EARLE 350 EASTMAN College of Physicians and Surgeons. At a later period he delivered a course of lectures at the Berkshire Medical Institution at Pitts- field, Massachusetts, as professor of materia medica and psychology. In 1864 he became superintendent of the Northampton Lunatic Hospital, and held that position till his retire- ment after twenty-two years of distinguished service. He was one of the original members of the American Medical Association, also of the American Medico- Psychological Associa- tion, the New York Academy of Medicine and president of the American Medico-Psychologi- cal Association in 1884. Dr. Earle was never married. He was a man of marked individuality, active mind, retentive memory and good judgment. His observations and study of hospitals in Eu- rope and America, which were probably more extensive than those of any other American physician of his time, gave him a high rank while a comparatively young man. He died at Northampton, May 17, 1892, at the age of eighty-two. Leaving out of view the young scholar and poet's contributions to the Worcester Talisman, Spy and other local periodicals, some of which he gathered into his Philadelphia volume of 1841, "Marathon and Other Poems," he also wrote the following : "A Visit to Thirteen Asylums for the In- sane in Europe" (Philadelphia. J. Dobson, pp. 144, 1841). This had before appeared in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences for October, 1839 (vol. xxv, pp. 99-134). It was reprinted later with many changes and, additions; "History, Description and Statis- tics of the Bloomingdale Asylum for the In- sane" (1848) ; "Institutions for the Insane in Prussia, Austria and Germany," Utica, New York (1853). These visits were all made in the year 1849, with many others upon which Dr. Earle did not report, but which served to correct former impressions and to make his comments on the annual reports of European asylums of great value ; "The Curability of Insanity," first form of this work in a pam- phlet issued by the New England Psychological Society, Boston (1877); "The Earle Family; Ralph Earle and his Descendents," compiled by Pliny Earle, of Northampton, Massachusetts, printed for the family (Worcester, Massachu- setts, Press of Charles Hamilton, pp. x.xiv, 480, 1888). This may be considered Dr. Earle's magnum opus, since it occupied him, at intervals, for half a century, and involved an expenditure on his part of some thousands of dollars. It is a masterly work, of almost in- credible labor, and yet deals with only one of the eight or ten families in America named Earl, Earll or Earle. It contains more than 4,000 names of cousins, near or remote, of Dr. Earle, and yet omits more than 1,000 as not coming within the scope of the book. In addition to these Dr. Earle wrote some thirty reviews of reports of hospitals, and in 1846 a review of "Esquirol on Mental Dis- eases" in a New York periodical ; a "History of Insane Hospitals in the United States," the first paper read before the New York Acad- emy of Medicine, and published in its records; in 1863 an article in the "American Almanac" on "Insanity"; in 1881 an article on the "Cura- bility of the Insane" in the "Proceedings of the Conference of Charities," and in 1892 a long article on the same subject in Dr. D. H. Tuke's "Dictionary of Psychological Medi- cine," published in London two months after Dr. Earle's death. He published in 1890 in the Journal of Social Science his paper on "Popu- lar Fallacies Concerning the Insane." G. Alder Blumer. Memoirs of Pliny Earle, M. D., by F. B. Sanborn. Med. Leg. Jour., N. Y., 1886-7, vol. iv, Portrait. Med. Rec, New York, 1892, vol. xli. Eastman, Joseph (1842-1902). Joseph Eastman, a pioneer abdominal sur- geon, was born in Fulton County, New York, January 29, 1842. He was a self-educated man, having had very little schooling. At nineteen he was shoeing oxen in a lumber set- tlement in the foothills of the Adirondacks, and in 1861 he shouldered a musket in re- sponse to the call of President Lincoln. He was wounded at Williamsburg and taken to Mount Pleasant Hospital, Washington. Here, a few days later, still weak and trembling under the weight of the knapsack and musket, he was ordered from the ranks of conva- lescents, leaving for the front. For a time he discharged small duties about the hospital dispensary, washed bottles and read furtively from medical volumes which lay about. Later he was appointed hospital stew- ard in the United States Army, and while thus engaged, attended three courses of medical lectures at the University of Georgetown, where he graduated in 1865. He was then commissioned assistant surgeon of volunteers. The next year he was mustered out at Nashville, Tennessee, and returning to New York, stopped of? in Indiana, where he remained to practise the profession he had picked up as a soldier. In 1868 he married Mary Katherine Barker, daughter of Thomas Barker of Indianapolis.
