NOTICES BIOGRAPHIQUES 



Vm. — JOSEPH LEIDY, M.D., LL.D. 



BY 



HENRY BALiD"WIN 'WARD, 



Professer of Zoology, University of Nebraska. 



Among American investigators who hâve won a place on the 

 world's roU of lionor for their work in the domain of natural 

 history there is only one who has devoted any attention to hel- 

 minthology, but his work in that department has been so important 

 as to demand récognition among the foremost workers in the field. 



Joseph Leidy was of French-German extraction, his forefather 

 Cari Leidy having come to this country from Rhenish Germany 

 about 1704. He settled in Pennsylvania where the subséquent 

 générations of the family lived in a small town, until Philip Leidy 

 moved to Philadelphia, where on Sept. 9'^^, 1823, was born Joseph 

 Leidy, the third of his four children by his first marriage. Joseph 

 Leidy lost his mother at the âge of twenty months, but of his step- 

 mother he says : « The only mother 1 hâve known, she was ail in 

 ail to me, the one to whom 1 owe ail that 1 am ». Intellectually 

 strong, of some éducation and of great ambition, she desired that 

 her children should be well educated and that her sons should 

 follow the professions. Of the boy at school it was reported by the 

 best Greek scholar in the academy that « Joseph Leidy never sized 

 up with the other boys )). He spent, in fact, much of his time at 

 his desk drawing natural objects such as snail shells, a small book 

 of sketches of which still preserved shows plainly his skill with the 

 pencil even in his tenth year, His natural ability as a draughtsman 

 led the father to map out for him a career as an artist, but after 

 the close of his school days he spent some time in a wholesale 

 drugstore. His step-mother, however, was insistent upon his 

 becoming a physician and, after the required course, the degree 

 of Doctor of Medicine was conferred upon him in 1844 by the 

 University of Pennsylvania. He began at once the practice of his 

 profession to which he was devoted about two years ; but his love 



