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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