several months in London and spent some time in Edinburgh, where he studied with the celebrated Dr. Cullen. In 1784 he returned to Philadelphia and practised medicine until his death.
Dr. Griffitts was interested in all public matter pertaining to his profession as well as in his private practice. He was the first person to actively engage in the establishment of a dispensary and it was largely owing to his efforts that the Pennsylvania Dispensary was founded in 1786, he serving as manager and attending physician and for forty years a daily visitor. He was a member of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, the Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, an active member of the Humane Society, a member of the American Philosophical Society and in 1787 became one of the original members of the College of Physicians, a body which in 1817 made him its vice-president. He was a member of the committee that made a pharmacopoeia for the College.
In 1787 he married Mary Fishbourne, daughter of William Fishbourne, a merchant of Philadelphia.
The University of Pennsylvania made him professor of materia medica in 1792, a position which he held for four years and filled with distinction. His last public effort of any importance was furnishing assistance in the making of the United States Pharmacopoeia, in which he was much interested. He read a paper on this subject June 1, 1820, before the Pharmacopoeial Convention. He died after a brief illness from pneumonia, May 12, 1826.
Grinnell, Ashbell Parmalee (1845–1907)
This legal physician was born at Massena, New York, December 26, 1845, the son of Josiah Heman Grinnell, a successful country practitioner of St. Lawrence County, New York. His early years were spent in study and teaching in the district schools of his own county and his medical degree was taken at the Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1869. For a time he practised at Ogdensburg, New York. In 1870, however, he removed to Burlington, Vermont. He was professor of physiology and of the theory and practice of medicine at the Medical Department of the University of Vermont, situated at Burlington. Of the same institution he was dean from 1874 to 1877, and again from 1884 to 1898, and professor of practice in the Long Island College Hospital from 1885 till 1887.
In November, 1904, he removed from Burlington to New York City. There he engaged in medico-legal practice until his death, and was remarkably successful.
He was of medium height, of rather heavy build, his hair red, his eyes large and deep blue. His face was always kindly, yet ever changing its expression. A quick and active man, full of nervous force and magnetism; a hard student and exceedingly fond of his profession. He loved all children and, though extremely busy, he somehow managed to spare the time in which to talk with and to play with them. He was also extremely friendly and helpful to his students. The present writer, one day, after a lecture by Dr. Grinnell, spoke to him in the hall concerning some matter which he had not sufficiently understood. "Come down to my house at 7:30 tonight," said the doctor. "I happen to be quite busy at the present moment." Of course I went, expecting to receive a very few moments. But Dr. Grinnell put me in a rocking chair and then, himself in another, he discoursed on small-pox for more than two full hours.
He married, in 1873, Miss Elizabeth D. Guest, of Ogdensburg, New York, and had one son, Albert R., and two daughters.
Dr. Grinnell died in New York City, April 8, 1907, of malignant endocarditis, following a long attack of grippe.
Grissom, Eugene (1831–1902)
Eugene Grissom, alienist and medico-legal expert, was a descendant of Oliver Wolcott, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He was born in Granville County, North Carolina, May 8, 1831. His mother, a person of great vitality, lived to a most extraordinary age and bore seventeen children, of whom Eugene was the sixteenth.
In his youth Eugene studied law; later he taught in the public schools, and at the age of twenty-two was elected clerk of the superior court by a large majority. In spite, however, of his flattering prospects in the direction of law, he soon began to turn his attention to natural science and finally to medicine, taking his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1858; then settling in his native county, he soon had an extensive practice.
Dr. Grissom took a fighting part in the
