Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/287

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JAMES CARROLL

CARROLL, JAMES, M.D., army surgeon, is an instance of a man who has risked his own life, and voluntarily put himself under the power of a virulent disease for the sake of science and for the relief of suffering humanity. He is to be honored as a benefactor of his race, and his name will be associated with those who have made important discoveries that tend to promote and protect human life.

He was born in Woolwich, Kent county, England, June 5, 1854, the son of James and Harriet Chiverton Carroll. His father, a mechanic and marine engineer, had a "splendid physique;" and his mother's influence over her son was morally strong. As a boy, his health was fair, and his tastes were in the direction of study. After he was fifteen, coming to Canada, he was a blacksmith's helper, and railroad laborer. He chopped cordwood, split rails, and did other such tasks to the improvement of his health and general physique. No especial difficulties stood in the way of his attaining an education; but preferring out-of-door life and hard labor, in 1870, he declined clerical employment and apprenticeship to a civil engineer. He had, however, attended the Albion House academy, Albion Road, Woolwich, England, preparatory to entering the English navy as an engineer student, but he did not graduate. He speaks of himself as having lived a "vegetative life" for some years. He pursued later a course of study in the University of New York and at the University of Maryland, graduating from the latter institution in 1891. He took a post-graduate course in pathology at Johns Hopkins university, Baltimore, Maryland, in 1901-02, and a course in bacteriology in the same institution, in 1902-03. He has filled the position of laborer, soldier, physician, and of professor of bacteriology, and clinical microscopy in the Army medical school (since 1902); demonstrator of bacteriology and pathology in the medical department of Columbian university 1896-1901; associate professor, 1902; professor, 1904; assistant curator of the Army medical