Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/282

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CRAWFORD 260 CROSBY the Baltimore Observer, and the Medical and Physical Recorder, Baltimore ; in Schultz's History of Freemasonry in 'Maryland, vol. ii, 188S, and in Cordell's Medical Annals of Mary- land. There is a crayon portrait and an MS. work on Tropical Diseases in the library of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty. Eugene F. Cordell. Crawford, John Barclay (1828-1894) John Barclay, son of John B. and Elizabeth Thompson Crawford, was born at Crawford, Orange County, state of New York, January 2, 1828. His earliest American ancestor, James Crawford, was with Gen. Wolfe at the capture of Quebec by the British, and an officer in the Continental Army in the Franco-English War. At the beginning of the Civil War, Dr. Crawford entered the United States Army as assistant surgeon and was promoted to be surgeon of the Fifty-second Regiment, Penn- sylvania Reserves. He began to study medi- cine in Elmira, New York, finishing at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York City, in 1850, and beginning to practise in 1851, at Hawley, Pennsylvania, but in 1852 removed to Wyoming, Luzerne County, and practised there, with the exception of the time spent in the army, until 1870, when he went to *V'ilkcs-Barre, and stayed until his death, October 7, 1894. In 1852 he married Sarah Hammond, of Horseheads, New York, who died in 1878, leaving him a daughter. Dr. Crawford was a member of the Penn- sylvania State Medical Society, also consulting surgeon and physician to the Wilkes-Barre City Hospital and president of the Luzerne County Medical Society. He was a profound thinker, a close reasoner, a gifted and fluent speaker, and a writer of more than ordinary ability. Two good essays entitled "Gunshot Wounds during the War," and "Malaria in the Wyoming Valley," attracted attention, and bore the marks of critical e.xamination and patient research. , ti -r ^ Lewis H. Taylor. Crosby, Alpheus Benning (1832-1877) "Dr. Ben," as he was affectionately called by everybody, was a brilliant man from the be- ginning of his career to its very last day. He was not meteoric, shining with refulgence briefly, and then fading out of sight, but with a steady hght he shone for twenty years as an operator, a surgical lecturer, a clinical teacher, a lecturer on anatomy and public health, and as an eulogist of men who had gone on before him. Remarkable in his choice of words and in his portraitures of famous men, like President Lord of Dartmouth, his eloquence attracted many listeners. Alpheus Benning Crosby, the son of Dr. Di.xi (q. V.) and Jane Moody Crosby, was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, on Washing- ton's Birthday, 1832, and died in Hanover, Au- gust 9, 1877, in his forty-sixth year, worn out by overwork. His parents moved to Hanover when he was young, and at an early age he showed interest in chemical and electrical ex- periments; he built a locomotive which would run. He was educated at Moor's Indian charity school, in Hanover, sometimes called "The Academy," and was graduated in the class of '53 at Dartmouth. Directly afterward he studied medicine with his father, attended the lectures at the Dartmouth school, acted as demonstrator, and after two years thus spent, served for a year as interne at the U. S. Marine Hospital at Chelsea, Massachusetts, where he saw multifarious cases of fracture, frost bite, pneumonia and syphilis in manifold forms. He then finished off his education with a third course of lectures, and was graduated at the Dartmouth School as Doctor of Medicine in. 1856. He established himself in practice with his father, and together they attended to a large and growing business, with the medical school as a nucleus for patients a hundred miles around. With the outbreak of the Civil War, "Dr. Ben" volunteered at once, was appointed sur- geon to the First New Hampshire volunteers, and in May, 1861, at Poolesville, Maryland, he personally drew the plans and superin- tended the building of the first complete mili- tary hospital on the pavilion plan, ever con- structed. He was present at the important battles of Ball's Bluff and the Second Bull Run, and was promoted to brigade surgeon, but he re- signed in 1862, as his father had need of him at the medical school. There he was nomi- nated as assistant professor of surgery and anatomy, and in a brief time developed a gift of descriptive anecdote and a charm of person and of style which gradually increased his fame as a speaker and made him known in medical circles throughout the entire north. Three years later he was full professor of surgery at Dartmouth and then in rapid suc- cession deHvered entire courses of lectures on surgery and operated on all attending patients at the University of Vermont, at the University of Michigan, at the Long Island College Med- ical School, ance at Bowdoin, and also at the Bellevue Hospital and Medical School, in New York. He declined an invitation to the chair of surgery in the New York University School of Medicine and at the death of Pan- coast he was urged to become professor of