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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
LIFE AND CHARACTER
SAMUEL  W.  MOORE,  M.  D.;
   LATE FELLOW OK THE COLLEGE OF 1'HVSIC'IAXS AND SURGEONS, ETC., ETC.
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      0.  R. GILMAN,  M. J).
NEW YORK. 
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      BIOGRAPHICAL  SKETCH
                           OF THE
                LIFE AND CHARACTER
                             OF

SAMUEL   W.   MOORE,   M.D.,
LATE FELLOW OF THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS ANj^SURGEONS, ETC., ETC.
   The life of a practicing physician is very rarely one of startling ad-
ventures or striking events.  His duties, though  important as the value
of life itself, are chiefly performed in the privacy of the sick-room; and of
consequence the manner in which he performs them is known only to
the small circle of loving friends who gather around the bed of the sick
or the dying.
   Such a life, it may seem, presents but a barren field to the biogra-
pher.   Bid him chronicle the  victories of the warrior, the triumphs of
the statesman, and he will devote to the task all  his most brilliant pow-
ers, and do it with pride and pleasure.  But  to trace the every-day life
of one who has " pursued the noiseless tenor of his way " in that obscu-
rity which  necessarily and very properly shrouds most of the labors of
the physician, whose path has been from sick bed to sick bed, and whose
contests have been only with the great enemy, death,—this, to the ambi-
tious  biographer, may seem to be an ungrateful  task.  But it is not, or
at least ought not to be an ungenial labor, to speak of a life devoted to
the service of humanity, spent in the unostentatious performance of varied
and  important duties. Especially should the task of tracing such a 
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course be grateful when the duties of the man have  been performed  in
the spirit of a Christian.
    Such a task I have imposed upon myself, in attempting to write a
biographical sketch of the life and character of Samuel W. Moore, M. D.
whose recent removal from among us, while it has plunged  a bereaved
family into deep affliction, has spread throughout a large circle of loving
friends and strongly attached patients, a deep and abiding sorrow " that
they shall see his face no more forever."
    Samuel W. Moore was born in New York city, 11th  October, 1786,
the son of Dr. William  Moore, long one of our most highly esteemed
and successful practitioners.   From early childhood his constitution was
frail, and  the delicacy of his bodily organization was equaled by the
gentleness of his temper, and the kindliness of his feelings.
    Such an one might seem to be unfitted  to bear the  grave responsi-
bilities, and act amid  the appalling dangers which  so  often beset the
physician's path ; but this, I believe, is not so;  and the success of Dr.
Moore adds another to the list of those physicians whose lives prove that
it is not so.   The truth seems to be that a strong sense  of moral  duty
will so nerve the heart and strengthen the hand, that the most acute sen-
sibility will only make its possessor more eager to relieve those sufferings
by which his compassion is so strongly excited.   Dr.  Moore received his
early intellectual training from Mr. Samuel Rudd, and entered Columbia
College at the age of sixteen year?, in 1802.  His connection with Co-
lumbia  College was probably rendered more pleasant and profitable by
the fact that his uncle, Benjamin Moore, D. D., Bishop of New York,
was then  president of the institution.  Several  of  his classmates  still
survive among us, and we  noticed two  of them among the sorrowing
friends who assembled at his funeral.  He graduated  in  regular course
in 1806, and immediately commenced the study of  medicine, under the
guidance of his father,  attending lectures in the medical department of
Columbia College ; in which Dr. Wright Post then taught Anatomy, Dr.
Richard  Bailey, Surgery, Dr.  Hammersley, Theory and Practice of
Physic, Dr. J. R. B. Rodgers, Midwifery, and  Dr. David Hosack, Botany.
From those distinguished teachers he received, in 1810, the degree of
Doctor of Medicine, and immediately entered into full practice, taking a
share  of the large business of his father.  This  arrangement continued
until 1824, when the  elder Dr. Moore died, having  practiced  physic
forty-four years.   His son now took his place among the prominent phy-
sicians of New-York, with a large circle  of  patients, and a still larger 
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one of friends; for such was the  unaffected kindness  of his heart, and
such the graceful amenity of his manners, that few became his patients
without  remaining ever his attached friends.  With  his professional
brethren, his position was peculiarly pleasant;  a thorough medical educa-
tion, and a large measure of well-improved experience, gave to his opin-
ions deserved weight, and insured him as a physician a  strong hold on
the confidence of physicians ; while his conduct, on all occasions so per-
fectly upright, his manner so dignified yet so gentle, gave him as a man
the highest place in their regard : to quarrel with such a man was sim-
ply impossible, and to distrust him seemed  not so much a wrong, as  a
folly.  Of him it can truly be said, that after a successful career of more
than forty years, and that in times of many professional contests, he made
many  friends, and not one single enemy  in his own profession.   Oh, si
sic omnes!   In 1824 he was  appointed  one of the  physicians  of the
New-York Hospital; for this situation he  had moral qualifications which
are more important, and alas ! more rare, than  professional  skill.  His
conscientiousness insured to the poorest and most degraded of his pauper
patients  a full measure of his attention; while his amiability and benevo-
lence made him the friend of poor  and rich  alike.  In  1828, he was
compelled, by failing health, to retire from a position which  he  was so
well fitted to adorn.
    In 1828, Dr. Moore was appointed Trustee of the College of Physicians
and  Surgeons, and continued, from that period to the end of his life,  to
take an  earnest interest in the  prosperity  of that institution.   At the
time of his death, he was the senior member of the board.  In 1849, on the
reappearance  of the cholera, Dr. Moore, in  conjunction  with his  friends
Dr. Joseph M. Smith and Dr. John B. Beck, was appointed medical coun-
selors to the Committee of the Sanitary Board of Health.   To the duties
of this position, made more onerous by the fact that his associate Dr.
Beck was soon, by the  state of his health, disabled from taking his share
of them, Dr. Moore devoted all his energies ; and the Report published
by the Committee affords most satisfactory  evidence of  the ability and
faithfulness with which this important public duty was performed.  For
several years, the health of Dr.  Moore, never very robust, had been grad-
ually declining, and he felt himself obliged to contract the sphere of his
professional labor.  Still he was unwilling entirely to give up the prac-
tice of his profession, and very  many of his old  friends were still more
unwilling to be given up. In March last he met with an accident, which,
though not immediately followed  by grave  symptoms, caused, as after- 
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wards appeared, effusion of blood into the cavity of the arachnoid.   He
continued to visit a few fi-iends, and his venerable form was still seen at
church;  till, in  July, paralysis very gradually supervened; and, on  the
26th of August, 1854,
                " Gently as an infant to his sleep,
                   Went he to death "—

    Dr. Moore married in 1813, Emily, daughter of William Constable,
Esq., by whom he had thirteen children, ten of whom  yet  survive to
give unto God most " hearty thanks, for the good example of him who,
having finished his course in faith, doth now rest from his labors." 
 
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