After a season of great success in this country Mr. Jefferson decided to

visit England. He appeared at the Adelphi Theater, in London, and at
once became as popular as he had been at home. His Asa Trenchard, in
"Our American Cousin," was received by the English with delight; but his
greatest triumphs were won in Boucicault's version of "Rip Van Winkle,"
which he has since immortalized. This play was first produced at the
Adelphi, where it enjoyed an uninterrupted run of nearly two hundred
nights.

Returning to the United States in the autumn of 1867, Mr. Jefferson
appeared at the Olympic Theater, in New York, in the play of "Rip Van
Winkle." Since then he has traveled extensively throughout the United
States, and has devoted himself exclusively to the character of Rip Van
Winkle; so exclusively, indeed, that many persons are ignorant of his
great merits in other roles. By adopting this as his specialty, he has
rendered himself so perfect in it that he has almost made the
improvident, light-hearted Rip a living creature. A writer in a popular
periodical draws the following graphic sketch of his performance of this
character:


If there is something especially charming in the ideal of Rip Van
Winkle that Irving has drawn, there is something even more human,
sympathetic and attractive in the character reproduced by
Jefferson. A smile that reflects the generous impulses of the man;
a face that is the mirror of character; great, luminous eyes that
are rich wells of expression; a grace that is statuesque without
being studied; an inherent laziness which commands the respect of
no one, but a gentle nature that wins the affections of all; poor
as he is honest, jolly as he is poor, unfortunate as he is jolly,
yet possessed of a spontaneity of nature that springs up and flows
along like a rivulet after a rain; the man who can not forget the
faults of the character which Jefferson pictures, nor feel like
taking good-natured young Rip Van Winkle by the hand and offering a
support to tottering old Rip Van Winkle, must have become hardened
to all natural as well as artistic influences. It is scarcely
necessary to enter into the details of Mr. Jefferson's acting of
the Dutch Tam O'Shanter. Notwithstanding the fact that the
performance is made up of admirable points that might he enumerated
and described, the picture is complete as a whole and in its
connections. Always before the public; preserving the interest
during two acts of the play after a telling climax; sustaining the
realities of his character in a scene of old superstition, and in
which no one speaks but himself,--the impersonation requires a
greater evenness of merit and dramatic effect than any other that
could have been chosen. Rip Van Winkle is imbued with the most
marked individuality, and the identity is so conscientiously
preserved that nothing is overlooked or neglected. Mr. Jefferson's
analysis penetrates even into the minutiæ of the part, but there is
a perfect unity in the conception and its embodiment. Strong and
irresistible in its emotion, and sly and insinuating in its humor,
Mr. Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle is marked by great vigor, as well as
by an almost pre-Raphaelite finish.

The bibulous Rip is always present by the ever-recurring and
favorite toast of "Here's your goot healt' and your family's, and
may dey live long and prosper." The meditative and philosophic Rip
is signaled by the abstract "Ja," which sometimes means _yes_, and
sometimes means _no_. The shrewd and clear-sighted Rip is marked by
the interview with Derrick Van Beekman. The thoughtful and
kind-hearted Rip makes his appearance in that sad consciousness of
his uselessness and the little influence he exerts when he says to
the children, talking of their future marriage: "I thought maybe
you might want to ask me about it," which had never occurred to the
children. The improvident Rip is discovered when Dame Van Winkle
throws open the inn window-shutter, which contains the enormous
score against her husband, and when Rip drinks from the bottle over
the dame's shoulder as he promises to reform. The most popular and
the most thriftless man in the village; the most intelligent and
the least ambitious; the best-hearted and the most careless;--the
numerous contrasts which the _role_ presents demand versatility in
design and delicacy in execution. They are worked out with a
moderation and a suggestiveness that are much more natural than if
they were presented more decidedly. The sympathy of Mr. Jefferson's
creation is the greatest secret of its popularity. In spite of
glaring faults, and almost a cruel disregard of the family's
welfare, Rip Van Winkle has the audience with him from the very
beginning. His ineffably sad but quiet realization of his desolate
condition when his wife turns him out into the storm, leaves
scarcely a dry eye in the theatre. His living in others and not in
himself makes him feel the changes of his absence all the more
keenly. His return after his twenty years' sleep is painful to
witness; and when he asks, with such heart-rending yet subdued
despair, "Are we so soon forgot when we are gone?" it is no wonder
that sobs are heard throughout the house. His pleading with his
child Meenie is not less affecting, and nothing could be more
genuine in feeling. Yet all this emotion is attained in the most
quiet and unobtrusive manner. Jefferson's sly humor crops out at
all times, and sparkles through the veil of sadness that overhangs
the later life of Rip Van Winkle. His wonder that his wife's
"clapper" could ever be stopped is expressed in the same breath
with his real sorrow at hearing of her death. "Then who the devil
am I?" he asks with infinite wit just before he pulls away at the
heartstrings of the audience in refusing the proffered assistance
to his tottering steps. He has the rare faculty of bringing a smile
to the lips and a tear to the eye at the same time. From the first
picture, which presents young Rip Van Winkle leaning carelessly and
easily upon the table as he drinks his schnapps, to the last
picture of the decrepit but happy old man, surrounded by his family
and dismissing the audience with his favorite toast, the character,
in Mr. Jefferson's hands, endears itself to all, and adds another
to the few real friendships which one may enjoy in this life.


Mr. Jefferson is a thoroughly American actor. Abandoning all sensational
shams, he devotes himself to pure art. His highest triumphs have been
won in the legitimate branches of his profession, and won by the force
of his genius, aided only by the most careful study and an intelligent
analysis of the parts assumed by him. He has the happy faculty of
entering into perfect sympathy with his characters, and for the time
being he is less the actor than the individual he personates. It is this
that gives the sparkle to his eye, the ring to his laughter, and the
exquisite feeling to his pathos; and feeling thus, he is quick to
establish a sympathy between himself and his audience, so that he moves
them at will, convulsing them with laughter at the sallies of the
light-hearted Rip, or dissolving them in tears at the desolations of the
lonely old man, so soon forgot after he has gone.

Mr. Jefferson has inherited from his father the genial, sunny
disposition for which the latter was famous. He is an essentially
cheerful man, and trouble glances lightly off from him. He is generous
to a fault, and carries his purse in his hand. Misfortune never appeals
to him in vain, and many are the good works he has done in the humbler
walks of his own calling. He is enthusiastically devoted to his
profession, and enjoys his acting quite as much as his auditors. In
putting his pieces on the stage, he is lavish of expense, and whenever
he can control this part of the performance, it leaves nothing to be
desired. Some years ago he brought out "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at a
Philadelphia theater, in a style of magnificence rarely witnessed on any
stage. The scenery was exquisite, and was a collection of artistic gems.
The success of the piece was very decided in Philadelphia, but when it
was reproduced, with the same scenery and appointments, in a Western
city, the public would scarcely go to see it, and the theater incurred a
heavy loss in consequence. Jefferson's remark to the manager, when the
failure became apparent, was characteristic: "It is all right," said he.
"We have done our duty, and have made an artistic success of the piece.
If the people will not come to see it, it is more their misfortune than
ours."

He has inherited also from his father considerable talent as an artist,
and sketches with decided merit, though he makes no pretensions to
artistic skill. In his vacations, which he passes in the country, his
sketch-book is his constant companion. He is a famous sportsman and
fisherman, and in the summer is rarely to be found without his gun and
rod. It is his delight to tramp over miles of country in search of
game, or to sit quietly in some cozy nook, and, dropping his line into
the water, pass the hours in reveries broken only by the exertion
necessary to secure a finny prize.

Not long since his love of art led him to buy a panorama merely because
he admired it. He put it in charge of an agent in whom he knew he could
confide, and started it on a tour throughout the country. In a month or
two he received a gloomy letter from the agent, telling him that the
exhibition had failed to draw spectators, and that he despaired of its
ever paying expenses. "Never mind," wrote Jefferson in reply, "it will
be a gratification for those who do go to see it, and you may draw on me
for what money you need." The losses on the panorama, however, were so
great that Jefferson was compelled to abandon it.

Several years before the death of John Sefton, Jefferson paid him a
visit at his home in Paradise Valley, during one of his summer rambles.
Upon reaching Sefton's farm, he found the owner "with his breeches and
coat sleeves both rolled up, and standing in the middle of a clear and
shallow stream, where one could scarcely step without spoiling the
sports of the brook trout, which sparkled through the crystal waters.
Sefton stood in a crouching attitude, watching, with mingled
disappointment and good humor, a little pig which the stream was
carrying down its current, and which, pig-like, had slipped from the
hands of its owner in its natural aversion to being washed. Jefferson,
with the true instinct of an artist, dropped his fishing tackle and took
his sketch-book to transfer the ludicrous scene to paper. Sefton
appreciated the humor of the situation, and only objected when Jefferson
began to fill in the background with a dilapidated old barn, at which
the old gentleman demurred on account of its wretched appearance. The
artist insisted that it was picturesque, however, and proceeded to put
it down. Sefton had to submit; but he had his revenge, by writing back
to New York that 'Jefferson is here, drawing the worst "houses" I ever
saw.'"

In private life, Mr. Jefferson is a cultivated gentleman, and is
possessed of numbers of warm and devoted friends. He has been married
twice. The first Mrs. Jefferson was a Miss Lockyer, of New York, and by
her he had two children, a son and a daughter. The former is about
eighteen years of age, and is destined to his father's profession, in
which he has already shown unusual promise. The present Mrs. Jefferson
was a Miss Warren, and is a niece of the veteran actor, William Warren,
of Boston. She was married to her husband early in 1868, and has never
been an actress.

Mr. Jefferson is the possessor of a large fortune, acquired in the
exercise of his profession, and being thus comfortably situated, is
enabled to enjoy more rest from his labors than falls to the lot of most
American actors. He resides in Orange County, New Jersey, about an
hour's ride from New York, where he has a handsome country seat, which
he has adorned with all the attractions that wealth and taste can
command.




XI.

PHYSICIANS.




CHAPTER XXXVII.

BENJAMIN RUSH.


It is not often that a man, however gifted, is capable of rising to
eminence in two distinct branches of public life, especially in two so
widely separated from each other as medicine and politics. The subject
of this sketch was one of the few who have achieved such distinction.

BENJAMIN RUSH was born on Poquestion Creek, near Philadelphia, on the
24th of December, 1745. He was carefully educated at the best common
schools of his native county, and then entered Princeton College, where
he graduated in 1760, at the age of fifteen. He decided, upon leaving
Princeton, to adopt medicine as his vocation, and began his studies in
Philadelphia. He gave nine years to preparing himself for his
profession, and after completing his course in Philadelphia, sailed for
Europe, where he continued his studies in Edinburgh, London, and Paris.
He returned home in 1769, and began the practice of medicine in
Philadelphia, and was at once elected Professor of Chemistry in the
medical college of that city. He was successful in rapidly acquiring a
large and lucrative practice, and experienced very few of the
difficulties and trials which lie in the way of a young physician.

In 1770 he began his career as an author, and for many years his
writings were numerous. He devoted himself chiefly to medical subjects,
but history, philosophy, and politics, and even romance, frequently
claimed his attention. He adopted the patriot cause at the outset of his
career, and with his pen and voice constantly advocated resistance to
the injustice of Great Britain. This drew upon him the attention of his
fellow-citizens, and he was chosen to a seat in the Provincial
Conference of Pennsylvania. In that body he introduced a resolution
setting forth the necessity of a declaration of independence of the
mother country. His resolution was referred to a committee, of which he
was made the chairman, and this committee having reported affirmatively,
the resolution was unanimously adopted by the Conference, and was
communicated to the Continental Congress, then in session in
Philadelphia, about the last of June, 1776. When it became evident that
the Congress would declare the independence of the colonies, five
members of the Pennsylvania delegation withdrew from that body. Their
places were at once supplied by Rush and four others, and when the
Declaration was finally adopted Benjamin Rush affixed his signature to
it as a delegate from Pennsylvania.

In 1776 Dr. Rush was married to Miss Julia Stockton, daughter of Richard
Stockton, of New Jersey, also a signer of the Declaration. In April,
1777, he was made Surgeon-General of the Continental army for the Middle
Department, and in July, 1777, was made Physician-General. He devoted
himself to his duties with energy and intelligence, and succeeded in
placing the affairs of his department in as satisfactory a condition as
the means at the command of the Congress would permit. He was not able,
however, to arrange every thing as his judgment assured him was best,
and was subjected to many annoyances and great inconvenience by the
incompetence and mismanagement of other officials, whom he could not
control. The management of the hospital supplies of the army was
especially defective, and was the cause of much suffering to the troops.
He made repeated efforts to effect a reform in this particular, but
failing to accomplish any thing, and indignant at the wrongs inflicted
upon the soldiers, he resigned his commission and retired to private
life.

During his connection with the army, he had watched the course of
affairs in his native State with the keenest interest, and in a series
of four letters to the people of Pennsylvania, called their attention to
the serious defects of their Constitution of 1776, the chief of which he
declared to be the giving of the legislative power to one house only.
His appeals had the effect of bringing about an entire change in the
form of State government, which was subsequently accomplished by a
general convention of the people. After the close of the war Dr. Rush
was elected a member of the State Convention which ratified the
Constitution of the United States, and distinguished himself in that
body by his earnest and brilliant advocacy of that instrument. He was
also a member of the convention which adopted a new State Constitution,
embodying the reforms he had advised in the letters referred to, and
labored hard to have incorporated in it his views respecting a penal
code and a public school system, both of which features he ably
advocated through the public press.

With this closed his public career, which, though brief, was brilliant,
and raised him to a proud place among the fathers of the Republic.

Returning to Philadelphia after resigning his position in the army, he
resumed the practice of medicine, and with increased success. His
personal popularity and his great skill as a physician brought him all
the employment he could desire, and he soon took his place at the head
of the medical faculty of the country.

In 1785 he planned the Philadelphia Dispensary, the first institution of
the kind in the United States, and to the close of his life remained its
warm and energetic supporter. In 1789 he was made Professor of the
Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Philadelphia Medical College, and
when that institution was merged in the University, in 1791, he was
elected to the chair of the Institute and Clinical Medicine. In 1797 he
took the professorship of Clinical Practice also, as it was vacant, and
was formally elected to it in 1805. These three professorships he held
until the day of his death, discharging the duties of each with
characteristic brilliancy and fidelity.

The great professional triumph of his life occurred in the year 1793. In
that year the yellow fever broke out with great malignancy in
Philadelphia, and raged violently for about one hundred days, from about
the last of July until the first of November. Nothing seemed capable of
checking it. The people fled in dismay from their homes, and the city
seemed given over to desolation. In the terrible "hundred days," during
which the fever prevailed, four thousand persons died, and the deaths
occurred so rapidly that it was frequently impossible to bury the bodies
for several days. The physicians of the city, though they remained
heroically at their posts, and labored indefatigably in their exertions
to stay the plague, were powerless against it, and several of them were
taken sick and died. Few had any hope of checking the fever, and every
one looked forward with eagerness to the approach of the season of
frosts, as the only means of saving those that remained in the stricken
city.

At the outset of the disease, Dr. Rush had treated it in the same manner
as that adopted by the medical faculty of the city; but the ill success
which attended this course soon satisfied him that the treatment was
wrong. He therefore undertook to subdue it by purging and bleeding the
patient, and succeeded. The new practice met with the fiercest
opposition from the other physicians, but Rush could triumphantly point
to the fact that while their patients were dying his were getting well;
and he continued to carry out his treatment with firmness and success.
Dr. Ramsey, of South Carolina, estimates that Rush, by this treatment,
saved not less than six thousand of his patients from death in the
"hundred days." Nevertheless, the medical war went on with great
bitterness, and the opposition to Rush became furious when he boldly
declared that the fever was not an importation from abroad, as was
popularly believed, but had been generated by the filthy condition of
the city during the early part of the summer. Some time after the fever
had subsided, a paper called "Peter Porcupine's Gazette," edited by
William Cobbett, made a series of outrageous attacks upon Dr. Rush and
his treatment of the fever. This exhausted the forbearance of the
doctor, and he instituted a suit against Cobbett, in which he was
successful, and secured a verdict of $5,000 damages against his defamer.

During the prevalence of the fever, Dr. Rush's labors were unceasing. He
was constantly going his rounds, visiting the sick, attending sometimes
over one hundred patients in a single day. He was called on at all hours
of the day and night, and it may be said that he scarcely slept or
enjoyed two hours, uninterrupted rest during the "hundred days."

[Illustration: PRESCRIBING AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.]

For weeks he never sat down to his meals without being surrounded by
dozens of patients, whose complaints he listened to and prescribed for
as he ate. These were chiefly the poor, and at such times his house was
literally thronged with them. He was a kind friend to them; rendering
his services promptly and heartily, without the slightest wish to
receive pay in return for them; and during all this terrible summer he
was to be seen ministering to these poor creatures in the foulest, most
plague-stricken quarters of the city, shrinking from no danger, and
deterred from his work of mercy by no thought of his own safety. He has
left us the following picture of the city during this terrible summer:



The disease appeared in many parts of the town remote from the spot
where it originated; although in every instance it was easily
traced to it. This set the city in motion. The streets and roads
leading from the city were crowded with families flying in every
direction for safety, to the country. Business began to languish.
Water Street, between Market and Race Streets, became a desert.
The poor were the first victims of the fever. From the sudden
interruption of business, they suffered for a while from poverty as
well as disease. A large and airy house at Bush-hill, about a mile
from the city, was opened for their reception. This house, after it
became the charge of a committee appointed by the citizens on the
14th of September, was regulated and governed with the order and
cleanliness of an old and established hospital. An American and
French physician had the exclusive medical care of it after the 22d
of September.

The contagion, after the second week in September, spared no rank
of citizens. Whole families were confined by it. There was a
deficiency of nurses for the sick, and many of those who were
employed were unqualified for their business. There was likewise a
great deficiency of physicians, from the desertion of some and the
sickness and death of others. At one time there were only three
physicians able to do business out of their houses, and at this
time there were probably not less than six thousand persons ill
with the fever.

During the first three or four weeks of the prevalence of the
disorder, I seldom went into a house the first time without meeting
the parents or children of the sick in tears. Many wept aloud in my
entry or parlor, who came to ask advice for their relations. Grief
after a while descended below weeping, and I was much struck in
observing that many persons submitted to the loss of relations and
friends without shedding a tear, or manifesting any other of the
common signs of grief.

A cheerful countenance was scarcely to be seen in the city for six
weeks. I recollect once, on entering the house of a poor man, to
have met a child of two years old that smiled in my face. I was
strangely affected with this sight (so discordant to my feelings
and the state of the city), before I recollected the age and
ignorance of the child. I was confined the next day by an attack of
the fever, and was sorry to hear, upon my recovery, that the father
and mother of this little creature died a few days after my last
visit to them.

The streets every-where discovered marks of the distress that
pervaded the city. More than one-half the houses were shut up,
although not more than one-third of the inhabitants had fled into
the country. In walking, for many hundred yards, few persons were
met, except such as were in quest of a physician, a nurse, a
bleeder, or the men who buried the dead. The hearse alone kept up
the remembrance of the noise of carriages or carts in the streets.
Funeral processions were laid aside. A black man leading or driving
a horse, with a corpse on a pair of chair-wheels, with now and then
half a dozen relations or friends following at a distance from it,
met the eye in most of the streets of the city, at every hour of
the day, while the noise of the same wheels passing slowly over the
pavements, kept alive anguish and fear in the sick and well, every
hour of the night.


The population of Philadelphia at this time was but sixty thousand, and
the reader will see that a loss of four thousand was a heavy percentage
for so short a period.

Dr. Rush's skill and heroic conduct in his efforts to stay the ravages
of the plague made him famous, not only in his own country, but
throughout Europe, and during the latter part of his life he received
most gratifying evidences of this fact. In 1805 the King of Prussia sent
him a coronation medal, and the King of Spain tendered him his thanks
for his replies to certain questions addressed to him concerning the
causes and proper treatment of yellow fever. In 1807 the Queen of
Etruria presented him with a gold medal as a mark of respect; and in
1811 the Emperor of Russia sent him a testimonial of his admiration of
his medical character.

In 1799 he was made treasurer of the United States Mint, which position
he held until his death.

Dr. Rush's writings were voluminous, and embraced a variety of subjects.
His medical productions occupy a high place in the literature of the
profession, and his political essays were one of the features of his
day. He was a man of profound learning, and it is astonishing that one
so constantly occupied with the duties of an engrossing profession
should have found the time for such close and thorough general reading.

He was a sincere and earnest Christian, and held the Bible in the
highest veneration. He wrote an able defense of the use of it as a
school-book, and for many years was vice-president of the Philadelphia
Bible Society, which he helped to establish, and the constitution of
which he drafted. He held skepticism and atheism in the deepest
abhorrence, and in his own life affords a powerful refutation of the
assertion one hears so often, that profound medical knowledge is apt to
make men infidels.

He died in Philadelphia on the 19th of April, 1813, at the good old age
of sixty-eight, leaving a son who was destined to render additional
luster to his name by achieving the highest distinction as a statesman.




CHAPTER XXXVIII.

VALENTINE MOTT.


Valentine Mott was born at Glen Cove, on Long Island, on the 20th of
August, 1785. His father, Dr. Henry Mott, was an eminent practitioner in
the city of New York, where he died in 1840, at the age of eighty-three.
Valentine Mott was carefully educated by private tutors until he reached
the age of nineteen, when he entered Columbia College, New York, as a
medical student, and at the same time became a private medical pupil of
his kinsman, Dr. Valentine Seaman. At the age of twenty-one he graduated
with the degree of M.D.; but feeling that he had not acquired as good a
medical education as the schools of the Old World could afford, he
sailed for Europe in 1806, within a few weeks after his graduation at
Columbia College. Proceeding to London, he was for more than a year a
regular attendant upon St. Thomas', Bartholomew's, and Guy's hospitals,
where he conducted his clinical studies under the direction of
Abernethy, Sir Charles Bell, and Sir Astley Cooper. He chose Sir Astley
Cooper as his private instructor, and became one of his favorite pupils;
and also attended the lectures of Currie and Haighton. From London he
went to Edinburgh, where he attended the lectures of Hope, Playfair, and
Gregory, as well as the prelections of Dugald Stewart. From Edinburgh
he went to Paris, and completed his studies in the great hospitals of
that city.

He gave evidence at an early day of his great surgical abilities. He was
indeed a born surgeon, possessing in a remarkable degree that peculiar
adaptation to this branch of his profession, without which no amount of
study can make a great operator. While a student in the Old World, he
performed leading operations with a skill and natural readiness which
astonished his instructors as much as they delighted them. He was
possessed of a firmness and dexterity of hand, a calm, cool brain, a
quick, unfailing eye, a calmness of nerve, a strength of will, and a
physical endurance which were Nature's gifts to him, and which rendered
him a great surgeon even before he had received his diploma. He did not
trust to these natural gifts alone, however, but applied himself to the
theory of his profession with a determination and eagerness which
nothing could daunt. He was an enthusiast in his studies, and soon
became known as the most profoundly-learned _young_ physician of his
day. As he advanced in life, he maintained his reputation, keeping up
his studies to the last. The great men under whom he studied abroad were
delighted with him, and Sir Astley Cooper was loud in his praise. He
exhibited so much skill as an operator that he was often called upon to
perform operations which the professors would never have dreamed of
intrusting to any one else, and he went through each trial of this kind
with a readiness and precision which few even of his instructors
excelled.

His reputation was unusually flattering to one who had not yet entered
upon the practice of his profession, and upon his return to the United
States, in 1809, he was met with an offer of the chair of surgery in
Columbia College, his _alma mater_. He promptly accepted the position,
and held it until 1813, when the medical department of Columbia College
was merged in the College of Physicians and Surgeons. He was at once
called to the same chair in the new college, and occupied it until 1826.
In that year he resigned his place in the faculty, in consequence of a
misunderstanding between the professors and the trustees of the college
on the principles of college government. Withdrawing entirely from the
school, he united with Drs. Hosack, Mitchell, Francis, and several
others, in founding the Rutgers Medical College. This college, after a
short career of four years, was compelled by the Legislature to
discontinue its operations, in consequence of an alleged invalidity in
its charter.

In 1830, Dr. Mott returned to the College of Physicians and Surgeons as
Professor of Surgery, and in 1840 he became President of the Faculty and
Professor of Surgery and Relative Anatomy in the new University Medical
School. The science of Relative Anatomy is of the highest importance to
the surgeon, and of this science Dr. Mott is generally regarded as the
author. He held his position in the University for twenty years, and in
1860, after a period of fifty years spent in the active duties of his
professorship, retired from the immediate discharge of them, and was
made Professor Emeritus, in which capacity he occasionally lectured to
the classes during each of the remaining years of his life.

As a professor and teacher of surgical science Dr. Mott won a brilliant
reputation, and was considered one of the most thoroughly successful
instructors in the Union. He had the power of winning the attention of
his pupils at the opening of his lectures and of retaining it until the
close. He made even the most difficult operations so clear and simple in
his lectures that the dullest intellects could comprehend them; and his
system of practical demonstration of his subjects was vastly superior
to any thing that had ever been seen in America. He was the first to
introduce into this country the system of delivering clinical lectures,
or lectures at the bedside of the patient, whose ailments were operated
upon during the course of his remarks. This system is naturally the most
repugnant to the patient, but its advantages to the student are so great
that they outweigh all other considerations. Other professors had shrunk
from subjecting their patients to such an ordeal, but Dr. Mott had seen
enough, during his attendance upon such lectures abroad, to satisfy him
that it was the only method by which a thorough knowledge of the
profession of surgery could be imparted, and immediately upon
establishing himself in this country he introduced it. He met with
opposition at first, but he gradually overcame it, and made the
advantages of his system so apparent to all that at length the
opposition entirely ceased.

The greatest difficulty to which American medical schools have always
been subject has been the almost utter impossibility of procuring dead
bodies for dissection. It was this want that compelled Dr. Mott, as it
has compelled so many others, to seek a practical education in Europe;
and when he came back to the college as professor, he was met by the
same drawback to thorough instruction. The law forbade the taking of
dead bodies for dissection, under severe penalties. If a student was
ever found in possession of a limb, he was liable to fine and
imprisonment; and popular sentiment was so strong against the practice
of dissection that those who engaged in it ran serious risk of incurring
violence at the hands of the mob. Dr. Mott was often driven to desperate
expedients in the procuring of subjects. He was fond of relating one of
his adventures of this kind, which will show the reader how he was
enabled to carry on his lectures.

It was in the winter of 1815, and it had been found impossible to
procure a supply of subjects for the season. They could not be obtained
at any price, and it was evident that if any were to be had, the doctor
and his pupils would have to take the matter in their own hands. There
was a grave-yard just outside the city, in which a number of interments
had recently been made, and the doctor resolved upon securing these
bodies for his dissecting-room. It was a dangerous undertaking, as
discovery would subject all engaged in it to the direst penalties of the
law, if, indeed, they should be lucky enough to escape being lynched by
the people. In spite of the dangers, however, the students volunteered
to assist the doctor in the attempt, and at an appointed time proceeded
to the cemetery, properly disguised, and began the removal of the bodies
from the graves. The night was intensely dark, and the wind was high,
both of which circumstances favored their undertaking, but every sound,
every snapping of a twig or rustling of a leaf caused them to start with
alarm and gaze anxiously into the darkness. It was near midnight when
they had finished their task, and, this done, they waited in anxious
silence for the arrival of the means of removing their prey. Their
movements had been accurately timed, and they had scarcely completed
their labors when a cart, driven by a man dressed in the rough clothing
of a laborer, approached the cemetery at a rapid pace. Signals were
exchanged between the driver and the students, and the latter fell to
work to place the bodies, eleven in number, in the cart. Having
accomplished this, they covered them over in such a manner as to make it
appear that the cart was loaded with country produce, bound for the city
markets. When every thing was properly arranged, the students
disappeared in the darkness, each seeking the means by which he had come
out from the city, and the driver, turning his cart about, drove off
rapidly in the direction of New York. It was a long ride, and to an
imaginative man, carrying eleven dead bodies that had been torn from
their quiet graves through the darkness of that winter night would have
been a terrible undertaking. But this man was not imaginative, and,
besides this, he was keenly alive to the tremendous consequences of
discovery. He knew that he was carrying his life in his hand, and that
he needed all the coolness and decision of which he was master. Reaching
the city long after midnight, he drove rapidly down Broadway and turned
into Barclay Street. The lights of the college shone out brightly, and
they had never seemed so welcome as then. The cart was driven rapidly to
the college entrance, where the students were in readiness to receive
it. In a few moments the bodies were removed from the cart and conveyed
to the dissecting-room, and the cart turned over to its owner. The
driver accompanied the students to the dissecting-room, and, throwing
off his disguise, revealed the handsome but excited and eager
countenance of Dr. Mott. He had shared the dangers to which his pupils
had subjected themselves, and had even borne the part in the enterprise
attended with the greatest risk. The affair had succeeded admirably, a
winter's supply of "subjects" had been obtained, and after this the
lectures went on without interruption.

"A story is told of his readiness in the lecture-room. A mother brought
into the amphitheater, one morning, an extremely dirty, sickly,
miserable-looking child, for the purpose of having a tumor removed. He
exhibited the tumor to the class, but informed the mother that he could
not operate upon the child without the consent of her husband. One of
the students, in his eagerness to examine the tumor, jumped over into
the little inclosure designed for the operator and his patients. Dr.
Mott, observing this intrusion, turned to the student and asked him,
with the most innocent expression of countenance: 'Are you the father of
this child?' Thunders of applause and laughter greeted this ingenious
rebuke, during which the intruder returned to his place crestfallen."

He was equally as successful in his private practice as in his labors in
the medical school. His brilliant reputation preceded him in his return
to his native country, and immediately upon opening his office in New
York he entered upon a large and lucrative practice. His skill as a
surgeon was in constant demand, and it is said that during his long
career he tied the common carotid artery forty-six times, cut for stone
one hundred and sixty-five times, and amputated nearly one thousand
limbs. His old preceptor, Sir Astley Cooper, proud of the distinction
won by his favorite pupil, said of him exultingly: "He has performed
more of the great operations than any man living, or that ever did
live."

When he was but thirty-three years old (in 1818) he placed a ligature
around the bracheo-cephalic trunk or arteria innominata, within two
inches of the heart, for aneurism of the right subclavian artery. This
was the first time this wonderful operation had ever been performed, and
the skill and success with which he accomplished it stamped him as one
of the brightest lights of his profession. "The patient survived the
operation twenty-eight days, and thus demonstrated the feasibility of
this hazardous and thus far unparalleled undertaking. He discovered in
this case that, though all supply of blood to the blood-vessels of the
right arm was apparently cut off, the circulation was kept up by the
interosculating blood-vessels, the pulsation at the wrist maintained,
and no evidence of loss of vitality or warmth manifested in the limb.
The patient finally died from secondary hemorrhage."

In 1828 he performed successfully the most difficult and dangerous
operation known to surgery. A clergyman called upon him to remove an
enormous tumor in the neck, in which were imbedded and twisted many of
the great arteries. In this operation it became necessary to take out
entire the right clavicle or collar bone, to lay bare the membrane which
surrounds the lungs, to search for and dissect around the arteries which
ran through the tumor, to make forty ligatures, and to remove an immense
mass of diseased matter. This terrible operation had never been
attempted before, and was performed by Dr. Mott without the aid of
chloroform; yet it was done so skillfully that the patient survived it,
and in 1865 was still living and discharging his ministerial duties. It
was thirty years before it was attempted again in any part of the world.
It was a great triumph of the genius of the operator, and won him
praises from men of science in all countries.

In 1821 "he performed the first operation for osteo-sarcoma of the lower
jaw. In 1822 he introduced his original operation for immobility of the
lower jaw. He was the first surgeon who removed the lower jaw for
necrosis, and the first to tie successfully the primitive iliac artery
for aneurism. Other of his original operations were cutting out two
inches of the deep jugular vein, inseparably imbedded in a tumor, and
tying both ends of the vein, and closing, with a fine ligature, wounds
of large veins of a longitudinal or transverse kind, even where an
olive-sliced piece had been cut out."

It was invariably his practice before attempting an operation on a
living subject to perform it on a dead body, and by the most minute and
patient examination to render himself absolute master of the anatomy of
the parts to be operated upon. He was a thoroughly conscientious man in
the exercise of his profession, and was always on his guard to resist
that greatest danger of the skillful surgeon--the temptation to use the
knife needlessly. It was his practice to investigate his cases
thoroughly, and never to use the knife unless his judgment was satisfied
that an operation was necessary. "That he decided in favor of operating
when some of his associates hesitated, was due rather to his large
experience than to an overweening fondness for the use of the knife." In
his operations he was firm and decided. Gifted with an unusual
steadiness of nerve and strength of muscle, he never allowed his
sympathy for the patient to cause him to hesitate or inflict one pang
less than the case required. He was prompt and ready in the event of
unforeseen complications, and never permitted any thing to take him by
surprise. His manner toward his patients was tender and sympathizing to
a remarkable degree, and his brother surgeons used to say of him, that
he seemed to have the power of cutting with less pain to the patient
than was possessed by most operators. During forty years of his practice
anæsthetics were unknown, and he had to operate with the full
consciousness that his patient was suffering the keenest agony. Besides
attaining such an exalted position as a surgeon, Dr. Mott won an
enviable reputation as a physician. His practice was confined almost
entirely to the best class of the people of New York, and he was for
many years the favorite accoucheur in a large circle of families in that
city.

He was an eminently progressive man. He fully recognized the advance of
science with the growth of the world, and was always prompt to welcome
any valuable discovery in medicine or surgery. He was among the first to
adopt and advocate the use of anæsthetics, for no man had had more cause
to understand the necessity of such assistants. He was himself the
inventor of many valuable surgical instruments, but he gladly welcomed
the introduction of others, even though they superseded his own in use.
To the close of his life he was a diligent student, and watched the
progress of his science with a keen and intelligent eye. He was the
author of several works of merit, including a volume of travels, and the
translator of "Velpau's Operative Surgery," to which he made extensive