Ives, Ansell W. (1787–1838)
Born at Woodbury, Connecticut, on the thirty-first of August, 1787, Ives was the third child of a struggling farmer who had to let the boy be apprentice to a farmer till he was nineteen, when, having qualified himself to keep an elementary school, he taught for several years with credit to himself and advantage to his employers. Continuing at the same time, with the greatest zeal, his plan of self-instruction, he soon found himself sufficiently advanced to commence the study of a profession; and having chosen that of medicine, entered himself a student with Dr. Elisha North (q. v.), a physician of New London. On removing to Fishkill, in the State of New York, he continued his studies with Dr. Barto White, and completed them in the office of Dr. Valentine Mott (q. v.), graduating in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in the year 1814. He contributed largely to our medical journals; and some of his papers, especially that on "Humulus Lupulus," gained him much credit, both at home and abroad. He republished, with notes and additions, "Paris's Pharmacologia," and "Hamilton's Observations on the Use and Abuse of Mercurial Medicines," and also a description of the "Epidemic Influenza," which prevailed in the northern and eastern states in the year 1815; indeed, his whole time was spent in improving his own mind, or making himself useful to his fellow-men. Yale conferred the honorary A. M. on him in 1821.
Dr. Ives was well formed, his manners prepossessing, and he had a fund of humor and anecdote which made his company acceptable to his associates. He enjoyed a fine share of health, until he was attacked in February, 1837, with neuralgic pain about the left hip, which gradually increased in duration and violence until his sufferings, for hours together, were almost beyond endurance. About five months from the attack the hip and thigh began to enlarge, which they continued steadily to do with augmented pain till February 2, 1838, when death relieved him from his agony. On dissection a large tumor was found on the left ileum, extending downwards under the left gluteus muscle.