American Medical Biographies/Hunt, Henry Hastings
Hunt, Henry Hastings (1842–1894).
This charming and attractive man was born in Gorham, Maine, July 7, 1842, fitted for college at the Gorham Academy, and graduated from Bowdoin with high honors in 1862. He immediately enlisted as hospital steward in the Fifth Battery of Light Artillery of Maine, and served through the war.
He afterwards studied medicine at the Portland School for Medical Instruction, graduating at the Medical School of Maine in 1867. He then took post-graduate courses at Philadelphia and practised at Gorham until 1882, then finding the wear and tear of country practice too hard he moved to Portland, where he rapidly obtained a choice of clientage.
In 1884 he was chosen to the chair of physiology in the Medical School of Maine, but resigned in 1891, owing to poor health. He was a member of the Maine Medical Association, of the American Medical Association, and a visiting physician to the Maine General Hospital for many years.
In 1887 he married Miss Gertrude Jewell, of Buffalo.
Henry Hunt was a type of the best class of physician, studious, tireless, patient. His opinion was always prized. As a medical writer, Dr. Hunt showed great mastery of his subject, together with taste and skill in authorship, so that it was a matter of regret that he had not time oftener to prove his capabilities in that direction. Perhaps the best of his papers was one on "Diphtheria" (1886).
For several years before his death, Henry Hunt knew that he was a victim of an incurable disease due to an injury of the spinal cord. His frequent sufferings, to which he jokingly referred as "just old fashioned rheumatism," were severe, but he kept at his work till about three months before his death.
He died November 30, 1894, much lamented.