GOODWIN 451 GORHAM Conducting the After-Treatment in the Op- eration for Vesico-vaginal Fistula;" "Treat- ment of Chronic Cystitis in the Female;" "Menstruation and the Law of Monthly Periodicity." He died at his home in Louisville, Febru- ary 19, 1912, of arteriosclerosis at the age of 74. Phys. and Surgs. of U. S., W. B. Atkinson, M. D., 1878. Jour. Amer. Med. Assoc, 1912, vol. Iviii, 713. Goodwin, James Scammon (1793-1884) James Scammon Goodwin was born at Old Fields, at the old Goodwin homestead, in South Berwick, Maine, November 11, 1793, the youngest of eleven children of a family widely known in that part of the country for their public services as well as for personal worth; his father was the then famous Maj.-Gen. Ichabod Goodwin, of Revolutionary renown, and his mother, Mollie Wallingford, of Ber- wick. James Goodwin fitted for college at the Ber- wick Academy under the charge of Maj. Josiah Seaver, and entered Dartmouth College when fourteen. He was sent there thus early in order to be under the observance of an elder brother, Dominicus, who graduated with him in the class of 1811. James then studied medi- cine at the Dartmouth Medical School and took his degree in 1814, when twenty-one. He obtained a surgeon's appointment at the latter end of the war of 1812-15 but did not actually serve. His life was spent in the prac- tice of medicine, first in Saco, then in South Berwick, and finally at Saco, where he re- turned at the urgent and repeated demands of his friends and former patients, and remained in practice until he retired at the age of sixty- five, when he moved to Portland to spend the rest of his life with his children. He made his name known throughout the state of Maine, at the age of thirty-two, by an amputation high up in the thigh upon a young girl on whom every doctor in the neigh- borhood had positively refused to operate, de- claring her condition hopeless, an operation nothing short of murder. The operation, de- cided upon with the patient's consent, was begun with prayer, a proceeding not at al! unusual in those days of genuine religion. As no physician could be found to assist, Mr. Ether Shepley, a young lawyer of Saco, stood by and assisted Dr. Goodwin to the best of his ability. The operation was a complete success, the patient living as long as her skilful surgeon. Goodwin was a member of the Maine Med- ical Association but does not seem to have left any medical papers. He Hved to be ninety- one, dying at last from sheer old age, March 14, 1884. J.MMES A. Spalding. Trans. Maine Med. .s0c. Family Papers. Gorham, John (1783-1829) Dr. Gorham was the son of Stephen Gor- ham, a merchant of Boston, Massachusetts, and was born there February 29, 1783. He graduated from Harvard College in 1801 and began the study of medicine with John Warren (q. v.). In 1804 he took his M. B. from Harvard College and his M. D. there in 1811. Afterwards he went abroad and studied for about two years in London, Edinburgh and Paris. On returning to Boston he married the daughter of Dr. John Warren and began to practise. Through Warren's introduction he had become acquainted with Dr. Aaron Dex- ter (q. v.), professor of chemistry at Harvard, and shortly (1809) Gorham was appointed ad- junct professor of chemistry and materia medica in Harvard College. He held this po- sition until 1816, when he was made Erving professor of chemistry to succeed Dr. Dex- ter. After 1824 Dr. Gorham's labors were confined to teaching in the Medical School in Boston, the corporation having decided that the Erving professors ought to live in Cam- bridge, and Dr. Gorham, being unwilling to move because it interfered with private prac- tice, resigned his position in 1827. During his professorship he published a sys- tem of chemistry in two volumes, 1819 and 1820, a book that had a large circulation and was considered a complete digest of the knowl- edge of the time. He wrote many papers for the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery, of which he was joint editor for about fifteen years. When this periodical was succeeded in 1828 by the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal he contributed to the latter. For many years after 1810 he gave private courses of instruction in chemistry in Boston. He died of pneumonia March 27, 1829. Dr. James Jackson said of him : "During twenty years and more I know not that he has made an enemy." He was a popular and successful teacher and practitioner. . lithograph por- trait of him taken from a painting in the possession of his descendants is now in the Boston Medical Library. Walter L. Burrace. Hist. Harvard Med. School, H. C. Ernst, 1906. Bos. Med. and Surg. Jour., 1829, vol. ii, pp. 107, 124 and 126. Hist. Har, Med. School, T. F. Harrington. 1905. Portrait. A sermon by J. G. Palfrey, Boston, 1829.
