his membership in the following societies:— Physicians' Mutual Aid Association, 1868; Fellow London Medical Society, 1878; Member London and Edinburgh Obstetrical Societies; Corresponding Member Philadelphia Obstetrical Society, 1874; Royal Society of Greece; president of the Anglo-American Society of Paris for October, 1890 (unable to be present); American Gynecological Society, 1876–77; vice-president International Medical Congress at London, 1881; visiting physician Bellevue Hospital, 1855–79; consulting physician, 1879–91; member of the Century Association (N. Y.) 1851; New York Academy of Design, 1864; American Geographic and Statistical Society, 1850; life member American Bible Society, 1867; St. John's Guild, 1871; life member, Museum of Natural History; member of Church Temperance Society and Charity Organization Society.
He died at his home in New York City, May 30, 1891, of cerebral hemorrhage, his wife surviving him.
Barker, Jeremiah (1752–1835)
As pioneer medical writer in Maine, Jeremiah Barker stands almost unique in its medical history. He was the son of Samuel and Patience Howland Barker, and was born at Scituate, Massachusetts, March 31, 1752. After a most excellent common school education, he studied medicine with Dr. Bela Lincoln, Harvard University, 1751, and Aberdeen, 1788, member of the Massachusetts Medical Society and a surgeon of the Revolution. Soon after beginning practice, Dr. Barker met with an accident confining him to the house for several weeks. During this enforced imprisonment he developed great skill in medical writing, composing a "Vade Mecum" based on several text-books of medical practice, and a hand-book of anatomy with drawings of his own. He first practised in Gorham, Maine, but finding the field well occupied by Dr. Stephen Swett, he moved to Barnstable, Massachusetts, where he practised chiefly between 1772 and 1779. During the revolution he served actively once or twice, and was a surgeon on a privateer, in which he was captured but soon released. He also took part in the ill-fated Bagaduce (Castine) expedition in 1779. Being now near Gorham again, and his brother-in-law, William Gorham, then living there, Dr. Barker tried the place once more and soon gained an extensive practice along the coast of Maine including all that district now known as Portland. Ten years later he built a house at Stroudwater, two miles from Portland, practised from that center with great success, and when a little over sixty retired to Gorham for the rest of his life.
Dr. Barker's chief service to medical history consists in a large number of interesting accounts of epidemics of scarlatina, malignant fever, measles and putrid sore throat occurring in Maine between 1790 and 1810. He also published meteorological sketches of great value to the historian. In those days much stress was laid upon the weather in the causation of epidemics, and these papers besides describing such conditions year after year contained hygienic advice of value. If it were not for this writer we should be without data of former epidemics. He was exceedingly interested in the use of alkalies in the treatment of disease, and experimented steadily with such substances, chemically and practically, until he had assured himself that in lime-water he had found one of the most valuable remedies ever used in medicine. At one time he planned a history of epidemics in Maine, and strove to interest his fellow physicians in his scheme, but no printed material or even manuscript remains to prove that his work was ever given to the public. He intended also to write the lives of his medical friends, and we can only regret that he was unable to prosecute this work.
Besides writing for publication, Dr. Barker corresponded actively with the learned medical men of his time among whom may first be mentioned Dr. Benjamin Rush (q.v.), the discoverer of forced feeding, fresh air in phthisis, and the rest cure, afterwards developed by other men in later times. Others of his friends were Samuel Latham Mitchill (q.v.), physician, philosopher and politician, Lyman Spalding (q.v.) the founder of the "United States Pharmacopoeia," Gov. (and Doctor) John Brooks (q.v.), Benjamin Waterhouse (q.v.), and numerous others including the well-known Portland surgeons, Nathaniel Coffin, father and son (q.v.), and at Hallowell, Maine, the exiled member of Parliament, Dr. Benjamin Vaughan (q.v.), and Maj-Gen. (and Doctor) Henry Dearborn (q.v.).
He was an active temperance man and, although at times prescribing stimulants, believed that the doctor should be the one to decide when they were really needed. He was one of the famous "sixty-niners" of the year 1818, with which title he goes down into Maine liquor law history, meaning that he was one of the sixty-nine persons who attended in the Friends' Chapel in Portland the first temperance meeting ever held in Maine, the purpose
