GALT 421 GARBER was appointed in 1773, and ending with the death of Dr. J. M. Gait in 1862, the connec- tion of the family with the hospital extended over a period of nearly a century. Dr. Gait's wife was probably Judith Craig, and two of their sons were physicians, one, A. D. Gait, the other, WilHam Craik Gait, who was born in 1771, and died in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1853. Dr. Gait himself died in 1808. Robert M. Slaughter. Gait, John Minson, 2a (1819-1862) A son of Dr. Alexander D. (q. v.) and Mary Gait, he was born in Williamsburg March 19, 1819, his first instruction being received from his parents and chiefly from his mother, while he next went to the preparatory school of Wil- liam and Mary College, and later entered the college from which he graduated in 1838 with the degree of A. B. He read medicine under his father for a time, and then entered the University of Pennsylvania, receiving from this school his M. D. in 1841. He began to practise in his native town and must have been almost immediately elected superintendent of the Hospital for the Insane, the office having been created by the Legisla- ture in Februar)', 1841, as his term of service began on July 1 of that year. He filled this position over twenty years; and from the time of his election until his death. Dr. Gait devoted his entire time and attention to his duties. Dr. Gait was a member of the Medical So- ciety of Virginia and also a member of the Convention of Medical Superintendents and Physicians of Asylums which became, fifty years later, the American Medico-Psychologi- cal Association. He was one of the early ad- vocates of separate hospitals for the colored insane, a movement which originated with the late Dr. F. T. Stribling (q. v.), superintendent of the Western Lunatic Asylum of Virginia. He was a good classical scholar, and knew French, Spanish, the Koran in Arabic, and wrote several books and many articles. In person he was small in stature, of much good sense and, like his father, cared only for his work, nothing for money, refusing an increase of salary. His life was devoted to the care of the unfortunates under his charge. He never married, and died at Williamsburg on May 18, 1862. For more than twenty-five years he kept a diary in which was recorded much of interest and value. In 1843 he published "Gait's Prac- tice of Medicine," which was compiled from notes of and histories of cases left by his father. He pubUshed in 1843 a work entitled "Gait on the Treatment of Insanity;" in 1851, two essays on "Asylums for Persons of Un- sound Mind;" in 1853, a second series on the same subject; in 1856, "Gait on Insanity in Italy," and in 1859, "Lectures on Idiocy." For medical journals he prepared many medical reviews and also wrote articles on botany. One manuscript, a "Life of Albert Gait, the Sculp- tor," was written but never published. Robert M. Sl.ughter. Garber, Abram Paschal (1838-1881) Abram Paschal Garber, son of Jacob B. Garber and Susan Stauffer, was born January 23, 1838, on his father's farm, "Floral Retreat," about three miles east of Columbia, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. His father had a strong taste for botany, built a greenhouse in 1832 and raised rare exotics. The younger Garber was educated at Millersville State Normal School, then taught school in Lancaster County and at the Catasauqua Seminary near Allen- town, Pennsylvania. For a short time during the Civil war (in 1864) he ser'ed in the 19Sth Pennsylvania Volunteers, and in 1865 entered Lafayette College, where he graduated in 1868. From 1868 to 1870 he assisted Professor Thomas C. Porter in the botanical laboratory of Lafayette College, and explored botanically western Pennsylvania and the Pocono Region, in the latter collecting mosses and liverworts. It was during this time that he began the study of medicine under Traill Green (q. v.) ; in 1869 he entered the University of Pennsyl- vania, graduating M. D. in 1872, with a thesis on "The Medical Plants of Pennsylvania." In 1872 he became assistant resident physician in the Harrisburg State Lunatic Hos- pital, where he had charge of two hundred patients; resigning because of ill health in 1875, he opened an office in Pittsburgh, but tuberculosis developing, he was forced to leave the rigorous climate of the North. Returning to Lancaster, he made yearly trips to Florida and the West Indies. He made extensive col- lections in Florida, and found a number of new species; he wrote a series of eleven letters to George Vasey (q. v.), who was in charge of botanical work in the Department of Agri- culture at Washington, throwing light on the flora of the Peninsula. He accompanied Baron Eggers, the Danish botanist, on a botanical expedition to the Island of St. Thomas, and in 1881 visited Porto Rico, where he made a small collection of plants. He returned to his home in June, but his
