engaged in works of love,—in the aid of the poor, in the care of public charities, in the cultivation and advancement of the means of elevating and ameliorating humanity.

He was a devoted and efficient trustee of the School for Idiots, an active member of the Sanitary Commission, and an earnest laborer for its success he was also one of the physicians elect of the new City Hospital, and a devoted member and counsellor of the Massachusetts Medical Society. Although no longer engaged in the active practice of his profession, he did not rest, nor were his great and highly cultivated powers left unemployed; all his talents and strength were given to the public good; and his kindness of heart, his tender sympathies, and his genial spirit, made him an acceptable and desirable associate both among his professional brethren and in society at large.

He died on the ninth day of January, 1864, from the result of injuries sustained in a fall a few days before. During his short sickness, he retained his usual calmness and philosophy, watching the progress of his malady with a scientific interest, and marking the slow but inevitable approach of death. Through this progress of decay, he trusted in his God, as in the vigor of his years he ever had; and met death as a Christian, prepared to give an account of a faithful stewardship on earth, and to enter on a larger responsibility in the world of spirits.

E. J.

FRANCIS BOOTT, M.D. EDIN., F.R.C.P.L., V.P.L.S., &c. (From the "Medical Times and Gazette.")

Though taking no part latterly in professional practice, Dr. Boott's death is one which will be severely felt, not only amongst a large society of medical men, but in the ranks of science generally. Few men were more accomplished and well informed; fewer still more beloved and esteemed, whether for the power and will to serve or to please, or for the sterling qualities of his mind.

Dr. Boott was born in the year 1792, in Boston, Mass., of British parents; his father being an Englishman, and his mother a Scotch lady. His parents being in good circumstances, young Boott, after completing his classical education at Harvard College, was sent over at seventeen to England; that being then, as now, the grand tour to many young Americans. Here his studious habits and literary talents soon led him to form intimacies only with persons of like pursuits; and his habits were thus early copied from models so judiciously chosen, that he ever after regarded these counsellors of his youth as types of refinement and moral worth. For several years, he voyaged back

wards and forwards between England and America, making lifelong friendships in both countries; but especially in this, where Sir Joseph Banks's house offered great attractions to young men, whether of literary or scientific tastes; and where Sir James Smith, President of the Linnæan Society, and Mr. (now Sir William) Hooker, keenly encouraged his botanical studies.

In about 1820, when upwards of twenty-eight, already married, he determined to study medicine; and placed himself under the tutelage of Dr. John Armstrong, in London. Thence he removed to Edinburgh; where he finished his education, and took his doctor's degree in 1824.

On his return to London, he commenced practice, and accepted the lectureship on botany in the Webb-street School of Medicine. This chair, however, though admirably conducted, he did not long hold. He also published his lectures on "Materia Medica"; and more lately, at the dying request of his friend Dr. Armstrong, he edited his "Life," and published it with a treatise of his own on "Marsh Fevers," illustrative of Dr. Armstrong's views. This latter part of the work is one of considerable eruditive merit. It treats largely of the fevers of the United States and Europe, and of the plague, under the several aspects of that disease, which he traced from Egypt and Syria, through Italy, France, and Holland, to England; showing that its type was always that of a periodic fever, but that its symptoms varied according to the climate of the several countries mentioned.

For seven years, Dr. Boott practised very successfully in London; being especially noted for his treatment of fevers, in which he followed the practice of Dr. Armstrong, in giving abundance of air, &c., to the patient, a course which, at that time, was vehemently objected to by the profession at large. In other respects, too, he was a judicious innovator; being one of the first to discard the black coat, white neckcloth, knee-breeches, and black silk stockings, for the ordinary costume of the day. This was then a blue coat with brass buttons, and yellow waistcoat, which he continued to wear to the last; and thus, by outliving the fashion, as he had forestalled it, he came to be as well known in 1860 as he had been in 1830.

Dr. Boott early retired from practice; and, having inherited a competency, he devoted himself for the last thirty-five years to the cultivation of his literary and classical tastes, to the study of botany, and to the duties of a Member of the Council of University College, and Secretary and Treasurer of the Linnæan Society. In the latter capacities, especially, he was most highly respected; conducting the business of the College and of the Linnean Society with singular tact, skill, and judgment; neither giving nor taking offence; and winning the esteem and cordial support of his brethren in office during a very long period

of active and gratuitous services. Of the Linnæan, especially, he seems to have been a distinguished member, no less for the disinterested zeal with which as a personal friend of its founder, Sir James Smith, he devoted himself to its financial welfare, or as a cordial friend of science and scientific men interested like himself in its meetings and publications. His portrait hangs on the Society's walls; and his blue coat and bright buttons are with many inseparably connected with its meetings.

Dr. Boott's botanical labors were entirely confined to the study of the great genus Carex; of which upwards of six hundred species are known, and in which he took the keenest interest, spending many hours daily in analyzing them, and laying out large sums of money on their illustrations. Much of his labors has seen the light in a large folio work, in two volumes, containing upwards of four hundred plates and descriptions of Carex; all produced at his own expense, and distributed with a lavish hand amongst English, European, and American botanists. This is, indeed, a magnificent work, and will immortalize its author. To it, however, we regret to add, the curtailment of his life is, in some measure, undoubtedly due; the close application necessary for its successful elaboration having materially tended to enfeeble his never very vigorous frame. The immediate cause of his death was disease of the right lung, induced by pneumonia, of which he had two severe attacks, one in 1839, which permanently injured his health, and prevented his undertaking any very laborious exertion thereafter; the other in June of the past year, from which he never rallied, and of which he died on Christmas Day, at the age of seventy-one years.

In person, Dr. Boott was very tall and thin. His manners were singularly pleasing, and his expression refined in the highest degree. His countenance was indeed very much a reflex of his mind, which was singularly polished, cultivated and sensitive. Nothing delighted him so much as companionship with the young, to whom his kindly manners, generous sympathies, and considerate conduct, much endeared him. His love of art was no less strong than that of literature and science. His house was full of excellent and always pleasing pictures, and his large library was as select as possible. In connection with literature, a most characteristic act of his was to erect a tablet to the memory of Henry Kirke White, of whom and whose family he knew nothing personally, but whose life and poems he ardently admired, and to whose memory no tribute of the kind had been paid.

Such is a meagre record of the life of a man whose death is felt by a large circle as a personal loss; and who was, in every sense, an ornament to the profession of medicine.

DR. JOHN WARE.

Dr. JOHN WARE died in Boston on the 29th of April, 1864, at the age of sixty-eight. He was a physician of just eminence, and had been President of the Massachusetts Medical Society, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in Harvard University, and a physician of the Massachusetts General Hospital. He was the son of Henry Ware D.D., Professor of Theology at Cambridge; and was graduated in Harvard University with the class of 1813, of which he was a distinguished member.

The first part of his professional career was obscure and laborious, and chiefly confined to the northerly part of the city. His expectations of success were at one time so doubtful, that he applied himself to the study of dentistry, as a subsidiary resource in case of failure to succeed in other walks of his profession. It was not long, however, before his application, good sense, thorough education, and undeviating sincerity and honesty of purpose, obtained for him the confidence of many friends and established him in a desirable practice. His professional and social position was high, and generally acknowledged; and, for a quarter of a century, he was one of the most active members of the profession in Boston. For the last twenty years of his life, his health had become impaired from the arduous duties to which he gave himself, both as a practitioner, a writer, and a teacher in the Medical School. He purchased a farm in the country, to which he retired for rest and relaxation in the summer months. He continued, however, to attend to business; and his advice as a consulting physician was much sought and respected.

Dr. Ware was an early adherent to the medical reform which had begun in this city some thirty years ago, and by which the power of active treatment to arrest the progress of certain acute and specific diseases was discredited, and its use, at length, generally relinquished. He was one of those who perceived, that among the things most frequently injurious to patients, under the heroic practice then and previously in vogue, was the nimia cura medici. A favorite term used by him in enumerating the various causes of mortality was that of "hyperpractice." One of his oldest and most distinguished medical friends, in speaking of his degree of faith in the infallibility of medicines in this respect, said, "Dr. Ware is an excellent doubter."

One source of his popularity with his patients was a delicate and intuitive regard for their convenience in small things as well as their welfare in greater. He had an instinctive aversion to over-drugging. His prescriptions were simple; seldom containing more than one, two, or three articles. His habit was to order small quantities at a time,

deprecating the practice of those who fill the chambers of the sick with residuary portions of expensive, unnecessary, and perhaps deleterious compounds. His belief in the importance of a just diagnosis was unlimited; and he properly attributed the errors common in empirical and routine practice to an incompetent understanding of the pathological character of the case.

Dr. Ware was an important contributor to different periodical works, and was at one time an editor of the "New-England Journal of Medicine and Surgery." For about twenty years, he gave lectures in Harvard University as Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine; in which office he acquitted himself with reputation, and much to the instruction as well as acceptance of his hearers. He labored for truth and knowledge, avoiding assumptions which applied only to his own reputation.

He died of apoplexy, after a few hours of insensibility; this disease being one which he inherited from his father, and of which he had had unmistakable premonitions.

J. B.