MEMOIR OF BENJAMIN PAGE, M.D.*
Born April 12, 1770; died Jan. 25, 1844.
[Communicated for the Boston Medical
and Surgical Journal.]
"On doit des égards aux vivans ; on ne doit
que la vérité aux morts."
THE living owe the dead, who have spent a long
and highly respectable and useful life in the midst of them, a public
exposition of their virtues. To friends it furnishes a precious memorial
; to successors it transmits a loved image of departed excellence. It
greatly serves to arouse and confirm virtuous resolutions and useful efforts,
and repress and weaken application of native endowments and acquired powers
to frivolous or hurtful purposes. In the memory of the good deeds of the
departed, we may learn
"How much it is a meaner thing,
To be unjustly great than honorably good."
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These reflections have been suggested by the death of the late BENJAMIN
PAGE, MD, M.M.S.S., of Hallowell, Maine, who died on the 25th day of January,
1844, in the 74th year of his age.
Dr. Page, whose death excited so much interest and called up so much
general feeling, belonged to a family of great respectability and medical
talents. His father, Benjamin Page, served as hospital surgeon in the
Revolution, and accompanied the celebrated Starke, of New Hampshire, in
his early campaigns, and died at Hallowell in 1820, at the advanced age
of 76. The son, following the example of the father, chose the medical
profession, in which he soon acquired an enviable distinction and practised
with a constantly increasing reputation and success to the end of his
long and eminent career, on the very spot where more than half a century
previous he reared his medical benner and commenced the monument of his
fame. His eldest son, also, follows pari passu in his footsteps,
having taken his medical degree at Harvard in 1821, and could ask for
no greater honor than that his father's mantle should fall upon his shoulders.
Dr. Page was born April 12, 1770, at Exeter, in the State of New Hampshire,
and received his preparatory education at the Academy in
* This Memoir was intended for an earlier No. of the
Journal, but owing to some delay in producing the lithographic likeness
which accompanies it, it has necessarily been reserved for the present
time.
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