318 HENRY INGERSOLL BOWDITCH. 



education. His simple character was in singular contrast to his 

 complex life. 



He had for somo time been physician to the St. Vincent Orphan 

 Asylum, which was under the charge of " that most remarkable wo- 

 man," as he called his friend the Sister Superior Anne Alexis, when 

 she undertook to establish a general hospital under the control of a 

 Catholic sisterhood. She naturally went to Dr. Bowditch, who said 

 of her, " We were like brother and sister," for help in organizing the 

 medical staff. To his cordial aid, to his willingness to endure much 

 from inexperience on the one hand and from religious prejudice on 

 the other, and to his patience in bearing the annoyances connected 

 with founding such a charity from small beginnings, with too lit- 

 tle money, the Carney Hospital, now after thirty years large and 

 prosperous, owes an inestimable debt of gratitude. He was made 

 President of the medical staff of the hospital as soon as it was 

 opened. 



In 1848, at the age of forty, Dr. Bowditch was elected a Fellow of 

 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. For full forty years 

 he attended the meetings most zealously, listening witb keen enjoy- 

 ment to men the list of whose names includes Wyman, Gray, Agassiz, 

 Peirce, Gibbs, and Rogers. His communications were three : on the 

 Lymntea, in 1848 ; on the Results of Investigations as to the Preser- 

 vation of the Teeth, in 1849 ; and on Pulmonary Consumption, as influ- 

 enced by certain Climatic Conditions, in 1870. Of the paper covering 

 his four years' investigations on the Lymnaea, the manuscript of which 

 fills 117 folio pages, closely written, with copious illustrations, he said: 

 " Soon after showing the paper to Agassiz, I was chosen into the 

 Amei'ican Academy of Arts and Sciences, with, as I have reason to 

 believe, Agassiz as one of my sponsors. The Professor commended 

 the paper and said to me, ' You show us the development of the snail 

 after leaving the ovary of its parent. To make the cycle complete, 

 you should now show us the gradual development of the ovum in the 

 ovary of the adult.' Accordingly I tore one or two of the living 

 snails to see the ovary in situ. But I soon found vivisection, even 

 of this humble creature, very distasteful and painful to me, and, as I 

 did not think that any beneficial result would come from the work, 

 I let the ' cycle ' remain incomplete." 



In 1852, through an injury in an obstetric operation followed by 

 a long illness with septic infection, a finger of his right hand was 

 permanently disabled. He then gave up midwifery and general 

 family practice, devoting himself more especially to thoracic diseases. 



