American Medical Biographies/Peters, John Charles
Peters, John Charles (1819–1893)
This eminent homeopathic physician and author was born in New York City, July 6, 1819. His early education was at Nazareth Hall, Pa., and he began to study homeopathy in 1837, and five years later visited Europe, working under Schoenlein, Rokitansky and Skoda, at Berlin and Vienna, and devoting especial attention to pathology, at that time a subject but little familiar to the medical profession. On his return to New York he joined with Dr. A. S. Wotherspoon in publishing a translation of Rokitansky's Pathological Anatomy in 1849, and practised homeopathy while introducing innovations in the methods of practice then in vogue. A treatise on "Diseases of the Head" was published, 1850, and between 1853 and 1856: "Apoplexy," "Nervous Derangements and Mental Disorders," "Diseases of Married Females," and "Diseases of the Eye." With Dr. F. G. Snelling he issued a "Materia Medica," 1856–1860; he also edited the North American Journal of Homeopathy. Dr. Peters was one of the three original founders of the New York Pathological Society, and in 1859 he was president of the College of Medical Sciences and professor of materia medica and therapeutics in this institution. He was the physician and personal friend of Washington Irving. He was associated with Dr. Edmund C. Wendt in preparing a treatise on cholera, and in 1866 wrote Peters' "Notes on Asiatic Cholera." This was one of his favorite subjects, also the routes by which the diseases traveled from Asia to Europe. The Index Catalogue credits him with some ten works on this subject out of a total of twenty-seven titles. In 1873 he traveled through the South and Southwest to study this disease, and afterwards assisted in preparing a report, published by order of Congress. At one time he was president of the Medical Society of the County of New York, and he held a similar office in the New York Neurological Society in 1876–77.
He married Georgina, daughter of Andrew Snelling, May 16, 1849.
Paralysis carried him off, October 21, 1893, at his home on Long Island, at the age of seventy-four.