University of Maryland School of Pharmacy - Terra Mariae Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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The Chair of Medicine in the University of Maryland. t Samuel C. Cukw, M.D., Professor of the P ractiee of Medicine. AT THE foundation of the School of Medicine in the University of Maryland one hundred years ago the first physician appointed to the chair of Practice was Dr. George Brown, who was born in Ireland in the year 1755, and who in 177!) obtained his medical degree at the University of Edinburgh, which was then, as it has continued to be, a famous seat of medi- cal learning, largely through the great reputation of the Munros, who were known successively as Primus, Secundus and Tertius, and who were followed by other teachers of distinguished ability down to John Hughes P ennett and George Balfour of our own day. In 178;} Dr. Brown emigrated to Baltimore, where he attained great success as a practitioner, and where he was appointed to the chair of Medicine in this school at its foundation in 1S07, and was president of its Board of Regents until 181 :i. Dr. Brown was the grandfather of the late George William Brown, Chief Judge of the Supreme Bench of this city, and at one time an instructor in the School of Law in our Univer- sity, and he was the great-grandfather of my friend, . rthur George ISrown, one of the most prominent members of the Bar of Baltimore at present, whose hereditary connection by this two-fold tie with the University of Maryland is, I am sure, a source of gratification to others of his friends, as well as to myself. Dr. Brown, though appointed to the chair of Practice, did not enter upon its duties, but re- signed the position almost immediately and was s ucceeded in it by Dr. Nathaniel Potter, who was thus the first actual or active incumbent of the chair, which he filled from 1807 to 184;{, the year of his death. I have no personal recollection of him, but there are two things which, when I follow Prospero ' s counsel and look into the dark backward and abysm of time. are among the very earliest engraven upon the tablet of my memory. One is the solemn tolling of bells which, on inquiring what it meant, I was informed, being then a little child, was for the death of the first President Harrison, who died, it will be remembered, just one month after his inauguration. The other record upon the tablet is that of someone at my home, I know not whom, uttering the words, Dr. Potter is dead. These two events of the long past have no con- nection with each other, except the fact that each is the record of the termination of a life. Although, as stated, I have no remembrance of having ever seen Professor Potter, his face is yet familiar to me, as it is to others now living, from the portrait of him which for many years has hung in the Faculty room of the School of Medicine. The attitude in which he is represented in the picture is that of a scholar holding in his hand a volume, which was one of his own works, Potter on Contagion, as is shown in the picture. Now it is most interesting

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I ' ROl ' . SAMrKK C. CHKW.

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to see that ill tliat bniik. a copy of wliidi is in our i.ilnary and uliicli was pmhal)!) the autlior ' s favorite anion}, ' his writings, he maintains the non-coiitaj ious character of yellow fever, a disease with which lie was very familiar, for it had prevailed in Ijaltimore more than once during his l)rofessi( nal life. It is especially interesting to find that in sn])])iirt nf his opinion he brought forward the same kind of evidence which was adduced by the L ' liited States Army Yellow Fever Commssion. a given in iluir report in 19iil : the evidence being the application of hand- kerchiefs and other fninilos which h;i(l been kept in contact with yellow fever iiatients, to others not laboring under the disease, with the result that it was not communicated to them. And tliiis he anticipated what has of late years been fully established by the labors of Dr. Walter Reed, Dr. James Carroll, Dr. . risiiiles Agramonte and that noble martyr to science and to humanity. Dr. Jesse W. Lazear, a name tn lie s])oken with reverence, for it is haloed with a martyr ' s crown. ' Piiis anticipatiiin of the truth i . I think, a nmsl interesting fact in the histury of this school and nf medicine. ' Pile next incumlieiil nf the chair nt Practice wa Hr. I ' .lisha llartlett, nf .Massachusetts, who was eiecled tn it early in ISM. and whn Jiad had e. |iiTieiK-e a a teacher nf medicine in several schnnis. thi ' ia t nf wliicli was the ' rraiisylvania l ni ersit . in which he resigned his position to acce])t till ' call tn I ' lallinmre. Of liini 1 have a faint, shadnwy recnlleclinii. I can recall, ami yet but dimly, his tall fnnn and his striking intellectual cnunieiuince. lie was a medical ] hiln-,n|)her nf admiralile rcasniiing ])nwers and high allainnients. His treatise on the Fevers nf the I ' liiteil States. first piihlislied in isl , shiAild be in the library of every medical scholar, fnr it entitles him to a place aiiKiiig tlin e great wnrkers who were engaged in differentiating frnin each nther the varinus fnnns nf febrile disease, a ])lace with Louis, of Paris, and Sir Wil- liam Jenner, nf l.nndmi. and (lerhard, nf Philadel| liia. and James Jackson, Jr., of Boston. I ' rofessnr Martlett ' s ]ihiln nphical works art alsn nf great value, his ■ ' Philosophy of Medi- c;il SciiMuw ' )iulilisluMl in is I I, ;tiiil his In(|uiry Intn tin- Degree nf (, ' ertainty in Medicine, in ISIS. : It was said by Dr. ( )liver Wendell 1 Inlines that liartlett ' s .Medical I ' hikisophy is as re- markable fnr elegance of style as for liberal and genial spirit and philoso]ihic breadth of view. ' )iie ])assage 1 can recall as having impressed itself n] nn my youthful memory and imagination IniiL; ears ago. The author is drawing a contrast between the various forms of charlatanry, which from time In time seek to rival medical science n the one hand, and legitimate, scien- tific medicine nii the nther. He likens them res])ectively tn twn kinds of illumination; in the one there is a nnise. a rush, a burst iiit( a myriad of coruscations which are soon extinguished, leaving behind them an obscuring clnnd of smoke, which jiarts and is scattered, and these are his words: Courage, my friends, look up and there looking down upon us with their dear old smile of afifectionate recognition, undimmed in their brightness and unchanged in tlieir loveliness. the ever-watchfid stars. Tlieir light rejiresents scientific medicine. Ill ISli; Professor P.artlett. in failing health, resigned his chair and was succeeded in it by Dr. William Power, a native of this city, who hatl taken his degree of . .V . at Vale in 18:?2. and nf M.D. at this school in ' [H ' ■ . and he was thus the first .Mumnus of the scliool to occupy the chair of Practice in it. After his graduation here, he jjiirsued his medical studies in Paris, un- der that brilliant cnrps i i teachers, consisting of i.onis, . ndrae, (irisoUe, P.arth, and the great 10