Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1122

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
NAME
1100
NAME

STEVENSON 1100 STEVENSON for medical literature than for practice, became editor of the Indiana Medical Journal and devoted himself to state medicine, writing articles for the meetings of the state medical society on the treatment of the criminal in- sane, medicolegal science, state boards of health, the need of hospitals in Indiana and other topics. At last a state board of health was established and Dr. Stevens became its first secretary and executive officer. Shortly before his death a state hospital was estab- lished for the benefit of the sick poor. When he died he left a widow and two sons. Most of his writings are to be found in the trans- actions of the Indiana State Medical Society. Med. Hist, of Indiana, G. W. H. Kemper, In- dianapolis, 1911. Trans. Indiana Med. Soc, 1886, 207. Emin. Amer. Phys. & Surgs., R. F. Stone, In- dianapolis, 1S94. Stevenson, Henry (1721-1814) He was born at Londonderry. Ireland, in the year 1721, and educated at Oxford, Eng- land. With his brother, John, also a phy- sician, he emigrated to Baltimore about the middle of the eighteenth century. According to George W. Archer, he and Dr. Alexander Stenhouse settled in the sixth decade of the century in Bush River Neck, Baltimore County, and there married sisters. In 1756 he erected a stone mansion, which he called "Parnassus," but which his neighbors called "Stevenson's Folly," on the banks of Jones Falls, just north of the present city of Balti- more. This was connected with the town by a long trestle bridge over the meadow or marsh. Here he maintained, at his own ex- pense, an inoculating hospital from 1768 to 1776, and again after the Revolution, from 1786 to 1800. In 1765 he was styled "the most successful inoculator in America." He did not confine his operations to Baltimore but went out into the counties to inoculate the people of the state. Among those who submitted to inoculation at his house was Gen. James Wilkinson, afterwards comman- der-in-chief of the .American Army, and he has left an account of the event in his "Memoirs," vol. i, p. 11. It may be interesting to -note that the charge for inoculation was two pistoles, and for board and lodgings, twenty shillings a week. At the outbreak of the Revolution Stevenson espoused the royal cause and left Baltimore on the declaration of independence. His brother John left with him although he had founded the trade of Balti- more and had the title, "Romulus of Balti- more." Henry, however, after holding office as surgeon in the British Navy from 1776 to 1786, returned in the latter year and con- tinued to practise in Baltimore until his death, March 31, 1814. Henry Stevenson was one of the founaers or the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland in 1799. In his treatment of yellow fever during the epidemic of 1797, he reported sixty-seven cases of the disease in his practice from July to October in that year with but six deaths. In the treatment he used no venesection, and little calomel, but tonics freely. Dr. Steven- son left numerous descendants in Maryland. He was married three times ; first, to Miss • Stokes of Hartford County, and had a son and daughter, George and Martha; second, to Anna, daughter of the Rev. John Henry, and had two sons and two daughters, Cosmo, Gordon, Anna, Julia; third, to Ada C. Bon- dell, no issue. Eugene F. Cordell. In the Maryland Med. .Tour., Centennial Number, April 29. 1899, there is a picture of Dr. Stevens, also of his house "Parnassus." Med. Annals of Maryland, E. F. Cordell, 1903. Stevenson, Sarah Hackett (1849-1910) This pioneer woman physician, was the daughter of Col. John Stevenson, and was born at Buffalo Grove, Illinois, February 2, 1849, of Scotch-Irish ancestry. Her grandfather, Charles Stevenson, came to this country after the Irish Rebellion of '98, purchasing large tracts of land in Ohio and Illinois. Her grandmother was Sarali Hackett of Philadel- phia. She took her degree from the Woman's Medical College of the Northwestern Univer- sity and in 1874 went to Europe for two years' study and was fortunate in having a biological training under Huxley and Darwin, fitting her to fill the chair of physiology in the Woman's Medical College to which she was later appointed. Upon her return to Chicago in 1876, she began to practise. She became a member of the Illinois State Medical Society and was sent as its delegate to the Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association held in Philadelphia in 1876, to the same association, which five years before had laid on the table, without a vote, the hotly discussed motion of admitting women as members. She was the first woman to serve on the staff of the Cook County Hospital, and was admitted to the International Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists at Brussels, became vice-president of the Pan-American Congress at Washington, was a member of the Chicago Medical and Chicago Medico- surgical Societies, was president of the Na- tional Temperance Hospital ; a consultant of the Woman's Hospital, of Bellevue Hospital, and professor of obstetrics at the Woman's