Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/575

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HOPKINS SS3 HORN Bedford County. They had only one child, a son, who died before his father. In December, 1892, the latter was for the fourth time attacked by "grippe," and never really recovered. In June he was taken sud- denly ill, his strength failed very rapidly and he died on July 31, 1893. He made numerous contributions to medical literature, which are to be found in the Trans- actions of the Medical Society of Virginia and in the Virginia Medical Monthly. Robert M. Slaughter. Trans. Med. Soc. of Virginia, 1893. Hopkins, Lemuel (1750-1801). This eminent consulting physician, renowned for his skill in treating tuberculosis, a satirist and poet of some repute in his day, was born in Salem Society (now Naugatuck) on June 19, 1750, the second son of Stephen Hopkins, Jr., and Patience, his second wife. Of his boyhood we know nothing save that he was of a slender constitution and was then troubled with a "cough, hoarseness, a pain in the breast and the spitting of blood." On his mother's side he was descended from a consumptive parent and family and he had that form of body which had been observed to indicate a predisposition to consumption." After being given a good classical educa- tion by his father, who was a farmer in easy circumstances, he began the study of medicine under the distinguished Dr. Jared Potter (q. v.) of Hallingford. Subsequently he re- moved to Litchfield, and studied under Dr. Seth Bird. In 1776 he began practice in that town and served for a short time during this year, as a volunteer soldier in the Revolu- tionary .'Vrmy. He removed to Hartford in 1784, where he resided until his death. In Hartford he soon made a name for himself. He employed "the cooling treatment in fevers, in the puerperal especially, and wine in fevers since called typhus" — methods which were then thought madness and some of his cases became the subject of much newspaper discussion. With large features, bright staring eyes and long ungainly limbs, which gave him an uncouth figure, he presented marked eccentricities of character and very brusque manners, yet with it all won the confidence and friendship of his patients. He kept at this time a medical school or a "room full of pupils" as he called his students, and among them Dr. Elisha North (q. v.) of Goshen and New London probably became the most prominent. His great specialty was tuberculosis, which is charmingly considered in the two inanuscript treatises on "Consumption" and on "Colds," which are now in my possession. They re- vealed a knowledge far ahead of that time and prove Hopkins to be a rival with Rush for honors in treating the great white plague. He believed this disease was curable in its early stages and sometimes in the far ad- vanced, and lamented the fact that physicians were apt to treat this disorder with a dull formal round of inert or hurtful medicines. Fresh air and good food were factors em- ployed in his treatment of these cases. He appreciated the fact that a neglected cold might bring on this disease. On account of his associations with a little coterie of literary men who were designated as "the Hartford Hits," he becatne a familar household name, especially in his native state, as a man of letters. This group, composed of Hopkins, Joel Barlow (Barlow later allied himself with the party of Jefferson), Tiinothy Dwight, David Humphreys, John Trumbull, Richard Alsop and Theodore Dwight, were strongly Federalistic in their principles and fervent in their sentiments, before the adoption of the Constitution, in favor of a strong cen- tralized government. They were ardent sup- porters later of Washington's administration and strove to win the adherence of others by ridiculing the Democrats and tlieir measures in poems which had great popularity in the news- papers of that period and were subsequently published in book form. Possessed of keen dry wit, Hopkins was peculiarly well fitted for these tasks. His other literary productions are seen especially in the poems "The Hypo- crite's Hope," "The Cancer Quack" and "Ethan -Mien," which may be consulted in Everest's "Poets of Connecticut" or Smith's "American Poems." Hopkins was an honorary member of the Massachusetts Medical Society (1790-1801); in the year 1784 he had received the honorary degree of M. A. from Yale. He was one of the founders of the Connecticut Medical Society. On March 24, 1801, he was very sick in- deed with his cough and was "bled repeatedly notwithstanding the opposition of his friends, yet lived to resume somewhat his practice." Some days after, he was brought home ill from a patient's house, and April 14 he died. Walter R. Steiner. The Johns Hopkins Hosp. Bull., Jan., 1910, VV. R. Steiner. Bronson's Hist, of Waterbury. 1858. Anderson's Hist, of Waterbury. 1896. Horn, George Henry (1840-1897). George Henry Horn, entomologist, was born in Philadelphia, April 7, 1840, the oldest