DRYSDALE 336 DRYSDALE character, with all the endearing and re- spected virtues of a gentleman." "Drysdale went on to the University of Pennsylvania and graduated M. D. on May 12, 1794, with a thesis with a Latin title which may be translated. Concerning Certain Func- tions and Inflammation of the Liver." Return- ing to Baltimore he began to practise. In 1793 fifteen hundred persons, of whom 500 were negroes, fled from the massacre in St. Domingo and sought refuge in Baltimore, and although the Board of Health declared the city free from yellow fever. Governor Lee pro- claimed quarantine against all infected places. In 1794 Drysdale was appointed a quarantine physician, and when yellow fever was epidemic in Baltimore during the summer and part of the autumn he observed the disease with great care and published his observations in a series of letters to Benjamin Rush, printed (not entire) in the Philadelphia Medical Mu- seum, 1805, vol. i, 22-42; 121-149; 241-266; 361- 373 —the date of the last letter is December, 1794. He gives a graphic account of the appear- ance and symptoms of the disease. He remarks that "in drinkers of ardent spirits, the fever was excited not only with more facility, but was attended also with more irresistible violence and malignity .... Accidental circumstances sometimes excited the disease. A mate of a vessel, having received a blow on the head from a cable, was immediately attacked with the fever .... A gentleman was attacked by the disease immediately after falling into the river .... among the causes are cold and sleep, and to these we may add grief and fear." A footnote adds, "The influence of these two are thus noticed by Hoffman in his directions for prevention of the plague. 'Guard against violent passions, .endeavoring to preserve a constant firmness of mind, and shaking off all timorousness and dejection!'" Drysdale further says : "Sleep . . . abstracts immensity from the support of life, for it is indeed a tendency to death .... I believe that the proportion of mortality among young equalled that of any other period of life . . . ." Drysdale had made the correct diagnosis against the contrary opinion of Drs. George Brown, John Coulter and Lyde Goodwin. The epidemic started by the water at Falls Points and spread rapidly in the month of August. A society for the abolition of slavery was formed in Baltimore in 1788; Drysdale later was in- terested in this and gave the oration on July 4, 1794. He was an honorary member of the Phil- adelphia Medical Society. Drysdale died in 1798 jj„^^^„ ^ ^eix^ Information from Dr. Ewing Jordan and Pres. Fell, St. John's College. Medical Annals of Maryland, E. F. Cordell, Al. IJ., Baltimore. 1903, Medical Annals of Baltimore, J. R. Quinan,. il. U., Bahimore, IbS-l, Drysdale, ThomBs Murray (1831-1904). Thomas Murray Drysdale, a gynecologist of temporary prominence through his connection with Atlee, and the discovery of the "ovarian cell," was born in Philadelphia, August 14, 1831, the sixth son of William Drysdale, de- scended from Scotch Covenanters ; an uncle was Alexander Dufif, the great missionary to- India from the Scotch Presbyterian Church. His early education was had at the schools of the Rev. Joseph P. Engles and the Rev. Sam- uel Crawford. Later he held a position in a drug shop in order to become familiar with pharmacy, and soon after took up the study of medicine with Washington L. Atlee (q. v.)^ at the same time attending lectures at the Pennsylvania Medical College, from which he received his M. D. in 1852. Drysdale was Alice's surgical assistant for ten years, and married his daughter, Mary L., in 1857; he has given us an excellent, brief life of his father-in-law in the Transactions of the Amer- ican Gynecological Society, 1878, with a por- trait. Drysdale was professor of chemistry in Wagner Institute of Science, 1855 ; professor in the Franklin Institute, 1862; consulting sur- geon to Girard College, 1885. He held numer- ous offices in medical societies and was pres- ident of the Philadelphia Obstetrical Society, 1887-88. Drysdale's title to fame is vested in his discovery of the "ovarian corpuscle" ("On the Granular Cell Found in Ovarian Fluid," Trans. Amer. Med. Assoc, 1873, vol. xxiv), which was alleged to be peculiar to fluids formed in ovarian cysts, in this way affording a much needed diagnostic mark at a time when any opening of the abdominal cavity was highly hazardous and when diagnosis was harder than it is to-day. With the aid of the hypodermic syringe the fluid of the cyst was secured to decide whether the case was ovarian and operable or not. Unfortunately the alleged discovery did not stand the test of time, as the cell was not pathognomonic. Drysdale died May 26, 1904. Howard A. Kelly. Phys. and Surgs. of the United States, W. B. .tkinson, 187S. Album of the Fellows of the Amer. Gynec. Soc.^ 1876-:917. Broun, 1918.
