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occurred in the New York Almshouse, of which institution, with the late Dr. Hosack, he was an associate physician. In 1808 he received from the Regents the appointment of Professor of Midwifery. In 1810 a reorganization of the School took place, when Samuel Bard was placed at the head. Dr. Macneven was now chosen the Professor of Chemistry, and, in 1816, while Dr. Francis was in Europe, Materia Medica was added to his chair. This arrangement continued until 1820, when they were separated, Dr. Mitchill being assigned that duty with Natural History. In 1826 he resigned his professorship in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and, with his colleagues, who withdrew at the same time from the institution, he received the thanks of the Board of Regents for the faithful and able manner in which they had filled their respective offices as instructors and lecturers in said College. Few public documents on collegiate subjects could prove more gratifying to the feelings of an enlightened body of long-devoted teachers than the elaborate Report on the College at this crisis, as drawn up by the Regents, Marcy, Van Rensselaer, and Talmadge.

In November following he commenced an elaborate course of instruction on the Materia Medica in Rutgers Medical College, which institution, with a majority of his former associates, Drs. Hosack, Francis, and Mott, and Drs. Griscom and Godman, was now organized in New York, at an expense of twenty-four thousand dollars, and opened at the usual period for the fall and winter courses. The success of this new school was demonstrative of the high opinion the public cherished for this well-known faculty, and it continued its operations with increased renown, and gave the strongest assurance of its beneficial services to medical and philosophical knowledge. After four years, however, its doors were closed, in consequence of legislative enactments, and Dr. Macneven, with his fellow-professors, ceased his labors as a public teacher.

It will thus be perceived that, amid the vicissitudes which marked the history of the College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Rutgers Medical College, Dr. Macneven for more than twenty years was engaged as a professor of medical knowledge,

and justice to his memory requires us to state that for that long period he was most assiduous in contributing, with zeal and ability, to promote the soundest interests of a responsible and important science. He had left the State school which he had helped to rear, in a condition of great prosperity, both in reputation and in the number of its pupils, and which, at the commencement of its career, had yet to secure the approbation and support of the profession. Its anomalous government, and the capricious measures of the trustees, were of themselves sufficient to distract the best councils and lead to results at war with that wise policy essential to great issues. In the ardent contentions which were maintained between the faculty and the trustees, Dr. Macneven's pen bore a powerful part in vindication of his colleagues, and several of his able compositions of sufficient pungency on the subject may be found in the third volume of his learned associate, Dr. Hosack's, Essays. The appeal to the Regents of the University, and to the legislature, on behalf of the incorporation of Manhattan Medical College, written by an actual student of the school, may be consulted by the curious reader solicitous of enriching his mind with medical politics. This manly effort for the creating of a new and independent medical and chirurgical school, was approved almost unanimously by the higher branch of the legislative councils of the State, and only failed through the lateness of the hour at which the act of incorporation was introduced to the consideration of the Assembly of New York. It was unquestionably a most benighted hour for the interest of knowledge, when the authority of the Regents was made subservient to the extinguishment of so laudable a design to advance Hippocratic wisdom.

As a professor, Dr. Macneven was learned as an instructor, and ample in his exposition. His erudition gave him peculiar advantages. The stores of ancient and modern science were equally accessible to him, and he was ever ready to communi

cate.

In chemical philosophy he was universally esteemed to hold a high rank. His studious disposition enabled him to penetrate the hidden wisdom of the astute and scholastic, and close attention to the progress of discovery imparted new

powers, with each returning term of the College, to improve his lectures and add new illustrations to experimental truths.

It remains to notice briefly his literary labors. His "Rambles in Switzerland" have been already mentioned. His "Pieces of Irish History," and his numerous political tracts, which his eventful life was the cause of occasionally bringing forth, evince how deeply rooted in his bosom were the political vicissitudes of his country; and this sympathy with the land of his birth, he cherished to the latest period of his existence. With Hugh Williamson and David Hosack, he was an active promoter of the organization of the Literary and Philosophical Society of New York, and contributed to the first volume of its Transactions a minute analysis, with medical reflections on the remedial qualities of the mineral waters of Schooley's Mountain, New Jersey. He deemed them valuable in nephritic disorders and in calculous complaints. As his colleague, the erudite Mitchill, at the commencement of his experimental and collegiate career, twenty years before, had in his instruction urged and defended the Lavoisierian system, so did Macneven press upon the attention, with the zeal of a proselyte, the atomic theory of Dalton; and his "Exposition of the Atomic Theory," which he printed in 1820, was received with favor, both abroad and at home, and reprinted in the French Annals of Chemistry. As coeditor of the "New York Medical and Philosophical Journal," a work which, made up chiefly of selections, he projected, with Dr. Benjamin De Witt, in 1812, he wrote several papers on subjects strictly medical. He also published, in 1821, with emendations, an edition of Brande's Chemistry. His professional worth secured him several advantages. Governor De Witt Clinton appointed him Resident Physician of New York, an office which he held for several years, and in 1840 he received. the same favor from Governor Seward. He was early a member of the Literary and Philosophical Society, and in 1823 he was elected a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society. When the Asiatic cholera made its first appearance in New York, in 1832, the municipal authorities selected him as one of its council. A passing remark may here justifiably be intro

duced. The official Reports of the Medical Board, during that awful crisis, again and again affirmed it as their most mature conviction, that the pestilence presented no evidence of a contagious or communicable character, the better to diminish the alarm created by the fearful visitor; yet, notwithstanding these official annunciations, Dr. Macneven and others of that sanitary guardianship, believed the disorder to be a nova pestis in this country, and that its progress through the land was best explained by considering it a specific disease, and regulated by the law of a sub modo contagion.

That the life of Dr. Macneven was one closely devoted to knowledge and its promulgation, is demonstrated by the brief record now given of his principles and acts. He was a prodigious reader, and his love of books was a prominent passion with him, and no medical man of the faculty among whom he resided surpassed him in philological pursuits, and in the acquisition of languages. He was a classical scholar, and ready with citations from the most approved English writers. He spoke German and French with the same facility as the English; and in the Italian, unlocked with delight the treasures of Dante and Ariosto. His native tongue, the Irish, as it was the first he had learned, so through life he conversed in it with fluency.

His burial was honored by a large attendance both of adopted and native citizens; and as at the funeral of his illustrious friend, the great jurist, Thomas Addis Emmet, there was but one feeling which pervaded all hearts, and one sentiment uttered by all lips; so at the interment of Dr. Macneven all felt that learning had lost a distinguished ornament, real knowledge a true disciple, the charities of life an ardent friend, and patriotism one who had sustained martyrdom in her glorious cause.

JOHN W. FRANCIS.

JAMES THACHER.

1752-1844.

WHETHER viewed as a patriot, faithfully serving his country in the darkest period of her history; as a man of science and extensive literary acquirements; or simply as an active and honorable member of a humane and noble profession, the subject of this sketch eminently deserves a prominent page in the historical annals of his country.

James Thacher was born in 1754, at Barnstable, in the colony of Massachusetts. From a brief memoir in the volume of Medical Biography, by the late Dr. Stephen Williams, we learn that his mother was the daughter of a Mr. Norton, of Martha's Vineyard, and granddaughter of ex-Governor Coggshall, of Rhode Island. Paternally, he was descended from one of the most learned and useful families in the colony. In "The Magnalia," by Cotton Mather, we have the biography of Dr. Thomas Thacher, who is represented to have been a learned physician and clergyman of Massachusetts; from whose pen emanated the first medical publication in that colony.

It was a tract or monograph, entitled "A Brief Guide in the Small-Pox and Measles;" and published in the year 1677.* Dr. Williams tells us that "no less than sixteen graduates of the name of Thacher appear in the triennial catalogue of Harvard University, from 1671 to 1832, nine of whom were clergymen." The name of the subject of this memoir, however, is not on the list, and we have no evidence that he ever enjoyed

* See History of American Medicine before the Revolution, by Dr. J. B. Beck.

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