American Medical Biographies/Wright, Thomas Lee
Wright, Thomas Lee (1825–1893)
Thomas Lee Wright, of Bellefontaine, Ohio, the author of a volume entitled "Inebrism, a Pathological and Psychological Study," was the son of Dr. Thomas Wright, who came to Quebec from the north of Ireland in 1817 and settled in Craftsbury, Vermont. He married a daughter of Dr. Huntington of that town, and moved to Ohio, and Thomas Lee was born in Windham, Portage County, August 7, 1825. He was educated at Miami University and at the Ohio Medical College, Cincinnati, where he received an M. D. in 1846. He practised at Kansas City until 1854, chiefly as government physician among the Wyandotte Indians. During the season of 1855–56 he was lecturer upon theory and practice in Wesleyan University, at Keokuk, Ia.; after that he practised in Bellefontaine where he had married the daughter of Dr. A. H. Lord, in 1846.
Being affected with organic heart disease, in 1880 Dr. Wright relinquished active practice and devoted himself to the study of inebriety, a subject that had led him to write "On the Action of Alcohol on the Mind and Morals" for the Lancet Clinic, the previous year. He became a frequent contributor to The Journal of Inebriety, and every year until his death presented a paper before the American Association for the Study and Cure of Inebriety. In 1885 through the advice of friends he published "Inebrism, a Pathological and Psychological Study." This book of two hundred and fifty pages was translated into the French, German and Russian languages, and has been regarded as one of the most valuable contributions to this subject that had been made by American physicians. His work was of a pioneer character, pointing out the paralyzing action of alcohol on the brain and nervous system and the philosophy of defects in the moral faculties of inebriates.
In 1860 he published a "Disquisition on the Ancient History of Medicine," 1 vol. 8vo., 84 p. and in 1874, "The Deterioration of the Race upon the Western Continent," a paper in the Cincinnati Lancet and Observer.
Personally, Dr. Wright was a genial man, keen to notice the follies and weaknesses of human nature, but charitable in his judgments.
He died at his home suddenly June 22, 1893.