DAWSON 297 DAWSON ■writer and a rising member of the medical faculty. The University conferred on him the honorary M. D. for this first paper. Returning to his home, he entered into partnership with his friend and patron. He •continued also to be a student and writer, and a series of articles followed, among them : "Thoughts on the Tongue as an Element of Diagnosis," "Epidemic Erysipelas," and "On Cold Baths in Typhoid Fever," the last some- thing like half a century too soon to be appre- ciated. While practising at Jamestown, he had one of those clinical experiences that come, if ever, only once in a lifetime. He had a case of obstruction of the bowel in a young man, and fully expected to lose him. One morning when he went into the house he found the patient upon the vessel straining, and was told that he suddenly had a desire to stool. In a few moments the patient said he was through, and was helped back to bed. Upon examination, the doctor found in the vessel a section of the ileum twenty-six inches long. This priceless trophy was lost to him the next year, for while visiting his old friend. Dr. Joshua Martin, at Xenia, during an attack of housecleaning all his collection of specimens were thrown out and lost. In 1851 Dr. Dawson, feeling that he was wasting his time and talents in continuing country practice, removed to Columbus, Ohio. The following year the faculty of Starling Medical College was organized, and he was made professor of anatomy and physiology, in company with a remarkably strong set of men as his co-workers. Dr. Dawson held this professorship for twelve years, and later became one of the professors of surgery, a position he held till the time of his death. The following year and until his death he was editor of the Ohio Medical and Sur- gical Journal. As a medical journahst he was eminently a success. His English was both strong and graceful, and the journal, during these years, contained many brilliant and learned articles. In politics he was a Democrat, and his writings, outside of his professional articles, showed the bent of his opinions. Samuel Medary's "Columbus Crisis" contained a num- ber of these writings. Among them were ■"Progress of the Races," "Commingling of the Races," and "Ethnology and Politics." Personally he was reserved and dignified, but never cold or severe; loved by his friends and respected by his enemies ; always a hard worker and a friend to the poor, white or black, and they admired and loved him. In the midst of his work he was stricken down in his office by an attack of cerebral hemorrhage, and died September 4, 1866. A remarkable family fatality is shown in the male members of this family. Dr. John Dawson, Dr. James Dawson and George Daw- son all died from cerebral apoplexy, and Dr. W. W. Dawson died of dementia paralytica, while the female members show no such ten- dency, nor can a previous family history of nervous trouble be established. Charles Anderson. Transactions of the Ohio State Medical Society, 1867. Dawson, John Lawrence (1815-1896). John Lawrence Dawson, practioner for more than fifty years in South Carolina, was born on his father's plantation at Metkin, Moncks Corner, South Carolina, in March, 1815, the son of Lawrence Monck Dawson, great grand- son of Lord Monck. He had his education at the Medical College of Charleston and graduated M. D. from the Medical College of South Carolina, afterwards studying at Paris clinics and finally settling down in Charleston. He was at one time president of the Med- ical Society of South Carolina and United States surgeon for the troops stationed there. As registrar of the city he compiled with Dr. de Saussure valuable statistics, the first real- ly good ones the city had had. He married Jane, daughter of his partner' Dr. Simons and had four daughters. When this wife died he wedded Catherine Dawson and had one son and two daughters. Dr. Daw- son died at his house in Tradd Street, Charles- ton, on the seventeenth of September, 1896. Robert Wilson, Jr. Dawson, William Wirt (1828-1893). William Wirt Dawson was born on De- cember 19, 1828, at Dawson's Mills, Berkley County, 'Virginia, the youngest son of John and Nancy Hays Dawson. The family — father, mother, and eleven children — emigra- ted to Jamestown, Green County, Ohio, when the boy was one year old, and there he spent his childhood and early youth. When old enough to leave home he was sent to a private school at Xenia, Ohio. After returning home from school at Xenia, he began to work for his father, but finding that rather too stren- uous for him, he followed the example of his two older brothers and began to study medicine with Dr. Matthias Winans, of James-
