482 NATHANIEL BRADSTREET SHURTLEFF. 



but he found great pleasure in attending the meetings and listening to 

 the various communications from the distingnisfied men of science who 

 gave these meetings their chief interest. 



The few publications Dr. Putnam has left relate chiefly to the dis- 

 eases of women and the practice of obstetrics, to which brandies he 

 was more particularly devoted. His translation of Louis on Blood- 

 letting introduced to the practitioners of this community a work which 

 has done much towards forming the professional creed of the present 

 generation. 



He died very suddenly after some threatening cerebral symptoms, 

 which however had left him capable of work and of enjoyment, on the 

 5th of February, 1875. 



His best record, because the amplest and the one that tries all a man's 

 qualities, is the memory of a life that was mainly spent in going about 

 doing good, without show, without noisy claim of acknowledgment, 

 without envy or jealousy. Single-hearted in the service to which he 

 had given himself, diligent, patient, skilful, he lived serenely and died 

 peacefully, leaving many mourners and not one enemy. 



NATHANIEL BRADSTREET SHURTLEFF. 



Na-THANiel Bradstreet Shurtleff, M. D., F. S. a., died in 

 Dorchester, on the 17th of October, 1874. He was in his sixty-fifth 

 year, having been born in Boston on the 20th of June, 1810. His 

 father, Dr. Benjamin Shurtleff, a native of Carver, in the County of 

 Plymouth, and a graduate of Brown University of 179G, removed 

 about the beginning of this century to Boston, where he was for many 

 years a practitioner of emmence. He came of the purest of the Pilgrim 

 stock, no less than six of his ancestors having been of the company of 

 the Mayflower. It is doubtless to this descent, and the interest in the 

 early history of New England which it excited, that we owe the numer- 

 ous antiquarian and historical works by which Dr. Nathaniel Shurtleff 

 is best known and will be chiefly remembered. His earlier education 

 was had at the public schools of this city, but his preparation for col- 

 leo'e was finished at the Round Hill School at Northampton, then at; 

 the height of its success, under Messrs. John G. Cogswell and George 

 Bancroft. He graduated at Cambridge in 1831, and at once entered 

 on his professional studies, taking his degree in medicine regularly in 

 1834. He was f.iirly successful in the practice of his profession, but 

 his taste lay rather in other directions, and latterly they much diverted 

 bis attention from his hereditary vocation. 



