THORNDIKE 1145 THORNDIKE ing at it almost until the day of his death. In 1896 he wrote his important article on "The Detection of Color Blindness." Two institutions in Philadelphia are espe- cially indebted to one work of Wilham Thom- son, namely, the Wills Eye Hospital, with which he became connected in 1868, and tlie Jefferson Medical College, with which he was identified from 1873 until 1897, first as lec- turer on diseases of the eye, later as honorary professor of ophthalmology, and finally, in 1895, as full professor of ophthalmology, with a seat in the faculty. He was a member of the Philosophical So- ciety, the Academy of Natural Sciences, honor- ary member of the New York Neurological Society, sometime physician to the Episcopal Hospital. Dr. Thomson died August 3, 1907. A list of his ophthalmic papers is given in the "Transactions of the College of Physicians" of Philadelphia, 3 s., 1909, vol. xxxi. They include : Chapter on diseases of the eye in Gross' "Surgery" (fifth edition) ; "History of First Case of Tumor of Brain Diagnosticated with the Ophthalmoscope in Philadelphia" ; "System Adopted by the Pennsylvania Rail- road in 1880 for Examination of Employees for Color-blindness, Vision and Hearing, with Instruments, Color-stick, etc."; "Normal Color Sense and Detection of Color-blindness in Norris and Oliver's System" ; chapter on dis- eases of the eye in "American Text-book of Surgery" ; "Relation of Ophthalmology to Practical Medicine." S. Weik Mitchell. Trans. Coll. of Phys. of Phila., 1909, vol. xxxi. S. Weir Mitchell. Trans. Amer. Opth. Soc, Phila., 1909, vol. xii. Thorndike, WiUiam Henry (1824-1884). William Henry Thorndike, Boston surgeon, was born at Salem, Massachusetts, June 5, 1824, and died at his home in Boston on the site of the Hotel Thorndike, December 26, 1884. His preliminary training was in the Salem Schools and at Harvard College, where he took an A. B. in 1845. After graduating he began to read medicine, according to the cus- tom of the time, in the office of Dr. A. L. Peirson of Salem (q. v.). Later, he entered the Harvard Medical School, and received his degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1848. He then served as house pupil at the Massa- chusetts General Hospital. He began the prac- tice of medicine in East Boston, an isolated community, where he was thrown upon his own resources. Thus was developed, as his associate at the Boston City Hospital, Dr. D. W. Cheever (q. v.), has said, "a peculiar roundness and completeness of character usu- ally found only in the country doctor." In this locality he quickly became one of the foremost physicians. He had been in prac- tice only a few weeks when he performed his first major operation, which was the removal of the lower maxilla, followed by recovery of the patient. During his residence at East Boston he was in the habit of crossing over Shirley Gut to Deer Island, and at the morgue obtained material for dissection. While living in East Boston he met his wife. Miss Sarah Wayland Smith, whom he married December 18, 1851. She was a daughter of Ebenezer Smith, a prominent business man of Boston. In 1866 he removed to Boston proper, and was ap- pointed one of the six visiting surgeons at the Boston City Hospital, which had been opened two years previously. He served until shortly before his death, a period of seventeen years. He was a typical New England-bred man, stood for all that such a heritage implies. He was descended from an English ancestor, who settled the town of Ipswich, Massachusetts, with Governor Winthrop in 1633. Dr. Thorndike came upon the scene in the days before the development of specialism in medicine, and practised therefore in all depart- ments of medicine and surgery without hesita- tion and success. The largest fee he ever got was for a cataract operation on both eyes. He charged $500, but the grateful patient sent him an additional $700 with his compliments. On a journey to Gardner, Massachusetts, he received $100 for tapping a hydrocele. It took the greater part of the day, and he was much criticised for not charging more. This tendency to undercharge characterized his pro- fessional life. He had an enormous practice and acquaintance, and for this reason was much sought after by lawyers as an expert in court. It was said that it was almost impossi- ble to empanel a jury which did not number among its -members a former or present pa- tient of Dr. Thorndike. He operated in all fields of surgery. Chee- ver says of him, "Natural taste, acquired dex- terity, long practice, had made him a deft, intrepid and successful operator. He loved his art. With him to see clear was to do. Diagnosis was followed by action. . . . He tied the internal iliac artery, behind the peritoneum, for secondary hemorrhage froin a perforating wound, and the patient lived to attend the funeral of his surgeon. He tied the external iliac vein for primary hemorrhage from a slab, with success. He tied the gluteal artery at its
