RICH
three members drank twenty-three bot-
tles of "brandy toddy" and "rum pimch."
Soon after his arrival in town, Dr. Rice married Miss Martha Wells, but she died in 1773, leaving him three or four children. AVithin a couple of years, he married the Widow Elizabeth Howe, of Marlborough, Massachusetts, and just about that time he began to believe that the colonists had gone too far; that England was too big to conquer, and that all the members of the committee would be hanged on the arrival of the British Army. So taking his new wife and children, he emigrated to Marlborough, where his wife had lived before her marriage, and there, far from the dangers of British invasion, he led a quiet life, not dying until 1822.
Like many other medical men of those days, Dr. Rice had some business as a source of income besides the scanty fees from practice and he had a good deal at one time to do with mining and smelting iron ore in the towns of Kennebunk and Wells.
Just as a pioneer in Maine, at a time when great physicians were few, Dr. Rice deserves praise and mention in a biographical work.
J. A. S. Trana. Maine Jled. As30C.
Rich, Hosea (1780-1866).
This capable surgeon, the son of Paul and Mary Dennis Rich, was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, Oct. 1, 1780. His childhood was spent on a farm, where he obtained that sturdi- ness which lasted through life. He studied medicine with Dr. John Elliot Eaton, of Dudley, Massachusetts (Har- vard College 1777), and with Dr. Thomas Babbitt, of Harvard, 1784. He studied medicine for five successive years, thus laying a solid foundation for success. On January 6, 1803, Rich mar- ried Mrs. Fannie Burke Goodall, by whom he had eight children, one of whom be- came a medical practitioner. Soon after marriage Rich tried practice at various places without success and finally set sail
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with an expedition for Port au Prince, as surgeon's mate. Two years later, John Burke, a brother-in-law, having moved to Bangor, Maine, then on the edge of the primeval forest, advised his brother- in-law to settle there, so on July 4, 1805, Rich went to Bangor, there to labor suc- cessfully nearly sixty-one years.
He was a prominent member of the Maine Medical Society, afterwards presi- dent of the Maine Medical Association. The transactions of the latter society not having been printed until Rich was advanced in years, we have no means of knowing what papers he contributed. .\s he had really no degree, as a reward for his long continued usefulness and exL-ellent standing in the Commonwealth of Maine, Bowdoin College granted him her honorary M. D. in 1851, gratefully acknowledged by Dr. Rich when he was more than seventy years of age as a token of being well thought of.
During the War of 1812 he was sur- geon of the Fourth Maine Regiment at the Battle of Hampden, Maine, where some 750 British attacked half the number of Americans. Rich had just extracted a bullet from the hand of a wounded soldier when the enemy entered the hospital. He ran one way, the patient another, and they did not meet again for several years. We can imagine the pleasure, when at that time Dr. Rich was able to show his patient the bullet that he had taken from his hand. It should be added that on the day after the battle, by permission of the invaders. Dr. Rich resumed work at the hospital.
He kept to the truth so far as his conscience would permit and encouraged his patients to the last. As a surgeon he was conservative, studying the anatomy thoroughly before operating, and always trying in every way to avoid operation if possible. The "Dubhn Hospital Gazette," February, 1856, reports one of his cases in which a thong forming the nucleus of a calculus was successfully removed July 3, 1855, at Bangor. His patient had foolishly pushed a leather thong into his bladder by means of a
