common operations incident to parturition.
His primary education was obtained in local schools. At the age of twenty he studied medicine with his uncle, Dr. Gibson, of Boston, and then entered New York University from which, when twenty-four, he obtained the M. D. degree, and in 1831 was appointed teacher of practical medicine and therapeutics in the Eclectic School at Worthington, Ohio, a position held until 1834.
He was tall, very slender; had brown hair, irregular features, and a rather erect carriage. To the stranger his manner was austere and his expression rather that of melancholy, incident perhaps to discomfort from dyspepsia, from which he suffered almost constantly for many years prior to his death.
Through his own suffering he became almost a fanatic on the subject of diet, and often restricted his patients so much that some of them said they were in greater danger from starvation than from their diseases.
He was a vigorous advocate for vaccination, which then as now was opposed by many swayed by prejudice on the hope of notoriety. The opposition came mainly from practitioners of his own school, and Dr. Jones joined the regulars in combating it. He believed that the immunity resulting from thorough impregnation of the system with the vaccine virus is permanent, and that when the first operation is properly performed and the virus active, a second is never necessary — a failure of the first is evidence of lack of care in the performance of the operation, or of the inertness of the virus. In 1833 he married Cynthia Kilbourne, a daughter of Col. James Kilbourne, the founder of the village of Worthington. There were four children: Louisa, James Kilbourne, Emma, and Elizabeth.
Dr. Jones died in Columbus, Ohio, in 1857, from cancer of the stomach.
Through his lectures in the Eclectic school he naturally became interested in botany, writing several papers descriptive of indigenous plants and trees, of which the most notable, perhaps, is a description of the grasses of this region; and he prepared an herbarium of the flora of central Ohio, the only complete work of the kind of his time.
He wrote many papers on professional subjects, and in 1853 published a voluminous work on "Practical Medicine and Therapeutics,"[1] differing from ordinary works of the kind only in treatment, as it embraced the doctrines of the Eclectic school.
Biographical Sketch, Address to the Old Northwest Genealogical Soc, 190.3, by Starling Loving.
Jones, John (1729–1791).
This man of ordinary name was of some extraordinary ability. He lived before the fashion of double-barrelled appellations and Thacher tells in pompous English how when " Some of the physicians of New York entered into a resolution to distinguish themselves by a particular mode of dressing their hair" John walked about plainly coiffed, refusing the "new-fashioned bob" and was cut in consultation for a while. But, neverthe- less, this clever young surgeon made his way.
He was born in Jamaica, Long Island, in 1729, his two grandfathers physicians, his father, Evan, one also. The latter married Mary Stephenson of New York and had four sons, John being the eldest, and very fortunate in all good opportunities for learning. First came medical tutelage under the famous Cadwallader of Philadelphia, then, in London he attended the lectures of John Hunter, and studied under Percival Pott; in Paris under the great French reformers. Petit and Le Dran, and in Edinburgh under the
- ↑ "The American Eclectic Practice of Medicine," Cincinnati, 1S53-4.
