Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/445

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
NAME
423
NAME

GARCELON 423 GARDEN and Freyburg, but studying medicine in the meanwhile with Abiel Hale, of the latter town, and earning enough (money tot attend the medical school at Dartmouth. While there, he attracted the attention of Prof. Reuben Dimond Mussey (q. v.) by his anatomical dis- sections, so much so that the professor invited him to act as his anatomical demonstrator at the Medical College of Ohio, then situated at Cincinnati, where Garcelon took his degree in 1839. Not long after he returned to Lewiston, and began at once an active practice which continued for sixty-seven years. It is said of him that he did the first mastoid operation ever done in Maine, and it is also well known that he was an excellent surgeon from the beginning of his career. He soon be- came one of the best known medical men in Maine, and with the outbreak of the Civil War, came rapidly to the front as a most capable military surgeon. He was appointed surgeon- general of the state early in 1861, and gave his entire time to the preparation of troops, later going himself, and being present at the first battle of Bull Run. After that he went through the Peninsula Campaign, was at Antietam and elsewhere until, worn out with malarial fever, he came home for a rest. Recovering rapidly, he returned to the army and was chief surgeon at the "White House" and "City Point" in Virginia during Grant's campaigns, finally re- turning home after four years of active service. Dr. Garcelon resumed active practice at once, but gradually became again interested in politics. He was also elected president of the Maine Medical Association and read be- fore it several papers of medical and surgical interest. In 1886, when seventy-three years old, he read an excellent paper on "Dislocation of the Shoulder Backward." It has also been claimed that he was the first in the state to remove the thyroid gland. The first newspaper in Lewiston was started by him and he was for a long time its chief editor in spite of many demands on his time as a medical man. In 1841 he married Miss Ann Augusta Wal- dron, of Dover, New Hampshire, by whom he had four children. She dying in 1857, he married in 1859 Miss Oliva Spear, of Rock- land, Maine, and had a daughter. He was chosen governor of Maine by the Legislature in 1879. Dr. Garcelon maintained his remarkable vitality to the last; he had neither ache nor pain to the day of his death, testifying as in expert only a few weeks before this occurred, and also he made a fine address on "Preventive Medicine" before the City Board of Health a few weeks before he died. He was found dead in bed December 8, 1906, while making a visit to his daughter in Med- ford, Massachusetts. In his old age he was thin and spare of feature and body, clean shaved, rather peaked in the face, which was largely free from wrinkles, and wore always an old-fashioned black stock with a high standing wide open collar giving him a venerable appearance. James A. Spalding. Trans. Maine Med. Assoc, 1907. Garden, Alexander (1728-1791) Born in Scotland in 1728, son of the Rev. Alexander Garden of Aberdeen. Alexander Garden came to the United States and stayed thirty years. Yet not one in a thousand either here or in England knows after whom the Gardenia Jasmin aides was named. His medical education was with the cele- brated Dr. John Gregory in Edinburgh and at Aberdeen University (1748). He arrived in South Carolina in 1752 and settled down to practise with a Dr. Rose in Prince William parish. At once he started on his favorite study of botany, but ill health compelled a voyage northward and he was offered but declined a professorship in New York Medical College. Returning to Charleston, he began what was to be a very successful practice. An odd little glimpse of his life at this time is given in a letter to John Bartram the botanist: "Think that I am here, confined to the sandv streets of Charleston where the ox, where the ass, and where men as stupid as either fill up the vacant space, while you range the green fields of Florida." The study of zoology, especially fishes and reptiles, filled up his leisure left from a large practice and botan- izing. He kept up an active correspondence also with Linnaeus and with John Ellis the botanist who named the beautiful Cape Jessamine "Gardenia" in his honor. In 1773 he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of London and eventually vice-presi- dent. Garden married Elizabeth Peronneau. Eager to extend his knowledge, Garden in 1775 accompanied James Glen, governor of South Carolina, when he penetrated into the Indian country and formed a treaty with the Cherokees and discovered an earth equal to that used for Worcester china, but history does not record what came of the discovery. He introduced into medical use the Spigelia Marilandica or pinkroot as a vermifuge, and anyone who would like to know more of Garden's travels and pretty reverent letters about nature should get the Linnaean Corre-