Mexican War Surgeon Wright was on the staff of Major General Worth with headquarters at San Antonio, Texas and there he had charge during an epidemic of Asiatic Cholera of great severity. During the Civil War while on the staffs of Generals McClellan and Rosecrans Surgeon Wright participated in some of the engagements in West Virginia and then served as medical director, department of Missouri, under General Halleck. He attained the rank of colonel and brevet brigadier general in 1865 and was retired in December, 1876. He died at his residence in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, May 14, 1878.
General Wright was a man of true soldierly instincts, never permitting personal consideration to interfere with the discharge of duty, and of high professional skill; he was most fair and honorable in all his dealings and had many friends.
He was among the first to use and recommend sulphate of quinine in large doses during the remission in the treatment of malaria. He published articles in Southern Medical Reports.
Wright, Thomas Lee (1825–1893)
Thomas Lee Wright, of Bellefontaine, Ohio, the author of a volume entitled "Inebrism, a Pathological and Psychological Study," was the son of Dr. Thomas Wright, who came to Quebec from the north of Ireland in 1817 and settled in Craftsbury, Vermont. He married a daughter of Dr. Huntington of that town, and moved to Ohio, and Thomas Lee was born in Windham, Portage County, August 7, 1825. He was educated at Miami University and at the Ohio Medical College, Cincinnati, where he received an M. D. in 1846. He practised at Kansas City until 1854, chiefly as government physician among the Wyandotte Indians. During the season of 1855–56 he was lecturer upon theory and practice in Wesleyan University, at Keokuk, Ia.; after that he practised in Bellefontaine where he had married the daughter of Dr. A. H. Lord, in 1846.
Being affected with organic heart disease, in 1880 Dr. Wright relinquished active practice and devoted himself to the study of inebriety, a subject that had led him to write "On the Action of Alcohol on the Mind and Morals" for the Lancet Clinic, the previous year. He became a frequent contributor to The Journal of Inebriety, and every year until his death presented a paper before the American Association for the Study and Cure of Inebriety. In 1885 through the advice of friends he published "Inebrism, a Pathological and Psychological Study." This book of two hundred and fifty pages was translated into the French, German and Russian languages, and has been regarded as one of the most valuable contributions to this subject that had been made by American physicians. His work was of a pioneer character, pointing out the paralyzing action of alcohol on the brain and nervous system and the philosophy of defects in the moral faculties of inebriates.
In 1860 he published a "Disquisition on the Ancient History of Medicine," 1 vol. 8vo., 84 p. and in 1874, "The Deterioration of the Race upon the Western Continent," a paper in the Cincinnati Lancet and Observer.
Personally, Dr. Wright was a genial man, keen to notice the follies and weaknesses of human nature, but charitable in his judgments.
He died at his home suddenly June 22, 1893.
Wright, Marmaduke Burr (1803–1879)
Marmaduke Burr Wright, a physician and medical teacher of Cincinnati, Ohio, was born in Pemberton, New Jersey, November 10, 1803. His early education was acquired in the Trenton Academy, and at the age of sixteen he began to study medicine with Dr. John McKelway, of Trenton, an alumnus of the University of Edinburgh. After attending three courses of medical lectures in the University of Pennsylvania he received his M. D. there in 1823 and in the same year he settled in Columbus, Ohio, and speedily established his reputation as a skilful physician and surgeon. In 1835 he married Mary E. Olmstead, of Columbus. In 1838 he held the chair of materia medica and therapeutics in the Medical College of Ohio, and two years later was transferred to the chair of obstetrics in the same institution. From this position he was removed by the action of the trustees of the college in 1850, a step which occasioned no little controversy and bitterness of feeling, but he was reelected to the same chair in 1860, and continued to hold this position until his retirement, with the title of professor emeritus, in 1868. During a large portion of his term of service in the Medical College of Ohio Dr. Wright filled the office of dean of the faculty.
Dr. Wright was one of the founders of
