POOLITTLE 319 DORSETT preacher and practitioner; he was said to be a "regularly educated physician and surgeon, furnished with books, instruments and drugs." When he had been settled in Northfield twenty years his medical and surgical practice became so extensive and lucrative that, in the opinion of many of his townsmen, it interfered with his ministerial duties. His reported statement that "he would not lay by doctoring and chir- urgery under 400 pounds a year," was one of the complaints. At this time (1737), when Jonathan Edwards had been preaching the "Great Awakening," the Rev. Doolittle's re- ligious doctrines did not find favor. Nineteen of his congregation signed a paper in which they accused him of leanings toward Armin- ianism and proposed to refer the matter to a "council" to determine whether his views were sound and he should be continued as pas- tor. Much to their discomfiture he made no reply, and the congregation seethed. The con- troversy reached a head in February, 1741, when he read a statement from the pulpit in which he said: "Brethren: There has been a great noise about my Principals which has been very wounding to Religion and hurtful to peace and unity among us; and I now make a demand of all those that have anything to object against my Principals to come to me and tell me ye very particular article they object against, to see if 1' cant satisfie them, and if I dont satisfie them, then to bring it to the church, or else to hold your peace forever hereafter .... Brethren, if it be your minds that those that have anything to object against my Principals should do as I have now demanded of them, manifest it by lifting up the hand. Voted in ye Affirmative." Very likely the Rev. Doolittle showed the same decision of character in his medical min- istrations to the settlements about Northfield, the garrisons at Fort Dummer and the Ashue- lots and in the battles and skirmishes of the Old French War. On settling in Northfield the town had pro- vided their minister with a house and lot of land, 16S pounds in money annually and "a stock of wood as the state and circumstances of his family shall require." Later, he received several grants of land. A month before assuming his duties. Dr. Doolittle married Lydia, daughter of Samuel Todd, of New Haven. They had twelve chil- dren. As an example of surprising vitality it may be mentioned that Mrs. Doolittle, after the death of Mr. Doolittle, married two hus- bands and Hved to the age of ninety-two. We hear of Dr. Doolittle June 3, 1746, when "Capt. Stevens sent down a troop of men to guard Mr. Doolittle and Dr. T. Williams (of Deerfield) to cut off the arm of one of the soldiers that was sore wounded, broke as they supposed, that the end would not be healed without cutting off one of his arms." Again in September, 1747, when a wounded cadet "was put under the care of Mr. Doolittle, by whose skill his wound was soon cured." Once more, June 16, 1748, when "a ranger, severely wounded in the thigh in an ambush, was brought on a horse the next day to Northfield to be treated by Mr. Doolittle." Dr. Doolittle died in his fifty-fourth year, January 9, 1749, when he "was suddenly seized with a pain in his breast" while mending a fence. It is said that his practice extended even as far as Springfield. In 1743 he wrote and published a sermon entitled : "An Enquiry into Enthusiasm," as we may suppose suggested by his differences with his parishioners two years before. At his death he left in manuscript "A Short Nar- rative of Mischief done by the French and In- dian Enemy on the Western Frontiers of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay," from 1744 to 1748. It was printed as a pamphlet of twenty-four pages by S. Kneeland at Boston in 17S0, and has formed the source of much of the history of the Old French and Indian War. ■ Walter L. Burrage. History of the Town of Northfield, by J. H. Temple and George Sheldon, Albany, 1875. Dorsett, Waller Blackburn (1852-1915). Dr. Dorsett was born in St. Louis County, Missouri, June 12, 1852, being the son of Henry L. Dorsett, of Virginia, and Georgia Ann Blackburn, of Versailles, Kentucky. His first college course was in civil engineering at the Washington University, and later he took up the study of medicine at the old St. Louis Medical College, now the Medical Department of Washington University. Here he gradu- ated with the degree of M. D. in 1878, then serving for a year as an interne in the St. Louis City Hospital, and becoming superin- tendint of the St. Louis Quarantine Hospital in the summer of 1879. The next year he was married to Eleanor C. French at Olney, Illinois, and one son was born of this union, later a practising physician in St. Louis. From 1880 until 1887 Dr. Dorsett was chief dispensary physician, and from the latter date until 1892, superintendent of the St. Louis Female Hospital. For seven annual sessions he was a member of the House of Delegates of the American Medical Association, and he was
