Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/261

COLE 239 GOLDEN After an illness of twenty-four hours of pneumonia with heart complications, Dr. Coit died March 12, 1917, at his home in Newark. Howard A. Kelly. Personal communication from Mrs. Coit. Report of Medical Milk Commission of Essex Co., N. J., May, 1917, with portrait. Newspaper clipping. Cole, Richard Beverley (1829-1901) Among the pioneers of medical education in California, Beverley Cole is well worthy of remembrance. He was born in 1829 in Man- chester, Virginia, his parents removing to Philadelphia soon afterwards. After gradu- ating at Jefferson Medical College (1849) be- fore reaching his twentieth year, he mar- ried Miss Eugenie Bonaflfon of Philadel- phia, and started practice in that city. A year or two later the new gold fields of Cali- fornia began to attract the world's atten- tion, and among the eager westward throng was young Beverley Cole. He reached San Francisco by way of Cape Horn in 18S1, opened an office there, and quickly acquired a prominent place in both medical and civic circles. The Vigilance Committee made him surgeon-general of their forces in 1852. In 18S8 he became professor of obstetrics and gynecology in the University of the Pacific, the beginning of an unbroken career of successful tutorial work. In 1866 he ac- cepted the same chair in the faculty of Toland Medical College, retaining it after that insti- tution became the medical department of the University of California, in 1873 and until his death, in 1904. Throughout this long sequence of years as a teacher of obstetrics, Dr. Cole maintained a position in the front rank. His practice was for many years limited to gynecology, always keeping pace with the rapid development of this science. Dr. Cole was a member of the Royal Col- lege of Surgeons, England, and a fellow both of the Obstetrical Society of London and the British Gynecological Society, also president of the American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 1895, and editor of the Western Lancet, 1873-6. In matters relating to public health he took an active interest, serving repeatedly on the city Board of Supervisors and on the municipal and state Boards of Health. It was mainly through his initiative and effort that a new city and county hospital was built to replace the unhygienic structure at North Beach. He succumbed to arteriosclerosis on Janu- ary 17, 1901, two daughters surviving him. His three other children died in infancy. William Henry Mays. Colden, Cadwalader (1688-1776) This physician, "a truly great philosopher and a very great and ingenious botanist," who came to be lieutenant governor of New York, was the son of the Rev. Alexander Colden, minister in Dunse, near Edinburgh. He was born there February 17, 1688, and took his M. D. from Edinburgh University in 1705. Attracted by the fame of William Penn's colony, he came over to America and prac- tised in Pennsylvania for seven years (1708- 1715), then returned to England. While Colden was in London Dr. Edmund Hally was so pleased with a paper of his on "Animal Secretions" that he read it before the Royal Society and introduced the writer to many learned men who became Colden's intimate friends. From London he made a short visit to Scotland, long enough, however, to marry Alice Christie, November 11, 1715, then he returned to Pennsylvania but eventually set- tled in New York (1718), and became a pub- lic character, holding in succession the offices of surveyor-general, master in chancery, and lieutenant governor, an office he filled for the rest of his life. Yet he never lost his hold on science and in 1751 appeared his most readable but least scientific work, "History of the Five Indian Nations of Canada, 1727," followed ten years later by his "Account of Diseases prevalent in America," and his essay on the "Cause and Remedy of the Yellow Fever," so fatal in New York in 1743. He must have worked hard even in those comparatively leisured days, for he trans- lated the letters of Cicero, wrote a purely scientific "Treatise on Gravitation," 1745 (afterwards enlarged into "The Principles of Action in Matter") and devoted all the re- maining time to be spared from official duties to his well-beloved study of botany, main- taining withal "with great punctuality" a cor- respondence with learned friends such as Linnaeus, Gronovius, Fothergill, Collinson, Franklin, Bard and Garden ; delighting to write to Franklin about electricity and sug- gesting, according to Franklin, the idea and plan of the American Philosophical Society. The Linnaean System was introduced by him into America only a few months after its publication in Europe. To the author himself he sent a description of some three or four hundred American plants and Linnaeus gracefully acknowledged the gift by publishing the record in his "Acta Upsaliensa" and naming a genus of boraginaceous herbs of the tribe Ehreticce after him (Coldenia), though a prettier version is that Miss Jane