REPORT ON AMERICAN MEDICAL NECROLOGY.

IN presenting another report of deceased members of the profes sion, the Chairman is again compelled to allude to the indifference indicated by not a few of those to whom circulars for information have been addressed. In many instances no response whatever has been received, while in others the memoranda furnished were too meagre and destitute of interest to be rendered either entertaining or useful to the reader.

Notwithstanding the Chairman feels obliged to refer to these omissions of duty, he has great pleasure in acknowledging the prompt and full contributions of others. A few of these have been inserted as prepared by their authors, with little or no essential modification-others have been almost wholly rewritten, while not a few sketches have been culled and condensed from the newspapers and journals of the day.

Of the gentlemen especially entitled to this public expression of thanks, are the following: Dr. HENRY CLARKE, of Massachusetts; Dr. JOHN SHRADY, of New York; Dr. CHARLES L. ALLEN, of Vermont; Dr. HENRY BRONSON, of Connecticut; Dr. EDWARD WALLACE, of Pennsylvania; Dr. A. II. AGARD, of Ohio; Dr. W. B. FLETCHER, of Indiana; Dr. J. M. TONER, District of Columbia; Dr. JOHN BLANE, of New Jersey; Dr. WM. MARSHALL, of same; Dr. THOMAS M. LOGAN, of California; Dr. S. M. WELCH, of Texas; Surgeon J. K. BARNES, Surgeon General U. S. A.; and Dr. P. J. HORWITZ, Chief of the Medical Bureau U. S. N.; and C. EVERSFIELD, U. S. N.

NEW YORK.

Some of the following sketches are presented as furnished by Dr. John Shrady, of New York city, to whose prompt and judicious service allusion has already been made. Others have been condensed from published notices culled from various sources.

BENJAMIN OGDEN, one of the earliest psychologists of the country, was born in New York, October 14, 1797. A student in the office of the renowned surgeon Wright Post, and in 1820 a graduate of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, he diligently improved the advantages offered by the schools and hospitals abroad, and at length entered upon his medical career in his native city in 1824. His practice, though extensive, added more to his experience than to his income, since his benevolence procured him a constituency more devoted than wealthy.

His self-sacrificing zeal during the cholera epidemic of 1832, conjoined with a marked talent for organization and a certain fertility of resource, attracted the attention of the city authorities, and led to his advancement to the position of resident physician to Bellevue Hospital. At this institution the pauper insane of the county were likewise cared for, but not to that extent which, in the new incumbent's opinion, the necessities of the cases demanded. With Dr. Ogden, to recognize an evil was to attempt its correction. So that, having enlisted in his scheme of an exclusive asylum for these unfortunates the cordial co-operation of Dr. James MacDonald, a prominent alienist, he had the gratification of seeing the commencement of the model establishment upon Blackwell's Island, during the spring of 1835. The work, however, was soon after suspended, and not resumed until the fall of 1837. As a matter of history, it may here be stated that the patients, 197 in all, were transferred, June 10, 1839, from Bellevue to the Island; the north octagon and west wing being then completed. About this time Dr. Ogden, by a singular coincidence, was reappointed to his old position of resident physician to Bellevue Hospital; he having filled that office continuously from 1834 to 1840, with an interregnum of only two years. The absence of his name from this list is very readily accounted for by its appearance during 1837 and 1838-9, as resident physician of the Bloomingdale Asylum for the insane. As evidence of the confidence reposed in the deceased by both the profession and the public, it will suffice to enumerate some of the responsibilities which he was called upon to assume. For a number of years he was consulting physician to the City Lunatic Asylum, and also sustained the same relation towards Sanford Hall, a private lunatic asylum, at Flushing, Long Island. In 1855 he was elected president of the County Medical Society, and four years afterward accepted the honor of being the first president of the Alumni Association of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, of

which college he continued a trustee from 1863 to his death. He also acted as a delegate to the American Medical Association more than once, and was borne on its roll of permanent members.

The subject of this memoir generally enjoyed good health; was hopeful, cheerful, and strictly Lutheran in his religious faith. He was well versed in the traditions of his native city; had a happy faculty of personal description, and a singularly apt genealogical memory; but owing to his busy habits, which disinclined him to any literary labor, much has forever passed away into "unwritten history."

Dr. Ogden was suddenly stricken with paralysis, November 9, 1865; his speech, though not lost, became thick and indistinct; his general condition was pronounced critical in the extreme; but the naturally robust constitution, which he inherited from a rather long-lived ancestry, at length rallied so far as to restore to him full control over the faculty of articulation, and with it his cheerfulness, although he remained as powerless as ever. So he continued for nineteen irksome months, a model of Christian fortitude, more considerate of the comfort of his attendants than mindful of his own, until death startled his friends and relatives into a sense of their bereavement. His demise occurred at College Point, Long Island, June 18, 1867.

In the language of a condolatory resolution, adopted by the New York Academy of Medicine, of which he was one of the founders, "he adorned and beautified his profession by nearly half a century of usefulness in this the city of his birth; nor was the knowledge of his worth confined to its narrow limits, for the brightness and goodness of his character and his specialty as alienist were coextensive with his country."

JOHN HART, born February 9, 1810, in Danville, Caledonia County, Vermont; after receiving a fair academical education, principally at Concord, Brownington, and Peachem, towns in his native State, came to New York city at an early age. A teacher in a private school, and a clerk in a drug store, his aim in life appears more to have been a thorough mastery of the healing art. Hence he is found, during the cessation from his other toils, an assiduous attendant upon the private anatomical demonstrations in the office of Dr. Stephen Harris.

At length, the happy possessor of a diploma from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, bearing on its face the date, March 31,

1-35, he soon received the appointment of visiting physician to the Northern Dispensary; but, for reasons of a private nature, resigned his position, after a faithful service of nearly a year.

Dr. Hart remained in the city pursuing his profession, subject to the usual vicissitudes incidental to those struggling for recognition without extraneous aids, until the winter of 1839-40. He then left for Syracuse, and there remained until February, 1848, the date of his return to New York.

After thoroughly identifying himself with the regular profession by joining the various accredited medical bodies, he chose the eastern section of the city as the theatre of his professional labors, but after the death of his wife, April 19, 1860, he gradually withdrew from the more exacting duties of his calling, without, however, any abatement of his interest in its progress. This he manifested by a systematic course of reading and a rather constant attendance upon medical meetings.

A man of courteous demeanor, scrupulously exact in attire, with kindly impulses, and an imposing presence, he possessed in an eminent degree the elements of personal popularity, but the delicate condition of his health, towards the close of his life, compelled him to neglect his more immediate interests for occasional and sometimes protracted sojourns in remote localities.

A desire to visit several friends in different parts of the United States, previous to his embarkation for Paris, as a representative of the American Medical Association, at the International Medical Congress, was soon put into execution, and it was on the occasion of a renewal of old intimacies at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, that he was overtaken by his final illness. He died August 19, 1867, bequeathing a share of his property to institutions under the patronage of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

SIMEON ABRAHAMS, son of Jacob and Catharine Nathan Wolf, was born in New York, January 13, 1810, and died suddenly, in that city, on the morning of April 19, 1867.

His medical studies were prosecuted under the direction of the late Dr. John H. Whitaker, Professor of Anatomy, etc., in the New York Medical College and Charity Hospital. Dr. Abrahams held a prominent position among the Israelites, and he filled in the Synagogue, and other organizations, many offices of great respectability and responsibility. A noteworthy event in the life of Dr. Abrahams was his visit to the Old World; and among other cele