1ST3.] J- ' O ^ Bell . 



The former appeared in 1831, and the latter (entitled "The Philadel- 

 phia Practice of Midwifery ") in 1838. 



At an earlier date, and while still an editor of the Medical Journal, he 

 had brought out a translation of Ilufeland on Scrofula, in 1829, and in 

 the same year the annual discourse before the Philadelphia Medical 

 Society. As we find him at this time, so he continued in the whole of 

 his subsequent professional career, snatching at every interval left in bis 

 attendance on his patients to continue his studious life. Often would he, 

 returning to his home from a detention through the greater part of the 

 night in a sick-room, sit down to his desk and cheat himself of the few 

 remaining hours till morning, in place of gladly taking the needed 

 repose. Tins strain on mind and body carried with it the risk of a break 

 down of both, and ambition's honors being lost when they are almost 

 within grasp. Dr. Meigs in his reasoning process paid a heavy penalty 

 for a negleet of the laws of nature in much severe suffering from an 

 abdominal neuralgia, and also from a bronchial attack : but he rallied, 

 regained his elastic bearing and customary strength, and resumed his on- 

 ward course radiant and rejoicing to carry his sunshine of reviving spirit 

 and skill into a long succession of sick-rooms. 



On the breaking out of the Asiatic epidemic cholera in Philadelphia, 

 in the summer of 1832, there was a call made for the services of a num- 

 ber of her physicians to help to stay the pestilence and mitigate its vio- 

 lence. On such occasions medical men are always eager volunteers to 

 encounter the assaulting fiend, in disregard of their ease and health, and 

 ready to make the forlorn hope, and sacrifice their lives for the public good 

 and safety. 



No blast of trumpet, no beat of drum heralded the advance of the 

 physician to the conflict ; and no honors are awarded to his success, no 

 commemorative monument raised to his memory if he falls a sacrifice to 

 his duty. Within the short period of six months during which the 

 yellow fever of 1793 raged with the greatest violence in Philadelphia, 

 no less than ten physicians were carried off by the disease and scarcely 

 one of the surviving members of the faculty escaped an attack. 



In the famine year of 1847, in Ireland, one hundred and seventy-eight 

 Irish practitioners, exclusive of medical students and army surgeons, 

 died of the prevailing typhus fever, being a proportion of nearly seven 

 per cent, of the eutire medical professional force of the country. The 

 popular belief is that physicians have a kind of charmed life which gives 

 them an immunity from the common causes of disease, and it is a matter 

 of wonder that they bear up so well as they do under the various circum- 

 stances in which they are so continually placed. 



Dr. Meigs was chosen to take charge of one of several temporary hos- 

 pitals opened and fitted up by the city for the reception and treatment of 

 patients who had no home nor the means of procuring suitable diet and 

 nursing. In acknowledgment of their services, which happily were of 

 short duration and unattended by mortality in their number, he, in com- 

 mon with each of his associates, received from the City Councils a silver 

 pitcher. 



