Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/261

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OWEN 233

died on the twenty-second of January, 1875, in the eighty-eighth year of his age.

R. M. S.

Dr. J. M. Toner"a Lives of Two Thousand Five Hundred Physicians, unpublished.

Owen, David Dale (1807-1860).

David Dale Owen had for father the well known philanthropist celebrated for his co-operative experiments first in Scot- land and later at New Harmony, Indiana. His mother was the eldest daughter of David Dale, merchant and Lord Provost of Glasgow. David was born at Brax- field House, New Lanark, Scotland, June 24, 1807.

His early training included a course of architectural drawing and carpentering and a classical course at the Lanark Grammar School. This was followed by three years at the celebrated institution of Emmanuel Fellenberg, near Berne, Switzerland. David and his brother, Richard, selected chemistry in addition to the usual course and on returning to Scotland in September, 1826, studied under Dr. Andrew Ure at the Ander- soniam Institute in Glasgow. Soon after they left Liverpool in a sailing vessel, passed through the West India Islands and reached New Orleans about the last of December and arrived at New Harmony to join their father early in January, 1828. Here they began to practise with the chemical apparatus they had brought from Glasgow, and the two brothers worked together until 1831, when David returned to Europe to further qualify himself in chemistry and geology and worked under Dr. Turner at the London University. On returning the following year he fell a victim to Asiatic cholera and on recovery began to study medicine at Ohio Medical College in Cincinnati, with a view to improve himself in anatomy and physiology, as essential aids in the study of paleontology.

During the summers of these years Alexander Maclure, brother of the noted geologist, William Maclure, engaged Dr. Owen to arrange the extensive collection of minerals and fossils made by his


OWEN


brother and to distribute specific suites to colleges, the residue to form the nucleus of a museum. To this nucleus Owen added largely by purchase, obtain- ing from Dr. Krantz, of Germany, an ichthyosaurus, larger than the one in the British Museum, from the lias of Wur- temberg. He also obtained a nearly complete megalonyx which he exhumed near Henderson, Kentucky. The entire collection was nearly all consumed by fire after it had been purchased by the Indiana University.

After graduating M. D. in the spring of 1836 he went on a state geological survey with Dr. Gerard Troost, a journey undertaken by Owen, at his own expense, for the sake of practice. But in the next year he turned aside from things purely scientific in order to go to Switzerland to marry Caroline C. Neef, third daughter of Joseph Neef, the coadjutor of Pestalozzi, but he was soon at work again, this time as state geologist of Indiana, publishing his notes in 1838. His merits were recog- nized at the capital and he was deputed to survey the mineral possibilities of Dubuque and Mineral Point dist icts of Wisconsin and Iowa, some 11,000 square miles. His report was pubUshed in 1840. In one month from the time of beginning he had one hundred and thirty-nine sub- agents and assistants ; had instructed the former in the elementary principles of geology; organized twenty-four working corps and furnished them with skeleton maps. In all this. Dr. John Locke, of the Medical College of Ohio, was his valued helper.

Such good work caus(?d him to be appointed United States geologist and to be given the direction of the Chippewa land district survey. The preliminary report in 1848 has in it 323 lithographs from his original sketches, also numerous maps. A more full survey of an extended district occupied the next five years, and Congress made a large appropriation for its printing and illustration in finest style. The wood cuts in this volume of six hundred and thirty-eight quarto pages are by his brother Richard, while David