94 SOME AMERICAN MEDICAL BOTANISTS 



time in getting as far as 74 printed pages in his 

 Flora Virginica, and a new edition of the first 

 volume of the Elements of Botany, the second 

 volume of this edition appearing in 18 14; also 

 in this year the first part of the Archaeologiae 

 Americanae Telluris Collectanea et Specimina, 

 64 pages, and a new edition of his memoir on 

 the fascinating faculty of various kinds of ser- 

 pents. 



" The pernicious consequences of his midnight 

 and injudicious toils " sapped his vitality. A 

 severe hemorrhage interrupted his work, and in 

 April, 1 815, he tried a sea voyage to France, 

 returning by England. Landing in New York 

 in November, he had not strength to get on home, 

 being laid up for three weeks by hydrothorax. 

 Travelling slowly home, by ship or one of the 

 " highflyer " coaches, he was only fit for bed on 

 arrival. Yet the indomitable spirit of work pre- 

 vailed, and three days before the end, and in 

 spite of frequent hemorrhages, he wrote a paper 

 — part of which I have quoted — concerning the 

 genus of plants named in his honor, a paper 

 which his nephew, W. P. C. Barton, read at the 

 following meeting of the American Philosoph- 

 ical Society. 



Early in the morning of December 19, 1815, 

 Barton was found dead in bed. Relatives, hastily 

 summoned, receive no parting words, but dumbly 



