Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/435

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SMITH 383

several years more he entered the med- ical department of Dartmouth, and took his M. D. in 1833. He began to practise at once in his native town and in 1849 was appointed professor of materia medica and therapeutics in the Dart- mouth Medical School, where he con- tinued to lecture until he resigned in 1870, and became emeritus professor. In 1857 he delivered his course of lectures at the University of Vermont and also a course at the Bowdoin Medical School in 1859.

The honorary LL. D. was conferred on him by his alma mater in 1870, and the honorary M. D. by the Rush Medical College of Chicago in 1875. He was also president of the New Hampshire Medical Society.

Dr. Smith married February 26, 1828, Fidelia Stearns of Jaffrey, New Hamp- shire, and had three children, Fred. Augustus, Susan S., and Catherine B.

As a medical instructor he was in- cluded among the first in New England. He devoted the leisure in the later years of his life to the preparation of " A History of Peterborough," which book was pub- lished in 1876. He published a lecture on "Hippocrates" and another on "Par- acelsus," besides various articles in the medical journals and in the transactions of the state society. He died in Peter- borough, February 22, 1878.

I. J. P.

Tr. N. Hampshire M. Soc. 1878 (H. M.

Field).

Tr. Am. M. Ass., Phila., 1878.

Smith, Albert Hobnes (183S-1885).

Dr. Smith's biography resembles many others of energetic, clever doctors in that it ends with detailing all the fame he might have acquired had he lived. "His ambition lay in the direction of capital operations in gynecology and, had he lived, it is likely he would have acquired as much skiU and reputation in this as in obstetrics."

Descended from Quaker ancestors who had emigrated from Yorkshire, England, in 1685, and who were among the earlier


SMITH


settlers of Pennsylvania, Albert Holmes was the third son and seventh child of Dr. Moses B. and Rachel Coate Smith, and born July 19, 1835, in Philadelphia. As a lad he went to the Westtown School and Gregory's Classical School, entering at thirteen the freshman class in the University of Pennsylvania. He entered the University in 1849 and took his bachelor's degree in 1853; graduating M. D. in 1856 and studying under Prof. G. B. Wood.

When he left the Pennsylvania Hos- pital in 1859 he soon entered on a busy practice and in 1860 married Emily, daughter of Charles Ivaighn of Kaighn's Point, New Jersey. As a practitioner he was extremely popular, but his highest skill lay undoubtedly in obstetric manip- ulations, and as a teacher in the practical character of his teachings and the large amount of information he imparted.

To pass over the part played by him in connection with the admission of women doctors to the County Medical Society would be to ignore an important chapter in his life. He became consult- ing physician to the Women's Hospital in 1867, a time when the acceptance of such a position meant strong moral courage. A resolution was offered to the College to expel any doctor consulting with women — a resolution aimed at those who were on the staff of the Women's Hospital. After a heated debate this was rejected, but many of Smith's confreres were alienated from him.

His powers of physical endurance were wonderful, but an attack of typhoid in 1880 formed a prelude to five years of work often carried on in physical weari- ness. A visit to Sir Henry Thompson, London, in 1883 benefited and encour- aged him, and he returned to active practice but the following year destruc- tive adenoma of the prostate gland from which he had suffered for some time compelled him to give up work, though his interest in the world outside con- tinued until three days before his death on December 14, 1885.

He held many appointments and