Background
Rusby, Henry Hurd was born on April 26, 1855 in Franklin, New Jersey, United States. Son of John and Abigail (Holmes) Rusby.
anthropologist Botanist curator explorer
Rusby, Henry Hurd was born on April 26, 1855 in Franklin, New Jersey, United States. Son of John and Abigail (Holmes) Rusby.
Rusby joined the club in 1879, and by then studied medicine at the School of Medicine of New York University. In 1884, he graduated with his degree in medicine. And in 1885 he embarked on a two-year expedition for Parke, Davis & Company, crossing South America and exploring remote regions of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Brazil.
Awarded medal at Centennial Exhibition, 1876, for herbarium of plants of Essex Company, New Jersey. Made botanical explorations, New Mexico and Arizona, 1880-1881, and 1883, as agent Smithsonian Institution, and South. America, 1885-1887, interest of medical botany, crossing the continent. Also on lower Orinoco River, 1896, and the Republic of Colombia, 1917.
Bolivia and Brazil, 1921-1922.
Professor of botany, physiology and materia medica, Department Pharmacy, Columbia, 1888-1930, and dean of faculty. Professor materia medica, U. and Bellevue Hospital Medical College, 1897-1902.
Honorary curator Economic Museum, New York Botanical Garden (Chairman of the Board scientific directors, 1908-1917, and member board of managers). Revision Committee 7th, 8th and 9th revisions, United States Pharmacopœiowa
Member Revision Committee of National Formulary.
Chairman Commission Pan-American Medical Congress for study of America medicinal flora. Honorary member Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. Honorary member Instituto Medico Nacional of Mexico.
President Torrey Botanical Club, 1905-1912.
President American Pharmaceutical Association, 1909-1910. Expert in drug products in Bureau Chemistry, United States Department of Agriculture, 1907-1909.
Then pharmacognosist in same bureau, 1912-1917. Secured the vindication of Doctor Wiley and associates from charges, 1911.
Fought successfully to stop the common use of decomposed ergot in those medicinal preparations for use in childbirth, from 1929 to 1935.
Author: Essentials of Pharmacognosy, 1895. Morphology and Histology of Plants, 1899. Materia Medica of Buck’s Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences (8 volumes), 1899.
National Standard Dispensatory, 1905.
Wild Vegetable Foods of United States, 1906. Fifty Years of Materia Medica, 1907.
Manual of Botany, 1911. Three Hundred New Species of South American Plants.
A Guide to the Economic Collections of the New York Botanical Garden.
Properties and Uses of Drugs, 1930. Jungle Memories, 1933. Introduced important drugs to American Materia Medica, among them pichi, cocillana, mire and caäpi.
As a member of Torrey Botanical Club, he encountered the celebrated botanist and taxonomist Nathaniel Lord Britton. In 1888 a pro-Garden committee of Botony, with eight distinguished members of the club, including Britton and Rusby was formed.
Married Margaretta Saunier Hanna, 1887.