Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1189

TULLY 1167 TURNBULL tive call to Bovvdoin College, he found his teaching days ended. Therefore, at the age of fifty-six, although in poor health on account of a bladder trouble, he was free to compile his "briefs and publish a ponderous encyclo- pedic materia medica, as the culmination of his life work. But the eighteen remaining years of his life only sufficed to see two vol- umes of the work finished, for he died in 1859, leaving no one sufficiently interested in the arduous task of compiling the remaining briefs, or able to do it, without assurance of remuneration from the sale of the books. Tuily himself felt that his life had been a fail- ure. He called his years of teaching "wasted years, fourteen in one institution and sixteen in another," but of his ability and value as a teacher, we have ample testimony from students and contemporaries. He was long- winded and pedantic, most minute in descrip- tion of drugs and lacking in perspective, for he believed that ever}' plant had same special value, but his knowledge and scientific ac- curacy compelled the attention of his students, and the more earnest of them profited well by his instruction ; but triflers, however, irri- tated him and he was not slow to show that lie felt that it was not Avorth while to try to (each them. As to Tully as a practitioner, we find that he was overbearing with his col- leagues, and criticised their methods so openly that they refused to ask him in consultation over a difficult case ; while with patients he was often discourteous as to their "garrulity,"' preferring to talk rather than listen to their symptoms, so that, one by one, thej- dropped him for some other, possibly less learned, but more agreeable doctor. It was thought that liis skill in diagnosis was less than his ability in describing a disease ; and his treatment was evident!}- aimed at the symptoms and not at the patient, for he continually experimented with some favorite drug in order to watch its effects and write bedside notes while the patient might be suffering or even dying. These notes were his "octets," from which, presumably, the "briefs" for his Materia Med- ica were supplemented. We can not wonder, then, that when Tully rcsignetl from his position as a teacher he found liimself with a very limited practice. He felt that his professorships had cost him more than they had brought him of financial reward, and as his professional fees were scanty, he went to South Carolina for a year to regain his health, and collect materials for his writings ; after which he returned to New Haven to compile his "briefs." His publica- tions had included such titles as, "Ergot" (1822); "Datura"; "Sanguinaria" (1828); "Ferns Growing Near New Haven" ; "Nar- cotics and Morphine"; "Actaea Racemosa"; "Chlorite of Potassa," and "Congestion." He defined many words for two editions of Web- ster's Dictionary (1840 and 1847), such as anatomy, physiology, and botany, by which he proved that he could be short and concise, but in his Materia Medica his definitions were too long and labored, the word "Adenagio," for instance, required one hundred and eighty words to explain its meaning. Finally, in 1851, with his family reduced to his feeble wife and two children, Tully moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, where the Materia Medica was to be published. There, in 18S3, his wife died, and he followed her six years later, February 28, 1859. During those years he could often be found sitting in the big arm chair in a neighboring drug store, talking by the hour to any listeners, expound- ing in a loud voice and with an assured man- ner, his theories of treatment and his experi- ments with drugs. It was thought that the world could not contain all the books he would have written had he had the time and strength. Bronson said of Tully that lie knew botany and chemistry better than anyone in the United States. It was because of this knowledge that he was associated with the first editions of the National Pharmacopeia. He was a mem- ber of the Boston Conference in 1817, to elect and instruct delegates to Washington, who compiled the first edition of 1820: and he was himself a delegate to the Conference in New York, ten years later, to revise the first edi- tion "in accordance with the present advanced state of science." From all of his honors and "chairs," there- fore, as well as from his writings we may say that Tully stood far above the rank and file of his contemporaries, for, as Dr. William H. Welch has said," He was a really remark- able man. erudite, original, an experimentalist unrivalled in his knowledge of the materia medica, and an extensive contributor to medi- cal literature." K.TE C. Me.d. William Tully, Kate Campbell Mead. Johns Hop- kins Hcsp. Bull., 1916. vol. xxvii, pp. 79-85. Toitrait. Turnbull, Lawrence (1821-1900). Lawrence Turnbull was born September 10, 1821, in Shotts, Lanarkshire, Scotland, and came to America when twelve years old. He studied at the Philadelphia College of Phar-