When thirteen he went to Haverford College and took his A. B. in 1839, his M. D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1845, and the honorary LL. D. from there in 1884. Three years after his election as resident physician to the Pennsylvania Hospital, in 1846, he married Mary, daughter of Jeremiah Brown of Philadelphia.
It was as teacher and writer that Dr. Hartshorne did his best work. "His broad culture and high attainments, his calm serenity of character, were universally recognized."
He was selected professor of the institutes of medicine in the Philadelphia College of Medicine in 1853, and in June, 1855, was made a consulting physician and lecturer in clinical medicine to the Philadelphia Hospital.
The list given of honorable appointments filled, of books written, inadequately represent the human side of a man. He advocated the cause of women physicians in 1872; was interested in the salvation, spiritually and medically, of Japan in the prohibition of opium, the care of the insane, and in all missionary work. When, finally, he died in Tokio, on February 10, 1897, the funeral was attended by Japanese and other foreigners, by missionaries, merchants, teachers and medical students.
Among his appointments were professor of the practice of medicine, Pennsylvania College; professor of anatomy and physiology, Philadelphia Central High School; professor of hygiene, Pennsylvania University; professor of organic science and philosophy, Haverford College; president, Howland College School; fellow of the College of Physicians.
His chief writings were:
"Essentials of the Principles and Practice of Medicine," 1867; "On Organic Physics." "Proceedings of American Philosophical Society;" articles in "Johnson's New Illustrated Cyclopedia" on anatomy, philosophy, brain, breast, chest circulation of the blood, deaf mutes and evolution; "On Some Disputed Points in Physiological Optics"; "On the Theory of Erect Vision With Inverted Images"; "On Ocular Color Spectra and Their Causation"; "Medical Record for Private Medical Statistics." Prepared under the sanction of the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania and of the Biological Department of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, 1859; "Memoranda Medica," 1860.
He was an editor of the Friends Review, after 1872, and he wrote a dramatic romance entitled, "Woman's Witchcraft, or the Curse of Coquetry" (1854), and "Summer Songs."
Hartshorne, Joseph (1779–1850).
Joseph Hartshorne was born in Alexandria, Virginia, December 12, 1779, son of William Hartshorne and Susannah Saunders. The father was a flour merchant and manufacturer whose residence was "Strawberry Hill," a country seat about six miles from Mt. Vernon. His ancestor, Richard Hartshorne, left his home in Leicestershire, England, because of his religious belief as a Friend, and came to America in 1669 and purchased land in the Highlands of Neversink on Shrewsbury River and the land nearby, including what is now Sandy Hook, New Jersey. The land on which Sandy Hook lighthouse stands was bought from the family by the United States Government in 1816.
William Hartshorne's sympathies were with the revolutionists, while those of his family were with the Royalist party, and this probably influenced him in seeking a home in the south. His nearness to the home of Washington made him both neighbor and friend; he was long treasurer and secretary of the Potomac Navigation Company, of which Washington was president.
Joseph Hartshorne had an attack of smallpox when he was five years old and was treated with large doses of calomel, to which was attributed an inflammation of the feet, leaving him permanently lame. With a vigorous mind and body and deterred from sports, he took to books, and was a distinguished student. On leaving school he entered his father's counting-house, but soon began to read medicine and later entered the office of Dr. James Craik (q. v.), Washington's physician. In 1801 he became resident apprentice and apothecary in the Pennsylvania Hospital; he studied at the University of Pennsylvania and graduated M. D. in 1805, offering as his thesis "Effects Produced by Air on Living Animals."
He prepared an American edition of Alexis Boyer's Lectures . . . . on Diseases of the Bones," adding an appendix, with notes on cases (1805).
After two long voyages as surgeon and supercargo he returned to Philadelphia, but practice was slow and he had to struggle for an existence. His father offered him a shelter in the old Virginia home, but Joseph declared that he would never go back until he could take with him "bank-notes enough to paper the walls of the best room at 'Strawberry Hill,'
