FRANCIS, JOHN WAKEFIELD. 



327 



Rome was strongly denounced by the liberals. 

 Signor Ratazzi, the Italian premier, visited 

 Paris, and had an interview with the emperor, 

 but without any apparent result. It was be- 

 lieved that the emperor was favorable at heart 

 to the wishes of the Italian king, but the pope 

 was impracticable, and the resort to compulsory 

 measures to induce him to relinquish his tem- 

 poral sovereignty, would have evoked a storm 

 among the Catholic powers, which the emperor 

 was desirous of avoiding. 



In December, M. Ernest Renan, a young but 

 distinguished savant, of Jewish extraction, was 

 appointed to a theological chair in the Univer- 

 sity, much to the joy of the students, but to the 

 displeasure of the Roman Catholic party. M. 

 Renau's opening lecture was very able and elo- 

 quent, but not at all in accordance with the 

 views of the Catholic Church ; and the clergy 

 obtained an order prohibiting him from giving 

 further instruction. This prohibition led to 

 an excitement and riot on the part of the stu- 

 dents of the Quartier Latin, and as a large part 

 of those who participated in the riot were radi- 

 cals and already suspect, (i. e., on the police lists 

 as of doubtful loyalty,) some hundreds were 

 arrested and committed to prison. The excite- 

 ment was kept up for some weeks and arrests 

 continued to be made ; but eventually the 

 greater part of those who had been arrested 

 were discharged. 



FRANCIS, Joira WAKEFIELD, M. D., LL. D., 

 an American physician and author, born in the 

 city of New York, Nov. IT, 1T89, died in the 

 same city Feb. 8, 1861. His father was a Ger- 

 man, who emigrated to this country soon after 

 the close of the revolutionary war, and his 

 mother, though a native of Philadelphia, was 

 of Swiss extraction. He was apprenticed to 

 the printer's profession while a lad, but subse- 

 quently prepared for college, under eminent 

 teachers, and entered Columbia College in ad- 

 vance, in 180T, and soon after commenced the 

 study of medicine in the office of Dr. Hosack. 

 He graduated as A. B. in 1809 and M. D. in 

 1811, at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. 

 Soon after taking his medical degree, Dr. Ho- 

 sack offered him a partnership, which he ac- 

 cepted, and which extended to literary as well 

 as professional pursuits, and continued till 1820. 

 He had, indeed, in 1810, been associated with 

 his then preceptor in editing the " American 

 Medical and Philosophical Register," which 

 was continued for four years. 



In 1813, when but twenty -four years of age, 

 he was appointed lecturer in the Institute of 

 Medicine and Materia Medica at the College of 

 Physicians and Surgeons ; and, when soon after 

 the medical faculty of Columbia College was 

 consolidated with that institution, he was ap- 

 pointed professor of materia medica in the 

 united body. After delivering one course of 

 lectures without fees, from the fear lest the in- 

 creased expense of the new establishment should 

 deter some from taking lectures, he sailed for 

 Europe to perfect himself in the knowledge 



requisite for his professorship, and to become 

 familiar with any new features in the medical 

 instruction of the schools abroad. "While in 

 Europe he formed the acquaintance of the most 

 eminent physicians and literary men of the time. 

 On his return he entered again upon his duties 

 as professor, first of the institutes of medicine, 

 afterwards of medical jurisprudence, then of 

 obstetrics, and finally of forensic medicine, and 

 filled these professorships with great ability in 

 the united Medical College till 1826, and then 

 for four years more in the Rutgers Medical Col- 

 lege. During all this period, with the added 

 cares of a large medical practice, he never re- 

 laxed his interest in literature or the fine arts. 

 He was a ready and eloquent writer, and while 

 he performed a large amount of literary labor 

 in connection with his profession, he contrib- 

 uted freely by his writings to the cultivation of 

 a taste for general literature and the fine arts. 

 In 1830 he relinquished his post as professor, 

 and devoted his attention to his practice and 

 to literary pursuits, and to the promotion of 

 those public charities so congenial to his kindly 

 and generous nature. The New York Histori- 

 cal Society was an especial favorite with him, 

 and the New York Lyceum of Natural History 

 hardly less so. His early connection with the 

 typographic art led him to affiliate himself with 

 the Typographical Society, of which he was till 

 his death a valued member. In the promotion 

 of the fine arts he was especially interested, 

 and the young painter or sculptor always found 

 in him a genial and warm-hearted friend, to 

 whom he could confide his trials and difficulties 

 with the certainty of receiving hearty sym- 

 pathy. The Woman's Asylum and the Ine- 

 briate Asylum both secured his services as 

 their president, and both were the recipients 

 of large-handed charity and earnest labor from 

 him. The early period at which he entered 

 upon public life, his clear and tenacious mem- 

 ory, and his great conversational powers made 

 him always a welcome guest at every public 

 entertainment, and his historical reminiscences 

 of New York, at the beginning of the present 

 century, were always deeply interesting. He 

 had published seven or eight medical treatises, 

 besides numerous essays in the medical period- 

 icals, biographical sketches of great numbers 

 of eminent men of the last half century with 

 whom he had been intimate ; addresses, al- 

 most without number, before the Historical, 

 Horticultural, Typographical, and other soci- 

 eties, Bellevue Hospital, the Lyceum of Nat- 

 ural History, and New York Academy of Medi- 

 cine ; and several historical and biographical 

 monographs, mostly on the men and times of 

 old New York. He was the first president of 

 the New York Academy of Medicine after its 

 organization in 184T, and was elected an asso- 

 ciate of numerous medical and scientific asso 

 ciations abroad as well as in this country. Per 

 haps no man in the city of New York wa 

 more universally popular with its citizens. Ai 

 his funeral the concourse which gathered to do 



