DELAMATER
DELAMATER
vocation, but a slight, though per-
manent injury received in early life
incapacitated him for the severe labor
of the farm, and it was decided to edu-
cate him for a profession. His father
preferred the ministry; he himself in-
clined to the law, and perhaps as a com-
promise between two opinions, the boy
finally decided to study medicine. Of
the details of his medical education we
have, however, no information. On
December 1, 1806, John Delamater was
licensed to practise medicine by the Medi-
cal Society of Oswego County, New York,
and returned immediately to Chatham,
his birthplace, entering into a partner-
ship with Dr. Dorr, his uncle. After a
sojourn in Chatham of two and one half
years, he removed to Florida, in Mont-
gomery County, New York, and began a
medical career, which in diversity,
strenuousness and duration more than
rivaled that of the famous Daniel Drake.
In 1814 we find Delamater practising
in Albany, New York, but in the follow-
ing year he removed to Sheffield, Berk-
shire County, Massachusetts, where his
success brought him to the notice of the
faculty of the Berkshire Medical Institute
located at Pittsfield in the same county.
Accordingly, in 1823 he was called to the
chair of materia medica and pharmacy
in that institution, and for three years de-
livered the annual courses of lectures.
His distinguished success as a teacher led
to his call in 1827 to the chair of surgery
in the College of Physicians and Surgeons
of the western district of New York,
located at Fairfield in Herkimer County.
Here for the next ten years Dr. Delamater
worked and from 1837 to 1839 he
lectured upon the theory and practice
of physic and on female diseases, and
during the session of 1839-40, on the
theory and practice of physic and mid-
wifery. At this time the impaired
health of his family induced him to
change his locality, and in 1841, he
removed to Geneva, New York, where
from 1S41 to 1843 he lectured on general
pathology and materia medica in Geneva
College. But the activity thus far
depicted by no means covers the entire
facts of his medical career up to this
point, and he himself says: "Within
the period intervening between the years
1828 to 1S42, both inclusive, I accepted
appointments and, in accordance there-
with, delivered the following lectures in
addition to the annual courses above
named, viz.: six courses on the princi-
ples and practice of physic in the Medical
School of Maine, connected with Bow-
doin College; one course on materia med-
ica and three courses on principles and
practice of physic in the Medical School
of New Hampshire, connected with
Dartmouth College; one course of ten
weeks — twelve lectures weekly — on sur-
gery and midwifery in the University of
Vermont; and four courses on patho-
logical anatomy, midwifery and theory
and practice of physic in the University
of Willoughby, at Willoughby, Ohio;
and, finally, in January and February,
1838, I delivered about sixty lectures on
surgery in the Medical College of Ohio,
located at Cincinnati, Ohio." Truly the
catalogue reads like the diary of one
of the peripatetic professors of the middle
ages!
During the time he was lecturing in Geneva Dr. Delamater was also occupy- ing the chairs of pathological anatomy and midwifery, or the theory and practice of physic, in the University of Willough- by, Ohio, and when, in 1843, the professors in the latter school resolved to remove to Cleveland and organize there a new medical school, Delamater was, naturally, the leading spirit in the transfer and occupied for seventeen years the chairs of general pathology and midwifery and the diseases of women in the Western Reserve College, thus founded. In 1S60, at the age of seventy-three, he resigned active and formal duty as a teacher, but occasionally filled temporary vacancies in the staff of the college until almost the close of his busy and useful life. After his death, the outlines of no less than seventy courses of lectures, in almost all departments of medicine, were found among his papers, and it is believed that
