American Medical Biographies/Blake, John George
Blake, John George (1837–1918)
John G. Blake was born in West Meath, Ireland, August 1, 1837. When ten years old he left the land which he always remembered so affectionately, and came with his mother to America. The trip was made on a sailing vessel, the barque Robert, which after a voyage of six weeks arrived at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1849. In this city Dr. Blake passed all the rest of his life.
Having chosen medicine as his profession he began to prepare himself with great enthusiasm and as thoroughly as possible, studying at night when the day's task was done, and working in an apothecary shop. The wide and unusually thorough knowledge of drugs which he possessed was doubtless to a large extent acquired at this time.
It was in 1858 that he entered the Harvard Medical School, where his intelligence and unusual application singled him out among his fellows. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes took a special interest in "that bright-eyed Irish boy;" and Dr. Blake used laughingly to tell of Dr. Henry J. Bigelow's having referred once to a patient as "an Irishman, an ordinary man." The boys in the class naturally looked with amusement at their Irish mate, but Dr. Bigelow added: "I know what you are smiling at, but I don't consider Mr. Blake an ordinary Irishman,—I consider him an extraordinary Irishman!"
The contact he had had with the great medical men of his day, and the opportunity to study their personalities, their methods, were sources of interest and pleasure to him all his life. His M. D. degree was received in 1861.
During the Civil War, though kept at home by the necessity of caring for his mother, he nevertheless served for a period as contract-surgeon, and was one of a group of Boston doctors who were sent to Washington after the second Battle of Bull Run, to care for the wounded. At the conclusion of his hospital service, Dr. Blake soon built up a very large practice. His energy and activity were astonishing. He has told of attending five labor cases in a day, of rising four different times during the course of one night, of never being able to eat his dinner uninterrupted.
Through all the span of his professional life he never neglected other duties as a citizen, serving for sixteen years on the Boston School Committee (a large part of the time as chairman of the Textbook Committee); also on the Metropolitan Water Board; as Trustee of the State Hospital for the Insane at Gardner; and as director of several banks in the city. He was a pioner in the introduction of military drill in the Boston schools, as well as being a strong advocate of the adoption of manual training.
Of his hospital connections the list is varied. Appointed visiting physician on the staff of the Boston City Hospital in 1864 at its opening, he made the first visit on the medical side with his house officer, Clarence J. Blake. On the formation of the gynecological department in 1892, he was made visiting physician for diseases of women; and was still on the staff as senior physician at the time of his death, a service of fifty-four years. A friend of Matthew Carney, he was influential in the founding of the Carney Hospital, and served for many years on its staff as consulting physician. He was also a member of the staff of St. Elizabeth's Hospital for more than two decades and had much to do with the upbuilding of the institution; he was deeply interested in the Channing Home in its early days, and found constant interest during the latter part of his life in his service as trustee for the State Hospital for the Insane at Gardner, Mass.
As a clinical teacher Dr. Blake was unrivalled. His extraordinary, almost uncanny gift of diagnosis was a constant stimulation to his pupils. It was jokingly said that he could tell what the matter was with a patient by looking at him from the doorway of the ward and he often commented himself on his ability to smell certain diseases such as measles, small-pox and rheumatism. His ward visits were immensely popular, combining interest and instruction in such manner that the memory of them never faded from his students' minds. The gratitude of his old pupils, their enthusiastic and cordial greetings mingled with reminiscences of former years, were in his later life sources of deepest satisfaction. Nothing pleased him more than to meet a colleague, or to be called to a patient whom he had attended years before.
Blessed with a remarkably strong constitution, Dr. Blake was fond of outdoor exercise. As a boy he loved sailing and rowing, and he found pleasure in the latter pastime even after he had passed the age of seventy years. He could often be seen pulling up the stretches of the Charles River with some friend who found a like pleasure in the sport. Mountain climbing was another form of exercise very dear to his heart; and he was a constant attendant of the winter classes at the gymnasium of the Boston Athletic Association, of which organization he was one of the charter members. He was seldom absent from the meetings of the Obstetrical Society of Boston (1861) and served it acceptably as president.
Belonging to but few clubs, his genial temperament, nevertheless, made him on all occasions a most welcome guest. He was especially happy as an after-dinner speaker, and it is typical of his youthfulness of heart that the younger men were as much drawn to him as those of his own generation. His wit was sparkling; as a story-teller he was unrivalled.
Dr. Blake was a Roman Catholic, and the devoted friend of the many religious and charitable institutions of the city.
In 1865 he married Mary Elizabeth McGrath, whose poetic and intellectual gifts added so much to the literary life of Boston in later years. Eleven children were born to them, of whom six survived him, two of the five sons being members of their father's profession, John Bapst and Gerald.
He died at his home after a long illness, March 4, 1918.