The biographical encyclopaedia of New Jersey of the nineteenth century, Part 103

Author: Robson, Charles, ed; Galaxy Publishing Company, publisher
Publication date: 1877
Publisher: Philadelphia, Galaxy publishing company
Number of Pages: 924

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ERHUNE, RICHARD A., M. D., Physician, of the city of Passaic, was born, January 9th, 1829, in Hackensack, Bergen county, New Jersey. IIis father, Garrit Terhune, is one of the oldest med- ical practitioners in the State; his mother was Elizabeth (Zabriskie) Terhune-the former a na- tive of New Jersey, and the latter of New York State. Richard A. Terhune received a very careful home educa- tion, his father taking the utmost pains to ground him sol- idly and thoroughly in the studies he was to pursue, and to secure for him the utmost mental discipline and develop- ment. This course of home education was supplemented by attendance at the public schools, and the two agencies secured for him a good degree of training and a large stock of practical and carefully selected knowledge. Influenced partly by the fact that his father was an eminent physician, and partly by the natural bent of his own inclinations, he de- cided upon entering the medical profession, and in the year

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IS46 he commenced a regular preliminary course of profes- | Medical Society have erected to his memory a costly monu- sional study, under the direction of his father. His pre- paratory course completed, he entered the College of Phy- sicians and Surgeons- in New York and attended three courses there. He graduated and received his diploma in IS50. On recciving his diploma he at once commenced practice in Passaic, in association with his father. This as- sociation continued until the year 1861, when he commenced independent practice, in which he has ever since continued. He specdily won the confidence of the community by the extent and thoroughness of his professional knowledge, by the skill which characterized his practice, and by the zeal and energy with which he performed the duties of his call- ing, and in consequence a large and valuable patronage was soon at his command. He is a member of the Passaic County Medical Society, in which body he has from time to time held official positions. Besides being a devoted professional man, he is an active and public-spirited citizen, interesting himself in all movements for the benefit of the community in which he lives, He is President of the Town Water Company, and was President of the Board of Coun. cil of the city of Passaic for three years. lle was married, in 1861, to Mrs. Emily L. Morrell, widow of Richard Morrell, of Jersey City, and daughter of the late Alanson Randal, of Newburgh, New York,

OLEMAN, JAMES BEAKES, M. D., of Trenton, was born in 1806. Ile is descended from ances- tors who long before the Revolution lived in Trenton and the immediate neighborhood. His great-grandfather, Edmund Beakes, as far back as 1716 resided in Trenton, and was for a long period Surveyor-General of West Jerscy. The only child of Mr. Beakes married Job Pearson, of one of the William Penn Quaker families of Pennsylvania. He resided on a farm two and half miles above Trenton, in Lawrence town- ship, at the period of the Revolution. His only living child, a daughter, married James Coleman, of an adjoining town- ship. The Colemans were the first settlers of that district. James Coleman was a man highly esteemed by his acquaint- ances for his intelligence and manly qualities. Ilis death occurred at middle age. Ile left a family of four children, two boys and two girls. One of the daughters, an accom- plished and intelligent woman, died many years since ; the other still lives, a blessing to those who depend on her for sympathy and counsel. The oldest son, Dr. Isaac Pearson Coleman, died November 4th, 1869, at Pemberton, New Jersey. He was eminent as a physician and surgeon, and was sought in counsel in most of the difficult cases that occurred in his district. He was President of the New Jersey Medical Society in 1858. So kindly was he regarded by his brothers of the profession that the Burlington County gland of Jolin Gibbs, in Lamberton, an operation the for-

ment in Mt. Holly cemetery. Dr. James Beakes Coleman was educated in Trenton, and spent some years with an apothecary, during which time he devoted himself particu- larly to chemistry, and became for one of his age, and at that period, an excellent practical chemist. He read such books as could be procured, sought advice from a Phila- delphia friend engaged in the same pursuits, and was able, under the difficulty that then attended chemical studies, to succeed in making experiments, even making sulphate of quinine, a remedy that had within that year been introduced from France. Ile began the study of medicine when nine- teen years of age with Dr. Nicholas Belleville, of Trenton, attended three courses of lectures at Yale College, and graduated in 1829. He read a thesis, as was the custom at that school, before the assembled professors and examiners appointed by the State Medical Society. The subject of the thesis was the " Similarity of the Nervous and Galvanic Fluid," a matter little investigated at that time. In the dis- cussion that occurred in defence of the doctrines advanced, the late Professor Silliman strongly advocated the theories of the thesis, and assisted in removing the objections of some of the examiners. After graduating, nearly two years were spent in Philadelphia, when the prospect of a better immediate practice offered in Burlington county, New Jersey, which was accepted. Here an easy country practice, in a delightful neighborhood, occupied six years. During this interval, besides attending patients, some of the time was occupied lecturing to lyceums on suhjects connected with medical studies, as natural philosophy, chemistry, vege- table physiology, phrenology, and battling with the Thomp- sonians, who then were popular and infested the neighbor- hood. Against them he wrote and had printed a Hudi- brastic pamphlet of twenty-one pages, which seemed to have the effect in that region of quieting their clamorous advocates, and driving away their troublesome doctors. The pamphlet was called " Number Six, or the Thompsonian conferring the degree of Steam Doctor on Sam Simons, with Practical Advice." Practice, although pleasant from all its associations in this neighborhood, was necessarily limited, not enough to occupy the whole time of one who was desirous to gain a position in a profession that requires, along with other qualifications, that of much and varied ex- perience. The last move was to return to Trenton, his native place. Here, since 1837, he has remained without interruption engaged in general practice; the time absent during this long period would not amount to more than five weeks, and part of this time away has been occasioned by pro- fessional calls. Although a general practitioner he became better known as a surgeon, for cases in this department are more under the public eye. Soon after establishing himself in Trenton, while yet young in his profession, the higher operations in surgery were frequently performed by him. As early as 1842 he extirpated successfully the parotid

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midable character of which spcaks well of his skill and nerve as a surgeon. Gibbs died some time afterward of consumption. Many plino-plastic operations, relieving great deformities, such as lost noses restored by flaps cut from the forehead, and limbs distorted by burns relieved by transfer- ring skin to the contracted part; lithotomy, cataract, stra- bismus, club-foot, trepanning, strangulated hernia, hardly an operation of importance that he has not been successful in performing. Mechanical knowledge, invention, and a ready use of tools, enabling him to construct without assist- ance almost any implement or apparatus he may require, have qualified him particularly for the surgical branch of his profession. The skill of a physician is hardly as demon- strable as that of the surgeon; our only estimate is formed from the regard in which he is held by his patients, and by the members of his own profession, and by his writings. Judging from these he is entitled to high rank. His patients have been amongst those of the first position and inteili- , gence, and they regard him as authority ; his brother phy- sicians accord him knowledge of his profession in a high degree, theoretic and practical; his communications to medical societies show that he is original in thought, and industrious in research. A report to the New Jersey Medi- cal Society, "On the Effects of Mercurial Preparations on the living Animal Tissues," read before the society in 1853, and published in their Transactions of that year, had it met the eye of Surgeon-General Barnes during the early part of the rebellion, when he was about ordering the army sur- geons to prescribe no mercury for the soldiers, would have been the document of all others upon which to base his action and authority. A paper on Malaria, for the same society, published in their Transactions of 1866, took the position that malaria is the product of diseased action in vegetables, not of vegetable decomposition, but poisonous emanations caused by perverted functions, as in animals when suffering from infectious diseases. This new and reasonable analogy has been received with much favor, and as a matter of general interest was republished in Beecher's Magazine in 1871. Many papers have been read by him before the Mercy County Medical Society on practical sur- gery, such as knee-joint operations, illustrated by his own cases ; apparatus for fractured clavicle; the propriety of im- mediate operations in cases of severe wounds, confirmed by railroad and machinery wounds, in which limbs have been amputated before reaction came on, showing the effect of the knife was to stimulate life and cause reaction, while the operation caused less pain during the prostration that fol- Iowed the shock of the accident. These communications stated his experience had been that all cases thus promptly treated had done better in every respect, and without anæs- thesia than others in which there had been the ordinary de- lay. He also contributed a series of articles, published in Beecher's Magazine, on natural and artificial mechanism, making in all a good-sized volume. The first attempt, of which there is any record, of forced ventilation of public

buildings to drive the circulation of hot air by a blowing- fan, was in the New Jersey Penitentiary, in 1841. At that time he was Physician to the prison. The former plan of heating this establishment was by hot water circulating through the ranges of cells: it was the Perkins' plan, and adopted in many public buildings; heat without ventilation radiated from hot pipes, and as a consequence the cells be- came very offensive. The new plan was conceived from a hint given by a visit to Hanover furnace, where they had adopted the hot-air blast to facilitate the reduction of iron ore. The air here was found hot enough to burn a shingle as it rushed through the tuyere in the lower part of the furnace. A description of a new way to warm the prisoners, and at the same time to ventilate perfectly, was drawn up, and submitted to the inspectors. It was approved and brought before the Legislature. An appropriation of $5,000 was made for the purpose. The apparatus was constructed, and Professor Henry was called to witness the experiment and give his opinion as to the value of the method. He said it was a new thing and he doubted its practicability. This is the plan by which all well-ventilated and well- warmed public buildings are now managed, and it was thrown out of the New Jersey Penitentiary because they had not power to spare from their other work to drive the fan. Almost as soon as electroplating was made known to the public he conceived the idea of applying the process to forming raised cuts to be used after the manner of wood- cuts in printing. He traced pictures through a wax coating on copper plates, filled up with more wax the broad spaces between the lines of the drawings, covered the edges and back of the plates with a still further coat of wax, and by proper arrangement submitted the prepared drawing to gal- vanic action in a solution of sulphate of copper. He suc- ceeded in forming a precipitate of pure copper that filled all the lines and around all the intervening spaces, which, when separated from the copper plate, showed the drawing in relief. These were backed, mounted, and used in the printing press more than a year before Palmer, of London, published his first pictures, and after this identical plan. The writer of this has seen some of these old plates, made in 1845. He is the originator of a plan for firing large ordnance, such as the fifteen or twenty-inch guns, by a cen-

tral chamber, on which the ball rests, with the main charge of the powder around this chamber, so that it cannot take fire until the inner chamber has been fired and the inertia of the heavy ball has been overcome by its lift from its bed. Thus started, it is accelerated in its motion by the main body of the powder taking fire from the fount after the whole of the charge in the central chamber has been exploded. Commodore Robert F. Stockton, who led the way in heavy guns, as well as steam war vessels, when the results of the adoption of this plan to a fowling-piece were named to him, said it was the only method by which good, quick powder could be used in heavy cannon. To overcome the inertia of the huge ball suddenly was too great a shock for the

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guns, and this would be the remedy. Mr. Edwin Stevens, | successor to Dr. A. J. Clark; in 1857 removed to St. Paul, who was present, had his attention called to it, and deter- Minnesota, and in 1857 returned thence, and finally settled in Lambertville. He was a prominent member of the Hunterdon County Medical Society, being elected Vice- President of that organization in 1866, and President in 1867, and in all its affairs taking an active interest and leading part. For several years he was a Ruling Elder in the Presbyterian Church of Lambertville. At the time of his death he had attained to an extensive practice, and was esteemed no less for his professional ability than for his moral worth. He died March 23d, 1870. mined in case his battery was accepted by the government to experiment on the plan, confident that it would succeed. The late John A. Roebling was so taken by this plan to set heavy balls in motion that he made efforts to have it brought before the Ordnance Department. Apart from his profession and the useful allied arts, he seems to have indulged in painting and poetry, particularly in the earlier years of his life. Many of his pieces appeared in the Philadelphia United States Gazette, when it was edited by Joseph R. Chandler, and were extensively copied. One, " The Cities of the Plain," was published as anonymous in a Boston collection of select poems. A ready sketcher, many excel- lent likenesses and good paintings of his early friends are still to be found. One, the portrait, three-quarter length, of his old preceptor, Dr. Belleville, would do credit to many a professed artist. During the United States Bank troubles, when General Jackson made war upon it, the cele- brated " Gold Humbug " caricature was published in New York, in the style of a large fifty-cent ticket. Thousands were struck off and sent to all parts of the country ; more profitably to himself, the publisher said, than anything of the kind he had attempted. Another, executed when John R. Thompson ran for Governor of New Jersey, representing the railroad running over the backs of the people, contrib- uted greatly, it was thought at the time, to the success of Stratton, the opposing candidate. He was President of the Medical Society of New Jersey in 1855 ; has been President of the Mercer County Medical Society at different times ; President of the Board of Health, of Trenton, for the last five or six years ; one of the Board of Managers of the New Jersey Asylum for the Insane, and of the United States Board of Examining Surgeons for Pensions.

OODRUFF, ABNER, later of Perth Amboy, was born in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, December 28th, 1767, and was the son of Elias Woodruff, also of Elizabethtown ;, George W. Woodruff was his brother; in 1772 his father settled in Prince- ton. In February, 1779, Abner joined the grammar school in Nassau Hall, and, as he says, " Commenced the rudiments of education." In 1780 he entered the Fresh- man Class of Princeton College. Soon after graduating he took up his residence in Sussex county, New Jersey, where he was engaged in mercantile operations until 1787. In September of that year he returned to Princeton, and was there admitted to the degree of Master of Arts. In Septem- ber, 1794, having resumed business in Sussex county, he, with his partner, both belonging to a volunteer troop of horse, joined the expedition organized and fitted out to quell the whiskey insurrection in western Pennsylvania. He then acted as a Paymaster of the 2d Regiment of New Jersey Cavalry. In December of the same year he returned to his native State. In 1798 he received an appointment as Midshipman in the navy, and continued in the service until 1803, when he resigned his commission and removed to Georgia, where he resided for a number of years. He afterward took up his residence at Perth Amboy, New Jer- sey, where he died, January 11th, 1842.

TUDDIFORD, JAMES HERVEY, M. D., late of Lambertville, son of the Rev. P. O. Studdiford, D. D., for forty five years pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Lambertville, was born in that town, September 12th, 1832. His preliminary educa- tion was received in the College of New Jersey, ALL, JOHN, M. D., late of Pittstown, Hunterdon county, New Jersey, was born, in 1787, in Sole- bury, Bucks county, Pennsylvania, and received his professional education under Dr. John Wilson of the latter place. About 1807 he succeeded Dr. McKissack, at Pittstown; acquired a consid- erable practice and became in that locality extremely pop- ular. The kindly regard so generally felt for him was based largely upon his success in the treatment of disease, but it was probably mainly owing to the fact that his charges for professional services were very small, and that whence he was graduated with honors in 1852. In the same year he began the study of medicine under his uncle, Surgeon Josiah Simpson, of the Medical Staff, United States Army, and in the winter of 1852-53 attended lectures in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania. The ensuing winter he attended lectures at the University of New York, and in the spring of 1854 received from that institution his degree of M. D. In 1856, having, after due examination by the State Board of Censors, received his license to practice as a physician in New Jersey, he estab- lished himself at Quakertown, Hunterdon county, as the | he rarely took the trouble to collect even these. If the

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Frank Blande

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recovered patient left a jug of apple brandy at the doctor's | latter place in 1828, and settling there immediately, where door, it was considered in the light of full payment of a long bill ; and while in the end his too free use of his liquid fees tended to throw his practice into other and steadier hands, it is none the less true that his professional ability was quite exceptional. He was very fond of out-door sports-hunting, fishing and riding-and in such passed much of his time. He died September 12th, 1826.

OREHOUSE, GEORGE READ, M. D., was born, March 25th, 1829, at Mount Holly, Burlington county, New Jersey. Ile is a son of the Rev. George Y. Morehouse and Martha Read, de- scendants respectively of Coloncl Andrew More- house and Major Z. Russell, of the Revolution. He is a graduate of the College of New Jersey, from which he received also the degree of A. M., having graduated in 1848, and been made Master of Arts in 1851. He studied medicine in the Jefferson Medical College and the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating from the latter in 1851, and settling in Philadelphia, where he has since resided. He is a member of the Philadelphia County Medical Society ; of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia; of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences; of the Pathological Society of Philadelphia, and of the Biological Society. He has enriched medical litera- ture with numerous writings, some of which at least, it is safe to say, the profession " will not willingly let die ; " as, for example, " Respiration in Chelonians," Smithsonian Institute, 1858; " Reflex Paralysis as the Result of Gun- shot Wounds; " " Malingery, Especially in Regard to the Simulation of Diseases of the Nervous System ; " "Gun- shot Wounds and Other Injuries of the Nerves," Philadel- phia, J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1864; " Laryngo-Trache- otomy," and the " Use of Atropia in Prolapsus Iridis." From 1862 to 1865 he was Acting Assistant Surgeon in charge of the Special Hospital for Nervous Diseases, at the corner of Christian street and Turner's lane.

INDSLY, HARVEY, M. D.,, was born, January I Ith, 1804, in Morris county, New Jersey. He is descended through both lines (Lindsly and Con- dict) from English stock, the representatives of which emigrated to this country more than two hundred years ago, and settled in New Jersey. He prepared for college in Somerset county, New Jersey, at the classical academy of the Rev. Dr. Finley, afterwards president of the University of Georgia, graduated at Prince- ton College, and studied medicine in the city of New York and Washington, District of Columbia, graduating at the

he has ever since resided. He retired from general prac- tice in 1872, not less full of honors than of years. For several years he was Professor of Obstetrics, and subse- quently of the Principles and Practice of Medicine, in the National Medical College, in the District of Columbia. He is a member of the Medical Society of Washington ; of the American Medical Association, of which he has been President; and of the Washington Alumni Association of Princeton College, of which he was elected President, De- cember 23d, 1876; and an honorary member of the Rhode Island Medical Society, the Historical Society of New Jer- sey, and numerous other societies in different quarters of the country. He has published articles on a variety of medical subjects in the American Journal of Medical Science and other medical journals, as also literary and scientific articles in the North American Review, Southern Literary Messenger, and other periodicals of the kind. In 1833 he was elected President of the Board of Health of Washington, and held the position for many years. Ile was for thirty years a member of the American Colonization Society, and Chairman of its Executive Committee. Philan- thropist, sanitarist, and author, as well as physician, he has borne well his part alike in his avocations and in his great vocation, wherein especially he has walked worthy of it, so that now, when nature in him stands on the " verge of her confine," he may enjoy the sweet solace of looking back over a long and busy life spent in usefulness and crowned with honor.

LANCKE, FERDINAND F., Capitalist and In- surance President, of Linden, was born, January 31st, 1831, in Manden, Prussia. His parents were Frederick A. Blancke, a merchant of the city just named, and Anna (Snider) Blancke, of Dues- berg, on the Rhine. IIe came to this country in the year 1854, and established himself in New York, where for nearly ten years he was prosperously engaged in the confectionery business. In the year 1864 he removed to New Jersey, locating himself in what was then the little town of Wheatsheaf. Here he purchased four hundred acres of land, and inaugurated a series of improvements which have resulted in the thriving town now known as Linden. The success which has attended his enterprise here well illustrates the energy and exccutive ability of the man. IIis character has inspired estcem and confi- dence in his neighbors, and they have given practical ex- pression thereto by placing him in various positions of trust and responsibility. IIe has been twice elected to the State Legislature ; is President of the Germania Fire Insurance Company, of Elizabeth, which position he has filled since the organization of the company in 1871 ; is President of the Union Manufacturing Company of Elizabethport; is a Director of the First National Bank of Elizabeth, and has

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been for the past six years; has been a Director of the New | removed to Belvidere in 1825, and was there actively en- Jersey State Agricultural Society for the past eight years; is gaged in practice until the time of his death, occupying a leading place among the physicians of that locality, and possessing to a remarkable degree the confidence and esteem of the entire community. He died September 4th, 1857. the Manager of the Rahway Savings Bank, and is a Director of the Mechanics' Savings Bank, of Elizabeth. In politics he is thoroughly independent, always voting for the men and the measures best calculated in his judgment to ad- vance the welfare of the city, the State, and the nation. He was married, April 3d, 1855, to Caroline Brake, of Balefeld, Germany.

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The biographical encyclopaedia of New Jersey of the nineteenth century, Part 103

Author: Robson, Charles, ed; Galaxy Publishing Company, publisher Publication date: 1877 Publisher: Philadelphia, Galaxy publishing company Number of Pages: 924

Author: Robson, Charles, ed; Galaxy Publishing Company, publisher
Publication date: 1877
Publisher: Philadelphia, Galaxy publishing company
Number of Pages: 924