350 HENRY JACOB BIGELOW. 



color of cherries and that of the leaves of the tree. Still, he had a 

 passion for a picture, and spoke with enthusiasm of the color of some 

 that pleased hiiu. A bright patch on an old canvas attracted him 

 in a moment ; he would wet his finger and rub off the dust as eagerly 

 as a gold-hunter explores a pebble with shining yellow particles 

 scattered through it. He bought a good many pictures, and it was 

 generally for their color, rather than for any other excellences, so 

 fur as my observation has gone. Another of his hobbies, if I may 

 call them so, was the study of agates. He made a large collection of 

 them, and examined some points of their internal formation with great 

 interest. 



Dr. Bigelow was not in the habit of speaking of his health, but 

 he suffered at various times from symptoms of different kinds. The 

 earlier pulmonary symptoms, which have been referred to, do not 

 appear to have troubled him after the period of early manhood. 



A few years before his death he was thrown from a vehicle, and 

 received a blow on the head, which was followed by what seemed to 

 be an inflammation of some of the membranes of the brain, leading to 

 what he thought and what proved to be some thickening of the dura 

 mater. His fatal illness seemed to be entirely disconnected with the 

 injury referred to. Occasional passages of gall stones, inflammation of 

 the bile ducts extending to the liver, and producing abscesses, with 

 other marks of internal inflammation, inability to take food without 

 extreme suffeiing, ended in gradual faiUire of bodily strength, the 

 mind remaining bright and clear to very near the close of life. It 

 was noted, in examination of the brain, that its convolutions presented 

 an unusual complexity, suggesting a greater amount of vesicular 

 matter than is common. 



Dr. Bigelow wrote upon vai'ious important subjects of a more gen- 

 eral nature. In 1871 he delivered an address upon medical education 

 in America, before the Massachusetts Medical Society. In 1880 he 

 wrote a minority rejiort upon the code of ethics adopted by the Medi- 

 cal Society ; and in 1889, an article upon fees in hospitals, in which he 

 took strong ground against certain practices alleged to have grown 

 up in some of these institutions. The last paper on the list of his 

 works is entitled, "An Old Portrait of a Surgeon." A painting was 

 presented many years ago to the Society for Medical Improvement, 

 supposed to be a portrait of the great surgeon, Ambroise Fare. The 

 truth of this supposition had been questioned, and remained undecided 

 for thirty or forty years, when Dr. Bigelow thou<;]it it was time to 

 settle it authoritatively. For this purpose he instituted the most search- 



