MURPHY
209
MURRAY
studies were in the comparative anatomy
of the eye, a subject upon which he was
an authority.
He had great artistic talents to which his works in sculpture testify. Several reliefs which he executed are well known in his community and highly prized. His inventive skill produced a number of very useful instruments, the best known of which is his eye speculum; an enlarged form of this he devised as a mouth-gag.
He was an able and successful operator, and was one of the few men of his years who was ready to apply rigidly the rules of asepsis. In his relation to patients, public as well as private, his gentleness and kindness and patience were extreme.
He was a spiritual man and a member of the Presbyterian Church, to which he devoted much time. But though in- tensely religious he was very tolerant of the views of others. His great famiharity with the Bible was a constant source of wonder to his friends.
H. F.
Obit, by Friedenwald, Trans. Am. Ophth. Soc, 1905.
Murphy, John Alexander (1824-1900).
John Alexander Murphy was born in Hawkins County, East Tennessee, Janu- ary 23, 1824, the son of Patrick and Mar- garet (McKinney) Murphy. The father, a native of Ireland, came to this country while a young man, and settled in East Tennessee, where he married Margaret McKinney, whose family came to Amer- ica after the Covenanter's War in the North of Ireland. Murphy received his education in the public schools and in Cincinnati College, in 1843 beginning to study medicine with Dr. John Pollard Harrison, and graduating in the Medical College of Ohio, 1846, serving afterwards as interne in the Commercial Hospital. He was one of the founders of the Miami Medical College, organized in 1852, and professor of materia medica, therapeutics and medical jurisprudence. In 1853 he went to Europe, and studied in the great hospitals.
When in 1857 the Miami Medical Vol. 11-14
College was united with the Medical
College of Ohio, Dr. Murphy was made
professor of materia medica and thera-
peutics, and in 1865 the Miami Medical
College was re-organized, Dr. Murphy
being appointed professor of theory and
practice.
In association with Drs. George Men- denhall and E. B. Stevens he established and edited the "Medical Ob.server" until its union with the "Western Lancet." He was until near his death on the staff of the Commercial Hospital and for many years a member of the Ohio State Medical Society, and its president in 1880.
He married November 11, 1862, a daughter of Dr. Samuel G. Menzies, of Kentucky, and had two daughters, Nora and Mary Ann, and a son, Archibald. The latter died at the age of three. Dr. Murphy died in Cincinnati, February 28, 1900.
A. G. D.
Murray, Robert Drake (1845-1903).
Robert Drake Murray, naval surgeon, son of Joseph Arbour and Nancy Drake Murray, was born in Ohio, April 21, 1845, and died on the twenty-second of Novem- ber, 1903. Although a native of Ohio, he became a Floridian by adoiition in the early 70's. He was senior-surgeon in the Public Health and Marine Hospital Ser- vice, having entered that department of the government in 1872, his first station being Key West, Florida. He came from a famiU' of Revolutionary fame. Enter- ing the army at the early age of fifteen, in the war between the states, he was several times wounded, and in the last encounter, at the battle of Saltville, Virginia, was so seriously injured that he was left on the field for dead, and was captured and imprisoned at Richmond. In 1865 he began the study of medicine in the Tripler United States Army Hospital at Columbus, Ohio, afterwards became a pupil of J. Augustus Seitz, in Bluffton, Ohio, and later studied under John E. Darby, M. D., of Cleveland. Dr. Murray attended the Cleveland Medical College
