aminers and Dr. Isham rendered his city great service in the reforms he introduced and carried through, working most of his term with his fellow member, Dr. N. P. Dandridge (q. v.). Marietta College conferred on him the degree of A. M. in 1889. He was a member of the board of trustees of the Cincinnati General Hospital from 1901 to 1912 and a member of the Academy of Medicine of Cincinnati from 1889 until his death, being its president in 1902 and a trustee from 1903 to 1912. He was for many years a member of the Literary Club of Cincinnati; of the Marietta Club, of which he was once president, a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows; The Masons; The Grand Army of the Republic; and The Loyal Legion.
Dr. Isham's daughter, Dr. Mary Keyt Isham, a graduate of Wellesley and the eldest of seven children, graduated at the Laura Memorial Medical College, Cincinnati, in 1903, and was interne in the Presbyterian Hospital, Cincinnati, in 1903–1904. She was assistant physician in the Ohio State Hospital, Columbus, Ohio, in 1908, and in 1915, she went to New York City, where she has practised medicine.
On the death of his father-in-law, Dr. Alonzo Thrasher Keyt, Dr. Isham edited the original researches of Dr. Keyt under the title:— "Sphygmography and Cardiography," a work which was received with great interest by the profession.
Dr. Isham was a voluminous writer on subjects both medical and military, a full list of his publications being printed in the Lancet-Clinic, Cincinnati, Mar. 12, 1912, vol. cvii, 333– 339, where there is an extended In Memoriam. Among the tributes there we find this by Dr. Charles Caldwell, his friend and neighbor:—
"In his intercourse with his fellows, Dr. Isham was not what would be called an approachable man. His straightforward steadfast gaze was rather disconcerting to presumptuous efforts at familiarity on the part of those who could not give the countersign, and yet he was by nature diffident and modest to a degree. He was not always at ease with strangers. Perhaps it would be better to say he did not admit people readily to his friendship, nor was he, be it said to his credit, what in the vernacular of the day is called 'a good mixer.' With him, however, once a friend always a friend, and no one having gained his friendship need ever fear an act of disloyalty. Only well substantiated evidence | of unworthiness would lead him to renounce a friend."
Dr. Isham died suddenly at his home in Cincinnati, February 20, 1912.
Isham, Ralph Nelson (1831–1904)
Ralph Nelson Isham was one of the original founders in 1859 of the Chicago Medical College, now the Northwestern University Medical School, which was one of the first schools to require a three years' course.
He was professor of surgical anatomy and then professor and professor emeritus of general surgery in the college from its foundation until his death. He was at one time or another connected with the Cook County, Mercy, Presbyterian and Passavant Hospitals.
He was born in Manheim, New York, March 16, 1831. His father, Nelson Isham, M. D., Yale, 1828, served in the field for four years in the 91st New York volunteer regiment. His mother was Delia Snell. Ralph was educated in the Herkimer Academy and graduated from Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1854, where he afterward served as interne. Tuberculosis of the lungs, acquired during his service, was completely cured by a few voyages to Liverpool on a clipper ship as ship's surgeon.
In 1855 he moved to Chicago and in 1857 married Katherine Snow, daughter of George W. Snow; their children were George S., Ralph, Mrs. A. L. Farwell and Mrs. George A. Carpenter. His start in his profession was made by doing a tracheotomy for quinsy on a son of the leading Presbyterian minister. This locally hitherto unheard of proceeding was seriously opposed by many of the good parishioners as a direct interference with Providence. Whether Providence, not being informed upon surgical methods, had not made the child quite sick enough, is not stated. At the beginning of the Civil War he was actively engaged with the Sanitary Commission and from 1862 to the close of the war was the chief surgeon of the Marine Hospital in Chicago which was changed to a Military Hospital.
He died in Chicago of cancer of the pylorus, May 28, 1904.
Ives, Ansell W. (1787–1838)
Born at Woodbury, Connecticut, on the thirty-first of August, 1787, Ives was the third child of a struggling farmer who had to let the boy be apprentice to a farmer till he was nineteen, when, having qualified himself to keep an elementary school, he taught for several years with credit to himself and advantage to his
