Background
He was born on March 31, 1752, he son of Samuel and Patience (Howland) Barker of Scituate, Massachussets
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Jeremiah Barker
Edit ProfileEducation
He was educated in the common schools and then studied medicine under Dr. Bela Lincoln, a graduate of Aberdeen and Harvard.
Career
After an unsuccessful attempt at practising in Gorham, Maine, he moved to Barnstable on Cape Cod, where he was at the outbreak of the Revolution. During the war, he served as ship's surgeon, first on a privateer and later in the Penobscot expedition. When this expedition was over, he returned to Gorham and gradually built up a large practise. Later on he practised at Stroudwater but finally retired to Gorham. He was married five times but outlived all of his wives and died at the ripe age of eighty-four. During his first stay in Gorham, Barker compiled a Vade Mecum, containing a digest of current medicine, and A Book of Anatomy. He produced a number of well-written papers, on epidemics occurring in Maine, 1790-1810 (published in Mitchill's Medical Repository), and planned a history of American epidemics, which apparently was never written. He was an omnivorous reader, and at his death left a medical library of 3, 000 volumes.
Barker was a man of many theories. Convinced that much sickness had its origin in inclement weather, he believed that approaching diseases could be predicted from atmospheric conditions. He experimented freely with the use of alkalies as drugs, and supposed that he had found in lime-water a universal panacea. More modest than many of his profession, he habitually carried a favorite text-book, Rush on Fevers, to the bedside of his patients and consulted it there. He was an indefatigable worker.
Achievements
Membership
He was a member of the Massachusetts and of the Maine Medical Societies.
Personality
He was an indefatigable worker. It is said that during an epidemic of putrid sore-throat he never entered his own house for more than a month, but drove from patient to patient, eating and sleeping anywhere.
Connections
He was married five times.
