ELIOT 357 ELIOT them becoming physicians, who died young. The portraits of Eliot and his wife, by an unknown artist, are preserved by a descendant at Clinton. Much more might be said in regard to this very distinguished man of colonial Connecticut. "Dexter"s Yale Biographies and Annals," "The Geneaology of the Eliot Family," "The De- scendants of John Eliot," a new edition, and Dr. Gurdon W. Russell's "Early Medicine and Early Medical Men in Connecticut," and nu- merous other books and pamphlets contain lengthy articles in regard to him, but one ot his communications in print shows in his own words the scientific spirit of the man more than any relation of what he did. "The last week, in this place, a man at his work was troubled with a fly that attempted, and, notwithstanding all his endeavors to avoid it, entered his ear and went so deep that he could not reach it. It continued for some time, and then came out of itself. He quickly found the inconvenience of the spawn there lodged ; the pain and tumult in his head grew great and almost intolerable, but was soon eased by thrusting into his ear a feather dipped in war oil. There came out forty maggots. This was in May, 1729." Elsworth Eliot. Early Medicine and Earlv Medical Men in Con- necticut, Gurdon W. Russell, Hartford, 1892. Eliot, Johnson (1815-1888). Born in the city of Washington, District of Columbia, on the twenty-fourth of August, 1815, Johnson Eliot was a son of Samuel and Mary Johnson Eliot, Jr., of Boston, Massachu- setts. Upon his father's side he traced his ancestry back to Sir John Eliot, of Devonshire, England, in 1373. When only thirteen, after a common _§chool education, he apprenticed himself, very much against the wishes of his widowed mother, to Charles McCormick, a druggist of Washing- ton, and continued in the drug business for about fifteen years, when he disposed of his store and in 1839 was appointed hospital stew- ard at the Naval Hospital, Washington, Dis- trict of Columbia, serving under Surgeons Foltz and Jackson. During the same year he began to study medicine under Dr. Thomas Sewall (q. v.), matriculating in the medical department of Columbia College, District of Columbia (now George Wtishington Univer- sity), and graduating in 1842 with a thesis en- titled "Humoral Pathology."' Immediately upon graduation he was ap- pointed demonstrator of anatomy there by Dr. Thomas Miller, professor of anatomy. He was zealous and faithful in the discharge of his duties ; this position he resigned in 1849 to become one of the founders of the Medical Department of Georgetown University and the same year professor of anatomy and phy- siology, three years later resigning the physi- ology chair but continuing to fill that of an- atomy. At this time the material for dissec- tion was very scarce and the rivalry between the two colleges often led to personal conflict. When the chair of surgery in Georgetown Medical Department became vacant in 1861, he accepted the position and very soon forged his way to the front rank of the surgeons in this section of the country. At the call of President Lincoln, he was among the first local surgeons who volun- teered their services, starting for the battle- field of Bull Run with a pass to the front signed by Secretary of War Stanton, not wait- ing for a commission. Here he busied him- self with the sick and wounded of both armies, amputating when necessary, dressing wounds, undertaking to deliver letters and notes from the unfortunates to their home folks. A thorough anatomist, a bold and deliberate operator, he was one of the pioneers in ova- riotomy, and among some of his brilliant operations may be mentioned three cases of re- moval of the superior ma.xilla, two cases of amputation at the hip-joint, a case of removal of seven and a half inches of the humerus, and also one of the early successful excisions of the head of the humerus, simultaneous li- gation of the carotid and subclavian arteries for aneurysm of the arteria innominata, two cases of removal of palatopharyngeal sar- coma, ligation of the subclavian artery, simul- taneous amputation of both legs. Among his appointments Dr. Eliot was phy- sician-in-charge of the Washington Small-pox Hospital from 1862-4; consulting surgeon and one of the directors of St. John's Hospital, Columbia Hospital for Women, Children's Hospital, Central Dispensary and Emergency Hospital, surgeon-in-charge of Providence Hospital, dean of the medical faculty of Georgetown University from May 12, 1856, to the re-organization of that body in 1876, and professor of surgery from 1861 to 1876, when he was elected emeritus professor of surgery, but continued his clinical teachings until his death. In 1869 the honorary A. M. and in 1872 that of doctor of pharmacy was conferred on Dr. Eliot by Georgetown University. He was a member of the Pathological Society, Medical Association of the District of Coli'm-
