Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/209

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CABOT 187 CABOT fine horses and kept a good stable which he himself looked after, and was always ready to risk a small stake on one of his horses. He was twice married, his second wife being Mrs. Margaret Meredith, whom he married in 1762. By his first wife he had a daughter and five sons, all of whom, except the fifth, who died young, were prominent citizens of the colony. His health began to fail in 1772, and after a long illness, he died on the twelfth of April, 1774, at his home near Warminster. Robert M. Slaughter. The Cabells and Their Kin. Alex. Brown. Appleton's Cyclop. Amer. Biog., N. Y., 1887. Cabot, Arthur Tracy (1852-1912) Arthur Tracy Cabot was born in Boston, January 25, 1852, third son of Dr. Samuel (q. V.) and Hannah Jackson Cabot. The families of which his parents were members were and are deservedly prominent. Strict integrity characterized them both, but in many qualities they widely diverged. The Perkins- Cabot is sporting blood. The Jacksons are far from being devoid of enterprise, but per- haps their most salient mark is a sense of •duty combined with clear intelligence. Arthur Tracy Cabot's great grandfather, Thomas H. Perkins, was second to none of his day as a merchant. No active port was a stranger to his ships, though he gradually concentrated on the China and India trade. In one of his letters, early in 1800, he says in substance: "There is great risk in our business, but it would not be so interesting if there were not." Cabot had a stub-twist ancestry, Scotch, Irish, English, Norman French (Chabot, Isle of Jersey) blood mingling in his veins. In him the contrasted qualities of his parents were harmoniously united to a remarkable degree. Ardent and impulsive, he was yet rationally cautious. He valued the opinion of others and weighed it, but reached his own conclusions which were nearly always sound, and then fearlessly followed. If he was or seemed prejudiced, the cause was apt to lie in his hatred of injustice and moral obliquity. No form of apparent self-interest ever swayed his decision. He took his A. B. at Harvard in 1872, his M. D. in 1876, and served a year as surgical interne at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He then went abroad, giving special attention to surgical pathology, but neglecting no op- portunity of laying a firm foundation in all pertaining to the healing art. So many-sided was his life that clearness and justice alike seemed to warrant separate treatment of the man, the surgeon, and the public servant. Of Arthur Cabot, the man, I have already spoken somew hat ; it remains to add that it is hard to think of a manly outdoor sport which he did not enjoy and enter into as far as he could without neglect of duty. Exer- cise in the saddle, riding to hounds, polo, fish- ing and shooting, yachting, golf, tennis, and squash. Of art he had a deep love and ap- preciation, collecting a few very choice pic- tures without the aid of experts, so-called. He sketched in water colors, was an active trustee of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and officially concerned with the Fogg Art Museum at Cambridge. His diversified in- terests, elevation of character, and real warmth of heart made him more and more sought after socially. A certain grimness of manner wore smooth in later life, unless stimulated by con- tact with what he deemed unworthy. Cabot's training for professional life ante- dates the general adoption of Listerism, i. e., clean surgery, an outgrowth of the work of the great Pasteur. His interest in surgical pathology has been mentioned. After his father's death, he and his brother, Samuel, founded at the Massachusetts General Hos- pital the Samuel Cabot Fund for Pathological Research. The income of this fund provides that a pathologist be on hand operating days at the hospital, and make such examination as the surgeon may require to determine the scope and character of his operation. If not the first, it was surely an early efi^ort to make thorough pathological study go hand in hand with the operation. In London he heard Lister's inaugural address at King's College, and ever after kept on the crest of the ad- vancing wave of clean surgery. On his re- turn, in 1877, he took up general practice. The experience thus gained can be safely said to have harmed him neither as a man nor as a surgeon. Without this developmental training it may be well questioned whether he would have been able to perform the great public service of his later years, of which more below. Increasing surgical work at the Carney, Children's, and Massachusetts General Hos- pitals successively compelled him, after about ten years, to confine himself to surgery. He was visiting surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital from 1886 to 1907. Dr. Henry J. Bigelow early recognized Cabot's quality and made him his heir in bladder surgery. It appears that Cabot did tlie first success- ful abdominal operation within the Massa-