Da Costa.] * " [Dec. 19, 



address on subjects of public interest before a popular assemblage. This 

 is so singular that to omit its mention would naturally invite criticism. 



It was as remarkable that Mr. Phillips never visited any foreign coun- 

 try, or, indeed, any part of his own. He remained in Philadelphia, except 

 short sojourns at Saratoga, or by the seaside during the summer months, 

 yet he lived to the age of three-score years and twelve. 



With traits of personal character that assured him devoted friends ; 

 kind, and more than considerate to the young lawyers who sought his 

 advice in their first efforts ; generous, when his left hand knew not the 

 outgivings of the right ; undemonstrative in his private relations ; and re- 

 tiring from a participation in social exactions ; concerned for the happiness 

 of those immediately connected with him by the nearest ties of kindred ; 

 living unmarried and without such domestic claims on his leisure hours ; 

 the public life of Henry M. Phillips is worthy of the respect which the 

 American Philosophical Society desires by this notice to record and 

 perpetuate. 



Henry M. Phillips was a typical Philadelphian. 



Those influences which surround the outgrowth of capacities in the men 

 of high merit of our city, do not stimulate their appreciation by our own 

 people. Our most distinguished citizens in literature, science, the arts 

 and affairs, gain their fame by the recognition awarded by other commu- 

 nities. If perchance so fortunate, then Philadelphia, surprised at the dis- 

 covery, permits its lethargic comprehension to utter tardy applause. 



Biograpliical Sketch of Professor Samuel D. Gross, hy J. M. 

 Da Costa, M.D., LL.D. 



(^Read before the American Philosophical Society, December 19, ISS4.) 



Samuel Dent Gross was born in the neighborhood of Easton, Pennsyl- 

 vania, on July the 8ih, 1805. At school he was an industrious boy, and 

 he received a good education at the Wilkesbarre Academy and the Law- 

 renceville High School He never went to college ; but when at the age 

 of nineteen he began to read medicine, it was evident that the young 

 votary of science had been accustomed to intellectual labor, and was 

 taking up his professional studies with no untrained mind. 



On enrolling himself as a student at the Jefferson Medical College, of 

 Philadelphia, he was at the same time an office pupil of Professor George 

 McClellan, if one of the most eccentric, also one of the most original and 

 successful surgeons of his day ; and it is very likely that young Gross, 

 who through life preserved a veneration for his brilliant preceptor, got his 

 bias for surgery from this association. And how he worked as a student 1 

 Tales are still current at the College, transmitted through janitors and 

 college servitors, and losing nothing in coloring by the diffusion through 



