Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/878

NOTT 856 NOTT the Geological Survey of the Northwest or- dered by Congress, under Dr. D. D. Owen as chief. Two reports on the country, then only known to fur traders and Indians, appeared and received due commendation, leading to his appointment in 18S1 as state geologist of Illinois. This position he held till March, 1858, when a political upheaval put a new party into power, and an end to his activity as geologist, for they refused the means to publish any of his reports, excepting his "Abstract of a Re- port on Illinois Coals." Immediately upon his removal from the di- rectorship of the Illinois Survey, Dr. Norwood was offered the position of assistant geologist of the Missouri Survey, which he held two years, when, without having made any applica- tion, he was elected to the chair of natural science in the University of Missouri at Co- lumbia, where he henceforth rendered im- portant and highly valued services as teacher and investigator till his death in 1895. Dr. Norwood was a man of broad and deep scholarship, courteous and dignified, much liked, and, aside from his scientific and pro- fessional attainments was well versed in for- eign literature, reading German, French and Spanish with ease, and even took up in his eightieth year the study of Dutch to afford him a better insight into its literature than transla- tions could furnish. His writings were largely on geological sub- jects. His reports as State Geologist of Illinois, 1851-1857, were written, but not pub- lished. Overton Fitch. Nott, Josiah Clark (1804-1873) Josiah Clark Nott was born March 31, 1804, in Columbia, Richland District, South Carolina, and died at Mobile, Alabama, March 31, 1873, on his sixty-ninth birthday. He was the son of Abraham Nott, a judge and politician, who was born in Saybrook, Connecticut, in 1767 and died at Fairfield, South Carolina, in January, 1830. Dr. Nott's father was a graduate of Yale College, and studied for the ministry, but did not take Orders. Dr. Nott received an A. B. from South Carolina College in 1824, began the study of medicine in the office of James Davis, M. D., of Columbia, South Caro- lina, and attended his first course of lectures at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, then situated in Barclay Street, in the winter of 1825 to 1826, under Profs. Wright Post, Valentine Mott, John W. Francis, David Hosack, Samuel L. Mitchill, William James Macneven (q. v. to all), and a second course at the University of Pennsylvania ; graduating thence in April, 1827. He was resident student at the Philadelphia ."Mmshouse from Septem- ber, 1827, to September, 1828, after which he became demonstrator of anatomy in the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, under Professors Physick and Horner. In 1829 he returned to Columbia, South Carolina, and began practice. In 1835 he went to Europe and spent that and the next year visiting the hospitals and study- ing medicine, natural history, and kindred sciences. In the latter part of 1836 he settled in Mobile, Alabama. In March, 1848, Dr. Nott pubUshed in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal a paper on yellow fever in which he took the ground that it was of "probable insect or ani- malcular origin." Starting with Sir Henry Holland's paper "On the Hypothesis of Insect Life as a Cause of Disease," he called attention to the fact that many insects such as the moth tribe, the night "musquitoes" and many of the aphidse are rendered inactive by too much light, heat and drjniess. This he thought explained the greater activity of the morbific cause of yellow fever at night. He said further : "The insect theory is perhaps as applicable to peri- odic as yellow fever. We can well under- stand how insects wafted by the winds (as happens with musquitoes, flying ants, many of the aphidae, etc.) should haul up on the first tree, house or other object in their course, offering a resting place . . ." ex- plaining why a row of trees or houses seemed to offer a barrier to the spread of the disease. He quoted the article mentioned above to the effect that "It is probable that yellow fever is caused by an insect or animalcule bred on the ground, and in what manner it makes its impression on the system, is but surmise." Dr. Nott had observed no facts that led him to believe that the disease was transmissible ; he noted the migrations of insects and thought that the history of the great epidemic of yel- low fever affords very strong support to the insect theory, thus paving the way for the researches of Walter Reed fifty years later. In 1857 Dr. Nott was called to the chair of anatomy in the University of Louisiana, but resigned it after one winter's service to re- sume his profession in Mobile, and in 1858 founded the Medical School in Mobile, where he lectured two years on surgery, when the college was broken up by the war. During the Civil War he served on the medical staff of General Bragg. Soon after the close of the war he left the South, and in 1867 went to Baltimore, Maryland, remaining one year, and