Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/514

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HARLAN
492
HARLOW

Ear Department of the Pennsylvania Hospital which he raised to the high standard of efficiency which it at present enjoys. He was emeritus surgeon at the time of his death. He was consulting ophthalmologist in the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb from 1883 until his death.

Dr. Harlan occupied the first chair of opthalmology (later emeritus) at the Polyclinic and School for Graduates in Medicine and his remarkable teaching abilities will be long remembered by many of his students.

He became a member of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia in 1865, the American Ophthalmological Society in 1873, the Wills Hospital Ophthalmological Society in 1876, the Philadelphia County Medical Society in 1876, the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania, the American Medical Association and the American Otological Society in 1882. In 1893 he was elected president of the American Ophthalmological Society, and in 1904 chairman of the Section on Ophthalmology at the Universal Exposition held in St. Louis, Missouri. He was president of the Association of Wills Hospital Residents and Ex-residents and dean of a similar association in St. Joseph's Hospital, Philadelphia. He was also a member of the Board of the American Hospital for Diseases of the Stomach up to the time of his death.

His contributions to this special branch of medicine were important and numerous. His book on "Eyesight and How to Care for It," published in 1879, enjoyed a large circulation, and his articles on "Diseases of the Eyelids" and "Operations Performed upon the Eyelids" in Norris and Oliver's "System of Diseases of the Eye" are justly ranked among the best expositions of the subject. At the time of his death he was associated with the editorial staff of Ophthalmology.

His operation for symblepharon and his tests for malingering are well known and extensively employed.

As an operator Dr. Harlan was one of the most careful, most conscientious and most successful of special surgeons; "as a man, he was gentlemanly, noble and unassuming, one who knew true friendship in all of its meanings." Of him, it can be truly said:

"The best and most depended upon men are those who are the most quiet in ordinary life and who possess the greatest calmness amid danger."

Condensed from C. A. Oliver's obituary in Trans.
Amer. Ophthal. Soc., 1910.

Harlan, Richard (1796–1843).

Richard Harlan anatomist, was born in Philadelphia, September 19, 1796, and previous to graduation at the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1818, made a voyage to Calcutta as surgeon of an East India ship. In 1818 Dr. I. Parrish (q. v.) opened a private dissecting room in Philadelphia and placed Harlan in charge of it. He practised in Philadelphia, was elected in 1821 professor of comparative anatomy in the Philadelphia Museum, and was surgeon to the Philadelphia Hospital. In 1832, after the appearance of the Asiatic cholera in Montreal, he was appointed, together with Dr. Meigs and Dr. Jackson, to proceed to that city and obtain information concerning the best mode of treating that terrible disease. In 1838 he visited Europe a second time, and after his return in 1839 removed to New Orleans, and became in 1843 vice-president of the Louisiana State Medical Society. He was a member of many learned societies in this country and abroad. He died of apoplexy in New Orleans, September 30, 1843, at the age of 47. Dr. Harlan was father of the ophthalmologist George Cuvier Harlan (q. v.).

His chief writings were: "Anatomical Investigations," comprising descriptions of various fasciæ of the brain, 10 pt. (8°, Philadelphia, 1824); Observations on the Genus Salamandra," Philadelphia, 1824; "Fauna Americana," being a description of the mammiferous animals inhabiting North America, 1825; "Medical and Physical Researches," Philadelphia, 1835, a collection of previous medical essays; translation of Gannal's "History of Embalming," 1840.

Lives of Emin. Philadelphians, now deceased, Henry Simpson, 1859.
Dictn'y Amer. Biog., F. S. Drake, 1872.

Harlow, John Martyn (1819–1907).

John Martyn Harlow was born in Whitehall, New York, November 25, 1819, son of Ransom and Annis Martyn Harlow, and at the time of death was eighty-seven years old. He fitted for college at the Methodist Collegiate Institute at West Poultney, Vermont, and at the Ashby Academy, Ashby, Massachusetts. In 1840 he began to study medicine and surgery at the Philadelphia School of Anatomy, and studied afterwards at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, graduating at the latter place in 1844.

In 1845 he began to practise in Cavendish, Vermont, where he remained for fifteen years, until obliged to retire on account of ill health. It was while at this place that he took charge of the case which gave him a world-