Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/654

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JOHNSTON 632 JOHNSTON Practical Therapeutics" (vol. iv, 1897), and "Buck's Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences" (vol. iii, 1901). These papers re- lated chiefly to diseases of the intestinal tract, a subject in which he had become especially interested. Other papers appear in the Trans- actions of the Association of American Phy- sicians and of other medical and scientific as- sociations to which he belonged. There is yet another sphere of professional labor in which Dr. Johnston acquired distin- guished eminence, namely, that of teaching clinical medicine. His work as a teacher be- gan in 1870, when he was appointed to give laboratory instruction in practical histology and the use of the microscope in the medical department of Columbian University. During the succeeding year he was appointed profes- sor of the theorj' and practice of medicine in the same institution, a position he continued to fill imtil his decease in 1902. Besides his di- dactic lectures at the medical school he gave weekly clinical lectures in the wards of the Children's Hospital for a period of twenty- seven years, and at the opening of the new Columbian University Hospital in 1898. he be- gan weekly clinics in this institution, which were continued during the college term, until the end of his life. His last lecture was given on March 6, the day on which his fatal illness began, and fifteen days before his death on March 21. Dr. Johnston was not only an able and suc- cessful teacher, but also a strenuous advocate of improvement and reform in the general methods of medical education. He especially insisted that the student should devote more time to practical training at the bedside and less to the theoretical teaching of text-books — a reform the wisdom of which has been demonstrated throughout the civilized world. As a public-spirited citizen Dr. Johnston had been instrumental in promoting the establish- ment of the '^Children's Hospital" of this city, and was also one of the founders of the "Gar- field Memorial Hospital" and served as con- sulting physician on its medical stafT from 1882 until 1897, when he resigned. He was also on the consulting staff of the Emergency Hospital, the Washington Asylum Hospital. Providence Hospital, the Episcopal Eye and Ear Hospital, and the "Government Hospital for the Insane." It was, however, to the Columbian Univer- sity Hospital that he was most devoted during the last few years of his life, in recognition of which the medical wards of this new hos- pital are to be known as the "W. W. John- ston Wards." Finally, in municipal affairs, Dr. Johnston was an earnest advocate of scientific sanitary reform and a promoter of all laudable mea- sures for the prevention of disease in his na- tive city. A. F. A. King. From Proc. Wash. Acad, of Sci., 1904, vol. v. Johnston, Wyatt Gait (1859-1902) Wyatt Gait Johnston died June 19, 1902, in Montreal, Canada, aged 42. He was the son of Dr. J. B. Johnston of Sherbrooke, Que- bec, and in December, 1905, married Julia, daughter of the late Michael Turnor of Ruge- ly, England. He received his early education at Bishop's College, Lennoxville, and began to study medicine in McGill University in 1880, graduating in 1884. As a student he showed especial aptitude for pathology and was a con- stant associate of William Osier. After grad- uating he was resident medical officer in the Montreal General Hospital for one year and in 1885 he worked in Virchow's laboratory in Berlin, the following year carrying on re- search into pernicious anemia with Prof. Gra- witz at Greifswald, upon a subsequent visit to Germany working at comparative pathology in Munich. Returning to England, he contin- ued his studies at the Zoological Gardens in London. His first university appointment was demonstrator of pathology at McGill, where he did the work unaided for four years. For personal reasons he resigned this post but continued to work in the Montreal General Hospital, devoting himself to bacteriology and medico-legal work. Dr. Johnston's first important public work was a bacteriological study of the water sup- ply of Montreal and of surface water gener- ally. In 1895 he was appointed lecturer in bacteriology in McGill University; bacteriolo- gist for the provincial board of health; and medico-legal expert for the district of Mon- treal, in 1897 being made assistant professor in public health and lecturer in medico-legal pathologr>'. His death on June 19, 1902, when only forty- two, was due to septic poisoning acquired in the autopsy room of the Montreal General Hospital in February. He received a second infection in April, when a thrombus appeared in the internal saphenous vein of the left leg. This was followed by extensive coagulation which extended to the iliac veins of both sides ; the immediate cause of death was pul- monary embolism.