Jameson

JAMESON, HORATIO GATES (i7;8-Aug.
26, 1855), physician, surgeon, and teacher, was
born in York, Pa., the son of Dr. David and
Elizabeth (Davis) Jameson. He attended no
medical school, but studied medicine under his
father and began practice at seventeen in Som-
erset County, Pa. Moving to Baltimore in 1810,
he followed lectures at the University of Mary-
land, taking the degree of M.D. in 1813. Like
many early American physicians he combined
the practice of medicine with the business of a
druggist. He became a prominent citizen of
Baltimore, serving as surgeon to the federal
troops in 1812, physician to the City Jail, sur-
geon, 1814-35, and consulting physician, 1821-
35, to the Board of Health. He had before him
a promise of an unusual medical career, but was
over-ambitious and unwilling to wait. He quar-
relled with the faculty of the University of
Maryland Medical School, insisting that they
had refused him due consideration, and founded
a medical school of his own, the Washington
Medical College. The University attempted to
prevent the granting of a charter to the new in-
stitution but failed. The new college opened
(1827) on North Holliday Street and flourished
for a time. Under Jameson's ambitious influence
it, expanded too rapidly, securing a university
charter in 1839 and erecting a hospital and col-
lege on North Broadway on the site of the pres-
ent Church Home. In 1849, it moved again to
the southeast corner of Hanover and Lombard
Streets, but it was heavily in debt. The build-
ings were sold and the college closed in 1851.
Jameson was greatly humiliated by its gradual
failure. A secondary result of his activity in this
connection was a criminal trial (American Med-
ical Recorder, January 1829, pp. 209-32) in
which Jameson sued Dr. French Hintz for defa-
mation of character. Jameson was finally vindi-
cated and his opponent fined, but the inheritance
of enmity and bitterness endured for many years.
Jameson was a voluminous writer. He pub-
lished accounts of many unusual operations, such
as extirpation of the upper jaw after ligation of
the carotid artery, which he performed for the
first time in 1820 (American Medical Recorder,
April 1821), and the first removal in America
of uterine scirrhus (Ibid., July 1824). After
Dorsey and Post, he was the third surgeon to
ligate successfully the external iliac artery
(Ibid., January 1822). He also edited (1829-
32) the Maryland Medical Recorder, contrib-
uting many papers himself, published four pa-
pers on yellow and typhus fevers (1825-30),
American Domestic Medicine (1817; 2nd ed.,
1818), and a more ambitious Treatise on Epi-

Jameson

demic Cholera (1855). He left a memoir of his
father. In 1830, by invitation, he visited Ger-
many and Scandinavia to read a paper before a
society of German physicians, being the first
American member of such a congress and the
only representative on this occasion from the
United States. During the cholera epidemic he
had charge of several hospitals. He became in
1832 superintendent of vaccination, and by pass-
ing the virus through the cow improved the
process. In 1835-36 he was for one term pro-
fessor of surgery at the Medical College of Ohio,
Cincinnati (Otto Juettner, Daniel Drake and
His Followers, 1909, pp. 194-95). He possessed
the physical qualities necessary for a great sur-
geon, a habit of meticulous cleanliness, mechan-
ical ability, and boundless energy. His faults
were those of an ambitious man who tried to
force circumstances to his will instead of mold-
ing them patiently. Probably his most impor-
tant contribution to surgery was his use of the
animal ligature: a distinction which he shares
with Dr. Philip Syng Physick of Philadelphia
(Medical Recorder, January 1827). He died
while visiting New York City, in 1855, and was
buried in Baltimore. By his first wife, Cath-
erine Shevell of Somerset County, Pa., whom he
married Aug. 3, 1797, he had seven children.
All his sons became physicians, but died without
issue. Following his wife's death, in 1837, he
married, in 1852, Hannah (Pearson) Ely, a
widow, by whom he had no children.

[H. A. Kelly and W. L. Burrage, Am. Medic. Biogs.
(1930) ; H. 0. Marcy, in Trans. Southern Surg* and
Gynecol Asso., vol. XIX (1907); E. F. Cordell, Univ.
of Md., 1807-1907 (2 vols., 1907), and The Medic. An-
nals of Md. (1903), with portrait; A. C P. Callisen,
Medicinisches Schriftsteller-Lexicon (Copenhagen), vol.
IX (1832), pp. 402-05, art. 780, nos. .2532-57; F. H.
Garrison, An Introduction to the Hist, of Medicine (4th
ed, 1929) ; J. R. Quinlan, Medic. Annals of Baltimore,
1608-1880 (1884) ; E. O. Jameson, The Jamesons in
America, 1647-1900 (1901); Evening Post (N. Y.),
Aug. 28, 1855; Baltimore Sun, Aug. 28, 1855.]

J.R.O.

JAMESON, JOHN ALEXANDER (Jan.
25, i824-June 16, 1890), jurist, was born in
Irasburgh, Vt. His parents were Thomas and
Martha (Gilchrist) Jameson, Thomas being a
descendant of Hugh Jameson, of Scotch ances-
try, who emigrated from Ulster, Ireland, in 1746
and finally settled in Londonderry, N. H. John's
character was crystallized in an atmosphere of
dignity, uncompromising uprightness, industry,
rigorous morality, social reticence, and quiet
domesticity; and while the orthodox Calvinism
of his childhood gave way to religious liberalism
in his adult years, the solid framework of his
heritage remained formidable to the end. His
father had been honored with the office of sheriff

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