out in St. John, in which fifteen hundred persons perished. During its prevalence Dr. Botsford stuck to his post, and was unremitting in his attentions to all classes; his strong physique enabled him to come through the ordeal unscathed. He was a man over six feet and had a fine, prepossessing face, and was a ready, pleasing and forcible speaker, and, as the writer well remembers, always held the attention of his hearers when he addressed them on a medical or other subject.
He was for a number of years surgeon to the Marine Hospital, as well as to the General Public Hospital and president of the Canadian Medical Association in 1877.
His wife was a Miss Main of Glasgow, with whom he became acquainted while a student there. She died in 1877, leaving no children.
Bowditch, Henry Ingersoll (1808–1892)
Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, chairman of the first Massachusetts State Board of Health, pioneer specialist in diseases of the chest; introducer of "paracentesis thoracis," was the third son of the celebrated mathematician, Nathaniel Bowditch, and of Mary Ingersoll, his wife. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, August 9, 1808, his early life being spent in Salem; but in 1823 his father moved to Boston, which became his permanent home. The old house in which he lived at first was at 8 Otis Place, now Winthrop Square, at the junction of Devonshire and Otis Streets in the present heart of the business section of Boston, at that time a quiet residential section of the city. In 1859 he moved to 113 Boylston Street (afterwards numbered 324), opposite the Public Garden, where he remained until his death thirty-three years later, in 1892.
He graduated from Harvard College in the Class of 1828, and subsequently began his medical studies in the Harvard Medical School, receiving an A.M. and M.D. in 1832. Later he was house officer in the Massachusetts General Hospital under the tutelage of his revered master, Dr. James Jackson (q. v.), for whose character and skill he always felt the deepest reverence. In 1832 he went abroad to study in Paris, and was fortunate in becoming associated with the great Louis. For the greater part of two years he was under the latter's guidance in the hospital of La Pitié in the Quartier Latin. With Louis, he became deeply interested in the teachings of Laennerc in examinations of the chest by auscultation and percussion; and he became so proficient that his contemporaries prophesied that he would be fitting successor of Dr. James Jackson, who was the leading physician in Boston in this special line of work at that time.
This was the beginning of his subsequent fame as a specialist in diseases of the chest and gave him the inspiration for the important work with which his name will be always associated, namely, thoracentesis (aspiration of the chest in pleuritic effusions by the aspirating needle and trocar), and his studies upon the probable predisposing causes of pulmonary tuberculosis, at that time usually spoken of as "consumption" or "phthisis."
Previous to his return to Boston in 1834, he visited the hospitals of Great Britain but found always his chief inspiration in Paris under the men who at that time were leaders in the medical world, the palm always being given by him and others to the great Louis.
After his return to Boston he began practice in general medicine, although he never practised surgery. During the early years he wrote and published "The Young Stethoscopist," a little book even now often referred to as containing most valuable instruction in the art of auscultation and percussion of the chest.
In 1835, when he had become a member of the Massachusets Medical Society, he founded with Dr. John Ware the Boston Society of Medical Observation, a similar organization to that under the leadership of Louis in Paris. It existed as a student society for two years when it was discontinued, then revived again by Dr. Bowditch and seven others, the organization being merged many years afterwards into the Boston Society for Medical Improvement. From the Society of Medical Observation, the Boston Medical Library Association took its birth, the first meeting of the association being held in Dr. Bowditch's office, December 21, 1874, six gentlemen being present, and in 1878 he made an address at the dedication of the Library in Boylston Place and took the keenest interest in its growth from that time.
Incidentally, immediately after his return from Europe he witnessed the so-called "Broadcloth Mob," in which William Lloyd Garrison was mobbed by respectable citizens of Boston at the Old State House for his burning denunciation of slavery. Instantly, Dr. Bowditch with the fire which was one of his marked characteristics, espoused the cause of the Abolitionists headed by Garrison, and took active part in all the auxiliary work in Massachusetts until slavery was abolished by the Civil War. This enthusiasm for the cause of the slave was followed by his being ostra-
