66 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



NECROLOGY. 



JEROME H. KIDDER. 



Dr. Jerome H. Kidder was born in Baltimore County, Md., on the 

 26th of October, 1842, and graduated in 1862 at Harvard, where he 

 is still remembered as foremost in the gymnasium as well as on his class- 

 rolls. He immediately then tendered his services for the war, and was 

 placed in charge of the sea island plantations near Beaufort, S. C,, 

 where he contracted yellow fever, and was invalided home early in 

 1863 ; but upon recovery enlisted in the Tenth Maryland Infantry, in 

 which he served as private and non-commissioned officer until the fol- 

 lowing year, when he was selected to be medical cadet, and in that ca- 

 pacity was employed in the military hospitals near the capital. During 

 this time he was prosecuting the study of medicine, and in 1866 re- 

 ceived from the University of Maryland the degree of M. D. In the 

 same year he was commissioned an assistant surgeon in the U. S. Navy, 

 becoming full surgeon in 1876. 



Dr. Kidder's first duty was at Japan, where he quickly acquired the 

 language of the country, and in other ways established the reputation 

 which attached to him throughout his career for his "capacity for taking 

 pains." While on this foreign service he was decorated by the King of 

 Portugal in recognition of services to a distressed vessel of His Majesty's 

 navy. 



Dr. Kidder took part in observing the transit of Venus at Kerguelen 

 Island, in 1874, as surgeon and naturalist of the expedition, and the ex- 

 cellent results of his scientific labors and researches therewith will be 

 found described in the Bulletins of the U. S. National Museum. After 

 the return of this expedition, Dr. Kidder arranged his specimens and 

 collections in the Smithsonian Institution, and commenced those kindly 

 and intimate relations with it which continued through his after life^ 

 with the regard of all his associates there. 



In 1878 Surgeon Kidder married, at Constantinople, Annie Mary, 

 daughter of the Hon. Horace Maynard, minister of the United States 

 to Turkey, and in 1884, having inherited an adequate fortune, he re- 

 signed his commission and established his home in- Washington, and 

 here organized the bacteriological laboratory in connection with the 

 Navy Museum of Hygiene, and also made a sanitary survey of the site 

 proposed for the new Naval Observatory, while later he was appointed 

 chemist of the U. S. Fish Commission, and in that capacity became one 

 of the most trusted advisers of Professor Baird. His laboratory was 

 in the Smithsonian building, and under the direction of the Secretary 

 of the Institution he made, at the request of Congress, an exhaustive 

 study of the ventilation of the Capitol and of the air in the Senate 

 chambers and the hall of the House, and submitted an extended report 

 or the use of the committees engaged upon the sanitary reform of the 



