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Life of Thomas Eddy

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I need not enlarge. I think you may safely assent to the con-clusion, that the subject of your biography appropriated the best years of a long life to the best purposes of man; that he may be justly deemed enlightened, among a people whose frugal views occasion perhaps too partial and too low an estimation of intellec-tual acquirements; that he was eminently conspicuous in a society deservedly regarded as excelling all others in works of charity and philanthropy. I am acquainted with but one striking instance in his whole life in which the integrity of his judgment was seriously impugned: he was unwittingly captivated by the enthusiasm which prevailed concerning the metallic tractors, and was led to confide in the remedial efficacy of Perkinism, by experiments instituted at the New York Hospital, where that practice was countenanced for a short while by certain of the physicians of that charity. But little censure can rest with him on this particular account: he was not educated a physician ; and this extraordinary deception received the support of many eminent professional characters, both in Europe and America, and indeed was not completely exploded as an unwarrantable hypothesis until subjected to the clinical acu-men of Dr. Haygarth. A word or two on your inquiry relative to his son John Eddy. I refer you to a short memoir of him printed in the American Monthly Magazine; more might have been said of his know-ledge of the physical branches of science, than is there recorded. He was a good zoologist, an excellent mineralogist, and a minute botanist. His acquisitions in this last named department were very remarkable. He was a member of the botanical class when I attended Columbia College in 1809-10. But it was requisite, on account of his being a deaf-mute, that his studies should be prosecuted privately by the intervention of signs and the manual alphabet. He found a friend willing to give him the necessary direction and aid, in his relative, the professor of Botany, Dr. Hosack. By visible signs, instead of accentible sounds, he mas-tered the Linnean system, and subsequently became a practical botanist. He formed an herbarium of some extent, of our indi-genous plants. The greater acuteness of the surviving senses when one or more are destroyed, was verified in the case of JohnEddy. His industry was unintermitting, and his attainments