Part 45

"His habits of study, that had been early formed, followed him into old age. New theories and discoveries in medical science were carefully criticised; the medical journals, to which he was a liberal subscriber, were read; and he was better posted in regard to the medical literature of the day than a majority of the young men in the profession.

"He exerted a strong influence on the profession itself. The quiet dignity of his character was felt by all who came in contact with him. No unguarded words passed his lips in regard to members of the profession that were absent that would not have been as freely expressed in their presence.

"The same elements of character made him a superior surgeon. His operations were complete. He had abundant resources, and, if the ordinary methods of treatment failed, was ever ready to supply their place by extraordinary methods. His contributions to medical science were of a character that reflected the highest honor upon him as a physician and skillful surgeon, and placed him in no mean rank as a benefactor of his race.

"He never indulged in sports, or frequented watering-places. His church, his home, and his professional duties filled to the full his days and years, and too many sleepless nights. His sympathies for the sick, his great benevolence, his love of neighbor as of himself, formed the mainspring of his life labors.

"We have known him in his strength, and we shall always recollect him as the strong, self-reliant, active physician. We are more than grateful for his record. Life is the sum total of so many days and years, to which may be added the little real good one has been permitted to accomplish in a lifetime. Looking back over these fifty years, can we compute the worth of such a life?"

His widow still lives, as also his son, Dr. George A. Crosby, of Manchester, an eminent physician and surgeon.

JUDGE NATHAN CROSBY.

NATHAN CROSBY, fourth son of Dr. Asa Crosby, was born in Sandwich, N. H., February 12, 1798; was graduated at Dartmouth College in 1820: read law with Stephen Moody, Esq., of Gilmanton, and Asa Freeman, of Dover, N. H., and was admitted to the bar in Strafford county in 1823. He practiced law a dozen years, mostly in Gilmanton, N. H., and Amesbury and Newburyport, Mass., until 1838, when he removed to Boston, at the call of the Massachusetts Temperance Union, to conduct two important features of the temperance cause,--the acceptance of the teetotal pledge for the ardent-spirits pledge, and prohibition for license, and to organize societies based upon those principles throughout the commonwealth. He was also editor of the Massachusetts Temperance Journal, the Cold Water Army and Temperance Almanac, and various other publications.

Subsequently, in 1843, he removed to Lowell, and was employed by the manufacturing companies of that city to purchase the large lakes in New Hampshire whose waters supply the Merrimack river, and secured for the companies one hundred thousand acres of water. Before this service was fully accomplished, he received the appointment of standing justice of the police court of Lowell, upon the resignation of the late Hon. Joseph Locke, who had held the office thirteen years. Judge Crosby was qualified May 19, 1846. This position he still holds. He has rarely failed of holding the civil terms of the court during his entire period of service. In the discharge of the duties of a local magistrate,--a position peculiarly trying, placed, as those duties are, so near the people in all their differences, controversies, temptations, follies, and depravities,--he has been at all times humane, conscientious, incorruptible, and just, aiming to do right.

In all works of philanthropy and reform, no one has a kinder heart, or a more willing or generous hand. His frequent appeals to the public, through the press, upon the temperance issues of the day have been characterized by great power, earnestness, and practical wisdom, and have been widely read and approved. He has never held political office, but has been in the ranks of the Federal, Whig, and Republican parties. He was the first man in the country to give one hundred dollars for the sanitary relief of Union soldiers in the late rebellion, and to form a soldiers' relief association, of which he was president during the war. He was the first college graduate from the town of his birth, and the last of four of his class who received the degree of Doctor of Laws.

His literary productions consist of "Obituary Notices for 1857 and 1858," in two volumes, "First Half Century of Dartmouth College," eulogies upon Judge Wilde and Hon. Tappan Wentworth, "Notices of Distinguished Men of Essex County, Mass.," the last being especially illustrative of Choate, Cushing, and Rantoul, and letters and appeals to the citizens of Lowell upon the temperance issues of 1880 and 1881. He has a nervous, but animated and entertaining style. His "First Half Century of Dartmouth College" is a model in its way, while his "Crosby Family," a genealogical work, is not the dry and uninteresting reading such literature usually is, but is entertaining, even to the general reader, for its reminiscences of individuals, and its pleasant pictures of old times in New Hampshire.

He has always cherished a deep interest in Dartmouth College, and to no slight extent has, by personal effort, brought about events which have been of substantial benefit to that ancient seat of learning.

Judge Crosby has been twice married. His first wife, Rebecca Marquand Moody, was a daughter of Stephen Moody, Esq., of Gilmanton, by whom he had nine children, of which number five are now living, namely, Frances Coffin, wife of Dr. Henry A. Martin, of Boston; Hon. Stephen Moody Crosby, of Boston; Maria Stocker, wife of the late Maj. Alexander McD. Lyon, of Erie, Penn.; Ellen Grant, wife of N. G. Norcross, Esq., of Lowell, and Susan Coffin, wife of Charles Francis, son of James B. Francis, of Lowell, the distinguished engineer. His daughter, Rebecca Marquand, widow of the late Z. B. Caverly, United States charge d'affaires at Peru, a highly accomplished and widely esteemed lady, was, with her daughter, lost on the "Schiller," a German steamer, off the English coast, in the spring of 1875,--a disaster which, at the time, created profound sorrow throughout the country. He married, May 19, 1870, Matilda, daughter of James Pickens, of Boston, and widow of Dr. J. W. Fearing, of Providence, R. I., who still lives.

Personally, the judge is a fine exemplification of the good results of temperance, self-care, and habitual good humor; and one meeting him for the first time, and noting his firm step and erect carriage, would hardly think him older than a man of sixty.

DIXI CROSBY, M. D.

DR. DIXI CROSBY, fifth son of Dr. Asa Crosby, was born in Sandwich, February 8, 1800, and died at Hanover, September 26, 1873. He married Mary Jane Moody, daughter of Stephen Moody, of Gilmanton, a distinguished lawyer, July 2, 1827. His academical preparation for his profession was quite limited; but being quick to learn, and with uncommon powers of memory, he made rapid progress in the study and practice of his profession and early became a prominent surgeon and physician, practicing in Gilmanton and Laconia till called to fill the chair of surgery in the Dartmouth Medical College, as successor of Professor R. D. Muzzey. He was placed at the head of the Medical College, in 1838, and held the place with great ability and distinction until nearly the time of his death.

His son, Prof. Alpheus B. Crosby, a young man of remarkable distinction, who died August 9, 1877, succeeded him. Another and older son is an eminent physician in Concord, N. H.

"Dr. Crosby, though a surgeon by nature and by preference, was in no modern sense a specialist. His professional labors covered the whole range of medicine. His professorship included obstetrics as well as surgery, and his practice in this department was exceptionally large. His surgical diocese extended from Lake Champlain to Boston. Of the special operations of Dr. Crosby we do not propose here to speak in detail. It is sufficient to mention that, in 1824, he devised a new and ingenious mode of reducing metacarpo-phalangeal dislocation. In 1836 he removed the arm, scapula, and three-quarters of the clavicle, at a single operation, for the first time in the history of surgery. He was the first to open abscess of the hip-joint. He performed his operations without ever having seen them performed, almost without exception. Dr. Crosby was not what may be called a rapid operator. "An operation, gentlemen," he often said to his clinical students, "is soon enough done when it is well enough done." And with him it was never done otherwise than well.

At the outbreak of the rebellion, Dr. Crosby served in the provost-marshal's office at a great sacrifice for many months, attending to his practice chiefly at night. As years and honors accumulated, Dr. Crosby still continued his work, though his constitutional vigor was impaired by the severity of the New Hampshire winters and by his unremitting labor. At length, having reached man's limit of threescore years and ten, he withdrew from active practice, and in 1870 resigned his chair in the college.

Dr. Crosby furnishes a beautiful and rare instance of a completed life. He early fixed his aim,--he reached it; he did all he attempted, and he did it well. 'Nihil tetigit, quod non ornavit.'

To those of us who had been most intimately associated with our departed friend, who had enjoyed his teachings, his counsels, and his generous kindness, the news of his death came as a heavy shock. But he still lives in the remembrance of his distinguished services, in the unfading affection and gratitude of his pupils, and in the many hearts whose burdens he has lifted. Verily, 'Extinctus amabitur idem!'"--Obituary notice of Dr. J. W. Barstow.

PROF. ALPHEUS CROSBY.

PROF. ALPHEUS CROSBY, ninth son of Dr. Asa Crosby, was born in Sandwich, October 13, 1810, died in Salem, Mass., April 17, 1874. He married for his first wife, Abigail Grant Jones Cutler, daughter of Joseph and Abi C. Grant (Jones) Cutler, of Newburyport, Mass., August 27, 1834, who died in Paris, France, March 25, 1837. He married, for his second wife, Martha Kingman, daughter of Joseph Kingman, Esq., of West Bridgewater, Mass., a teacher in the Normal School, Salem, Mass. He was childless.

Professor Hagar says: "When in his tenth year he was taken to Hanover, the seat of Dartmouth College, and was placed temporarily under Professor Adams in algebra and Euclid, under Professor James Marsh in Latin, and under Tutor Rufus Choate in Greek; and these gentlemen pronounced him fitted for college. He was subsequently put to the study of Hebrew, under the Rev. John L. Parkhurst, and was sent to Exeter Academy; but in 1823 he entered college, passed through the four years' course of study without a rival and far beyond rivalry. His power of acquisition and retention was marvelous.

"After his graduation, he spent four years at Hanover; the first, as the preceptor of Moor's Indian Charity School, and the following three as tutor in the college. He subsequently spent nearly two years at the Theological Seminary in Andover, Mass. He was appointed to a professorship of Latin and Greek in 1833. In 1847 he was released from the Latin and became professor of Greek only, which office he held until 1849, when he resigned; but he remained professor emeritus until his death."

Professor Crosby was one of the earnest Greek scholars of eminence that New England can boast, being precocious in his scholarship, and so a little in advance of Professor Felton, of Cambridge, who was a year or two older. Both graduated in 1827, Felton at Harvard, and Crosby at Dartmouth; and this, as it happens, was the year in which the first Greek lexicon, with definitions in English, came into the hands of pupils in any part of the world. It was the work of John Pickering, a Salem man, who for many years stood almost alone as a great Greek scholar in America, having preceded Crosby and Felton by more than thirty years. The young men took up the work where Pickering laid it down, and began not long after they became Greek professors in their respective colleges (Felton in 1832, and Crosby in 1833,) the task of preparing grammars, readers, and editions of authors, for the studious youth of the land. Crosby's Greek grammar and his edition of Xenophon's Anabasis soon came into common use, and have been of great service in promoting the elementary instruction of thousands of Greek scholars since; as also have Felton's Reader and his editions of Aristophanes, etc. The learning of Hadley, Goodwin, and other recent professors has gone beyond that of these pioneers in extent and accuracy, but it is doubtful whether they have done so much for rudimentary scholarship.

Professor Crosby belonged not to us alone, but to all New England,--to the whole land. Our country is poorer by the loss of an eminent scholar, one of that small band of classical scholars in America who are known and honored at foreign seats of learning. In the latest, freshest, and most original Greek grammar of Professor Clyde, of Edinburgh, the author acknowledges his obligations to four distinguished scholars, three Europeans and one American; and the American is Professor Crosby.

Professor Crosby published "A Greek and General Grammar"; "Greek Tables"; "Greek Lessons"; an edition of Xenophon's Anabasis; "Eclogae Latinae"; "First Lessons in Geometry"; also many religious and political tracts, and elementary school-books, which have been widely useful among the freedmen and Indians.