Hosack

of having the empty barges towed upstream and
built the first towboat to ply inland waters. It
was driven by a single engine and was a "side-
wheeler." It was named the Condor and during
the forty years which followed the "Condor"
idea spread and Horton profited immensely.

The presence of numerous salt wells in this
region made the salt trade increasingly impor-
tant. Horton was among the first to enter the
business on a large scale and in 1851 organized
the Pomeroy Salt Company. Among the wells
which he drilled was one which remained in
operation for forty years and produced salt esti-
mated at ten million barrels during that time.
The Civil War increased the growth of the trade
especially since foreign importation stopped.
The opening of the Michigan and New York
supplies, however, brought about keen competi-
tive conditions and led to the reorganization of
the Ohio River Salt Company with Horton as
president. This company was regarded as one of
the early trusts. Horton was a member in 1850
of the Ohio constitutional convention and served
in Congress in 1854 as an anti-slavery Whig,
capturing what was ordinarily a Democratic
stronghold. He was reflected two years later
but refused a third nomination. In 1860, how-
ever, he was nominated by the Republicans with-
out his knowledge or consent and accepted only
for "the good old cause of human liberty." He
served on the ways and means committee and in
1861 he was a member of the Peace Congress in
Washington. For forty years he was a trustee
of the Ohio University at Athens, Ohio. He had
six children, one of whom was Samuel Dana
Horton [q.v."]. One daughter, Clara Pomeroy
Horton, married John Pope [#.#.], and another
daughter, Frances Dabney Horton, married
Manning Ferguson Force \_q.v..].

[G. M, Dodge and W. A. Ellis, Norwich Univ., 1819-
jpii, Her Hist., Her Grads., Her Roll of Honor (1911),
II, 141-42; C B. Galbreath, Hist, of Ohio (1925), JIť
57-58; Sioff. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928); J. G. Blaine,
Twenty Years of Cong., I (1884), pp. 416^.; A. A.
Pomeroy, Hish and Geneal of the Pomeroy family
(1912); Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, Jan. 14, 15,
1888.] A. I.

HOSACK, ALEXANDER EDDY (Apr. 6,
i8os-Mar. 2, 1871), surgeon, was born in New
York City, the son of Dr. David Hosack [q.vl
and his second wife, Mary Eddy, adopted daugh-
ter of Caspar Wistar \_q.v*"\. Under an intensive
course of private instruction he developed in-
cipient tuberculosis which interfered with his
college program, but he was able to take a degree
in medicine in 1824 at the University of Penn-
sylvania, where he was the last private pupil of
Dr. Philip Syng Physick [q.v.~\. He at once
went to Paris for the study of surgery, where he

Hosack

was externe for eighteen months and interne for
one year at the Hotel Dieu. With Ricord and
Nelaton he was a private pupil of Dupuytren, but
his health did not permit him to study under
Amussat, who required his pupils to rise at 3
A. M. Returning to New York in 1827, Hosack
plunged at once into a surgical career. He seems
to have brought with him knowledge of the tech-
nic of Syme's new operation for exsection of the
elbow and by 1833 he was distinguished for im-
provements in the technic of cleft palate opera-
tion. Operating in all regions of the body, he
was a pioneer urological surgeon. By 1839 he
had operated on twenty-three patients for stone
in the bladder and was successful in employing
a technic which did not leave the male patient
sexually impotent. In that year appeared his
paper on the removal of sensitive tumors of the
female urethra (New York Journal of Medicine
and Surgery, July 1839), which is regarded as a
classic. When Dr. J. C. Warren of Boston an-
nounced his memorable discovery of the value of
sulphuric ether as an anesthetic, Hosack tested
the new resource promptly (1847), and in a
single session amputated a limb, removed two
breasts, and operated for stone ("Cases Illustra-
tive of the Beneficial Effects of Ether," Boston
Medical and Surgical Journal, Aug. n, 1847).
He operated successfully for malignant disease
of the head by ligating the carotids. Although
he had begun to operate at the early age of nine-
teen and had a brilliant though not extensive
operative record, he seems in the end to have
turned against surgery, and he once stated that
he would never devote another life to it. He was
not in any way active during the Civil War and
his last years were passed uneventfully in New-
port, R. I. As a medical practitioner he was un-
fortunate in contracting diseases and suffered
attacks of typhus, cholera, and yellow fever. He
was greatly interested in suicide and in execution
by hanging. He made a number of experiments,
some of which seemed to indicate that those thus
executed did not suffer pain. His writings were
few in number, restricted to clinical papers. In
1889 his widow, Celine B. Hosack, presented
Hosack Hall to the New York Academy of Medi-
cine, as a memorial.

[S. W. Francis, in Medic, and Surgic. Reporter, Dec.
2. 1865, repr. in his Biog. Sketches of Distinguished
Living N. Y. Surgeons (1866); J. J. Walsh, HisL of
Medicine in N. Y. (1919), vol. V; John Shrady, The
Coll of Phys. and Surgeons, N. Y. (n.d.), vol. I; H.
A. Kelly and W. L. Burrage, Am. Medic. Btogs. (1920) ;
Medic, end Surgic. Reporter, Mar. 25* *$?i J N. Y.
Times, Mar. 7, 1871.] E.P,

HOSACK, DAVID (Aug. 31, 1769-Dec 22,

1835), physician, son of Alexander and Jane
(Arden) Hosack, was born at the home of his

239