DAVIS 2
built a museum for its reception and dedicated it to his native town, Salis- bury, where it now remains. Unfor- tunately for Davis, he placed his fifty copies in a bookstore for sale, and soon afterwards a fire in the store destroyed them. So far as the "Ancient Monu- ments" are concerned, the above facts show who was the originator and rul- ing spirit in the getting up of this great work. Davis contributed to the med- ical journals, and in 1S50 prepared a "Report on the Statistics of Calculous Diseases in Ohio." In 1841 he ope- rated successfully on a man thirty-five years old for strabismus, and always claimed that his was the first one of the kind in Ohio.
Davis came to New York in 1S49. In 1850 he was elected professor of materia medica in the New York Med- ical College and lectured there for ten years. Failing health compelled him to retire from practice and the chief cause of his death, May 15, 1888, was debility from old age. He left four children, two sons and two daughters. His remains were taken to Chillicothe, Ohio, and placed by the side of his wife. Med. Reg., State of New York, Albany, 1S88.
Davis, John Staige (1824-1885).
This anatomist was the son of John A. G.and Mary J. Terrell Davis, his father, a lawyer of Charlottesville, Virginia, who in 1830, being elected to the chair of law in the University of Virginia, removed with his family to that institution. John was born in Albemarle Co., October 1, 1824.
In the cultured and refined atmos- phere of the university he acquired his education, graduating M. A. before the completion of his sixteenth year. One year later, on the fourth of July, 1841, he took his M. D. there and after spending eighteen months in the study of practical medicine in Philadelphia, settled in Jef- ferson County, Virginia, December, 1841. Here he practised until January, 1847, when, having been elected demonstrator of anatomy in the university, he returned to Charlottesville.
DAVIS
From January, 1845, to July, 1856, he filled the position of demonstrator of anatomy in the University of Virginia, and in the latter year was elected pro- fessor of anatomy, materia medica and botany. With the exception of the chair of botany, which in 1867 was transferred to another school, he held this professor- ship until his death. He was commis- sioned July 3, 1861, surgeon in the Con- federate States Army, and served as such in the military hospital at Charlottesville.
Dr. Davis was one of the greatest teachers of anatomy America has known; "As a practitioner," says a colleague, "he was not only fully abreast of the latest advances in medical science, but was also skillful and judicious in their practical application." He was, more- over, possessed of a beautiful Christian character and the highest sense of duty. He was a churchman without cant, a Christian without hypocrisy.
Dr. Davis was twice married, first to Lucy L. Blackford, who died on the first of February, 1859, leaving a daughter and a son, Dr. William B. Davis of the United States Army. His second wife whom he married the second of September, 1865, was Caroline Hill. Three children were born, the eldest of whom was John Staige Davis who became professor of medi- cine in the University of Virginia.
Dr. Davis died at his home in the uni- versity on the seventeenth of July, 1885, of pneumonia, secondary to hemiplegia, in the sixty-first year of his age.
There is a portrait of Dr. Davis in the posession of his son, Dr. John Staige Davis, Jr., at the University of Virginia. J. H. C.
Sketch of the Late John S. Davis, by John 11. Claiborne, A. M., M. D., Alumni Bulletin of the University of Virginia, vol. i. No. 3. Trans. Med. Soo. of Virginia, 1885.
Davis, Reese (1837-1895).
Reese Davis was born July 5, 1837 of Welsh parentage in Warren, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, the ninth child in a family of eleven. His father being a farmer, young Reese had only such
