Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/893

OWEN 871 OWEN nucleus Owen added largely by purchase, ob- taining from Dr. Krantz, of Germany, an ichthyosaurus, larger than the one in the Brit- ish Museum, from the Lias of Wiirtemberg. He also obtained a nearly complete megalonyx which he exhumed near Henderson, Kentucky. The entire collection was nearly all consumed by fire after it had been purchased by the Indi- ana University. After graduating M. D. in the spring of 1836 he went on a state geological survey with Dr. Gerard Troost, a journey undertaken by Owen, at his own expense, for the sake of practice. But in the next year he turned aside from things purely scientific in order to go to Switzerland to marry Caroline C. Neef, third daughter of Joseph Neef, the coadjutor of Pestalozzi, but he was soon at work again, this time as state geologist of Indiana, pub- lishing his notes in 1838. His merits were recognized at the capital and he was deputed to survey the mineral possibilities of Dubuque and Mineral Point districts of Wisconsin and Iowa, some 11,000 square miles. His report was published in 1840. In one month from the time of beginning he had one hundred and thirty-nine sub-agents and assistants ; had in- structed the former in the elementary prin- ciples of geology; organized twenty-four working corps and furnished them with skele- ton maps. In all this. Dr. John Locke (q. v.), of the Medical College of Ohio, was his valued helper. Such good work caused him to be appointed United States geologist and to be given the direction of the Chippewa land district survey. The preliminary report in 1848 has in it 323 lithographs from his original sketches, also numerous maps. A more full survey of an extended district occupied the next five years, and Congress made a large appropriation for its printing and illustration in finest style. The wood cuts in this volume of six hundred and thirty-eight quarto pages are by his brother Richard, while David for the first time brought the medal ruling style of engraving to bear on fossil specimens. Gov. Powell, of Kentucky, selected Owen as state geologist in 1854, and the results of his survey occupied four large volumes, with maps and illustrations. Duties came throng- ing fast, for the Kentucky survey was not com- pleted before Owen was made state geologist for Arkansas, but the second volume for this expedition was not quite finished when he died, though he dictated up to three days of his death. The offer, a second time made, of state geologist for Indiana, had been taken on condition that the work should be carried through by his brother Richard, who had then, because of the war crisis, resigned his profes- sorship of natural science at Nashville, Ten- nessee. The volume had 368 pages with wood cuts and diagrams by Richard and the last proofs were read by him in camp when he was serving in the Fifteenth Indiana Volun- teers. Great and indefatigable perseverance marked Owen's life work. Although he found that the Arkansas summer surveys, often made in the rich malarial bottoms, injured his health and brought him home in the autumn with a hue denoting strong malarial derangement, he not only continued the surveys but con- tinued his laboratory winter work far into the night. But the unrelaxed strain and at- tacks of cardiac rheumatism terminated his career on November 13, 1860. His wife, two sons and two daughters survived him. His work as an artist deserves some men- tion, for, besides leaving some good paintings in oil of his family he richly illustrated his reports. He also sent to London on canvas in distemper, views of the fossil sigillaria found erect in situ twelve miles from New Harmony. These were presented by Sir Rod- erick Murchison at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Owen subsequently took Sir Charles Lyell to the locality. He was always eager to shar? his scientific pleasures and built at his own cost (some $10,000) a laboratory fully equipped in every respect, so fine also architecturally that he furnished the design for the Smith- sonian buildings and carefully tested the vari- ous specimens of stone submitted. The Araer. Geologist, Aug., 1889. Portrait. The History of Amer. Geol., G. P. Merrill, 1906. Portrait. Owen, William (1788-1875) This obstetrician was born in Staunton, Vir- ginia, on the twelfth of January, 1788. Three years later his family removed to Lynchburg, then known as Lynch's Ferry, and there he spent his life. Beginning in a drug store, he pursued at the same time the study of medicine for three years under the guidance of able instructors, afterwards attending a course of lectures in the University of Pennsylvania, but being too poor to take at once the second course, and graduate, he therefore entered upon the prac- tice of medicine, returning some years later to college and completing the course and re- ceiving his degree in 1815, the subject of his thesis being "Mercurial Disease." He was a