American Medical Biographies/Backus, Frederick Fanning
Backus, Frederick Fanning (1794–1858)
Azel Backus, D. D., was a staunch old divine of Connecticut whose sternness was only equalled by his philanthropy, and his son Frederick Fanning, settling down as a general practitioner in Rochester, then numbering three hundred and thirty-one inhabitants, was a chip of the old block and took the burden of woes physical, spiritual and civic on his own shoulders determined to make things better. He was born on the fifteenth of June, 1794, and graduated from Yale College at nineteen, in 1813, taking his M. D. from the Medical College of New Haven in 1816, and two years later marrying "a lady of cultivated mind," one Rebecca, daughter of Col. William Fitzhugh of Maryland.
His chief merit lay in his indefatigable efforts on behalf of the insane. His reports on their neglected condition laid the foundation for the Asylum at Syracuse. No one had done much before this and when his efforts had gained some measure of success he retired from the Senate to a damaged practice. In 1858 he had a second attack of paralysis following one two years previously, and on November 4 he died, leaving his wife, his daughter and four sons a small competence.