Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/106

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LEE 00

When the Northern Dispensary of New York City was being established, Dr. Lee and Dr. James Stewart were among its most active and most efficient promoters.

He accepted the chair of materia medica and general pathology in the Geneva Medical College, New York.

After the year 1S50, Dr. Lee devoted himself chiefly to teaching various branches of medicine in different med- ical colleges, among which may be named the University of the City of New York; Geneva Medical College; University of Buffalo, medical depart- ment; Vermont Medical College, at Woodstock; Maine Medical School, at Brunswick; Berkshire Medical College; Starling Medical College, Columbus, Ohio. The branches taught by him in these different colleges were: therapeutics and materia medica; general pathology, ob- stetrics, and diseases of females ; hygiene and medical jurisprudence.

In 1S50, in connection wuth his col- leagues, Drs. Hamilton, Flint, Hadley, and Webster, he, founded the Buffalo Medical School, acting under the charter of the University of Buffalo.

He wrote extensively on a great variety of medical and scientific sub- jects. His "Physiology for the Use of Elementary Schools" was published by the American Common School So- ciety about 1835 and passed through ten or more editions, much popularizing this important branch of knowledge His "Manual of Geology for Schools and Colleges" was published in 1835. In 1843 he was instrumental in estab- lishing the " New York Journal of Medicine and the Collateral Sciences."

In 1845 Dr. Lee brought out an edition of "Principles of Forensic Med- icine," by William A. Guy, M. D., with extensive and valuable notes and additions, and in 1848 commenced the most important and laborious pro- fessional work of his life — the editing an American edition of Dr. James Copland's " Dictionary of Practical Med- icine," issued irregularly in London.


LEE


The Dictionary was fifteen years in passing through the press of the Harpers, owing to its slow publication by its author in London. The entire work forms three immense octavo volumes. He also edited and enlarged an English work entitled " Bacchus, an Essay on the Nature, Cause, Effects and Cure of Intemperance," by Ralph B. Grin- drod. A. T. Thomson's "Conspectus" of the London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Colleges, and of the United States Pharmacopoeia. "Pharmacologia, or, the Theory and Art of Prescribing," by J. A. Paris, M. D.

He wrote, the last years of his life, a work on the " Indigenous Materia Medica of the United States," which is in manuscript and would form a volume of about six hundred pages.

In the spring of 1862, the second year of the war, Dr. Lee visited Europe to collect plans, models, and specifica- tions of the best and most recent naval, civil, and military hospitals of Great Britain and the Continent, for the use of the United States Govern- ment. These, with others, were placed in the archives of the War Department at Washington. He wrote for the "American Medical Times," of New York, about fifty elaborate and care- fully prepared letters designed to furnish useful information to our army and naval surgeons.

During the war he accepted a situ- ation as hospital inspector and visitor, in the United States Sanitary Com- mission's employ. He labored efficient- ly in this field until the close of the war, and in the spring of 1865, soon after the surrender of Gen. Lee's army, the doctor was engaged for several months throughout the South in collecting materials for "Memoirs of a Sanitary History of the War." ("Sanitary Rec- ords and Medical History of the War," issued by the United States Sanitary Commission.)

Lee was a member of the New York Academy of Medicine and the New York State Medical Society.