Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1252

WHITAIAN 1230 WHITTAKER County, Connecticut, December 16, 1822. When seventeen he began teaching school, studying medicine at the same time and several years later, in 1848, graduated from the Berk- shire Medical Institution at Pittsfield, Massa- chusetts. He began to practise at Wolcottville, Connecticut, and married there, in 1850, Frances Hungerford. In 1852 he removed to Brooklyn, New York, where his wife died in 1854. A few years later he removed to Janesville, Wiscon- sin, where, in 1860, he married the widow of Chief Justice Whiton. During the Civil War he was surgeon-in- chief of the Military Hospital at Milliken's Bend, opposite Vicksburg, and surgeon-in-chief of hospitals in the Military District of NatcTiez, Mississippi. His arduous duties, especially onerous during a very severe outbreak of smallpox, so undermined his health that he was compelled to resign and return to Janes- ville, where in 1865 he resumed practice. Dr. Whiting found time for other duties as well as giving faithful devotion to his pro- fessional career; in 1889 President Cleveland appointed him a member of the Chippewa In- dian Commission to buy lands of that tribe in the White Earth, Red Lake and Leech Lake reservations in northern Minnesota, and in 1895 he was surgeon-general of the Grand Army of the Republic. The illness and death of his only son. Dr. Joseph Whiting, Jr., a month preceding his own death was a great blow, from which he failed to rally, and he died at Janesville, Wis- consin, March 27, 1905, from the infirmities of old age. S.MUEL B. BUCKMASTER. Whitman, Marcus (1802-1847) To the pioneer medical missionary is due a great part of the knowledge of strange coun- tries and diseases, and when Marcus Whitman with his wife, Narcissa Prentiss, went many miles into Oregon he began a work the fruits of which we reap. Practically, by his quick recognition of the possibilities there and his famous ride in winter to Washington to avert its sale he largely helped to save Oregon to the United States. Daniel Webster, in the Senate had openly said he would never vote a cent to bring the Pacific Ocean an inch nearer Boston, and even then the British were treat- ing for the State. Marcus Whitman was born at Rushville, Yates County, New York, on September 4, 1802, the third son of Beza and Alice Whit- man, the family line going back to John Whit- man, who came from Hereford, England, in 1602. Marcus held his medical diploma from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Fair- field, New York, and after practising in Canada for four years and for a while at Wheeler, New York, he offered himself as medical mis- sionary to the American Board of Foreign Missions and was commissioned to explore Oregon. So, the first physician on the Pacific coast and the first to carry physical and spiritual help to the Indians there. Whitman and a band of co-laborers worked until 1846. But the British Fur Company, partly in revenge for losses, stirred up the Indians to suspect Whit- man of ulterior motives in befriending them. In 1847, attacked by measles they would not submit to the same treatment as the whites and they died by the hundreds, "Whitman has poisoned us !" A plot was laid, and on the twentieth of November, Whitman, his wife and twelve others were killed and scalped, and forty-six were taken captives. Today Whitman College stands at Walla Walla, Washington, to perpetuate his memory, and the Baird pro- fessorship, founded for the advance of natural science is doing much to make known the rich- ness of Oregon. D.AVINA Waterson. The Whitman Coll. Quarterly, Jan., 1897. Marcus Whitman, M. Eella, 1909. How Marcus Whitman saved Oregon, O. W. Nixon, 1896. History of Oregon, W. H. Gray. Whittaker, James Thomas (1843-1900) The son of James and Olivia S. Lyon Whit- taker, he was born in Cincinnati, March 3, 1843, and was educated in Covington, Ken- tucky, graduating in 1859. In September of that j-ear he entered Miami University, Ox- ford, Ohio, and graduated in 1863. While in the navy, 1863-65, he received leave of absence to attend the medical lectures at the Medical College of Ohio. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1866, and from the Medical College of Ohio in 1867. In 1868, going to Berlin, he attended the lec- tures of Langenbeck, Martin and others. He went also to Prague to study clinical obstetrics and in January, 1869, to Vienna. In 1870, he received the A. M., and in 1891, the LL. D. from Miami University. Whittaker was acting assistant surgeon in the United States Navy; member of the American Academy of Medicine; Association of American Physicians ; fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia; fellow of the Chicago Academy of Medicine. In 1869 he was assistant professor of ob- stetrics and diseases of children in the Medi- cine College of Ohio, and pathologist to the