HOLBROOK 538 HOLCOMBE from old New England stock. His mother was Mary Edwards of South Carolina. His early education was received at Wi-en- tham, Massachusetts, and at Providence, Rhode Island. In 1815 he graduated from Brown University with the degree of A. B., and jn 1818 he took his M. D. at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1824 he was elected to the chair of anat- omy in the Medical College of South Carolina. Dr. Holbrook began to practise in Boston, Massachusetts. After a brief stay in this city he went to Europe, and spent two years at Edinburgh, and about two more in England, France and Germany. While in Paris he spent several months studying in the Tardin des Plantes, where he became acquainted with Cuvier, and formed intimacies with such men as Valenciennes, Dumeril and Bibron, from whom he imbibed the inspiration of his life. He returned to America in 1822, and settling in Charleston, South Carolina, practised there. Here his ability and his irresistible personal charm soon won for him a full measure of suc- cess. So delicate and sympathetic was his na- ture that he never attended an obstetric case, nor performed a surgical operation, if it was possible to avoid it, because of the pain it caused him to witness the sufferings of others. In 1824 he was active in the establishment of the Medical College of South Carolina, in which institution he lectured for thirty years. Unsurpassed as a lecturer, possessing in an eminenl degree the faculty of uniting accurate description with a rare grace of expression he made the dull details of anatomy glow with an unsuspected beauty. But his real life work was his "Monograph upon the Reptiles of the Uniled Slates." This work was completed in 1842, and embraced descriptions and illustra- rions of one hundred and forty-seven nominal species, few of which "have proved to be other than real species in the present sense of the figure." Dr. Holbrook named twenty-nine new species, most of which are still retained with his specific names. He subsequently devoted his attention to a companion work on fishes. His original plan comprehended a description of the fishes of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, but later was narrowed down to the fishes of South Carolina. After the publication of this work was begun, a fire in the "Artist's Building" in Philadelphia interrupted its progress. A new edition was then undertaken with finer and more accurate illustrations, but only a portion was completed wlien the outbreak of the Ci'il War terminated his scientific labors. He was a member of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh ; of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquarians, Copenhagen ; of the Society of Naturforschende Freunde, Berlin; and the Academy of Natural Sciences, Phila- delphia. He married Miss Harriott Pinckney Rut- ledge in 1827. They had no children. He died in his sister's home at Norfolk, Massachusetts, September 8, 1871. He was a brother of Silas Pinckney Hol- brook (1796-1835), of Medfield, Massachusetts, a popular contributor to the Nezv Eucjland Galaxy and the Boston Courier, and editor of the Boston Tribune, and a comic paper called the Spectacles. Dr. John E. Holbrook's chief works were "American Herpetology," 5 vols. 4lh, Phila- delphia. 1842, beautifully illustrated; "Ameri- can Ichthyology," part ii. New York and Lou- don, 1847; "Ichthyology of South Carolina," Charleston, South Carolina, 1855; "Ichthyol- ogy of South Carolina," vol. i, Charleston, South Carolina, 1860. RORERT WlI.SON, Jr. An excellent biogr. sketch by Theodore Gill was published by the Nat. Acad, of Science in vol. V, Biogr. Memoirs. Histor. Cat. Brown Univ.. 1764-1914. Holcombe, William Frederic (1827-1904). William Frederic Holcombe, physician and genealogist, son of Captain Augustine Hol- combe and Lucy Bush, of Boylston, Massachu- setts, and West Greenby, Connecticut, respec- tively, was born April 2, 1827, in Sterling, Massachusetts. He graduated at Albany Medi- cal College in 1850, and then studied in Europe. He was a physician in New York City, and professor of eye and ear diseases in New York Medical College, 1862 ; later in the New York Medical College for Women and in the Ophthalmological College and Hospital in 1863. He was one of the founders of the New York Genealogical and Biographical So- ciety, 1869. Dr. Holcombe lived for years at 54 East 25th Street, New York, and treated General Grant during his last illness. He also treated Daniel Webster and Charles Sumner. Some ten years before he died he became deaf and through this affliction was compelled to give up his practice as well as his professorship in the various New York Colleges. He married Margaret, daughter of Moses Wanzer, a Quaker of Sherman, Connecticut, in 1852. He was the author of "The Genealogy and History of the Holcombes of America and England," and "Family Records, Their Impor-
