Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/975

RAMSAY 953 RAMSAY claimed that his great services to medicine in studying the yellow fever and publishing his great work on anatomy deserved this reward, but his request was denied. He lectured in New York City in 1816, and then at the medical school at Fairfield, New York, where, although his knowledge was admired, he was soon detested for introducing religious discussions into his medical lectures. The year 1817 found him in Charleston, South Carolina, and then in Savannah, Georgia. At the one place he collected an herbarium, of medical plants, at the other he carried on a newspaper squabble with an editor who had insulted him on his deformity of body. His expenses on this trip were large, amounting to not less than $3,000. From this year to the end of his life in Par- sonsfield, Maine, on November 24, 1824, Ram- say was incessantly at work, mostly in New England. In one year he petitioned the New Hampshire Legislature to establish an Institu- tion for Anatomy at Conway in that State. In another year he asked the legislature of Maine to aid him for an institution at Frye- burg. His applications were both in vain. At that time he valued his anatomical museum at $14,000, and threatened in each State to send it back to Europe, unless he were as- sisted with money. He was elected honorary member of the New Hampshire Medical So- ciety, and read before it his "Personal Ex- periences From a Bite by a Rattlesnake." The topics of his lectures were generally : "The Animal and Intellectual Economy of Human Nature as Founded on Comparative Anatomy," and "Dissection as a Basis of Physiolog}', Anatomy, Surgery and Medicine." Arriving in a town, he would advertise for money to complete his Academy. He asserted that Columbia should ask him to found such an institution, instead of his demeaning himself to beg for it. Dr. Ingalls (q. v.), of Boston, offered him, at one time, his lecture-room, but the attendance and receipts were small. Ingalls is said to have been one of the few who could manage him, despite his temper. The winter of 1821 found Ramsay lecturing in Montreal and other Canadian cities. His learning was brilliant as ever, but the man be- hind was hard to deal with. In 1823 he was laid low with a "lung" fever and a similar disease terminated his life. He was buried at Fryeburg, where by many he was cherished as a teacher, physician and friend. His aim in life was to establish in America an Anatomical Museum of which the Nation should be proud. In this he failed. Another purpose of his life was to improve everyone with whom he came in contact, and in this he often succeeded. He was visionary in the extreme. He urged a physician, for in- stance, to leave his growing practice, to travel five hundred miles to Freyburg, and after learning Ramsay's system of teaching, to take it up for a living to the entire abandonment of his practice. He was deeply religious, and as deeply conscious of his faults. He was genuinely eloquent; his students hung upon his every word. Personally, he was short, clumsy and mis- shapen, yet he was always referring to the beautiful development of his muscles and the magnificent shapeliness of his head. After his death, his famous collection of specimens and preparations was most unfortunately dispersed. Some writer has said that Ramsay hated every physician, and saw in every anatomist a rival, but no one, reading the charming let- ters of recommendation given by him to an- other anatomist seeking a vacant chair of anatomy in a metropolitan school, would be- lieve this charge, nor can we forget his ex- cellent behavior to physicians at Dartmouth un- der the gentle handling of Dr. Nathan Smith. Ramsay was a genius, as his beautifully en- graved plates bear witness, and as attested by letters of the past. Like all such, however, he was too eccentric for ordinary humanity to understand or endure. He wrote many medical papers and many letters. His style was quaint and turgid. Too often did the remark of some person "cause the blood to curdle in my veins." He wrote his letters and lectures on large sheets of papers, the upper half covered with a design beautifully en- graved, of the sun above, and below it the mottoes "To thy years there shall be no end" and "They die and return to the dust." Below these, three cherubims, one standing, one fly- ing and one seated weeping over a skull and hour glass. In the extreme lower left- hand corner was a delicate etching of Edin- burgh Castle. We may find the key to Alexander Ram- say's character in his misshapen body. Born well-formed, possibly injured for life by care- less handling in infancy, may he not have al- ways brooded over that misfortune and fancied that all the world were talking of this, to his great disparagement? James A. Sp-^lding. Sketch of Dr. Alexander Ramsav by Dr George Bradley U. S. N., in the Transactions of the Maine Med. -Asso., 1883, vol. viii. Portrait in the SurR.-gen.'s lib., Washington. D. C. Spalding Family Letters.