TACKETT 1121 TALIAFERRO succeeded in improving the surgical appli- ances of that day and published his ideas in two valuable pamphlets. His first official visit was paid to the Peninsula in 1862 when he helped as surgeon after the battles of Wil- liamsburgh and West Point, and he was one of the eight surgeons who organized the hos- pital at White House. His report on the battles and the soldiers he subsequently at- tended, induced Gov. Morgan to appoint him superintendent of the New York State Troops and soon after he was the means of preparing an asylum for 2,500 patients in Virginia. After the war he served six years as quar- antine health officer at the port of New York. War seems to have held attractions for him, because after these six years he went abroad and served with the French Army during the Franco-Prussian War, organizing the Amer- ican Ambulance Corps in Paris and taking care of it during the siege, receiving the Cross of the Legion of Honor. By 1873 he was back again in Albany tak- ing an active share in politics as well as in medicine and doing much work as a good citizen. He maintained a free dispensary, treating thousands of cases, chiefly surgical, and was professor of clinical surgery in Albany Medical College; consulting surgeon to Albany Hospital and a member of vari- ous important medical societies. In 1882 he was elected mayor of Albany, and in 1884 he served one term in Congress. Among his writings are : "Treatment of Fracture of the Femur by Extension,"' 1859; "Introduction of -Air into the L^terine Veins during Criminal Abortion," pronounced by Dr. Dalton the only case on record ; "Compound and Comminuted Gunshot Fractures of the Thigh and Means for Their Transplantation"; "Treatment of Fractures of the Long Bones," 1861 ; "Reports on the Pen- insular Campaign," 1863, and other pamph- lets. "A Typical American or Incidents in the Life of Dr. John Swinburne," 1888. He married in 1848 Henrietta Judson of Albany and had four sons. He died in .!bany, March 28, 1889. Med. Kec. N. Y.. IS89. vol. xxxv. Med. and .Surtr. Rep., Pliila.. lSu4-5, vol. xii. Trans. Med. Soc, N. Y., Albany, 1864. The case of Swinburne (Edit.), Med. Gaz., N. Y., 1880. vol. vii. .Vppleton's Cyclop. .Amer. Biog., N. Y., 1889. Tackelt, John (1815-1891). John Tackett was born in Huntsville, Ala- bama, November 27, 1815, and began to prac- tise at Cooksville, Mississippi, the spring after his graduation at Louisville Medical College in 1844 and two years later moved to Richland. His wife was Bettie Dulaney, and they had five children. In 1847 he performed Caesarean section successfully alone. This case was reported to the Nezv Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, by Dr. B. Harvey, and the operation was quoted by Dr. Paul F. Eve in his book of "Remarkable Surgical Cases," in very com- plimentary terms. In 1861 he enlisted in the Confederate army as surgeon, but was subsequently called home by a petition to the governor from the fathers and the husbands of families in and near Richmond, who wished him to remain and provide for the health, comfort and protection of their wives and children. He died in Richland, Mississippi, December 3, 1891, of pneumonia. Trans, of the Mississippi State Med. Assoc, 1892. Taliaferro, Valentine Ham (1831-1887). Valentine Ham Taliaferro, gynecologist, born in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, on Sep- tember 24, 1831, was a descendant of one, Zachariah Taliaferro, an early colonial, and the son of Charles B. and Mildred Meriwether. As a boy he went to the local schools and Kellog Academy, then graduated M. D. from the University of New York in 1852, soon after marrying Mary A., daughter of his old pre- ceptor, Dr. B. O. Jones of Atlanta. He had four daughters and two sons, one of whom, Valentine Ham, became a doctor. During the Civil War the father was surgeon to the Second Georgia Cavalry, and organized the Tenth Brigade. At the end of the war he was brevet brigadier-general. In 1857 Dr. Taliaferro became professor of materia medica in Oglethorpe College, Savan- nah, and successively, professor of diseases of women and children, in the .-tlanta Medical College ; of obstetrics and diseases of women, there, and dean in 1876. In 1881 he success- fully started a private infirmary for the dis- eases of women, the first of its kind in the South, making his home in Atlanta for the rest of his life. As a writer he did good work, co-ediling and writing for the Medical and Literary Weekly, The Hygienic and Literary Magacine, and the Oglethorpe Medical and Surgical Journal, Sa- vannah. Among his writings are: "Medication by the Use of Uterine Tents, in the Diseases of the Body and Cavity of the Uterus," 1871 ; "The -A-pplication of Pressure in Diseases of the Uterus, Ovaries and Peri-uterine Struc- tures," 1882 ; "Intrauterine Tampon for Dila- ting the Uterus and Securing Better Drainage in Diseases of the Endometrium," 1884.
