Some American medical botanists / Howard A. Kelly.

  • Kelly, Howard A. (Howard Atwood), 1858-1943.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Some American medical botanists / Howard A. Kelly. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Latin School. Then he went to Philadelphia to attend the lectures of Push, Wistar, Barton and Coxe and to receive the doctor’s degree. To bring himself early before the professional public he took to writing and secured the Boylston prize four successive years. So promising seemed his career that the elder James Jack- son chose him as associate in practice. He was a born artist, craftsman and inventor. When occasion came for illustrating his ^^Medical Botany” with colored engravings and l^efore modern photography and lithog- raphy were invented he devised a means of illustration which proved both practical and beautiful and furnished sixty plates and 6,000 colored engravings for this monu- mental and now rare work. He speaks laughingly of his first lesson in botany given when, as a little ]my, he asked a learned gentle- man the name of the plant ^^Star of Bethlehem.” ^‘That ? Why, that’s grass, you little fool.” When he wished for drawings and models for his lectures as Eumford pro- fessor he knew how to make them. In 1813 his interest in the study of botany led him to give a course of pub- lic lectures in Boston. Botany was his great hobby and his ^‘^Florula Boston- iensis” was a simple, charming Imok,' well known to our grandfathers. In 1815 he was appointed lecturer on materia medica and botany, and two years later when he was 30 his title was changed to professor. Then, too, it is pleasant to believe that Count Eumford left behind him in his native state a young disciple as first Eumford professor who fulfilled all his desires. ■ But the work which brought Bigelow into closest con- tact with European savants and gave him honor in his own country was the elaborate series published under the title American Medical Botany,” which was noted for its finish and beauty and avoidance of technical terms. In 1830, when 33, he was associated with Spaulding, Hewson, • Ives and Butts in editing the United States Pharmacopeia. He followed up this labor by adding Bigelow’s Sequel, a perspicuous commentary on current remedies. Three years previously he had married Mary, daugh- ter of Colonel William Scollay of Boston, and they had five children, one son, Harry, becoming a doctor. When the great cholera epidemic of 1833 in New A^ork carried off some 3,000 victims, Boston’s death-roll numbered only 100, owing to the fact that the author- ities were wise enough to adopt the stringent sanitary