surgeon, serving as surgeon-in-chief of the second division of the eleventh corps, and being afterwards appointed medical director of his corps. Dr. Brinton was present at several engagements, including the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, and, in consequence of a sunstroke received soon after the last, was unfitted for active service. Till August, 1866, he acted as superintendent of the hospitals at Quincy and Springfield, Ill., when he was discharged with the rank of brevet lieutenant-colonel.
It is characteristic of the man (perhaps his good old Quaker ancestry had something to do with it) that, when the war was over, he devoted himself assiduously to the arts of peace, the colonel disappearing in the doctor and the professor. Settling down in Philadelphia, in his native State (he was born in West Chester, Pa.), he busied himself with the pursuit of medicine, but did not neglect to cultivate the germ disclosed in his book of 1859, especially his propensity for linguistic studies.
His medical activity is represented by his redaction of "The Medical and Surgical Reporter," and the "Compendium of Medical Science," his editorship of "Naphey's Modern Therapeutics," and other volumes on similar subjects, and his numerous contributions to medical journals, especially upon subjects relating to public medicine, hygiene, etc. In "The Pursuit of Happiness" (Philadelphia, 1893, 293 pp. 8vo), published after the wisdom of the anthropologist had been assimilated with the experience of the physician, Dr. Brinton, with a wealth of epigram and neat turning of speech, discusses the search after the third and hardly achieved ideal of the Declaration of Independence. His last essays of a physiological character seem to have been three brief papers on "Variations of the HUman Skeleton and their Causes" (Amer. Anthrop., Oct. 1894), on "The Relations of Race and Culture to Degenerations of the Reproductive Organs in Women" (Med. News, New York, 1896), and on "The Measurement of Thought as Function" (Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc., Dec. 1897). As a physician Dr. Brinton is said to have held the view that "medical science should be based on the results of clinical observation rather than on physiological experiments."
During the years 1866-67 Dr. Brinton published several articles of an ethnological nature, and in 1868 his second book, "The Myths of the New World" (New York, 1868, 337 pp. 8vo), appeared, the first really scientific attempt to analyze and correlate the rich mythology of the American Indians, a work which thoroughly justified its re-appearance, nearly thirty years afterwards, in a third revised and enlarged edition (Philadelphia, 1896, 360 pp. 8vo). This useful and suggestive volume was followed (many articles on other topics intervening) by "The Religious Sentiment: a Contribution to the
