Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1260

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WILLIAMS 1238 WILLIAMS the insane. He urged the necessity of build- ing a large asylum and a bill to establish such an asylum was in the state senate at the time of Dr. Willard's death. It afterward passed and the institution was called the Willard Asylum for the Insane. In 1861 he married Susan Ellen Spence, daughter of Mirmion Spence. Two children were born, Margaret and Sylvester David. Among his appointments were: presidency of the Albany County Medical Society ; the surgeon-generalship of New York; secretary and editor of the Transactions of the New York State Medical Society. He died in Albany April 2, 1865. In addition to some fifteen biographies and the "Annals of the Medical Society of the County of Albany," he wrote "Suicide and Homicide," 1861 ; and "Conservative Surgery," 1861. Trans. Med. Soc, of N. Y., Franklin B. Hough, Albany, 1866. Med. and Surg. Reporter, Phila., 1865, vol. xiii. Trans. Med. Soc, County Albany, 1851-70, Al- bany, 1872, vol. ii. Appleton's Cyclop. Amer. Biog., N. Y., 1889. Williams, Charles Herbert (1850-1918) Charles Herbert Williams, Boston ophthal- mologist, was born in Boston, April 19, 1850, the eldest son of Dr. Henry W. Williams, the first professor of ophthalmologj- in the Har- vard Medical School, and of Elizabeth Dewey Williams. He was graduated from Harvard A. B. in 1871 and M. D. in 1874, then spending several years in Europe studying ophthal- mology and settling in practice in Boston with his father. He did pioneer work in color- blindness and wrote important articles on this subject. He married Caroline Ellis Fisher of Brook- line in 1884 and the following year accepted a position with the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railway as director of its medical and health insurance interests. Returning to Bos- ton in 1895, he resumed the practice of oph- thalmology with his brother. Dr. E. R. Wil- liams, residing in Milton. He was possessed of great mechanical ability and was most suc- cessful in the diagnosis and treatment of errors of refraction. He was the first to ex- tract a foreign body from the eye by the aid of a Roentgen picture, the picture being made by another brother, Dr. Francis H. Williams. Dr. Williams was surgeon to the Massachu- setts Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary and to the Ophthalmological department of the Boston City Hospital and Boston Dispensary. He wrote "The Eyes of School Children," (1885) ; "Standards and Methods of Examin- ing the Acuteness of Vision, Colorsense and Hearing for Railway and Marine Service" (.19U1) ; "The Need of a Supplementary Lan- tern Test for the Proper Examination of Color Perception" (1903). Among the many societies in which he held membership were the American Ophthalmo- logical Society, Chicago Ophthalmological So- ciety, American Medical Association, Massa- chusetts Medical Society. Dr. Williams died at his home in Cambridge, Mass., June 9, 1918, of heart disease, survived by his widow and two children. Boston Med. & Surg. Jour., June 20, 1918, vol. clviii, 886, Amer. Jour. Ophthalmol., T. H. Shastid, M. D., lylB, 3 S. I., 875. Williams, Elkanah (1822-1888). Born in Lawrence County, Indiana, Decem- ber 19, 1822, Elkanah Williams was one of the thirteen children born to Isaac and Amelia Gibson Williams, both of Welsh extraction, and born in North Carolina. In 1819 the father moved from Tennessee and settled near the village of Bedford, In- diana, and made a fortune in farming. His older sons were satisfied with the education they could get at home, but Elkanah had higher aspirations and preferred study to farm work. He matriculated at the State University at Bloomington, Indiana, 1843, then went to De Pauw University, where he took his degree in 1847. Bishop Simpson was president while Dr. Williams was at Asbury, and a strong personal attachment was formed between them, which only ended when the former passed away. It was his intention to study medicine, but before doing so he taught school for a short time. He matriculated at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, and took his M. d' in 1850. While a medical student he married Sarah L. Farmer in December, 1847, and practised in Bedford until the death of his wife in 1851. Against the advice of many of his friends, he determined to make diseases of the eye a specialtj-, and to that end went abroad, in 1852, to study in the eye clinics of Europe. He chose a most auspicious time, so far as ophthalmology was concerned. A new light was dawning, for the opthalmoscope was about to enlighten the unseeable fundus oculi and explain many things hitherto only matters of conjecture. He learned the use of this valuable instrument in Berlin, Vienna and Paris, and was one of the first to demonstrate its practical use at the Moorfield's Hospital in London. The following is from a sketch of Williams, in the "Transactions of the American Ophthal-