American Medical Biographies/Norcom, William Augustus Blount
Norcom, William Augustus Blount (1836–1881)
He was born in Edenton, North Carolina, May 24, 1836, the youngest son of Dr. James Norcom, a learned physician of that place. His early education was at home with his father, but he afterwards went to the Edenton Academy. He did not take a college course and graduated in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania in 1857, afterwards settling in his native town. When the Civil War broke out he was appointed assistant surgeon in the hospital at Petersburg, Virginia.
He was president of the Medical Society of North Carolina in 1874, and a member of the Board of Examiners from 1872 to 1878. His presidential address on "Malarial Hemorrhagic Fever" was a valuable contribution to the literature of that disease. Another of his comprehensive papers was "The Modern Treatment of Acute Internal Inflammation" (1868). Dr. Norcom was particularly noted for his scholarly attainments and wonderful powers of memory. Page after page of his favorite authors he could repeat by heart. He lived in an atmosphere of medical events and was said to be more enthusiastic about medicine than ardent in its practice. He died in St. Vincent's Hospital, Baltimore, February 28, 1881.