Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/447

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SMITH 393

gretted that Dr. Smith neglected the use of botanical names. His plants are all employed under common names, but he describes the appearance and habitat of each specimen so carefully as to enable the experienced reader to identify most of them. Rafinesque, who credits Dr. Smith's work, objects to his common names, which, however, are very inter- esting in connection with the text. The pains he takes to credit authorities from whom he obtained information is very refreshing, the relationship of these names to the substances used being useful to us to-day in connection with many drugs.

J. U. L.

Smith, Philip Greth (1810-1879).

Philip Greth Smith was born in Bern township, Berks County, Pa., in 1810 and educated at Mt. St. Mary's College, Maryland, reading medicine with hi«  brother-in-law, Dr. Daniel Deppen, of Bernville. In the fall of 1835 he married Louisa G. Allgaler, of Reading, and moved to Lebanon, where he engaged and continued in practice for forty-four years. In 1850 he purchased the rights of Lebanon County for "Coad's Patent Graduated Galvanic Battery," and there- after confined his practice almost exclu- sively to chronic diseases. While belong- ing to the old school, he largely used botanic remedies which, in earlier life, he himself gathered. He cultivated valerian in his garden, producing some of the finest, equalling if not excelling the English root in appearance and medical virtues. He was familiar with the medicinal plants growing in Lebanon and the adjoining counties, and with assistants spent several weeks every autumn in gathering and curing them. From these he made his tinctures, decoc- tions and extracts.

He was a faithful member of St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, companionable, courteous and pleasant and greatly re- spected by all with whom he came in con- tact. He died December 4, 1879, aged sixty-nine years. Of a numerous family,


SMITH


two sons survived, one of whom. Dr. W. C. J. Smith, became a physician in St. Clair, Schuylkill County.

J. H. R.

From an account read before the Lebanon County Historical Loeiety, OctoVjer 19, 1900, by J. II. Kedseckor.

Smith, Samuel Mitchell (181(j-1874).

Samuel Mitchell Smith was born in Greenfield, Highland County, Ohio, on the twenty-sixth of November, 1816. Definite information in regard to his parents is not obtainable, but it appears that his father was a minister of the Presbyterian church.

The boy's early education was obtained from his father and in private schools. Before liis majority he obtained a posi- tion as teacher in the district schools of Greenfield and vicinity, by economy accumulating sufficient funds to enter Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and after the usual course took his M. A., afterwards becoming a pupil of Dr. .John Morrison and matriculating in Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, from which he received his M. D., and within a year was appointed assistant physician to the Central Ohio Hospital for the Insane in Columbus.

On August 3, 1843, he married Susan Evans Anthony, daughter of Gen. Charles Anthony, of Springfield, Ohio, and very soon afterwards resigned his position in the State Hospital and began to practice on East Rich Street, near the corner of High, in the city of Columbus.

In the autiuim of 1846 he was appointed professor of materia medica and thera- peutics in Willoughby Medical College, transferred in that year from Willoughby, Lake County, Ohio, to Columbus. In 1847 Starling Medical College war founded and Willougby merged into it, most of the teachers becoming members of the faculty of the new school. Dr. Smith retaining his chair with medical jurisprudence added. There was no change in his relations to the school until 1850, when he was trans- ferred to the chair of practical medicine,