A History of the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia; With Biographical Sketches of the Early Professors (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1858 Excerpt: ...facts touching his birth and after-life, we must draw from our memory the prominent incidents in the history of the deceased professor; and, in thus venturing to give a brief sketch for a volume destined to be of permanent character, it is our purpose to state nothing but what we have long believed to be the facts in the case. John Eberle was born in Lancaster county, Pa., in January, 1788. His parents were immigrants from Germany, who, with hundreds from the same region, found a happy home in one of the most fertile counties of the State. To such an extent did this kind of population settle there that, for many years, it was regarded as almost literally a German county. Many of the children born and educated in that region heard scarcely a word of the English language, and then only from travellers. At the time of reaching manhood, Eberle spoke the language of his parents far better than he could his own native tongue; and, even so late as our first acquaintance with him in 1819, the German idiom and accent were so strongly impressed on every sentence that many regarded him as of foreign birth. His father being devoted to agriculture, and as schools were then "very few and far between," it is difficult to imagine how the elements of even a good English education were acquired. The son was an occasional helper in the duties of the farm, so that only a part of the time could be given to study. And yet it is notorious that, in the face of all the difficulties that must have environed his path, Eberle became an excellent writer, as his works testify; and it is within the compass of our personal knowledge that he was more than an ordinary Latin scholar, and an easy reader of all the new French publications which his means enabled him to procure. Our d...