r illustrates
Dr. Smith's sagacity. While residing in Cornish he had a friend who
was a sea-captain, and who, on his return from foreign voyages, was
wont to relate to him whatever of interest in a medical way he might
have chanced to observe while abroad. On one occasion he told Dr.
Smith that on his previous voyage one of the sailors dislocated his
hip; there being no surgeon on board, the captain tried but in vain to
reduce it. The man was accordingly placed in a hammock with the
dislocation unreduced. During a great storm the sufferer was thrown
from the hammock to the floor, striking violently on the knee of the
affected side. On examination, it was found that in the fall the hip
had somehow been set. This greatly interested Dr. Smith, and he
questioned the narrator again and again as to the exact position of
the thigh, the knee and the leg, at the time of the fall.

"From this apparently insignificant circumstance, Dr. Smith eventually
educed and reduced to successful practice the method of reducing
dislocations by the manoeuvre, a system as useful as it is simple,
and as scientific as the principle of flexion and leverage on which it
depends. Had this incident been related to a stupid man, he would have
seen nothing in it, or to a skeptic, he would have discredited the
whole account, but to a man of genius it furnished a clue by which
another of Nature's labyrinths was traced out. This system is by far
the best ever devised, symplifying and rendering easy the work of the
surgeon, while reducing human suffering to its minimum.

"I do not propose to recall to your minds how much he did for
Medicine and Surgery; that were the work of days, not a single hour.

"Time would fail me to relate the well authenticated traditions of his
skill, his benevolence and his practical greatness. But almost from
the inception of his professional life until he left for New Haven, he
was the acknowledged leader of his profession in the State, and his
reputation came soon to cover the whole of New England. He was the
father of several sons, who have since been distinguished in the same
profession. The venerable Professor N. R. Smith, of Baltimore, is the
eldest, and perhaps the most celebrated, of the survivors."

The venerable Dr. A. T. Lowe adds the following valuable paragraphs:

"In the organization and early history of the Medical department of
Dartmouth College Dr. Nathan Smith occupied a pre-eminent position. For
ten or twe