CLASS OF 1893

Dr. Ernest Henry Wheeler of Augusta, Me., died at the Augusta city hospital, February 15, a week after an operation for appendicitis. Dr Wheeler was born in Whitefield, Me., July 31, 1868, his parents being Henry and Elizabeth Wheeler. Both his father and grandfather fought in Maine regiments at the battle of Gettysburg. In his boyhood he was a page in the Maine senate,' and afterwards its assistant secretary. His academical education was obtained at the Coburn Classical Institute. After obtaining his medical degree, Dr. Wheeler took a post-graduate course in surgery at the Polyclinic Hospital, Philadelphia, and then established himself in practice at Rockland, Me., being there city physician and chairman of the board of health. When the Spanish war broke out he went to Chickamauga as hospital steward of the First Maine Volunteers, and was soon promoted to be assistant surgeon. He distinguished himself at this time by bringing home to Maine a hospital train of one hundred twenty typhoid patients without losing a case. In February, 1901, he was commissioned assistant surgeon in the volunteer service, with the rank of major, and saw two years' active service in the Philippines. A bold night-ride through a hostile and almost impassable country in the hope of saving the life of a brother officer will long be remembered, and his general record in the islands was of high merit. His next service was on the Isthmus of Panama, where he was associated with Col. Gorgas, the chief of sanitation. He was at first executive officer of the Ancon hospital, from which post he was promoted to be health officer at Colon. Here he had no small part in the great work of making the isthmus habitable for the force engaged on the construction of the canal. In 1907 he resigned from the army, and returned to Maine, making his home in Augusta, where he had married, February 15, 1905 Hope Manchester, daughter of the late J. Manchester Haynes. His time since his return had been largely occupied in the management of the large timberland properties of his father-in-law's estate, and he was attacked by fatal disease while in the forest. In 1907 he was appointed lecturer on tropical medicine in Dartmouth Medical School. At the time of his death he had in preparation a paper to be read before the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Sanitation, at its coming session in Washington. He was a member of the Alpha Kappa Kappa fraternity, and of the Army and Navy Club of New York. A widow and a young son survive him.