(Excerpt from Report on the Medico-Legal Duties of Coroner...)
Excerpt from Report on the Medico-Legal Duties of Coroners, 1857 Previous to the publication of the Magna Charta, Coroners not only received accusations against offenders, but they also proceeded to try them. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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He was born on December 17, 1828 in Georgetown, District of Columbia, United States, the son of Raphael Semmes of Nanjemoy, Charles County, Maryland, and Matilda (Jenkins), and a first cousin of Raphael Semmes. Both his grandfathers were officers of Maryland troops in the Revolutionary War. They were descendants of English Catholic gentry who came to Maryland in the following of the Calverts.
Alexander received the degree of A. B. in 1850 from Georgetown College. He began the study of medicine in Paris and was given his medical degree in 1851 by the medical department of Columbian College, District of Columbia, after a year's course.
He studied at Pio Nono College, near Macon, Georgia, and at the Benedictine monastery of St. Vincent at Latrobe.
For a short time he practised in Washington, and then joined an elder brother, Thomas Jenkins Semmes, in New Orleans, where he became resident physician of Charity Hospital.
At the outbreak of the Civil War he was appointed surgeon of the 8th Louisiana Infantry and shortly thereafter was commissioned as surgeon in the Confederate army. He served for two years as brigade surgeon of Hay's Louisiana brigade in Jackson's corps of the Army of Northern Virginia and later was placed in charge of a section of the Jackson Military Hospital in Richmond. In addition to these duties, he was at various times medical inspector of the Department of Northern Virginia, inspector of hospitals, and member of the board for the examination of medical officers.
With the close of the war he returned to New Orleans and renewed his connection with Charity Hospital as a physician; subsequently, he moved to Savannah, Georgia, where he became a highly successful practitioner and from 1870 to 1876 was professor of physiology at the Savannah Medical College.
At the height of his medical career Semmes applied to the bishop of Savannah for permission to enter the Catholic priesthood. He was ordained at Macon in 1878. For a short time he was engaged in parish duties and then, 1886, returned to Pio Nono College as its president and lecturer on English and American literature and history. He served thus for five years and was thereafter chaplain of the school and asylum of the Sisters of St. Joseph at Sharon, Georgia. He continued in this congenial work until a paralytic stroke in 1895 incapacitated him from further active service and he took up his abode with his brother in New Orleans.
During his last months he was under the care of the Sisters of Charity, where he died. One of his earliest and most noteworthy articles is Report on the Medico-Legal Duties of Coroners, a pamphlet published in Philadelphia in 1857.
He died in 1898.
Alexander Semmes was highly successful physician and professor of physiology at the Savannah Medical College. Besides, for fifteen years he was the chaplain of the school and asylum of the Sisters of St. Joseph at Sharon, strenghten the congregational mission throughout the state. He was also famous as the author of writings for medical and literary periodicals, that cover a wide range of topics: "Report on the Medico-Legal Duties of Coroners", "Poisoning by Strychnia - The Gardiner Case", "Reports of Cases of Gunshot Wounds".
(Excerpt from Report on the Medico-Legal Duties of Coroner...)
He was a man of uncommon scholarship. Deeply religious from early training, he is described as having been gentle and courteous and yet forceful, a man of ready sympathy and broad charity.
He had been married on October 4, 1864, at Savannah, to Sarah Lowndes Berrien, daughter of John MacPherson Berrien, attorney general in the cabinet of President Jackson and for many years United States senator from Georgia. She died within a year after their marriage.
