Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/482

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SUTTON 426


assistant surgeon and, when com- missioned, served at various stations, chiefly throughout the west, engaging in numerous expeditions against the Indians, and was promoted surgeon-major April 16, 1S62. He was with Gen. Halleck's forces at Columbus, Kentucky, and Memphis, Tennessee, fitting out numer- ous large general hospitals and equipping extensive forces with medical supplies, also serving as assistant medical director and inspector with Gen. Grant and par- ticipating in the siege of Vicksburg, besides holding afterwards many army appointments, being in 1876 promoted colonel and surgeon, serving as medical director and promoted to surgeon-general of the army by Pres. Harrison, December 23, 1890. He retired to Washington two years before his death, on May 10, 1895, having fulfilled the duties of his many oflBces with fidelity and ability.

J. E. P.

Pilcher, James Evelyn, Journal of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States, vol. xvi, 1905 (port.). The Surgeon-generals of the United States Army, Carlisle, Pa., 1905 (port.).

Sutton, George (1812-1886).

George Sutton, of Aurora, Indiana, who wrote a considerable number of papers on epidemics and made them a special study, was born in London, Eng- land, on June 16, 1812, and came with his parents to America in 1819. As a lad he went to the village school and in 1828 to the Miami University, afterwards studying medicine with Dr. Jesse Smith in Cincinnati. In 1836, he graduated from the Ohio Medical College vidth a thesis on the " Relation between the Blood and Vital Principle, " in the spring of the same year beginning practice in Aurora, Indiana, where he married Sarah Follre and had five children, four sons and one daughter.

In 1843 an epidemic of erysipelas broke out in Aurora and Sutton's paper on it in the " Western Lancet" was, for its excel- lence, practically all incorporated into Copland's Medical Dictionary. He also wrote on " The Medical History of Chol-


SWEAT

era in Indiana"; in 1856 another report on erysipelas and the same year a careful study on hog cholera, which was then ravaging the State, he was one of the first to study the disease in a systematic way. Tiiese studies were published in in the Cincinnati "Gazette" 1857, and more extended, in the " American Medico- Chirurgical He view," 1858. He was instrumental in organizing the Dearborn County Medical Society which met first at his house and was president of this society, and of the Indiana State Medi- cal Society.

He served the American Medical Association for two years as Chairman of the Committee on Meteorology and Epi- demics and compiled the reports.

Keenly interested, also, in natural science, the antiquities of the west early attracted his attention, and he wrote articles concerning a large collection of geological and other specimens he had collected. One of his papers was "Evi- dences in Boone County, Kentucky, of Glacial or Ice Deposits of Two Distinct and Widely Distant Periods"; and an address before the Association for the Advancement of Science. A tolerably full list of his writings may be seen in J. M. Toner's "Address before the Rocky Mountain Medical Association" (biographical section), 1877, from which this biography is gathered. D. W.

"The Med Hist, of Indiana," G. W. H. Kemper, 1911.

Sweat, Moses (1788-1865).

The portrait of Moses Sweat shows us a handsome looking man with long flowing patriarchal beard and hair, the latter pushed back from his forehead, a clean-shaven upper lip, and a placid face. He was the eldest son of Jonathan and Sarah Ayer Sweat, and was born in Portland, Maine, March 15, 1788.

He had a career of over half a century as physician and surgeon, though he made no specialty of surgery, but cases of this sort for fifty miles around fell into his hands and he worked mostly in that line the best part of his time.