Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/88

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
BARTLETT
66
BARTLETT

man of education and experience and the author of works which have given him a wide reputation."

The last of Bartlett's strictly medical publications was a little monograph on the "History, Diagnosis and Treatment of Edematous Laryngitis," published in Louisville at the time he held the chair of practice at the University in 1850.

Bartlett was at his best in the occasional address. Perhaps the most characteristic is one entitled, "The Head and the Heart, or the Relative Importance of Intellectual and Moral Education," which is a stirring plea for a higher tone in social and political morality. In the same clear, ringing accent he speaks in his address on Spurzheim of the dangers of democracy. In a lecture on the "Sense of the Beautiful," delivered in 1843, Bartlett appears as an apostle of culture, pleading in glowing language for the education of this faculty.

One of the last of Bartlett's publications was "A Discourse on the Times, Character and Writings of Hippocrates," delivered as an introductory address before the trustees, faculty and medical class of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, at the opening of the session of 1852–53. The three pictures which he gives of Hippocrates as a young practitioner in the Isle of Thasos, at the death-bed of Pericles, and as a teacher in the Isle of Cos, are masterpieces worthy of Walter Savage Landor.

When at Louisville some obscure nervous trouble, the nature of which I have not been able to ascertain, attacked Dr. Bartlett. Against it in New York he fought bravely but in vain, and after the session of 1853–54 retired to Smithfield, his native place. The prolonged illness terminated in paralysis, but, fortunately, did not impair his mental faculties in the slightest degree. He died on the nineteenth of July, 1855.

Elisha Bartlett, a Rhode Island Philosopher, William Osler, Providence, 1900.
An address on the life of Elisha Bartlett, delivered before the Middlesex North District Med. Soc., 1855 (E. Huntington).

Bartlett, John Sherren (1790–1863)

John Sherren Bartlett, journalist, founder of the Albion newspaper in New York, was born in Dorsetshire, England, in 1790 and died in New Jersey, August 24, 1863. He was educated as a physician in London and on recommendation of Sir Astley Cooper was appointed surgeon in the royal navy in 1812; sailed on the packet Swallow to the West Indies; was captured by the American frigates President and Congress, under Commodore Rogers, and remained a prisoner at Boston until discharged in 1813. At the close of the war he married a lady of Boston, and established himself there as a physician. He began the Albion in New York, June 22, 1822, as an English organ of conservative politics and through its interesting variety of miscellaneous reading this journal gained a wide circulation. Dr. Bartlett subsequently began one or two other papers of a similar character at a cheaper price, and on the beginning of Atlantic steam navigation also established at Liverpool the European, a weekly compendium of the latest news for American circulation. Owing to failing health he withdrew from the Albion in 1848. In 1855 he issued the Anglo-Saxon, a weekly paper, at Boston, which existed for about two years. In 1857 he was British consul at Baltimore.

New Amer. Cyclop., Appleton, 1866.
Dictny. Amer. Biog., F. S. Drake, 1872.

Bartlett, Josiah (1729–1795)

Josiah Bartlett, signer of the declaration of independence, was born in Amesbury, Massachusetts, November 21, 1729, the son of Stephen and Mary Webster Bartlett.

At sixteen he began to study medicine with his relative, Dr. Ordway, of his native town. He soon exhausted his preceptor's scanty library and resorted to other physicians for a supply.

In 1750, having completed his medical education, he began to practice at Kingston, New Hampshire.

In 1733 and again in 1735 a "distemper" originated in Kingston, which eluded all the powers of the physicians. This was called the "Throat Distemper or Angina Maligna." The disease spread rapidly, and among children was universally fatal.

The depleting and antiphlogistic course of practice was pursued, but when in 1754 the angina again appeared in Kingston, Dr. Bartlett gave up this method of treatment and used the then new remedy, Peruvian bark, and met with general success.

From his integrity and decision of character Josiah Bartlett was soon appointed a magistrate and in 1765 began his political career as a representative in the Legislature, an office he filled annually until the revolution.

In February, 1775, he was deprived of the commission he he had held as justice of the peace, and the command of the militia by Gov. Wentworth. In the September following, he was appointed by the provincial congress, of which Dr. Matthew Thornton was