he was probably without equal in skill or number of operations performed. One of his last was upon the aged Chief Justice Marshall, a remarkable case, nearly a thousand calculi, in size varying from a partridge shot to a pea were removed and the patient made a good recovery.
Dr. Physick was one of the first in this country to employ the stomach tube for washing out the stomach, an invention of Dr. Alexander Monro of Edinburgh in 1797. Physick reported cases in the Eclectic Repertory and Analytical Review in October, 1812. In orthopedic surgery his facility and inventive mechanism brought him wide fame, and his treatment of coxalgia is well known and most of the appliances today are modifications of his methods. His modification of Desault's splint for fractured thigh is still in use and his appliance for outward displacement of the foot in "Pott's fracture" seems to have anticipated that of Dupuytren. Like Hunter his surgery was conservative—a conservatism often carried to excess. As to general practice he went by the light of experience of common sense and was intolerant in his practice and teaching of the theories of others. He had great faith in venesection and Dr. Charles D. Meigs tells of a patient of his for whom he consulted Physick. She had a violent attack of conjunctivitis; great pain and threatened destruction of the eye. "She was duly bled, today, tomorrow, the next and next morning, and so on until at last she fainted so badly that terror laid hold on us both and we fled for succor to Dr. Physick. He came the next day at ten o'clock, looked at the eye and asked 'Who is your bleeder? Send for him and tell him to take twelve ounces of blood from the arm and request him to meet you in the morning and repeat the operation if necessary.' Although I was horrified I complied with the request and the next day on looking into the eye could discover only the faintest trace of inflammation. In fact, the woman was virtually cured."
He was not a great reader even on his own subject. A bound volume of Physick's lectures as delivered by him in 1808–09, annotated in his own handwriting, was presented to the University of Pennsylvania by Dr. John Welsh Croskey. His lectures, often written at four o'clock in the morning, were as carefully written as if for publication, he deeming it wrong to trust to memory and to instruct others upon subjects he did not clearly understand. One of his biographers, S. D. Gross, describes him as a cold, dyspeptic, pessimistic, unsociable man, but full of sympathy for suffering humanity; strikingly erect and handsome but pallid, his face as if chiselled out of marble, the eyes black and his hair powdered and worn in a queue. Fond of money but never claiming high fees, he yet left nothing of his large fortune to the advancement of medicine. His mind was much troubled on theological matters but what conclusions he came to in the end his reserved nature did not allow him to disclose. He died in Philadelphia, December 15, 1837.
In 1800 he married Elizabeth Emlen of Philadelphia, daughter of an eminent minister of the Society of Friends, and they had four children. Physick was "a faithful domestic character," allowing his daughters to entertain as much as they liked and only allowing himself recreation towards the end of his life when he loved to go with them to his summer house in Cecil County Maryland.
He was professor of surgery, Pennsylvania University, 1805–19; professor of anatomy, 1819–31; president of Philadelphia Medical Society, 1824; emeritus professor of anatomy and surgery, Pennsylvania University, 1831– 37; member of the Academy of Medicine of France, 1825; honorary fellow, Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, London, 1856.
Pickering, Charles (1805–1878)
Charles Pickering, known to the scientific world as an anthropologist and botanist, was of good New England stock, being a grandson of Col. Timothy Pickering, a member of Washington's military family and of his first cabinet. He was born on Starucca Creek, Upper Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, on a grant of land owned by his grandfather, November 10, 1805. His father, Timothy Pickering, died when 30, leaving Charles and his brother Edward to the care of their mother.
He left Harvard before graduation, but was given his A. B. out of course in 1849 and A. M. in 1850. He received his M. D. there in 1826. In his earlier years he used to make botanical expeditions with William Oakes, and when he settled in Philadelphia in 1829, he had a strong bent towards natural science, very soon being appointed one of the curators at the Academy of Natural Sciences. During this time he published a brief essay on "The
