American Medical Biographies/Brower, Daniel Roberts
Brower, Daniel Roberts (1839–1909)
Daniel Roberts Brower, Chicago alienist, was born in Philadelphia October 13, 1839, and graduated from the Philadelphia Polytechnic College in 1860 with the degree of M.S. and from the Medical Department of Georgetown University in 1864. His ancestors were of the early Dutch settlers in this country. He served as an assistant surgeon for two years during the Civil War, and afterwards as superintendent of the Freedman's Hospital, Richmond, Va., and later of the Eastern State Hospital for the Insane, Williamsburg, Va., for nine years. He came to Chicago, Ill., in 1875, and soon became an important figure in the medical life of the city. He was connected with Rush Medical College, first as professor of materia medica and therapeutics, and later as professor of nervous and mental diseases, and later held for many years the chair of diseases of the nervous system in the Woman's Medical School and the Post-Graduate Medical School.
He was a member of the American Medical Association, the American Neurological Association, the American Electro-Therapeutic Association, the National Association for the Study of Epilepsy, the Mississippi Valley Medical Association, the Chicago Physicians' Club, and the American Medico-Psychological Association, besides being an honorary member of the Moscow Society of Neurologists and Psychiatrists, and one of the founders of the Senn Club. He was a member of the attending staff of St. Joseph's, Cook County and Presbyterian hospitals, and consulting physician to the Women's and Children's Hospital and Oakwood Sanitarium, besides being president of the Chicago Medical Society in 1891 and of the State Medical Society in 1895.
He was the author of a text-book on insanity and of many monographs on nervous and mental diseases and received the honorary degrees of A. M. from Wabash College, and of LL.D. from Georgetown University, Kenyon College and St. Ignatius College.
He was married, May 15, 1868, to Eliza Ann Shearer, of Pennsylvania, and they had two children.
Dr. Brower was in apparent good health until a week before his death, when he was seized with cerebral apoplexy, causing paralysis of the left side, but apparently not affecting his mind. He gradually failed physically, but retained consciousness until a few hours before his death, which occurred at his home in Chicago, March 1, 1909, at the age of 69.