Jarvis

ticello" to test the excellence of the Carrasguiera
and other wines which Jarvis had procured for
him in 1803.

After his return to the United States in 1810
he bought a farm at Weathersfield, Vt., on the
Connecticut River, and devoted himself with
meticulous care to its cultivation, although the
condition of his business in Lisbon compelled him
to make a hazardous visit there (1813-15). He
continued to take an active interest in public
affairs; he was an ardent protectionist and in
1827 was a delegate to the Harrisburg Conven-
tion. In 1808 he had married at Lisbon, Mary
Pepperrell Sparhawk, a niece of his step-moth-
er: she died in 1811 and in 1817 he married her
cousin, Ann Bailey Bartlett By his first wife
he had two children, and by the second, ten. His
contribution to the economic history of the coun-
try is commemorated by a sheep carved on his
headstone at Weathersfield.

[Mary Pepperrell Sparhawk (Jarvis) Cutts, his
daughter, published a memoir of Jarvis in the Christian
Register (Boston), Feb. 26, 1859, The Life and Times
of Hon. Wm. Jarvis of Weathersfield, Vt. (1869),
and "Sketch of Mrs. Wm. Jarvis of Weathersfield,
Vt.," in Essex Inst. Hist. Colls., vol. XXIV (1888).
Hampden Cutts, his son-in-law, published "The Life
and Public Service of the late Hon. Wm. Jarvis/' New-
Eng. Hist, and Ceneal. Reg., July 1866. See also
Usher Parsons, "Pepperrell Geneal.," Ibid., Jan. 1866;
Zadock Thompson, A Gazetteer of the State of Vt.
(1824), p. 276; J. P. Gunnell, "Farming in the New
England States," in Senate Esc. Doc. No. 39, 37 Cong.,
2 Sess., p. 259 ; U. S. Merino Sheep Reg.> voL I (Zanes-
ville, Ohio, 1876) ; Spanish Merino Sheep, Their Im-
portation from Spain, Introd. iwto Vt., vol. I (1879);
Reg. of the Ohio Spanish Merino Sheep Breeders'
Asso., voL I (1885) ; E. A. Carman, H. A. Heath, and
J. Minto, Special Report on the Hist, and Present Con-
dition of the Sheep Industry of the U. S. (1892) ; G. A.
Jarvis, The Jarvis Family (1879) J Jarvis' Consular
Reports, 1802-10, in the Dept. of State, Washington;
Daily Evening Traveller (Boston), Oct 26, 1859.]

W.E.L.

JARVIS, WILLIAM CHAPMAN (May 13,
i855-July 30, 1895), physician, pioneer laryn-
gologist and rhinologist, was born at Fortress
Monroe, Va,, the son of an army physician,
Nathan Sturges Jarvis. Following the death of
his father in 1862 he went to Baltimore where
he was educated at private schools. Early in life
he showed mechanical skill and inventive in-
genuity and was a good draftsman; he also
owned a microscope and was an amateur pho-
tographer. Having decided upon a medical ca-
reer, he took the degree of M.D. at the University
of Maryland in 1875 ano^ then devoted two years
to post-graduate work at Johns Hopkins, study-
ing biology under Henry Augustus Rowland and
Henry Newell Martin and chemistry under Ira
Remsen. In 1877 he settled in New York City
as a general practitioner on the East Side. Hav-

Jarvis

ing obtained an assistantship in Professor Frank
H. Bosworth's nose and throat service in the
Bellevue Hospital out-patient department he de-
cided to confine his work to this specialty, al-
though he always retained his interest in general
medicine and in all ways sought to counteract
the narrowing influence of specialism. He worked
without any effort at publicity, without the pres-
tige of a trip abroad, and with practically no
backing, and in 1881 published a description of
his famous "snare" or cold wire ecraseur which
revolutionized the treatment of intranasal tu-
mors. It was then that he was offered and ac-
cepted a lectureship in laryngology in the medi-
cal department of the University of the City of
New York (later New York University) and in
1886 he was given, a professorship.

From the early eighties until the failure of his
health, Jarvis* career was marked by a series
of innovations in the diagnosis and treatment of
nasal and laryngeal diseases. None was of the
importance of his snare and some would have
come about at the hands of others, but he was
first in the field. In 1884, soon after the intro-
duction of cocaine, he reported his application of
it as a local anesthetic and at about the same time
he made use of Edison's newly invented mignon
lamp to illuminate the larynx. Three years later
he applied electrically-driven drills to intranasal
bone work. Other well-known devices which he
invented were a laryngeal applicator for cauter-
izing the ulcers of laryngeal tuberculosis and an
operating nasal speculum. Every instrument in
use in his office was in some way modified by
him for his own work. During the years 1880-
92 he contributed thirty-one papers to periodical
literature on his special subjects, all brief with
the exception of the section on intranasal sur-
gery in Volume II of Charles Henry Burnett's
System of Diseases of the Ear, Nose and Throat
(1893) • After years of intense application Jarvis*
health began to fail and he was found to be suf-
fering from an obscure abdominal ailment. He
resigned his active teaching in 1893 but was
given an emeritus professorship. His death took
place while he was visiting his brother at Wil-
let's Point, N. Y. It may be said of him that his
honors came to him unsought, that he was quite
indifferent to publicity and was very conserve^
tive and modest in his claims*:allowing his in-
novations to speak for themsdves.

[Trans. Am. LaryngoL Ass&, vol. XVII (1896);
Medic. Record, Aug. 31, 1895:; R#vue IntemaL de .
Rhinol, Otol, et Laryngol., Jtua? 1807; Gea &, Jarvis
and others, The Jarvis Family (1897); "Blog, and
Bibliog. of Wm. Chapman JarvS," an anonymous MS.
in the library of the N. Y. Aca$. of Medicine; tf. Y*
~, Aug. ir 1895.] \