836 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sies that lie had reason to expect he left Edinburgh and took his 

 degree at Gottingen, returning to America toward the close of 

 the year 1789. He began to practice his profession in Philadel- 

 phia, where his knowledge of science soon caused him to be looked 

 upon as one of the rising young men of the day. 



The trustees of the College of Philadelphia having instituted 

 a professorship of Natural History and Botany, appointed Dr. 

 Barton, then only twenty-four years of age, to the chair. This 

 appointment was confirmed in the following year, when the col- 

 lege united with the University of Pennsylvania, and was held 

 by him for the rest of his life. Dr. Barton thus became the first 

 instructor in natural history in Philadelphia, and probably was 

 the first in any American college. Five years later the professor- 

 ship of Materia Medica in the university became vacant, and this 

 chair also was assigned to Dr. Barton and was held by him until 

 he succeeded to that of Dr. Rush. On January 28, 1798, he re- 

 ceived an appointment as one of the physicians of the Pennsyl- 

 vania Hospital, which position he held for the rest of his life. 

 Dr. Barton was a man of high ambition, and being deeply im- 

 pressed by the well-deserved fame of Prof. Rush, spared no exer- 

 tions to equal it. When the latter died, he very naturally desired 

 to obtain his professorship, and his application was followed in a 

 few months by his appointment. 



Dr. Barton had been from early life subject to haemorrhages 

 and to attacks of gout his period of illness while a student at 

 Edinburgh was due to these causes and he had further weakened 

 his health by too great application to his scientific and profes- 

 sional labors. He had sustained a severe haemorrhage just before 

 undertaking the labor of preparing for his new position. He had 

 delivered but two courses of lectures on the practice of medicine 

 when his increasing ill health decided him to try the effect of a 

 sea voyage. He accordingly sailed for France in the spring of 

 1815, and returned in November of that year, but without gain- 

 ing the benefit hoped for. Hydrothorax came on soon after he 

 landed in New York, and it was three weeks before he was able 

 to reach home. His condition became rapidly worse, and on the 

 morning of December 19, 1815, he was found dead in bed. 



Only three days before his death he wrote a memoir on a 

 genus of plants which had been named in honor of him, and re- 

 quested his nephew, Dr. W. P. C. Barton, to make a drawing to 

 accompany it. The latter did so, and read the memoir at the next 

 meeting of the American Philosophical Society. Dr. Barton was 

 elected to this society January 16, 1789, before his return from his 

 medical studies abroad, and had been one of its vice-presidents 

 since January 1, 1802. The printed Transactions of the society 

 afford abundant evidence of his activity as a member and as a 



