American Medical Biographies/Bates, James
Bates, James (1789–1882)
James Bates, son of Solomon and Mary Macomber Bates, was born in Greene, Maine, September 24, 1789. At the age of seven he moved with his parents to Fayette, Maine, and when twenty-one he studied medicine with a local physician, Dr. Charles Smith of Fayette, and with Dr. Ariel Mann of Hallowell.
Toward the end of the War of 1812, he was appointed surgeon's mate in the army, and ordered to a hospital on the Canadian frontier, where he took care of the sick and wounded and spent nearly two years in moving them safely back into New England. The sufferings of the patients in the hospital being great, but those likely to be caused by their journey home seeming worse, it was considered wisest to keep them far from home for a while, rather than to see them die from the hardships of travel.
Dr. Bates resigned from the army about 1815, went into partnership with Dr. Mann and married July 27, 1815, Miss Mary Jones of Fayette, with whom he lived happily sixty years and had a family of two sons and three daughters.
Dr. Bates removed to Norridgewock in 1819 and practised there with great renown for twenty-six years, serving as a consultant and performing all of the surgical operations of the day. He was an early member of the Maine Medical Society, and wrote for its meetings a number of papers, amongst which may be mentioned, "On Encephaloid Tumors," "On the Use of Artificial Leeches for Phlebotomy," "On Opium Eating," and "On Division of Arteries to Arrest Aneurism and Hemorrhages."
After some years of practice he was asked to enter politics which he did successfully and served two terms in Congress at Washington. The State of Maine having determined to establish an insane asylum, Dr. Bates was chosen the first superintendent, and in his term of service designed and finished the central pavilion of the Asylum, as it now stands.
He wearied of so confining a life after a not very long term of office, resigned from the Asylum, practised for a while at Fayette, his native town, and in 1858 at the urgent and written invitation of a large number of the inhabitants of Yarmouth, Maine, he settled there, and practised until he was over ninety years of age.
Born to be a leader, he led the people toward things that were good, in every town in which he practised. He spoke much both in public and in private, on temperance, medicine, and agriculture. Though never obstinate he uttered his views with persistence, yet with a good keen sense of humor. Glancing over his long career he seems to have been one of the best all-round men in medicine and surgery that Maine had produced. He died rather suddenly at the last, from the effects of a slight fall, and after a short illness, on February 25, 1882, aged ninety-two years. He said on his death-bed: "My father lived to be ninety-three, his father before him reached the same age, and the only thing that I now regret is that I am afraid that I shall not reach that age myself."