DELAMATER 304 DELAMATER ham of two and one-half years, he removed to Florida, in Montgomery County, New York, and began a medical career, which in diversity, strenuousness and duration rivaled that of the famous Daniel Drake. In 1814 we find Dela- mater practising in Albany, New York, but in the following year he removed to Sheffield, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where his success brought him to the notice of the faculty of the Berkshire Medical Institution situated at Pittsfield in the same county. Accordingly, in 1823. he was called to the chair of materia medica and pharmacy in that institution, and for three years delivered the annual courses of lectures. His distinguished success as a teacher led to his call in 1827 to the chair of surgery in the College of Physicians and Sur- geons of the western district of New York, situated at Fairfield in Herkimer County. Here for the next ten years Dr. Delamater worked, and from 1837 to 1839 he lectured upon the theory and practice of physic and on female diseases, and during the session of 1839-40 on the theory and practice of physic and mid- wifery. At this time the impaired health of his family induced him to change his locality, and in 1841 he removed to Geneva, New York, where from 1841 to 1843 he lectured on general pathology and materia medica in Geneva Col- lege. But the activity thus far depicted by no means covers the entire facts of his medical career up to this point, and he himself says : "Within the period intervening between the years 1828 to 1842, both inclusive, I accepted appointments and, in accordance therewith, de- livered the following lectures in addition to the annual courses above named, viz : six- courses on the principles and practice of physic in the Medical School of Maine, connected with Bowdoin College; one course on materia medica and three courses on the principles and practice of physic in the Medical School of New Hampshire, connected with Dartmouth College ; one course of ten weeks — twelve lec- tures weekly — on surgery and midwifery in the University of Vermont ; and four courses on pathological anatomy, midwifery and the theory and practice of physic in the University of Willoughby, at Willoughby, Ohio ; and, finally, in January and February, 1838, I delivered about sixty lectures on surgery in the Medical College of Ohio, located at Cincinnati, Ohio." Truly the catalogue reads like the diary of one of the peripatetic professors of the middle ages ! During the time he was lecturing in Geneva Dr. Delamater was also occupying the chairs of pathological anatomy and midwifery, or the theory and practice of physic, in the University of Willoughby, Ohio, and when, in 1843, the professors in the latter school resolved to remove to Cleveland and organize there a new medical school, Delamater was, naturally, the leading spirit in the transfer and occupied for seventeen years the chairs of general pathology and midwifery and the diseases of women in the Western Reserve College, thus founded. In 1860, at the age of seventy-three, he resigned active and formal duty as a teacher, but occasion- ally filled temporary vacancies in the staff of the college until almost the close of his busy and useful life. After his death, the outlines of no less than seventy courses of lectures, in almost all departments of medicine, were found among his papers, and it is believed that during life he had assisted in the medical education of as many young men as any physician of his day. On his retirement Dr. Delamater was honored with the title of professor emeritus, and re- ceived also the honorary LL. D. from the Western Reserve University. His son. Dr. Jacob G. Delamater, was professor of anatomy and physiology in the Cleveland Medical Col- lege, 1843-1861. As a writer his communications are charac- terized by clearness of thought and expression. Fortunately we have several specimens of his style preserved in the medical journals of his day. Among these we mention "On Detecting and Diagnosing the Simpler Forms of Valvular Diseases of the Heart" (Cleveland Medical Gazette, December, 1859), "Reminiscences of Country Surgery" (Ibid., May, 1860), two let- ters on the subject of ovariotomy addressed to Dr. J. W. Hamilton and published in the "Transactions of the Ohio State Medical So- ciety" for 1859, and most remarkable of all, a series of papers entitled, simply, "Dr. Fisher's Case," but containing, in addition to a fairly complete medical autobiography, an exhaustive discussion of the pathology and treatment of inversion of the womb. (Cleveland Medical Gazelle, April, 1860, ct seq.) An excellent portrait of Dr. Delamater is found in the faculty room of the medical de- partment of the Western Reserve University, another of less excellence in the parlors of the Cleveland Medical Library Association, and good engravings of his quaint features are pub- lished in "Cleave's Cyclopedia" and elsewhere. Henky E. Handerson. Cleave's Biographical Cyclopedia of the State of Ohio, No. 1, Cuyahoga County. Phila., 1875. A Sermon deliveveij at the funeral of lohn Dela- mater by W. Goodrich, D. D., Oeveiand, 1867. The Life and Character of John Delamater. An address delivered before the Alumni of the Cleveland Medical College, March 3. 1880. by T E. Ingersoll (Cleveland, 1880). Magazine of Western History, vol. iv. D. P. Allen. Trans. Amer. Med. Assoc, 1868
