LAWSON
85
LAWSON
the veins as well as the Ij'mphatics
served as absorbents. He himself dis-
believed in the conclusions of Magendi,
and at his suggestion a committee of
the Academy of Medicine was aj)-
pointed to make a study of the subject.
He gave pecuniary assistance to this
committee, which consisted of Dr.
Lawrence, Dr. Harlan and Dr. Coates.
Over ninety experiments on living
animals were performed. Lawrence,
not satisfied with this, in the following
summer, together with Dr. Coates,
performed an additional series of over
one hundred experiments. He hail
begun a third series to determine
the method of absorption in the brain,
when his work was cut short by death.
The results were published in the
"Philadelphia Journal of Medical and
Physical Sciences," vol. iii, p. 273;
vol. V, pp. 108 and 327, and they not
only verified but extended Magendi 's
views.
In New Orleans, Lawrence had ex- posed himself to yellow fever by mak- ing autopsies on putrid bodies. He investigated the subject still further in the epidemic of 1820, and left the most complete record of autopsies which had been made up to this time. He left over 3000 pages of manuscript, much of it for use in a projected work on pathological anatomy, a subject at that time neglected in America.
He died in Philadelphia in 1823.
C. R. B.
Prof. W. W. Keen, History of the Philadel- phia School of Anatomy. For Obituary Notices, see: Dr. Coates, Phila., Jour. .Mod. and Phj-s. 8ci., 187.3. Eulogium, l)y Prof. .lackson, il)id.
Lawson, Leonidas Merion (1812-18G4).
Leonidas Merion Lawson was born in Nicholas County, Kentucky, Sep- tember 10, 1812, a son of the Rev. Jeremiah Lawson. He received his early education in the school which afterwards became Augusta College and in 1830 began to study medicine, two years later receiving a license to prac-
tise in the first medical district of
Ohio. He removed soon afterwards
to Mason County, Kentucky, where
he practised until 1837, graduating
at Transylvania University, Lexing-
ton, Kentucky, in the spring of 1838.
In 1841 he removed to Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1842 he founded the "West- ern Lancet," and continued editor until 1855. In 1844 he commenced a reprint of Hope's " Pathological Anat- omy." During the same year he received- a call to a chair in Trans- ylvania Universit}^ and in 1845 spent several months in the hospitals of London and Paris. On his return he moved to Lexington, Kentucky.
In 1847 he was made professor of materia medica and general pathology in the Medical College of Ohio, which position he held until 1853, when he was appointed professor of the princi- ples and practice of medicine, and in 1856 he returned to the Medical Col- lege of Ohio, but in 1860 filled the chair of clinical medicine in the Univer- sity of Louisiana.
In 1861 he published his treatise on "Phthisis Pulmonalis," a work to which he had given six years of earnest labor, and which was a standard text-book long after its publication.
Lawson married twice. His first wife a Miss Louisa Cailey, of Felicity, Ohio, who died in 1846 leaving three daughters. One of them — Louise — became a noted sculptor, receiving high honors in this country and abroad. She died in 1899.
His second wife was Eliza Robin- son, daughter of John Robinson of Wilmington, Delaware; liy her he had two sons and five daughters. Dr. Lawson died January 21, 1864.
A. G. D.
Cincin. Lancet and Obs. 1864, n. s. vii. Portrait in Surg. -gen. Lib. Wash. D. 0.
Lawson, Thomas (1795(?)-1861).
This army surgeon after the comple- tion of his medical studies was surgeon's mate in the navy, clearly too young,
