USA > New York > Albany County > Albany > The annals of Albany, Vol IX > Part 8
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28
104
Physicians of Albany County.
towards them a kindness of manner, that has not always characterized seniors in the medical profession. To the desponding he had always a word of encouragement, and not unfrequently wholesome advice for the presuming and impertinent. With a favorite volume, he took no note of time and was as regardless of the hours of sleep as of business. At length, with such a habit, sleep came unwillingly and with broken slumbers, until disease* grew upon him, and he lost the power of yielding to its soothing and balmy influence. To the poor he was kind and liberal, bestowing upon them his his best services without ex- pectation or hope of reward. Dr. Wing was in every re- spect a self made man; to society, and to the profession to which his whole life was enthusiastically devoted he was a great loss.
CHARLES DEKAY COOPER
Was the fourth of ten sons of Dr. Ananias Cooper, and was born in Rhinebeck, Dutchess county, in this state, in the year 1769. His ancestors were among the early emigrants from England to Massachusetts, mention having been made of them as early as 1634. His father was a practicing physician in Rhinebeck, and an active whig during the revolution. Dr. Cooper commenced the study of his profession under the direction of his father, and was afterwards a student of Dr. Crosby, in New York city. His favorite study was anatomy, and he made several anatomical preparations. He had likewise a taste for surgery, but there is only the account of one minor operation preserved. Dr. Cooper came to Albany in 1792. Two years afterwards he was appointed by Gov. George Clinton and the council of appointment, health officer to the port of Albany. The yellow fever was at that time raging in New York, and a quarantine was accordingly established four miles below this city, and for a length of time " vessels having on board, or suspected of having on board, any person or persons in-
* His disease was softening of the brain, induced in part beyond doubt by insufficient sleep.
105
Physicians of Albany County.
fected with any infectious distemper," were detained at that point. Whatever might have been his attachment to his profession, he did not long continue in professional life, but entered the arena of politics, indeed as early as 1804, he was warmly engaged as an active partisan in the electioneering campaign between Burr and Lewis. In 1806 he had been appointed judge of the county courts, and in 1808 he succeeded Richard Lush as clerk of the county, and was reappointed to this office in 1809, 1811, 1812 and 1815. He occupied from time to time other political offices, and among them was that of Indian agent. From the Indians of Oneida and Onondaga Castle, to whom he was commissioned with moneys to pay their yearly annuities from the state, he received the name Tight Blanket, because, they said, he held the money as securely as they did their blankets. In 1817, he was appointed by Lieutenant Gov. Tayler and the council of appointment, who came into executive authori- ty, on the resignation of Governor Tompkins, secretary of state. Dr. Cooper was a man of great physical force and power of endurance. He was quick in his move- ments, and well skilled in the art of fencing. He could spring upon his feet so quickly as to catch a designated pigeon in the street, a feat he has often performed. He excelled in the athletic sports, and could run with re- markable speed. It is said of his brother, Capt. William Cooper, that he could run half a mile and return quicker than any horse. Dr. Cooper died suddenly on the 31st of January, 1831, in the sixty-third year of his age. Says that distinguished political historian, Hon. Jabez D. Hammond, of Dr. Cooper, "I knew him long and well as a remarkably correct man, and a man of integrity and honor."
WILLIAM HUMPHREY
" Was the son of John Humphrey, and was born in Alba- ny, on the second day of Feb., 1796. His parents were both natives of New Hampshire, but at an early period came to this city. His father died of cholera at an ad- [Annals, ix.] 10
106
Physicians of Albany County.
vanced age in 1832. William was sent to Union college, where he was graduated in 1813. Having made choice of the medical profession he. commenced his preliminary studies with Dr. Eights, and afterwards attended the lectures at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and received the honors of that institution in 1819. He re- turned to Albany and commenced business here, continu- ing it as his health would permit until his death. Dr. Humphrey did not possess a large degree of physical energy, his health was delicate for several years, and the disease which terminated his life was consumption. It was the subject upon which his thesis was written in 1819. Dr. Humphrey possessed a fine mind and keen reasoning faculties; his education was thorough, and he excelled as a linguist. His mind was of a reflective order. His manners were exceedingly mild and amiable. His conversation was marked by great simplicity and earnestness. He was uniformly cheerful, but had no ex- uberant elasticity of spirits. He had gravity in thought as well as in conversation, and was careful to avoid everything that appeared like pedantry in private or professional life; he never volunteered his opinion, and was unwilling to express it on any subject with which he was not familiar. His ambition was to do right, and to be useful to his fellow men, rather than to acquire fame in his profession. A native modesty and unas- suming manners prevented that rapid rise in his profession which is so often incident to the aspiring who possess less talent and fewer virtues. Says one in noticing his death: "His virtues were numerous and beamed with an effulgence which attracted the attention and elicited the admiration of all who knew him; his benevolence warmed the hearts and cheered the homes of the comfort- less. His name was synonymous with all that was noble and disinterested." He made occasional contribu- tions to medical journals of the day; his style is said to have been chaste, simple, and forcible. It is impossible now to refer to any of the few articles from his pen. He died on the 12th of March, 1829, in the thirty-first year of his age.
107
Physicians of Albany County.
SAMUEL STRINGER TREAT
The second son of Richard S. Treat, and grandson of Dr. Samuel Stringer, a surgeon of distinction in the American army, was born in Albany, in 1799. He enjoyed the best advantages the city afforded for laying the foundation of his education, and he commenced the study of his profession in the office of his grandfather. He afterwards attended medical instruction at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and graduated in 1822, and the same year united with this society. Dr. Treat was a man of more than ordinary intellect, of a quiet, retir- ing disposition, and with only a moderate love for the perplexities of the profession he had chosen. Inheriting the ample estate of his grandfather he felt none of that necessity that stimulates and presses young men into the arena of professional life. He was for a short time the partner of Dr. Eights, and gained the esteem and confi- dence of his patrons; this was perhaps less on account of his attainments and skill as a physician, than the natural result of intelligence combined with amiability, gentle and winning manners. He was companionable, generous and warm hearted; his conversation was spiced with wit and humor. He was tall and slender in person, and his dress exhibited extreme neatness; indeed there was some- thing in his appearance, meet him when and where you might, that would have impressed even a stranger with the conviction that he was a gentleman. His social ex- cellencies endeared him to a large circle of friends. He was a good student and fond of literature, but had no particular love for the sciences. The ordeal to profes- sional distinction was not passed when he became a victim to disease of the lungs, of which he died on the 29th of February, 1832, at the age of thirty-three years. He died in the communion of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
HENRY VAN OLINDA
Was born in the town of Charleston, Montgomery coun- ty, in this state, on the 9th of April, 1805. He was the son
108
Physicians of Albany County.
of Cornelius Van OLinda, and descended in the seventh generation; from Peter Van OLinda, who came from Hol- land, and died at Watervliet at an advanced age, in 1715. Until he was seventeen he spent his time upon his father's farm. In 1822 he commenced the study of medicine with his brother, Dr. Peter Van OLinda, of this city, and under the direction of an elder brother, the Rev. Douw Van OLinda, he acquired a considerable knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages, and was thereby enabled to form the habit to which he uniformly adhered, and in which he took great pleasure, of tracing the technicali- ties of the profession, to their strictest derivations from those languages. He made good improvement in the collateral branches of the profession, and during one course of lectures was the assistant of that learned and distinguished teacher, Dr. T. Romeyn Beck, in his chemical lectures. He was licensed to practice by the Medical society of the county of Montgomery, in 1826, and shortly after entered into business with his brother. Albany was the field of his labor. Dr. Van OLinda was ardent and earnest in whatever he undertook. He had not the advantages of most of the students at the present day, but the deficiencies from the want of such he labored diligently to overcome. He was indefatigable in his attention to his patients, and counted no sacrifice on his part too great for them while under his care. From such faithful attendance a strong friendship often grew between him and his patients. After ten years of severe labor, a scorfulous disease began to develop, and it continued through his life. His health at length failed, and in the winter of 1835 he sought relief by a short sojourn in Savannah, and the ensuing winter he spent in St. Augustine, Florida, with a few of his patients and friends. The relief to his malady thus obtained was only temporary and palliative. He made a voyage to Europe, but his constitution was so much impaired that he derived but little benefit from it. He returned, and after a painful illness, died on the 30th of September, 1846, in the forty-first year of his age. Dr. Van OLinda
109
Physicians of Albany County.
was a man of agreeable manners, social habits, and prepossessing in his personal appearance. He was fond of rural sports, and sometimes indulged in them by ex- cursions with a party of friends to the northern counties for hunting and fishing. He made no pretensions to being a great man, but he was faithful and diligent in the duties of his profession, and occupied a respectable position in it. He had a large practice; and this state- ment I am allowed to render more definite by saying that after twenty years in the profession, during ten of which he was an invalid, at times absent for months from duty, and at other times unable to perform it, yet at the time of his death his outstanding accounts amounted to seventy thousand dollars, of which only about three thousand could be collected. This vast amount of service, rendered mostly to the poor, in such a simple unostentatious manner, should enbalm a man in the memory of future generations as a benefactor to his country and his race. But alas! how soon are such deeds forgotten.
JAMES M. BROWN
Was a native of Albany, the son of Major Brown, and . was born on the 25th February, 1804. His father died when he was only five years old, but he received careful and gentle training from his mother, who was a woman of exceedingly mild and amiable disposition, and of a consistent Christian character. He received a good English education, and, when a boy, applied himself quite diligently to study. At the early age of sixteen years he began the study of medicine under the direction of Dr. Christopher C. Yates, and was subsequently a student of Dr. Platt Williams. In 1823, he attended lectures at the Vermont Academy of Medicine. He received his license to practice from this society, of which he became a member in 1828. He began practice and met with only indifferent success during a period of sixteen years. In the autumn of 1844, he was induced to remove to Delphi, Indiana. Here he found considerable
110
Physicians of Albany County.
business, but continued ill health in his family led him to return to Albany after a short period. But he was not successful in the efforts to re-establish himself here, and pecuniary embarrassments and misfortune followed in rapid succession, such as were calculated to keep his mind constantly depressed. Many, indeed most of his patients were among the poorer classes, from whom it was quite impossible to obtain renumeration; still how- ever an appeal to him for any service that he was able to bestow was never unanswered.
In disposition Dr. Brown was generous, frank and sincere. In all his trials he never inclined to charlatan- ism, or wavered in his adherence to his profession. He shrank from publicity, and his sense of responsibility, made him the subject of great mental suffering, whenever he had a very sick patient. He was rather timid, and his great respect for the opinion of others, made him regard his own with too much diffidence; and I think he lacked confidence in his own abilities. His health was so impaired that he was unable, during several of the last years of his life, to make severe physical exertions or endure great fatigue. He needed health and success to stimulate and encourage him; sickness and disappoint- ments abated his ardor. Thus twenty-six years rolled away. In the spring of 1854 he was appointed resident physician at the Alms-House hospital. A few weeks after his appointment, and in the discharge of duties incident to the office, he contracted a typhoid fever, which was prevailing there, and by which his life was terminated on the 23d day of May, 1854. His age was fifty years.
Says one who well knew Dr. Brown, "The tone of his last letter to me, written just before his illness, was unusually hopeful and cheerful; the expressions of Christ- ian faith which it contained; the glimpses of his habitual frame of mind, afforded during his illness; and more than all his Christian life are to us cheering evidences that the summons, though it came suddenly, was a summons to immortal joy." I saw him once after his appointment
111
Physicians of Albany County.
as resident physician, and I thought that his new and uniform duties had given elasticity to his spirits, and vigor to his step. In a conversation with me, his at- tending physician, Dr. Spencer, confirmed, by relating a touching incident which he witnessed, the allusion just made to the excercise of his devotional spirit during his fatal illness.
TEN EYCK GANSEVOORT
Was the youngest son of Conrad Gansevoort, of Alba- ny. He was born however, in Minden, Montgomery co., N. Y., on the 5th of January, 1803. He was educated at Union college, and graduated with some distinction as a scholar, in 1822. He presently commenced the study of medicine in the office of Dr. Chas. D. Townsend, and was graduated in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, in 1825. For a number of years he pursued his profess- ion in this city, and became a member of this society. Subsequently he removed to Bath, in the county of Steu- ben, where he arose to a prominent rank as a physician and surgeon; throughout the country his services were widely sought. As an operator in surgery he had a con- siderable degree of skill. Dr. Gansevoort had a well bal- anced mind, a correct judgment, and a good knowledge of medical literature. There was no rashness, or love of novelty in him, and he was considered emphatically a safe and reliable practitioner. But there is nothing so at- tractive in the physical labors, mental anxieties, and pro- fessional responsibilties of a physician as to lead men willingly to assume them. Necessity is the strongest motive to such duties. In a new and mountainous country great fatigue and exposure is inseparable from the practice of medicine, and possessed of a comfortable fortune, Dr. Gansevoort very naturally began to limit his professional duties to the circle of his relatives and friends; meanwhile he became largely interested in mercantile and other busi- ness operations. Thus with health hitherto uninter- rupted, and every thing around him by which to make his life useful and desirable, in September, 1842, he was
-
112
Physicians of Albany County.
attacked with typus fever; the disease advanced to a fatal termination. He had not quite completed his fortieth year.
HIRAM A. EDMONDS.
Ridgefield, in Connecticut, the birth place of Dr. Ed- monds, has furnished Albany with several of its promi- nent citizens. In that ancient town, Hiram Augustus Edmonds was born on the 21st of September, 1824. Here, too, the days of his boyhood and youth glided away. He attended the academy in Ridgefield, an institution of some repute and there continued until he was prepared for the duties of a teacher. Pursuing these duties he subsequent- ly went to Southport, a seaport village, in the southern part of the country, and became principal of the South- port Academy. He continued thus occupied from 1846 to 1851. The employment was well suited to his tastes, and he found pleasure in devoting himself to it ; he contin- ued to occupy a portion of his time in classical and philo- sophical studies with great advantage. The following in- cident which occurred in the beginning of his instructions will serve to illustrate his promptness and ingenuity. It occurred when he was about seventeen years of age. At
an association of teachers he was called upon to illus- trate upon the black board the rationale of a certain rule in mathematics. He was taken by surprise, but did not like to acknowledge that he was not fully prepared to ex- plain the very thing that a teacher was supposed to under- stand. He must make the attempt and break down, or ask to be excused. With peculiar quickness of thought he walked up to the board and wrote a row of figures, then turning to the teachers he said: " I have been requested to illustrate the principle of this rule; but in order to make the subject more interesting, I propose that we all should take a part in it. Will some one now tell me the first step?" Of course some one immediate- ly complied. " Very well," said he. "Will some one now tell me the reason of this step?" Another gave the reason. "Do any of you see any thing wrong in this reasoning, or would you express it differently?" No ob-
113
Physicians of Albany County.
jection being made he said, "Very well. Now will you tell me the next step?" And so he led them through the entire thing to be illustrated, making them all do the work. Afterwards, he received the congratulations of the President of the Association, for the happy manner in which he had conducted one of the exercises of the meeting. While teaching, he made choice of the medical profession, and began his preparatory studies with Dr. Sherwood, of Southport, finding opportunity, meanwhile, to attend some of the lectures at the medical department of Yale college. His residence of five years in South- port was a period profitably spent, pecuniarily, as also in intellectual, social and religious improvement. In the autumn of 1851, he came to Albany and united with the Albany medical college. At this institution he gradu- ated with an excellent standing for scholarship at the close of the term of 1853. He had decided to make Albany his place of residence, and at once began busi- ness here. Dr. Edmonds was in his twenty-ninth year when he entered his profession; he brought to it a mind well developed, disciplined by study, and a mature judg- ment. In nothing did he act with rashness or presump- -tion. There were no marked eccentricities in his char- acter, and if he had any remarkable quality, it was that of common sense, and a knowledge how to use it. He possessed great frankness and stern integrity. His lan- guage was simple, unstudied, unaffected; his manners were affable, but as simple and unstudied as his language. He was punctual in all that related to business, and was averse to incurring a debt for a single week, indeed, I have heard him say that since he lived in Albany he had not owed a dollar for half of that time. He abounded in anecdote, and had great love for the ridiculous. In in- dulging this passion he played upon his friends without reserve, but he never hesitated on the other hand to as- sume the place in the story that might turn the mirth upon himself. His social and genial humor made his soci- ety at all times acceptable. He was given to levity, but never in such a manner as to compromise a Christian
114
Physicians of Albany County.
consistency. He assumed in his profession an honorable position which his propriety, his judgment, his diligence to business would have enabled him always to maintain. In the autumn of 1854 he was seized with a cough which grew upon him until it became evident that pulmonary tuberculosis existed. He continued his business with in- tervals of absence from the city, until 1856, and at length, on the 13th April, 1857, calmly died. In so brief a period it would have been impossible for a man to distinguish himself in the medical profession, but the time was long enough to indicate that had life and health been spared, Dr. Edmonds would have been a prominent physician and a useful man, as he was a sincere and devoted Christ- ian. For three years and until the period of his death, he was Superintendent of the Mission Sabbath School on Lydius street, and unless absent from the city was uni- formly present at its exercises.
WILLIAM BAY.
Albany gave birth to Dr. William Bay, nearly three years before the declaration of our National Independence (14th October, 1773). Here he passed the days of his boyhood, and procured his early education. His father having possessions in Claverack, Columbia county, subse- quently removed to that town, and from thence his son after some years, proceeded to Princeton college, then the great literary school of the Middle states. He re- mained at this institution until his senior year, when he was obliged to leave in consequence of ill health. In 1794, having determined to study medicine, he repaired to New York, and became a private pupil of Dr. William Pitt Smith, an eminent practitioner of that day. Colum- bia college was then the only medical school in the state. Among its professors while Dr. Bay was in attendance, were Smith, Post, Mitchell, Rogers, Hosack and Ham- mersly. Dr. Smith, in addition to his other offices, held the arduous and responsible one of health officer to the port, and in the discharge of its laborious duties fell a victim to inflammation of the lungs, in 1795. In the
ยท
115
Physicians of Albany County.
interval between his death and the appointment of his successor (Dr. Richard Bailey), being about four months, the office was temporarily filled by Dr. William Bay. He next became a pupil of the eminent Dr. Samuel La- thom Mitchell, and remained in his office until he gradu- ated as doctor in medicine, in May, 1797. The subject of his inaugural thesis was, " The operation of pesti- lential fluids upon the large intestines, termed by nos- ologists, Dysentery," This was published by T. & J. Swords, 8vo., pp. 109, 1797. A review of this disserta- tion was published in the New York Medical Repository. Dr. Bay returned from New York to his home in Claver- ack, where he immediately began the pursuit of his pro- fession. His business and his reputation alike rapidly increased, and his skill was sought throughout an exten- sive district. But he found a country practice exceed- ingly laborious. He was accordingly induced to remove to Albany, which he did in 1810, and almost immediately formed a business relation with Dr. William McClelland; this however, was terminated in a few months by the death of the latter. Here in his native city, he soon be- came a leading practitioner, and so continued until ad- vancing years led him to retire from the more active duties of his profession. Dr. Bay is known as a skillful ac- coucheur, and his has been a large and valuable experience, and in difficult cases his counsel has frequently been so- licited by his medical brethren, and always held in high esteem. In point of professional seniority Dr. Bay ranked next to Dr. Eights, but since the death of the latter he has been by many years the oldest practitioner in this community. There are those present whose memory will revert with pleasure to the Jubilee dinner given by the medical profession to our venerable father, on the ac- complishment of the first half century of his professional career. But this was nearly ten years ago, and, it is nearly sixty-one years since he was acting as health offi- cer at the port of New York. Who that sees him moving about the city with so much vigor and elasticity, would suppose this ?
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.