838 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the American Journal of the Medical Sciences. He, however, 

 preferred chemistry to medicine, and served from 1876 as chemist 

 of the first Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, under his brother 

 Henry, who was chief of the survey. In this position he was 

 associated with James Curtis Booth and John F. Frazer as the 

 other assistants. 



In the fall of 1841 he was invited to the University of Virginia 

 to take the place in teaching the chemistry classes of Prof. John 

 P. Emmet, who was ill. Prof. Emmet not recovering from his 

 illness, Mr. Rogers was in March, 1842, elected in his place Pro- 

 fessor of General and Applied Chemistry and Materia Medica, a 

 position which he held with credit till 1852. In August of the 

 latter year he was elected Professor of Chemistry, in the place of 

 his brother, James B. Rogers, deceased, in the University of Penn- 

 sylvania. In 1856 he became Dean of the Medical Faculty of that 

 institution. In July, 1862, during the civil war, he was appointed 

 acting assistant surgeon in the Army of the United States, and 

 assigned to duty in the Military Hospital at West Philadelphia, 

 where he served not quite one year. At his suggestion a steam 

 mangle was set up under his supervision in the neighborhood of 

 the hospital. On the day it was completed he was showing a 

 woman how to feed it safely, when his right hand was caught in 

 the machinery and crushed. He was able with his other hand to 

 throw the machine out of gear and stop it, but while a workman 

 was lifting the cylinder, weighing eight hundred pounds, from off 

 the disabled hand, the great piece slipped from the crowbar and 

 fell upon it, aggravating the injury it had received. He was 

 anxious lest his wife should be seriously shocked by too quickly 

 realizing the severity of the mutilation he had suffered, and, to 

 prevent this as far as possible, he left the carriage in which he 

 was conveyed a short distance from his house and walked home. 

 The hand was amputated by Prof. Smith, of the university, and 

 its place was supplied for a time by an artificial hand. " Almost 

 ambidextrous prior to the accident," says Dr. Ruschenberger, 

 " he speedily learned to write with his left hand and to use the 

 right arm, beneath the shoulder, in prehension with notable skill 

 in his experiments while lecturing." 



About this time the United States was swept by the " oil 

 fever," and visions of wealth to be suddenly acquired by the pos- 

 session of a well turned many an otherwise well-balanced head. 

 Prof. Rogers did not escape the epidemic ; and the fact that a 

 man so well informed in scientific matters as he was associated 

 in the enterprise contributed no little to the success of the scheme 

 for organizing the Humboldt Oil Company in February, 1864, to 

 which a capital of a quarter of a million dollars was contributed. 

 Organization was all the success the company had. Land was 



