FLETCHER .394 FLINT relations of private life, he was most kindly and generous, even with little children, who always liked him. An Englishman, de race, he had the Saxon's strength of hand and the independence of the Western men, he did not need his war-time experience in the field to ac- quire a stoical disregard for pain and a fine sense of duty and loyalty. "He had," says Sir William Osier, "A rare gift for friendship ; and all his colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Hospital were devoted to him. After his Jurisprudence lecture at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, at the hospitable board of the Director, Dr. Hurd, many of us would gather, delighted to hear Dr. Fletcher's reminiscences of the profession, which went back to the forties. He had met Sir Astley Cooper, and he knew well the fam- ous old men of the Bristol School, and could tell tales of the Middle West in the palmy days nf Drake and Dudley and Caldwell. It was a rare treat to dine with him quietly at his club in Washington. He knew his Brillat- Savarin well, and could order a dinner that would have made the mouth of Coelius Apicius to water." The profession lost in Dr. Fletcher an ac- complished scholar, whose work will be es- teemed as long as medical bibliography is of importance; his friends and intimates miss the high-minded, honorable gentleman, the staunch and loyal friend. Fielding H. Garrison. Fletcher, William Baldwin (1837-1907). William B. Fletcher of Indianapolis was the son of Calvin Fletcher, a lawyer who came from Vermont and settled in the woods on the site of Indianapolis in 1821, and of Sarah Hill Fletcher, of Kentucky. William was born in the town where his life was to be spent, August 18, 1837. His early training was at the academy at Lancaster, Massachusetts, and as a student with Louis Agassiz (q. v.) in Cambridge. Thence he entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York and graduated M. D. in 1860, beginning practice in Indianapolis at once. For seven years he was a professor in the Indiana Medical Col- lege, filling at various times the chairs of anatomy, physiology, and materia medica. At the outbreak of the civil war Fletcher entered the army as surgeon to the 6th In- diana ; transferred to the secret service he was captured and imprisoned for nine months, wounded while trying to escape, condemned to death but reprieved by General Lee. Later in the war he served on the Sanitary Commis- sion and as surgeon on various battle-fields. In 1866 he visited Europe and studied in the hospitals of London, Paris, Glasgow and Dub- lin. He represented Marion County in the state senate in 1882-83 and in the latter year was appointed superintendent of the Indiana Hospital for the Insane, a position he held for four years, introducing many reforms, such as the abolition of restraint and the employ- ment of women physicians to take charge of the female patients. In 1888 Fletcher estab- lished a private sanatorium for the treatment of mental diseases. He furnished the following papers to the transactions of the state medical society: "Human Entozoa," 1886; "Cerebral Circula- tion in the Insane," 1887; "Purulent Absorb- tion Considered as a Cause of Insanity," 1892; "The Effects of Alcohol upon the Nervous System," 1895; "A Consideration of the Pres- ent Laws for the Commitment of the Insane in Indiana," 1901. He married Agnes, daughter of James O'Brien in 1862 and they had three sons and four daughters. One of his friends has described him in the following words : "He was a combination of the scientific mind and artistic temperament. .... He was open to conviction and had the rare power of withholding his judgment. He fought a good fight, lived according to his lights, the helpful citizen, father and soldier, the ready, the scientific physician." He died at Orlando, Florida, April 25, 1907, aged 70 years. In commemoration of him James Whitcomb Riley wrote a poem, printed in the Indianapolis Star the day of his funeral, entitled "The Doctor" (Tr. Ind. State Med. Ass., 1907, 496-99). Appleton's Cyclop. Amer. Biog., New York, 1888, vol. ii, 482. Phys. and Surgs. of the U. S. W. B. Atkinson, Philadelphia, 1878. Med. Hist, of Indiana. G. W. H. Kemper, 1911. Emin. Amer. Phys. and Surgs. R. F. Stone, Indianapolis, 1894. Trans. Ind. St. Med. Assoc, 1907, 496-97. Por- trait, frontispiece. Flint, Austin (1812-1886). The fourth in succession of a medical ances- try, Austin Flint, physician, was born in Peters- ham, Massachusetts, October 20, 1812. Thomas Flint came to America from Matlock, Derby- shire, England, and settled in Concord, Massa- chusetts. Edward Flint, his great-grandfather, was a physician, his grandfather, Austin Flint, did good service as an army surgeon, and his father was a surgeon. The younger Austin studied at Amherst and Cambridge, graduat- ing in Medicine at Harvard in 1833 and at once beginning to practise in Boston. But he did not stay long, most of his early profes- sional life being passed in Buffalo, where, as editor of the Buffalo Medical Journal which
