ELMER 361 ELSBERG to 1791. The following extract from the journal of VYilHam Maclay, a fellow Sen- ator in 1789, throws light on his char- acter : "I know not, in the Senate, a man if I were to choose a friend, on whom I would cast the eye of confidence as soon as on this little Doctor. He does not always vote right — and so I think of every man who differs from me. but I never saw him give a vote, but I thought I could observe his disin- terestedness in his countenance. If such an one errs, it is the sin of ignorance and I think heaven has pardons ready sealed for every one of them." While in Congress Dr. Elmer was placed on the Medical Committee, visiting in this relation the various hospitals within reach by long journeys on horseback, and it was on one of these journeys that he met his brother, Surgeon Ebenezer Elmer (1752-1843), at the military hospital at headquarters, Morristown, when the brother was on his return from his northern campaign. A very neatly written and legible letter from Dr. Elmer as president of the New Jersey Medical Society, dated Trenton, 22nd Jan- ■uary, 1788, to the president of the Massa- chusetts Medical Society, is preserved in the archives of the latter society. According to the records it was one of two letters sub- mitted to the council, establishing friendly relations between the two societies. The New Jersey society had been unfortunate in being unable to obtain a charter from its state leg- islature. It is possible that the first charter for a term of twenty-five years, granted them in 1790, may have been helped along by the correspondence between Dr. John Warren, (q. v.), corresponding secretary of the Massa- chusetts society, and Dr. Elmer. Dr. Elmer held the office of presiding iudge in the Court of Common Pleas in Cumber- land County, which he resigned in 1814, on acccunt of increasing age and infirmity, re- marking to his associates, as he took his final leave of them, that it was forty-two years since he became an officer of the court, and he ha^ lived to see every person who had been a member of it, both on the bench and at the bar, consigned to the house appointed for all the living. He died at the age of seventy-one and was buried in the Bridgeton cemetary. Walter L. Burrage. History of Medicine in New Jersey, and of Its Medical Men. Stephen Wickes, 1879, 242-247. Trans, of the New jlersey Med. Soc, 1766-1858. Massachusetts Med. Soc. Documents, vol. i. 44. .Appleton's Cyclop. Amer. Biog, New York, 1887. Communications from W. G. Kiraer, M. D., through H. A. Hare, M. D. Elsberg, Louii (1836-1885). As the first to demonstrate in public in this country the use of the laryngoscope in diagnosis and treatment, Elsberg deserves to be remembered. He was born April 2, 1836, at Iserlohn, Prussia, son of Nathan and Adelaide Elsberg. His people came to America and settled in Philadelphia when he was thirteen, and the boy went to a public school, and took his M. D. at Jefferson Medical College in 1S57. After six months as resident at Mt. Sinai Hospital he went abroad and studied under Czermak, and the year after, on returning, established the first public clinic for throat diseases. He also, with some few others, founded the American Laryngological Asso- ciation and was its first president. The records of his contributions given at the end of this sketch show the work he did despite a very large operative practice. In a paper on "Laryngoscopic Medication," 1864, he gave descriptions of many new instruments he had invented. His intense application to work after a second journey to Europe, this time to recuper- ate, led to an aggravation of the kidney disease from which he suffered. Ten days before his death he contracted a severe cold, pneumonia set in and his friends hardly knew he was ill before news came of his death -jn Feb- ruary 19, 1885. He married, in 1876, Mary Van Hagen, daughter of Joseph Scoville, of New York. His most important writings include: "Laryngoscopical Surgery," 1864, which won the gold medal of the American Medical As- sociation; "On the Structure and Other ('bar- acteristics of Colored Blood" ; "Changes in Biological Doctrines During the Past Twentv- five Years"; "Neuroses of Sensation of the Pharynx and Larynx"; "A Complete Manual of Throat Diseases" ; "The Normal and Path- ological Histology of the Cartilages of the Larynx"; "The Discovery of a New Kind of Resultant Tones"; "The Explanation of Musical Harmony." In 1880 he began the quarterly publication of The Archives of La- ryngology. Among his appointments he was professor of laryngology at the University Medical College, New York, for seventeen years. Trans. Med. Soc. State of New York, 1886. Dr. Morris H. Henry. Physicians and Surgeons of the United States, VV. B. Atkinson, 1878.
