American Medical Biographies/Bayly, Alexander Hamilton
Bayly, Alexander Hamilton (1814–1892)
Alexander Hamilton Bayly was born in Cambridge, Maryland, on March 3, 1814, the son of the Hon. Josiah Bayly, at one time attorney-general of Maryland, and of Anne Hack Walters of Somerset County, Maryland. He received his early education at the High School, Cambridge, and at fourteen entered St. Mary's College, Baltimore, completing his education at Washington College (now Trinity), Hartford, Connecticut, in 1832. He then began to study medicine under Dr. Vans Murray Sullivane of Cambridge, Maryland, and in 1833 worked under Prof. Samuel Baker of Baltimore, graduating from the University of Maryland in 1835. He became a member of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty and president of the State Board of Lunacy. During the Civil War, Dr. Bayly was the surgeon-in-charge of the military hospital in Cambridge.
Dr. Bayly was specially efficient as a surgeon, and as early as 1839 did an excision of the tibia, and in 1846 was the first to employ the horse-shoe magnet to remove a piece of metal from the cornea.
For forty years or more, Dr. Bayly was mayor of Cambridge and he did much to beautify the town by planting trees. He was artistic in many directions, being a fine musician and specially fond of botany, the garden in the rear of his old home in Cambridge being one of the most beautiful to be found anywhere. His personal characteristics were lovely, he was charitable and kind, his affection and care for his children was almost womanly. Dr. Bayly's wife was Delia Byus Eccleston by whom he had eleven children, none of whom studied medicine. Dr. Bayly loved his native town, the "Old Sleepy Hollow" as he called it, and it was there that he died on March 14, 1892, from rheumatic gout.