Bell.] 170 [March 21, 



OBITUARY NOTICE OF CHARLES D. MEIGS, M. D. 

 By John Bell, M. D. 



(Read before the American Philosophical Society, March 21st, 1873.) 

 In preparing an obituary memoir of our deceased associate, Dr. Charles 

 D. Meigs, the writer must wish for the talent of a practised limner who 

 would give the portraiture of a man of pure morals, kind and gentle, 

 and deferentially polite, in an age of assertion, adorning and ennobling 

 his profession by his writings and prelections, his skill and tact in devis- 

 ing, and opportune the in application of the means for relief and cure of 

 sickness and suffering at all hours, and at the sacrifice of his personal 

 comfort and domestic and social pleasures. 



Doctor Meigs was born February 19th, 1792, in the Island of Bermuda, 

 where his parents had taken up their temporary abode, but in a few 

 months after they returned to their native home in New Haven, Con- 

 necticut. At the age of seven years he accompanied his father to Athens, 

 Georgia, on the occasion of the latter being made President of the Col- 

 lege at that place. Under such favoring auspices the education of 

 young Charles was carried on with the happiest results, as manifested by 

 his knowledge of the Greek and Latin classics, in addition to that in 

 other branches. He acquired, through an intimate intercourse with a 

 French emigrant noble, a command of that language, so that he was 

 able to speak and write it with great fluency and idiomatic accuracy. 

 During a portion of his boyhood his delicate frame and health gained 

 strength and restoration by following the advice of his physician, that he 

 should go for a season into the Cherokee country and participate to a 

 certain extent in Indian life. Here he found in the person of one of the 

 natives a companion and teacher in riding and shooting, whose extempore 

 lessons were probably more effective for the purposes intended than 

 formal instruction in the menage or cavalry drill. It was Chiron teach- 

 ing the future follower of Esculapius. He graduated at the University 

 of Georgia in 1809. In the same year, 1809, Dr. Meigs began his medical 

 studies under the instructions of Dr. Fendall (supposed in Augusta, 

 Georgia,) to whom he was apprenticed for three years and took his degree 

 of the Doctorate in the University of Pennsylvania, in the year 1815. 

 His next step in life, to him in every way a fortunate one, was his mar- 

 riage with Miss Mary Montgomery, of Philadelphia. From this union 

 came a numerous issue, all of the members of which were estimable, 

 some distinguished members of society. Much as may be accorded in 

 this case to a father's good example, still more was due to the affectionate 

 care and judicious guidance of the mother who in the discharge of her 

 home duties cared not for the glitter of fashion and found ample space 

 for the exercise of her true privileges without bustling in the crowd and 

 joining in angry discussions on woman's rights. 



The field chosen by Dr. Meigs for professional labor was Augusta, 

 Georgia, and the selection was followed by every prospect of success, but 

 the ill-health of Mrs. Meigs made him abandon his expectations and 

 remove to Philadelphia. Through the temporary cloud of disappoint- 



