Maine physicians of 1820 : a record of the members of the Massachusetts Medical Society practicing in the district of Maine at the date of the separation / by James A. Spalding.

  • Spalding, James Alfred, 1846-1938.
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Maine physicians of 1820 : a record of the members of the Massachusetts Medical Society practicing in the district of Maine at the date of the separation / by James A. Spalding. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    INTRODUCTION When I awoke on New Year’s morning of 1920, I said to myself: 1920 has arrived, the Centennial year of Maine as a State, and erelong the newspapers will be filled with eulo¬ gies of the famous Politicians, Lawyers, Divines, Merchants, Lumber-Barons, Shipmasters and so on of 1820, but we shall look in vain, I fear, for any account of the lives of the Physi¬ cians who brought some of these heroes into the world, car¬ ried them safely through life and toward the end, lengthened their lives so far as they were able. So far then as concerns any Centennial Memorial to the Physicians of 1820, it seems to depend entirely upon me to put it into proper shape or indeed into any shape at all. When I started out upon the great task of saying some¬ thing concerning the Founders of the Maine Medical Society of 1820 I planned to include only such men as belonged to the new society by virtue of their membership in the Massachu¬ setts Medical Society. I soon found, however, that it would be an affair of extreme dffffculty a hundred years and more after asserted election of Maine Physicians to membership in the Massachusetts Society, to establish their actual status. For, many were chosen but did not all accept membership, and were not properly catalogued, others were elected and accepted their election but did not pay their dues, and others were elected but were not catalogued in their actual places of practice, so I have tried in vain to discover where they lived or what they did, even in the faintest degree. So I finally decided that it would be best to change my standard for entrance into this collection of lives, and to admit all promi¬ nent physicians of the time of the separation, whether accredited members of the Massachusetts Society or not, and to add at the end of my paper the names of those of whom only the faintest traces could be discovered after diligent research. Let me now proceed to state briefly the origin of the Maine Medical Society of 1820, to follow this with an account of the life of the Founder, then with a narrative of