al, and teaching them
his own self-reliance. 'Depend upon yourselves, young gentlemen,' he
invariably said. 'Take no man's diagnosis, but see with your own eyes,
feel with your own fingers, judge with your own judgment, and be the
disciple of no man.'

"In his class, he was courteous without familiarity, patient with
dulness, but quick to punish impertinence; always kind, always
dignified, always genial. The practical view of a subject was the view
which he delighted to take; and the dry humor with which he never
failed to emphasize his point, at once fixed it in the memory of the
class, and made it available for future use. With his office-students,
Dr. Crosby was the very soul of geniality and confidence. He saw and
measured men at a glance, and was rarely wrong in his estimate of
character. Strong in his own convictions, he was yet tender of the
infirmities and the prejudices of others, and his generous instincts
lost no opportunity for their daily exercise.

"His love of nature was as instinctive and as thorough as his
knowledge of men. He transferred the treasures of the woods to his own
garden. He studied the habits of birds and insects, and his parlors
were adorned with a cabinet of American birds more complete than is
often found in the museum of a professed naturalist. He reveled in the
'pomp of groves and garniture of fields,' and his daily drives through
the picturesque scenery of the Connecticut valley fed his aesthetic
taste, and proved a compensation for fatigue.

"Dr. Crosby, though a surgeon by nature and by preference, was in no
modern sense a _specialist_. His professional labors covered the whole
range of Medicine. His professorship included Obstetrics as well as
Surgery, and his practice in this department was exceptionally large.
His surgical diocese extended from Lake Champlain to Boston. Distance
seemed no bar to his influence, and his professional journeys were
often made by night as well as by day. Of the special operations of
Dr. Crosby we do not propose here to speak in detail. It is sufficient
to mention that, in 1824, he devised a new and ingenious mode of
reducing metacarpo-phalangeal dislocation. In 1836 he removed the arm,
scapula, and three quarters of the clavicle at a single operation, for
the first time in the history of Surgery. He was the first to open
abscess of the hip-joint. He performed his operations, without ever
having seen them performed, almost without exception. Dr. Cro