PORCHER
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PORCHER
where he founded the State Medical
Association and was an organizer of the
Wayne County Medical Society and many
times elected as its president. He was
also president of the Medical Association
of Central New York. As governor,
trustee and resident physician of the
New York State Custodial Asylum for
Feeble-minded Women Dr. Pomeroy
worked until his impaired health obliged
him to resign.
He married twice. His first wife dying in early life, he married a second time in 18.50.
Dr. Pomeroy died of granular disease of the kidneys with cardiac complications, in Newark, December 14, 1887.
M. K. K.
Trans.ictions of the New York State Medical Association, 18SS, vol. v.
Porcher, Francis Peyre (1825-1895).
A distinguished physician and botanist, he was born December 14, 1825, and was descended from Isaac Porcher, a French Huguenot who emigrated from France at the time of the prosecution of the Hugue- nots by the Romish Church. He gradu- ated from the South Carohna College in 1844 with the degree of A. B. and took his M. D. from the Medical College of the State of South Carolina in 1847. His thesis, entitled: "A Medico-botanical Catalogue of the Plants and Ferns of St. Johns, Berkley, South Carolina," was published by the faculty of the college. This work proved to be the forerunner and ground work of a very remarkable series of books, as follows:
"Sketch of the Medical Botany of South CaroUna," 1849; "Medical Poi- sonous and Dietetic Properties of the Cryptogamic Plants of the United States," being a report made to the American Medical Association at its sessions held at Richmond, Virginia, and St. Louis, Missouri, 1854; "Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests" (war volume), 186.3; second edition, 1869.
In addition to these large works he wrote, in 1860, a prize essay entitled "Illustrations of Disease with the Micro-
scope: Clinical Investigations," with
upwards of five hundred original drawings
from nature and one hundred and ten
illustrations in wood. For this, a prize
of $100 offered by the South Carohna
Medical Association was awarded to him.
The first edition of "The Resources of the "Southern Fields and Forests" was published by order of the surgeon-general of the Confederacy and it was also a medical botany of the Confederate States. After graduating in medicine he spent two years in France and Italy, perfecting him- self in the refinement of his profession. Dr. Porcher returned to Charleston, South Carolina, and assisted in establish- ing the Charleston Preparatory Medical School. He was sub-sequently elected professor in the chairs of clinical medicine and of materia medica and therapeutics in the Medical College of the State of South Carolina. He was for five years one of the editors of the "Charleston Medical Journal and Review," and also assisted in editing and publishing four volumes "new series" after the War between the states.
Dr. Porcher, with his two brothers, served throughout the War, a third being killed in 1862. He was surgeon to the Holcombe Legion; to the Naval Hospi- tal at Fort Nelson, Norfolk Harbor, and at the South Carolina Hospital at Peters- burg, Virginia. His contributions to medical literature have been numerous and valuable. Some of his most impor- tant contributions have been upon " Yellow Fever, " " Diseases of the Heart," ("Wood's Hand-book of the Medical Sciences"), reports of sixty-nine cases of paracentises of the chest walls in case of effusion, on the medical and edible properties of the cryptogamic plants, on gastric remittent fevers," etc., etc. A partial list of Dr. Porcher's works will be found in the "Index Medicus" of the surgeon-general's office in Washington.
Dr. Porcher was an ex-president of the South Carolina Medical Association and of the Medical Society of South CaroUna, ex- vice-president of the American Medical Association, member of the Association
