SKETCH OF PROF. JOHN LE CONTE. 



5 



During his senior year at college Mr. Le Conte was bereft of 

 his devoted father, who died after a very brief illness. This ca- 

 lamity hastened his selection of a profession. In August, 1838, 

 he was graduated with high honor. Immediately afterward he 

 began the study of medicine, and in the spring of 1839 he entered 

 the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, where, in 

 March, 1841, he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine. A few 

 months before his graduation in medicine another domestic calam- 

 ity befell him in the death of his eldest brother, William, to whom 

 had been committed the charge of the family estates in Georgia. 

 This event hastened Dr. Le Conte's return home in the spring of 

 1841, to take charge of the estate as the eldest surviving son, and 

 frustrated the execution of a cherished plan for supplementing 

 his medical education by a year's residence in Paris. 



During the summer of 1841 Dr. Le Conte returned to New York, 

 and was married in July to Miss Josephine Graham, of that city, 

 an accomplished young lady of Scottish and English extraction. 

 The deep love and earnest devotion, and the consequent domestic 

 happiness which crowned this union, contributed more than all 

 else afterward to fortify and sustain him in the battle of life. Mrs. 

 Le Conte was a woman of wonderful personal magnetism, queenly 

 in bearing, and of extraordinary beauty. Her brilliancy and wit, 

 her quick insight and ready tact, added to her majestic presence, 

 made her the center of attraction in every social gathering. In 

 after-years, especially at the annual meetings of the American As- 

 sociation for the Advancement of Science, such men as Bache, 

 Peirce, Henry, and Agassiz vied with each other in doing her 

 homage. Her fame in social circles equaled that of her husband 

 among men of science ; and no important step in his life has been 

 taken without acknowledgment of the help derived from the so- 

 cial influence of a wife of whom he was justly proud. 



In the autumn of 1842 Dr. Le Conte established himself as a 

 practitioner of medicine in Savannah, Georgia. His four years of 

 residence in that city formed no exception to the usual experience 

 of a young doctor : a very small practice and an increasing fam- 

 ily. It afforded, however, an excellent opportunity for study and 

 research, and it was during this period that he made his most im- 

 portant contributions to medical literature. These at once estab- 

 lished his reputation in the profession as an acute observer, cau- 

 tious, exact, and industrious. The first of them, entitled " A Case 

 of Carcinoma of the Stomach," published in the " New York Med- 

 ical Gazette " in 1842, was the initial outcome of a series of obser- 

 vations on cancer that has been continued from time to time, even 

 after Dr. Le Conte's abandonment of the practice of medicine. At 

 this period he probably paid more attention to physiology than to 

 an^^ other of the departments included in medical science, and his 



