AE 
BSB RIOLOGICAL FOURNATL. 
Vou. 1]. APRIL, 1891. No. 1. 
HARVEY WILLSON HARKNESS. 
The subject of this sketch was born in the town of Pelham, Massa- 
chusetts, on the twenty-fifth day of May, in the year 1821. His 
parents, of Scottish origin, were blessed with a large family and 
small means, and the boys following the usual custom of the rural 
population in those days, worked upon the farm in summer, attend- 
ing the best accessible schools in winter. Harvey, the seventh 
child, being of a more than usually studious turn, sought eagerly 
for opportunities of instruction, and following his strong inclination, 
entered upon the study of the profession which was to be his life 
work, receiving his degree in medicine from the Berkshire Medical 
College of Massachusetts in the year 1847. 
His youth was overshadowed, and the foundation laid for that 
melancholy often observable even in gayer moments, by that fell 
blight of New England—consumption. One by one he saw his 
brothers and sisters, starting with every promise of vigorous life, 
fade away as they reached maturity, and it was as much for the 
- milder climate as for the allurements of wealth that he joined a 
party of emigrants at Rock Island, Illinois, reaching California by 
_ the tedious journey across the plains in October, 1849. 
He first located at Bidwell’s Bar, in the practice of his profession, 
removing the next year to Sacramento, at which place he spent the 
succeeding years in the busy life of a physician until his retirement 
in 1869 with a well earned competence, Since that period he has 
lived for the greater part of the time in San Francisco, but has" 
ee oe ‘made several visits to the Eastern States, four to Europe and two _ 
ee) Northern Africa. 
On the tenth of May, 1860, he assisted in laying the rail which 
| eed the first transcontinental railroad, presenting on behalf 
of the State of California the gold spikes used in the ceremony, _ . 
_ and on the seventeenth of November, in the same year, was pres- 
