New York carried off some 3,000 victims, Boston's death roll numbered only one hundred owing to the authorities being wise enough to adopt the stringent sanitary precautions urged by Bigelow, who, with Ware and Flint, offered his services as investigator of the conditions in New York.
Bigelow at middle age was visiting physician to the Massachusetts General Hospital, professor of materia medica at Harvard, had an enormous consulting practice, and wrote frequently for the press and keenly worked for reform in the practice of medicine. Bigelow had clear vision and for many years, in season and out of season, demonstrated the self-limited character of disease. In 1835, when he read an address with this title before the Massachusetts Medical Society, the effect it produced was profound. Dr. O. W. Holmes says, "this remarkable essay had more influence on medical practice in America than any other similar brief treatise." This paper is bound up in a little volume entitled "Nature in Disease and Other Writings," 1854.
His educational pamphlets caused widespread discussion at home and abroad. Lecky wrote a strong letter of dissent, but Lyell, Huxley and Spencer were vigorous in commendation. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology with its splendid curriculum and strong staff is a monument, in part at least, to his untiring energy.
He did many other things in his declining years and became a most distinguished, most approachable old-man oracle. He was blind at the last for nearly five years; bed-ridden, but with mind undimmed at ninety-two. "His religion, not for speech, discussion or profession, was that of a serious man living very near the realities of life!" Unforgotten to the end, though long inactive, he died January, 10, 1879, and was buried in the beautiful Mount Auburn Cemetery, which he himself had originated.
Billings, John Shaw (1838–1913)
The family of John Shaw Billings is of Scandinavian origin and came from England to Massachusetts in the first half of the 17th century. About 1835 James Billings, his father, removed from Massachusetts to Switzerland County, Indiana, which was at that time still a sparsely settled pioneer region. Here John Shaw Billings was born April 12, 1838. He spent his early life on the farm and attended the country schools of those rugged pioneer days. He very early showed an uncommonly active and intelligent mind; he had an exceptional memory and was an omnivorous reader. When he grew older he studied Latin, Greek and geometry under a clergyman, Mr. Bonham, who was struck by the extraordinary brightness of the boy and who, much later says of him: "He recited lessons in Latin and Greek, so long that no average pupil could have learned them. He had a marvellous memory. I never met his equal!" Young Billings was soon so proficient that, in 1852, he could pass the entrance examination to Miami University. Here he spent five years of hard study. From the testimony of his teachers we know that he was a student of exceptional ability. One of them, Charles Elliot, Professor of Greek, describes him as "a young man of very superior talents and extensive acquirements," and he adds: "I have observed, moreover, that he possesses great facility in communicating what he knows." Yet Billings' college life was one great struggle with privations for he had to rely entirely on himself for his means of subsistence. But this hard school steeled his naturally strong mind for the arduous course of his later life. Billings graduated from this school with the degree of A. B. in 1857 and in the following year commenced the study of medicine at the Medical College of Ohio at Cincinnati. This school, founded by the celebrated Daniel Drake in 1819, enjoyed a well-merited reputation throughout the West. It laid great stress on practical teaching, and the hospital experience Billings received here served him in good stead in his subsequent career. He says himself: "I practically lived in the dissecting-room and in the clinics, and the very first lecture I ever heard was a clinical lecture." Billings graduated as doctor of medicine in 1860. The subject of his thesis was "The Surgical Treatment of Epilepsy," published in the Cincinnati Lancet and Observer of 1861. Already this early treatise bears the marks of his independent and original mind. His teachers held such a high opinion of him that, after his brilliant graduation, he was at once appointed demonstrator of anatomy in the institution. But soon after the Civil War broke out and young Billings did not hesitate a moment in offering his services to the Union cause. He passed first on the list of candidates before the Medical Examining Board of the Army and was duly commissioned first lieutenant and assistant
