a ia 
Dr. Jacob Bigelow. 265 
any other country, arranged upon the Linnean artificial system. 
Much later in life the author contemplated a revision of the 
work, brought up to the time, and illustrated by chromo-litho- 
graphic plates, such as we have lately seen turned to good 
account. But after some consideration the project was aban- 
doned. He did not propose himself to undertake the editorial 
work: for he had long since passed from actual service into 
the emeritus or honorary rank of botanists ; and his active pro- 
fessional life, already verging to its close, was diversified or 
relieved by other avocations. Indeed some of these were 
taken up very early. He became Rumford Professor of the 
Applications at Cambridge in 1816, and delivered annual 
courses of lectures until 1827, when he published the sub- 
stance of them in a volume entitled Elements of Technology, 
here coining this apt word. During all this time, and muc 
longer, he was Professor of Materia Medica in the medical 
school of Harvard University, namely, from 1815 to 1855; 
for many of these years one of the physicians of the Massa- 
chusetts General Hospital; through al] of them, and until 
old age disabled him, a leading physician of Boston. From 
the year 1847 to 1863 he was President of the American 
Academy of Arts and Sciences, of which body he was a mem- 
ber for sixty-seven years! 
We cannot here refer to Dr. Bigelow’s various professional and 
literary writings. They are not numerous, but are weighty. 
His treatise on “ Nature in Disease,” which contains the famous 
discourse “ On Self-limited Disease,” is the most important of 
them; and an address “On the Limits of Education,” delivered 
in the year 1865 before the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology, is notable. It has been said of the latter, that 
never before was the depreciation of classical study or general 
culture, as a preparation for technical scientific education, 
undertaken by so ripe a classical scholar or so wide-cultured a 
man. His many essays in English and Latin verse, some of 
which have been privately printed, ought to be collected. Dr. 
Bigelow lived, honored and trusted, to a good old age before 
infirmities touched his frame, and only toward the close was 
the brightness of his acute mind dimmed. e candle at 
length burnt down, the flame flickered awhile in the socket, 
and the light went out. : 
The name will abide in botanical nomenclature. First ap- 
peared in Rees’ Cyclopedia the Bigelowia of Smith, founded on 
the Adelia of Michaux. But that is Forestiera. Then Sprengel, 
in 1821, founded a genus Bigelovia on a Brazilian plant which 
he took to be a Rhamnacea; but it is a species of Casearia. 
Again, in 1824, Sprengel gave the name to a part of Spermacoce, 
the Borreria of G. Meyer. Then DeCandolle, in 1824, was 
