A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time. Various

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Название A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time
Автор произведения Various
Жанр Языкознание
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Издательство Языкознание
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isbn 4064066166670



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honourable position he declined at the insistance of his friends in New Brunswick, and immediately returned to his native province. Shortly after his return he read by invitation a paper on “Chloroform as an Anæsthetic,” before the Medical Society of New Brunswick. Establishing himself at DeBec, Carleton county, he soon acquired a lucrative practice. It was here that for the first time in the history of medicine in New Brunswick nitro-glycerine was employed, by Dr. Gaynor, for remedial purposes. Finding that his sphere of labour was too circumscribed, and desirous of entering into a larger field, Dr. Gaynor removed, in 1884, to St. John city, where he has since resided. On February 20, 1884, he was united in the bonds of holy wedlock to Nora Costigan, of St. John, a relative of the Hon. John Costigan, Minister of Inland Revenue. By her he has three children—Walter and Frederick, born February 16, 1885, and James, born August 28, 1886. During his vacations, while yet a medical student, Dr. Gaynor travelled extensively through the Northern, Western, and Middle states, spending some time in the Oil regions of Pennsylvania, and at the watering places on the Atlantic coast. In politics he is a Liberal-Conservative, with no love, however, for toryism as it exists in the mother country. The descendant of a family that fought and bled for human liberty, he is naturally a liberal in sentiment and aspiration. It is his belief, however, that so far as principles are concerned, there is no essential difference between the Conservative party led by Sir John Macdonald and the Liberal party led by Edward Blake. It is tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee; and in the end the people always rule. Such being his opinion of the two great political parties into which the Canadian people are divided, Dr. Gaynor has pronounced views as to the position which his Irish Catholic co-religionists should take in dominion politics. They should, he believes, adopt Parnell’s famous motto, Support the party which does the most for you. They would thus as a body be bound to neither political party, and would gravitate from one to the other consistently with the fair or unfair, just or unjust, treatment they might receive from either party. Outside his native province Dr. Gaynor is best known as a writer on materia medica. He has made a specialty of the study of new drugs; and his articles in the “Investigator”—a medical monthly of Buffalo—on this and kindred subjects, have attracted unusual attention from the medical profession in America. He also wrote and published in the same journal a series of articles in explanation and defence of the Catholic doctrine on craniotomy. In those articles he triumphantly refuted all the objections brought forward by his adversaries, and abundantly proved, in defence of the Catholic position, that the rational soul animates the human fœtus from the very first moment of conception, and that consequently it is as great a violation of divine law to destroy the living embryo as it would be to murder the new-born child. Dr. Gaynor’s views of medical practice are wide and comprehensive. His motto as regards remedial agents is:

      “Seek the best where’er ’tis found,

      On Christian earth or pagan ground.”

      Yet he is not an eclectic in the narrow sense of the word, which is now practically synonymous with homœopath. A thorough knowledge of anatomy, a complete acquaintance with the physiological effect of every drug or remedy, a no less complete acquaintance with pathology, and a virility of character sufficient to elevate the mind above the crude ideas of past generations, whether sanctioned by usage or made sacred by great names, must in future, he contends, be characteristics of the successful medical practitioner. A determined opponent of everything irrational or unintelligent in medicine, Dr. Gaynor has ever raised his voice against that hit-or-miss method, facetiously yet correctly styled “shot-gun practice,” which combines, for example, in one prescription three, four, or six different remedies, with the hope that if one misses some of the others will touch the target. He is, by consequence, a strong believer in the single remedy in every prescription. Dr. Gaynor is also a specialist in gynecology, his practice in St. John being almost limited to this department of his profession. He resides at number 2 Germain street.