Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/489

This page needs to be proofread.

TAYLOR


433


TAYLOR


tries he settled in Southern California, where he died January 25, 1899. He had married Mary Salina Skinner of Williston on March 7, 1854, who with four children survived him.

He was honored with medals or diplomas at Paris in 1867, at Vienna in 1873, and at Philadelphia in 1876. He was made corresponding member of the Imperial Medical Society of Vienna on Billroth's nomination, and charter mem- ber of the American Orthopedic Associ- ation ; a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine; a member of the New York County Medical Society; a fellow of the American Geographical Society, and of the New York Academy of Sciences.

His pubUshed work includes between forty and fifty titles, mostly on ortho- pedic subjects. Those on the "Mechani- cal Treatment of Angular Curvature or Pott's Disease of the Spine" (1863), and its German translation (1873); "Spinal Irritation or the Causes of Backache among American Women" (1864); "In- fantile Paralysis" (Lippincott, 1867); on the " Mechanical Treatment of Dis- ease of the Hip-joint" (William Wood, 1873), and its German translation in the same year; and "Emotional Prodigality" (Dental Cosmos, July, 1879) are still classic. His largest work was on "The Theory and Practice of the Movement Cure," 1861.

Though not opposed to the use of drugs when definitely indicated, he found no use for them in his practice and never wrote a prescription. He was a tireless worker and always felt that he could have accomplished more except for his meager schooling, poor eyes, and ill health in early manhood. Writing in 1887 he says, "I acknowledge that deficiency of early training left me more free from bias and less hemmed in than is often the case after special training. But it has always seemed to me that I could have managed the bias if I could have had the training."

How completely Dr. Taylor overcame through his own exertions the defects in his schooling is evident from these recol-

VOL. II^l'S


lections as well as from his other writings. His mind was fertile in original ideas and stored with information, from his con- stant habit of informing himself in regard to everything with which he came in contact. He was particularly interested in processes of manufacture, in machinery and in people as individuals, especially those engaged in productive occupations, and those in need of help, mental, physi- cal, moral, or material, and his interest was not theoretical; he was one of the most helpful of men.

H. L. T.

Memorial by E. H. Bradford, M. D., and auto- biographical reminiscences, Transactions American Orthopedic Association, 1899. Obituary in Pediatrics, No. 5, 1899; Year Book, New York Orthopedic Dispensary and Hospital, 1899. American Physical Educa- tional Review, vol. iv, No. 3, 1899.

Taylor, Isaac Ebenezer (1812-1889).

Isaac E. Taylor was one of the eight children of William and Mary Taylor of Philadelphia where he was born April 25, 1812. Educated at Rutgers College he afterwards took his M. A. and M. D. at the University of Pennsylvania, .settling down to practice in New York in 1839 with his wife Eliza Mary, daughter of Stuart MoUen.

In 1840 he visited Paris and studied under Cazeaux and at Dublin and on his return to New York had charge of the gynecological section in the cit}', Eastern, Northern and Demilt dispensaries, taking a private class of four in each, which really was the origin of the gynecological clinic there. He will be remembered chiefly for his demonstration of the non- shortening of the cervix during preg- nancy ("American Medical Journal," 1862), in which he anticipated Muller, to whom credit is generally given. As a literary contributor to the "Trans- actions of the New York State Med- ical Association," of which he was a founder and ex-president, he did valuable work and also helped forward the cause of medicine by being the founder and lifetime president of the Bellevue Hospi- tal Medical College. In 1839, he with