Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/306

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DARLINGTON 284 DARRACH attend the botanical lectures of Dr. Benjamin S. Barton (q. v.). and it is easy to imagine the shoots of his botanic ideas taking root in the firm earth of accurate knowledge. A voyage to India as ship's surgeon gave him leisure for study and reflection, but does not seem to have given him "travel fever" also, for the following year he settled down to practise in West Chester after marrying Cathe- rine, daughter of Gen. John Lacey of New Jersey. In 1812 international science yielded to in- ternational strife and Darlington became ma- jor of the "American Grays," organized to defend Philadelphia. Shortly after he figures as a politician advocating the abolition of sla- very, and, resigning, receiving the thanks of the secretary of war and a nomination as visit- or to West Point. He served on the Board of Canal Commissioners to unite two great lakes with the Atlantic, yet in the midst of much civic business he found time to botanize and to found the Chester County Cabinet of Natural Science ; to publish, in 1826, his "Florula Ces- trica" or catalogue of plants growing round West Chester, Pennsylvania. Also with some confreres he founded and became president of the Medical Society of Chester County. That which pleased him most was the per- petuation of his name in flower form. Prof. De CandoUe of Geneva named a genus after him, but it did not prove to be sufficiently dis- tinct, and another friend. Prof. Torrey of New York, dedicated to him a finer plant, of the order Sarraceniaceee, which grows in Cali- fornia. Darlington certainly deserved the hon- or, for a more generous man never lived. This was shown in his gathering together all the letters and memoranda of Dr. William Bald- win, a zealous botanist, who died still young while on an expedition up the Missouri. He called the book "Reliquise Baldwinianx," 1843, and six years later made all botanists his debt- ors by his loving work shown in "The Memo- rials of John Bartram and Humphry Mar- shall," 1849, the careful foot-notes alone con- stituting valuable references to the botanical side of that period. Between these two vol- umes came another written as a result of his observation of the unscientific farming going on around him, a book which proved of genu- ine utility ; this was his "Agricultural Botany," 1847. He willed that his herbarium and all his botanical works, now too little known, like many another collection, should go to his own county museum, and these are still in the mu- seum of the West Chester State Normal School, but while the donor lived they were a source to him of continual pleasure, adding zest to his correspondence with fellow bota- nists on both sides of the Atlantic. More than forty learned societies elected him a member. The loss of a soldier son of fever off the African coast and of his wife, occurred in 1845-6, and in the spring of 1862 Darlington had a slight attack of paralysis, followed in 1863 by another from which he died on Thurs- day, April 23, 1863, nearly eighty-one years old and with mind still unimpaired. He was buried in Oaklands Cemetery, Philadelphia, and on his tomb was carved : Plantas Cestrienses quas dilexit atque illustravit Super Tumulum ejus Semper floreant. A portrait is to be seen in "The Botanists of Philadelphia," Harshberger, 1899, and in the Surgeon-General's Library, Washington. Some Amer. Med. Bot., H. A. Kelly, 1914. Tr. Med. Soc. Penn., Phila., 1863. Memorial of William Darlington. W. T. Jamei, Westchester, 1863. Darrach, May (1868-1917). The founder of the Darrach Home for Crippled Children in New York City, herself a cripple from spinal caries, she was born a' Newburgh on the Hudson, N. Y. April 19. 1868. Her father was Samuel A. Darrach, horn in New York state, her mother Julia Angell, a native of Jamaica, West Indies, whose ancestors were physicians and coflee planters. On her father's side were doctors and ministers. Dr. William Darrach (q.v.) being her great uncle and Dr. Bartow Darrach, with civil war record, her uncle. Another uncle, Dr. Marshall Darrach of Newark, was an invent- or, devoting much of his time to mechanical appliances for the relief of cripples. He was the originator of the wheel-crutch and plaster jacket. May Darrach's early training was in the school of suffering. Spinal caries prevented her from walking until she was thirteen years of age. Her studies were of necessity very de- sultory and she was largely self-taught. She spent one year at school in Canada and she studied kindergarten with Madam House- Bolte. She graduated from the Woman's Med- ical College and Hospital for Women, New York City, in 1904, but previous to this she had devoted herself to the education of crip- pled children and with the aid of Mr. Brace of the Children's Aid Society started the first class for cripples in New York City in the Henrietta School on West 65th Street in 1889. In 1899 she opened the Darrach Home for