Among the many texts which he had selected for special contemplation were the following: "Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father which is in heaven.""Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account thereof in the day of judgment.". "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Breathing forth such sentiments, and with a mind full of thoughts like these, he was preparing himself daily for that rest with the people of God for which he had long and fervently prayed, and at the age of about fifty-one years-an age at which the vigor of the intellect, soundness of the judgment, and the experience of manhood are but matured and perfected, when the strength has not been overtasked and exhausted-exchanged the cares, labors, and responsibilities of life for the quiet and repose of the grave.

His life, as we have seen, had been from its very outset one requiring the active, energetic exercise of every power and faculty, both of mind and body-at first from the necessities of his condition, and subsequently continued, doubtless, partly from the force of habit, but in part, also, from the aspirations of a laudable ambition. It is also unquestionably true that, at the time of his death, he had accomplished, and nobly too, the labors of a long, elevated, and eventful career. Nor is it too much to believe that his name will go down to posterity among that bright galaxy of distinguished men who, self-made, have attained to eminence through the steady, well-directed efforts of sound, well-balanced, and well-informed minds, aided by a strength of will and firmness of purpose which no obstacles. could successfully oppose, nor discouragements long depress; a model worthy the imitation of all who would excel in manly gifts, or in the honorable performance of duty among men.

E. K. HUNT.

CHARLES A. LUZENBERG.

1805-1848.

CHARLES ALOYSIUS LUZENBERG was born on the 31st of July, 1805, in the city of Verona, where his father, an Austrian of ancient and respectable family, had followed the army in the capacity of commissary. Soon after this event, his father returned with the army to Alsace, residing with his family alternately at Landau and Weissemberg. At the latter place one of his uncles was established as a practitioner of medicine; a circumstance which, perhaps, gave his father the idea of educating him for that profession.

His earliest tuition was at the public school of Landau, where his precocity first evinced itself, in the rapidity with which he learned arithmetic, and the French and Latin languages. Afterward, when his father moved to Weissemberg, he was received into the city college, at the early age of ten years, being the youngest pupil ever admitted. On account of his attainments, the rules for admission were waived in his favor, and he was held up as a model to the other scholars.

In the year 1819 his father left his native country and settled with his family in Philadelphia, and sparing no expense, sacrificed almost all his means to procure for his eldest son every facility his adopted city could afford for the completion of his studies. True to the German standard of a perfect education, he was taught music, fencing, boxing, and other exercises in gymnastics, and soon acquired the same proficiency in the athlete which he afterwards attained in the medical

arena.

In 1825 he attended the lectures of the Jefferson Medical College, and evinced such assiduity and zeal in the acquisition of knowledge, especially in the dissecting rooms, as to furnish, even at that early period, strong indications of his future eminence. Although he made the study of his profession the base-line of his pursuits, he did not neglect to prosecute the departments of classical literature, and especially natural history; which latter he made subsidiary to comparative anatomy, and in this he engaged con amore.

At this period, Dr. Physick was in the zenith of his surgical career, and it is presumed gave a bias to the mind of his hospital pupil for his particular department. Hence surgery became his ruling passion; and he spared no trouble or pains, by constant attendance at the Almshouse, or by going almost any distance to witness an important or interesting operation.

In the year 1829, he went to New Orleans, taking with him many most flattering letters, but contenting himself with delivering a single one to Dr. David C. Ker, one of the visiting physicians to the Charity Hospital. On his first visit to that institution, upon the invitation of Dr. Ker, he performed a difficult amputation, in a manner so satisfactory, and so indicative of that courage and genius, which were soon to ripen into maturity, that he was almost upon his arrival, and when scarcely known to the administrators, elected house-surgeon.

In this situation his talents found a field somewhat commensurate with their extent, and which soon brought him a rich harvest of celebrity and reputation.

The abundant opportunities here afforded of witnessing every variety of calamity and casualty to which suffering humanity is subject, and the many emergencies which tasked his judgment, boldness, and address, soon enabled him to acquire those qualities which are found in all great surgeons,-a sure and steady hand, an imperturbable self-possession, and a quick sagacity to seize new indications and employ, at the instant, the means of fulfilling them. These were only some of the evidences of his genius for surgery, which were now developed.

While in the pursuit of surgery, his earliest and his first love,

he was not unmindful of the importance of the other departments of his profession. About this time his attention was attracted to the numerous cases of small-pox which were received into the Charity Hospital. While engaged in the postmortem examination of a patient who had been some years previously so afflicted with small-pox as to produce deep pits upon the face, Dr. Luzenberg was surprised to find that those parts of the body which had been protected in a great degree from the action of light by clothing were entirely unmarked. Putting this in connection with the fact recorded by Baron Larrey, with which he was doubtless acquainted, as he had read a great deal, viz., that the Egyptians and Arabians were accustomed to cover the exposed parts of small-pox patients with gold leaf, the idea was impressed upon his mind that light was the agent of this phenomenon. Acting upon this impression, he placed a number of patients in an apartment so constructed that the reflective rays of the sun, even at its meridian, could not penetrate within. The result confirmed his opinion, and fully established the position, that the exclusion of light prevents pitting; for all who were discharged cured, exhibited neither pit nor mark upon the face or body, and even such as had the disease in its worst confluent form, passed rapidly and without any difficulty through the maturative and desiccating stages, and recovered with comparatively none of those marks and disgusting discolorations which so signally disfigure the subjects of this most loathsome disorder. Thus satisfied of the correctness of his conclusion, he communicated the fact in scientific good faith to the class of young men around him, requesting them to prosecute the subject, with the view of further testing its reliability. One of them made it the subject of a paper, which will be found in the tenth volume, page 119, of the "American Journal of the Medical Sciences," for 1832, and thus attracted the attention of European physicians to the subject, as may be seen in the Revue Médicale, for August, 1832. Much acrimonious disputation transpired as to who was the actual discoverer of this method; at which we need not be surprised, when we remember the old adage that "there is

nothing new under the sun." Our own Physick was almost shorn of the eclat of one of his most important surgical discoveries by Dupuytren and Schmalkalken; and like him, if Dr. Luzenberg did not first bring into notice the practice of excluding the light in treating variolous disorders, he at all events revived it, and finally got as much credit for it as he deserved; for I well remember when I arrived in Paris, in 1832, that he was pointed out to me at one of the hospitals, by a French student, as an eminent American physician, who had discovered a new mode of treating small-pox.

His reputation soon spread beyond the walls of the Charity Hospital, and a better field was opened for him in private practice, which furnished additional scope for the exertion of all his powers, as well as the gratification of his highest ambition.

In March, 1832, he was married to Mrs. Mary Fort, daughter of the late Henry Clement, of New York. By the ample fortune which was at once, with the most exemplary confidence, placed at his disposal, he was raised to a height whence he could look down with pity upon the rivalries and jealousies of the profession, and in the seclusion of a well-stocked library, and all the appliances for study with which he now supplied himself, shut his ears against the hubbub of his assailants.

More eager now for the acquisition of knowledge than the accumulation of riches, he did not fall into the fatal error of supposing that the distinction he had already acquired entitled him to repose or indolence. He had learned enough—the most important learning-to be conscious of his comparative ignorance, and looking abroad from this new eminence to which he had urged his way, he felt the overpowering conviction that what he had already gained bore but a ratio, eternally decreasing, to what was still contained within the ever expanding horizon of knowledge. Thus did he determine to avail himself of his acquirements in the languages, to collect materials in Europe to erect the superstructure, for which he conceived he had but as yet laid the foundation.

He accordingly, on the 2d May, 1832, left New Orleans, accompanied by his family. He went by way of the West, with