TOLAND
450
TOLMIE
saved about three thousand dolhirs,
and in the spring of 1S33 he sailed for
France and sought quarters in Rue dc
I'Ecole de Medicine, Paris, where he Hved
econoniically for the next two years and
a half, and applied his time in constant
attendance under illustrious surgeons in
the hospital cUnics.
During the succeeding twelve years, Dr. Toland practised alone, and married Mary Goodwin, who lived only a few years. In 1 844 he married Mary Avery, of Columbia, who in 1852 accompanied him to CaUfornia.
Early in 1852 the doctor purchased a quartz mill and had it shipped to San Francisco but his mining ventures never succeeded, so he settled in San Francisco. Until 18G0 Dr. Toland included obstetri- cal cases in his practice, but determined to give this up on account of the dis- turbance of his night's rest. At this time he married his third wife, Mrs. Mary B. M. Gridley. On the breaking out of the Civil War in 1861, Dr. Toland's annual income was over forty thousand dollars. He had been appointed surgeon to the Marine Hospital in 1855, and the appointment was renewed yearly until the establishment of the City and County Hospital, where Toland was appointed visiting surgeon. Patients from the entire Pacific Coast sought the San Francisco City and County Hospital for treatment.
In 1866 he founded a college of Medi- cine, known for the next six j^ears as "Toland Medical College." He had secured a suitable lot on Stockton, near Chestnut Street. He alone suppHed the funds necessary to erect a substantial brick building and to furnish it with the adjuncts deemed requisite.
Toland had, for some years previously, been pubhshing the "Pacific Medical Journal," and in 1872 it was re-named the "Western Lancet."
Although Dr. Toland was accredited with some sternness of manner when dealing with men patients, his manner toward women and children was exceed- ingly gentle and sympathetic.
During the seventies there was much
written about the power of the iodides
in the cure of the later symptoms of
syphilis. Dr. Toland vigorously com-
bated this idea and insisted that mer-
cury, and niercur}^ only, was realh^
curative in syi^hilis at any stage.
As a surgical operator Dr. Toland was rapid, direct and abundantly resourceful in the presence of unexpected develop- ments. To the disinterested witness he perhaps might not appear to be par- ticularly dexterous, but he always knew exactly what he meant to do, and did it in the most direct way. Toland took especial pleasure in operating for urinary calculus, and he always used the litho- tome cache double of Dupytren.
He had often expressed the hope that he would not die a lingering death. This hope was reahzed, for when the final summons came, he was about to go down stairs to begin his daily roimd of work, when he fell to the floor, expiring at once. Although no autopsy was per- formed, it was understood that a fainting fit had caused him to fall, striking his forehead violently upon the floor, and causing cerebral hemorrhage. His death caused sincere mourning in many a home.
R. A. McL.
From a sketch of hia life, written by Mr. A. Phelps after the doctor's death; and from recollections of personal communications during the last ten years of his life, when the writer was associated with him in practice and in college and hospital work.
Tohnie, William Eraser (1812-1886).
Born at Inverness, Scotland, and edu- cated in Glasgow, from which university he held his L. S. P. and S., he left Scot- land for America in 1832, in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, coming around Cape Horn on a sailing vessel and arriving at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River, then the chief trading post of the company, in the spring of 1833.
In 1834 he joined the expedition under Mr. Ogden, which traded along the Northwest coast as far as the Russian boundary, establishing trading posts at
