Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/540

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WILDER
WILDER

which he represented in the Massachusetts legisla- ture in 1 798-'9, he removed to Hallowell, Me. He served as a presidential elector in 1800 and 1808, was a state councilor in 1814, and a delegate to the Hartford convention in the same year, and from 1815 till his resignation in 1850 was a judge of the Massachusetts supreme court. In 1820, after the separation of Maine, he removed to Newburyport, Mass., and in 1831 he went to reside in Boston. Judge Wilde was a delegate to the State constitu- tional convention of 1820, and a member of the American academy of arts and sciences. He was one of the best nisi prius judges in the state, and possessed profound legal learning and great in- tegrity. Bowdoin gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1817, Harvard in 1841, and Dartmouth in 1849. Judge Wilde published several orations. He mar- ried Eunice, daughter of Gen. David Cobb, and their daughter Caroline became the wife of Caleb Cushing. A discourse on his life by Rev. Dr. Ephraim Peabody, with the proceedings of the Boston bar, was published (Boston, 1855).


WILDER, Alexander, physician, b. in Verona, Oneida co., N. Y., 14 May, 1823. He attended the common schools, was self-educated in the higher branches, taught for some time, and was graduated in medicine at Syracuse in 1850. He was an editor of the Syracuse " Star " in 1852 and of the " Jour- nal " in 1853, and took charge of the " New York Teacher " in 1856. In 1857 he went to Spring- field, 111., where he prepared the bill to incorporate the State normal university. Removing to New York city, he became connected in 1858 with the " Evening Post," on whose staff he remained for thirteen years. In 1871 he was elected an alder- man of New York on the anti-Tweed ticket. He was president of the Eclectic medical society of New York in 1870-'l, of whose "Transactions" he edited two volumes (Albany, 1870-'l), and be- came secretary of the National association, whose annual " Proceedings " he has issued since 1876. In 1873-'7 he was professor of physiology in the Eclectic medical college of the city of New York, and from 1878 till 1883 he held successively the chairs of physiology and psychological science in the United States medical college. Dr. Wilder is a member of the American Akademe, a philo- sophical society, and editor of its " Journal," published in Orange, N. J. He has published many monographs, including " The Intermarriage of Kindred " (New York, 1870) ; " Plea for the Col- legiate Education of Women " (1874) ; " Vaccina- tion a Medical Fallacy " (1878) ; " Paul and Plato " (St. Louis, 1881) ; " Life Eternal " (Orange, N. J., 1885) ; and " The Ganglionic Nervous System " (1887). He has edited essays on " Ancient Sym- bol-Worship " (New York, 1873) ; Thomas Taylor's " Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries " (1875) ; Rich- ard Payne Knight's " Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology " (1876) ; and " In- dia: what can it Teach us?" by Max Miiller (1883) ; and translated Iamblichus's work on " The Mysteries of the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Chal- daeans," in " The Platonist."


WILDER, Burt Green, naturalist, b. in Bos- ton, Mass., 11 Aug., 1841. He was graduated at the Lawrence scientific school in 1862 and at the medical department of Harvard in 1866. Meanwhile he served in the U. S. army as a medical cadet in 1862-'3 and as assistant surgeon and surgeon in the 55th Massachusetts volunteers in 1863-'5. In 1867 he was elected professor of physiology, com- parative anatomy, and zoology in Cornell univer- sity, which chair he still holds, and he was also professor of physiology in the Medical school of Maine, Bowdoin college, in 1874-'84. His dis- covery in 1862 that silk might be drawn from a living spider to the extent of 150 yards at a time led to his further researches on the habits of the spider and the qualities and usefulness of the silk. Since 1880 he has devoted his attention mostly to studies on the vertebrate brain. He has also striv- en earnestly for the adoption of a uniform anatomi- cal nomenclature, claiming that names should be as far as possible mononyms, and that in each lan- guage should be used the appropriate paronym of the Latin name rather than the Latin form. In 1887 he described the brain of cerotodus and showed that among vertebrates the proper cerebral hemispheres, the special organs of the mind, occupy five different positions relative to the olfactory tracts and bulbs, which are the direct continua- tions of the general brain axis and were probably the primitive and at first most important parts of the prosencephal. In brain publications he has insisted upon the morphological significance of the cavities, and upon the need of greater care and improved methods in dissection and prepara- tion. In 1857 he described the slip system of notes, consisting of the brief statement of facts, ideas, or references to books, written lengthwise upon slips equal to the sixth part of a sheet of note-paper. He also uses these slips for correspondence, and in 1886 invented a note-wheel on the circumference of which they are filed. Prof. Wilder lectured at Harvard in 1868, at the University of Michigan in 1876-'7, at the Lowell institute, Boston, in 1866 and 1870, at the American institute, New York, in 1870-'3, and on the Cartwright foundation before the Alumni association of the College of physicians and surgeons in 1884. He is a member of scien- tific societies, presided over the section on biology of the American association for the advancement of science in 1885, and was president of the Ameri- can neurological association in 1885. His bibli- ography includes nearly 100 technical papers in scientific and medical journals and in the publica- tions of learned societies, also about 80 reviews and articles in magazines. He has published in book-form " What Young People Should Know " (Boston, 1875); "Emergencies: how to Avoid them and how to Meet them " (1879) ; " Health Notes for Students " (1883) ; and, with Prof. Simon H. Gage, " Anatomical Technology as applied to the Domestic Cat " (New York, 1882).


WILDER, Daniel Webster, journalist, b. in Blackstone, Mass., 15 July, 1832. He was gradu- ated at Harvard in 1856, and became a lawyer and journalist. He has been an editor of the Leavenworth, Kan., " Conservative " and " Times," the Fort Scott " Monitor," the Rochester, N. Y., " Express," the St. Joseph, Mo., " Herald," and the " World," of Hiawatha, Kan. Mr. Wilder was one of the chief organizers of the Kansas historical so- ciety, and has served as its president. He was ap- pointed surveyor-general of Kansas and Nebraska in 1863, and elected state auditor of Kansas in 1872 and 1874, and superintendent of insurance in 1887. He has published " Annals of Kansas " (Topeka, Kan., 1875).


WILDER, Marshall Pinckney, merchant, b. in Rindge, N. H., 22 Sept., 1798; d. in Boston, Mass., 16 Dec, 1886. He received a common-school education, and engaged in farming, but in 1819 became a partner of his father, who was a merchant in his native place. In 1825 he removed to Boston, where he established a wholesale business in West India goods, and in 1837 he became a member of the commission firm of Parker, Blanch- ard and Wilder. He acquired a large fortune, and