SPENCER
401
SQUIRE
of the County of Madison in 1820, and
attended a second course of lectures at
the Medical College at Fairfield, and
received his M. D.
In 1824 Spencer was elected to the Assembly of the Legislature of New York State. In 1832 curious as it might seem to us now, during his presidency of the Medical Society of the State of New York in 1822, he attended a course of lectures at the University of Pennsjd- vania, going occasionally to the lectures of the Jefferson Medical College. His article on "Cholera" was written in Philadelphia in ten days, just prepara- tory to its delivery in that city. It was well received and noticed in Cincinnati, Philadelphia and other medical journals of the day. At the suggestion of the Hon. John C. Spencer, late Secretary of War (not a relative), to Drs. Spencer and Morgan, a medical college under the powers of the Geneva College was founded. The first course of lectures was delivered in 1835, Dr. Spencer filling the chair of theory and practiceof medicine for fifteen years. Through his energy large endow- ments were obtained for the literary and also for the medical department. He i-emoved to Geneva in order that he might be more convenient to the college. In 1847, when the Mexican War broke out, Dr. Spencer was appointed surgeon of the Tenth Regiment of New York and New Jersey Volunteers, he served for nearly one year and a half on the northern line of the Army; at Matamoras he or- ganized a field hospital and brought everjrthing in connection with it, its ap- pliances and appurtenances, to a great degree of perfection.
Soon after his return Dr. Spencer removed to Milwaukee, in order to be near the Rush Medical College, Chicago, where he became professor of theory and practice of medicine. Owing to ill health he was obliged to resign and return to Syracuse. The Board of Trustees, how- ever, elected him emeritus professor. Dr. Spencer relinquished his practice in Syracuse to accept a professorship in the Philadelphia College of Medicine about Vol. 11-26
1852, and accordingly removed to that
city, where he continued to reside until
the period of his death which took place
on May 30, 1857.
M. K. K.
Abridged from a biography by Dr. James
J. Walsh.
Tr. M. Soc, N. Y., Albany, 1858 (S. D.
Willard).
Squire, Truman Hoffman (1823-1889).
When a general practitioner like T. H. Squire with evident talent for surgery remains a practitioner, one regrets a loss to both sides of the pro- fession, but commonplace hindrances often keep a man tied wfiile ambition soars. Truman Squire was born to John Graham and Rhoda Smith Squire in Russia, March 31, 1823. He went as a lad to the Fairfield Academy and gradu- ated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, in 1848, setthng eventually in Elmira and practising there all his life with the exception of a term of service during the War. He married Grace, daughter of Dr. Nathaniel Smith, of Bradford County, Pennsyl- vania, and had two daughters and a son, tlie latter, Charles L., practising with his father.
Dr. Squire possessed a reputation in skillful surgery appreciated by his col- leagues and, added to this he had a fine talent of invention, one result of which was an instrument for easy admission to the bladder through the natural channel, an invention which culminated in the soft rubber catheter of N(Slaton. Squire's was designed for cases of enlarged prostate and consisted of the employ- ment at the distal extremity of a metallic catheter of a number of ball-and-socket joints in the form of a continuous tube which admitted of much mobility and readily found entrance through a sinuous canal to the cavity of the bladder. In 1876 the Arguentieul Prize from the Academy of Medicine of Paris of 1500 francs was awarded him for his contribu- tion to surgical appliances for use in genito-urinary disease. Dr. Squire died
