JACKSON
35
JACKSON
of cataracts, and with the needle had
remarkable results in curing the blind.
He was elected an honorary member
of the Massachusetts Medical Society
in 1783, and in 1793 received the hon-
orary degree of M. D. from Harvard
College. He took great interest in
small-pox inoculation.
His life was terminated, like many others of our profession, by an accident occurring while on his rounds of duty. In September, 1797, while "turning out" for another carriage his own was overturned and he was thrown and suffered a fractured rib. Fever soon ensued and September 28, 1797 he died. Hardly any other medical name in New Hampshire stands out brighter than that of Hall Jackson, for he was kind to the poor, charming in manners, genial in society, skillful in every branch of medicine which he practised, and above all an honest patriot.
J. A. S.
"The Graves we decorate," Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1907." " Letters by Whip- ple, Thornton and Hall Jackson," Philadel- phia, 1889.
Jackson, Samuel (1790-1872).
He was born March 22, 1787, the year in which the College of Physicians, Philadelphia, was founded, and grad- uated from the medical department of the University in 1808, having re- ceived his college education also at the University. His thesis was on " Suspended Animation." He was a student of Dr. Hutchinson, and after Dr. Hutchinson's death, of Dr. Wistar. He did not begin practice until about 1815, when he severed his connection with the drug business, of which he had assumed charge in 1809 on the death of his brother. He rapidly be- came prominent and in 1820 when the yellow fever prevailed in Philadel- phia he was chairman of the Board of Health. He rendered signal service not only fighting the disease fearless- ly and valiantly, but publishing import-
ant papers in the "Philadelphia Journal
of Medical and Physical Sciences."
He himself had an attack of the fever
and regarded it of local origin, due to
filth and putrescent animal and vege-
table matter.
His writings, chiefly opening lectures at the University and biographies of colleagues, occupy some two columns in the catalogue of the Surgeon-General's Library at Washington. His best work was his "Principles of Medicine found- ed on the Structure and Functions of the Animal Organism" (1832), the first of its kind published in America.
Jackson was seventy-six years of age when he delivered his last course of lectures at the University in the ses- sion of 1862-63, which I attended. He had the appearance then of being a very old man — older than he seems in the bronze tablet which we in 1910 erected to his memory in our Uni- versity. He was so feeble that he leaned on the arm of an assistant as he walked to his desk, whence he delivered his lectures sitting. There was, how- ever, no lack of spirit in his message. With his bright eyes beaming, his face full of enthusiasm, and his white hair streaming over his shoulders, he was truly picturesque. Leaning forward, he narrated with great animation the happenings of the day in physiology as they appeared to the eyes of the great French physiologists, Claude Bernard, Milne Edwards and Brown- Sequard. For at that day the French were the acknowledged leaders in physi- ological science.
He became professor of materia medica in the College of Pharmacy in 1821 as the colleague of Prof. George B. Wood. Jackson's introduction to medical teaching was in the Philadelphia Hospital, in whose wards he served from 1822 to 1845, and attracted many students to his lectures. At that day the subjects of practice of medicine and the institutes of medicine were united under one professorship. Institutes of medicine was a term which
