High School, to study medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago, where he graduated in 1896 and in the same year married Corena B. Kirkpatrick of Waterman, Illinois, who survived him.
His first position was that of company surgeon for the American Smelting and Refining Company at Tepezala, Aguascalientes. He afterwards went to Santa Barbara, Chihuahua, Mexico, and became surgeon-in-chief of the company's smelting interests in 1911. Though an American citizen, he held the position of official muncipal surgeon in Santa Barbara, where he gained fame by his original, drastic and effective methods of stamping out an epidemic of malignant smallpox. In Mexico, smallpox, fully erupted, stalks the streets and jostles the crowds, thronging the open air markets in the Plaza; so hopeless is the situation that mothers carry their little children to the bedside of the affected patient to insure catching the disease, to have it over with, so as to avoid the trouble and expense of raising them to die of it later on. Husk, as generalissimo, simply herded all who had smallpox and all the suspects, and segregated and watched them, while they tore down and burned houses, clothing and bedding, in a manner that seemed reckless and appalling to the astonished natives; but no opposition, however sturdy, checked the triumphal march of the vaccination squad; the epidemic was speedily checked, and soon passed into Mexico's long history of similar events.
Husk's warm heart knew no class distinction. He was as devoted to the poor and the illiterate as to the rich. During the bad epidemic of typhus in Mexico in 1916, he helped to organize the scientific expedition for the study and control of the disease, which was financed by the Mount Sinai Hospital of New York City, including on its staff, Doctors Peter Olitsky and Bernard Denzer. A hospital was established in the centre of the affected zone at Matahuala, where the staff experimented upon themselves, and then upon others, with an antityphus vaccine; all school children also were inoculated. The most good came from convincing the Mexicans of the imperative necessity for killing the lice. The interiors of all public buildings and schools were sprayed with a mixture of equal parts of hot soapsuds and kerosene and with these preventive measures, research work went on at the hospital laboratory, the results of which can be partly estimated by the low mortality—only 14 per cent among the Mexicans. Laboratory studies only served to confirm the growing conviction that the body louse was the carrier of the infection. The germ was isolated from the louse and the disease reproduced in guinea pigs. Husk, as he worked, became infected and developed a fever as high as 104.5° F.; he refused, however, to go to bed, and continued toiling for two days, tabulating results and preparing microscopic specimens, so that the work might go on. He then laid down his tools, and yielded up his life. His services were so appreciated by the Mexicans, that, notwithstanding anti-American riots at the time, a movement was set on foot to erect a monument to him. He was a debonair, gay-hearted, courageous warrior of the scientific war-path, fully aware of all the dangers, and never afraid to face them. In the midst of the great typhus epidemic there was also an outbreak of smallpox, which he handled as skilfully as the previous one.
He was a prolific writer of articles on medical and sanitary problems among the Mexicans, and other subjects.
Huston, Robert Mendenhall (1795–1864).
Robert Mendenhall Huston was born in Abingdon, Virginia, May 19, 1795, son of William Huston and Elizabeth Mendenhall. He entered the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1823, and graduated in 1825, with a thesis on "Hemorrhoids."
He practised medicine, and was professor of obstetrics and diseases of women and children in Jefferson Medical College, 1838–1841; professor materia medica and general therapeutics, 1841–1857. Resigning in 1857, he became professor emeritus; for many years he was dean of the faculty.
His publications consist largely of addresses delivered at Jefferson College; he edited the American edition of Churchill's ". . . Theory and Practice of Midwifery," Philadelphia, 1843. In 1844–1848 he was co-editor of the Medical Examiner.
In 1819 he married Hannah, daughter of Samuel West, of Chester, a descendant of Benjamin West, Pennsylvania; they had four sons and three daughters.
Huston died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, August 3, 1864.
Hutchinson, James (1752–1793).
James Hutchinson of Philadelphia, a fighter of yellow fever and a victim to that disease, was born in Wakefield, Pennsylvania, January 29, 1752. The son of Randal Hutchinson, a farmer and a member of the Society of
