to recall, with delight undiminished by the lapse of three quarters of a century, how the doctor had persuaded him to be inoculated by the irresistible bribe of a puppy.

He remained at his post in the hospital throughout the original emergency of the Siege of Boston, and then returned to private practice. This became so extensive that he frequently rode forty miles in a day’s rounds. His probity and sagacity caused him to be repeatedly elected to the Legislature of Massachusetts; he was