CASPAR WISTAR 85 



" Dear Dr. Kelly: 



" Well may you be ( in love with Dr. Wistar.' 

 Every one was in love with him ! It was probably 

 his most marked characteristic to draw the ad- 

 miration, love and respect of all with whom he 

 came in contact. By virtue of his social and 

 scholarly instincts his rooms were informally 

 open to his friends on Sunday, later (by request 

 of his wife) on Saturday evenings, when tea and 

 cake were handed, and every savant from far and 

 near was sure of an invitation to his salon." 



Once a week, in his house at the southwest 

 corner of Fourth and Locust Streets, he received 

 his friends and any distinguished strangers who 

 happened to be in town. After Wistar's death 

 his friends kept up these " Wistar Parties " in one 

 another's house for over forty years. The mem- 

 bers were fifty in number and members of the 

 American Philosophical Society. S. D. Gross 

 was the one who gave the last party. Wistar died 

 suddenly on January 18, 1818, of heart disease; 

 his last words were: " I wish well to all man- 

 kind." His memory has been perpetuated in the 

 Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, Phila- 

 delphia, and in the Wistaria, concerning which 

 his great nephew, Dr. Thomas Wistar, writes to 

 me: 



" As to the naming of the genus Wistaria in 

 honor of Dr. Caspar Wistar, there is not the 



