American Medical Biographies/Porter, James Burnham
Porter, James Burnham (1806–1879)
"Dr. Jim," as he was familiarly known over a wide territory, was one of a medical family famous in Vermont for a century, and greatly missed when he died in 1879.
His father, James Porter, was one of four brothers, all medical men, and was long a Vermont practitioner. James B. Porter was educated at Middlebury College, and had his medical education at Castleton and Woodstock, graduating at the latter institution. He was long a member of the Vermont Medical Society.
He was one of the best types of the country doctor, and widely sought in consultation.
He was called to attend the man injured in the construction of the Rutland Railroad, who became the famous "crow bar case." This case was reported by John M. Harlow (q. v.) in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, in November, 1848, and had a wide circulation in medical literature. The patient, who had an iron bar driven through his skull, lived many years, and his skull is still preserved in the Warren Museum at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Porter married, in 1834, Harriet Griggs, of Brookline, Massachusetts.
Of his four children, one, Charles Burnham (q. v.) (1840–1909), became a surgeon and was professor of clinical surgery at Harvard from 1887 to 1903.