DR. S. N. BRAYTON, of Buffalo, is illustrating in his life and experience the fact that when native worth and natural ability are wedded to industry and devotion to one's life work, the highest form of success is secured; and that this holds good with an especial force in a professional career. He long since won a prominent place among the medical men of New York, and every year that passes adds to his reputation, and the circle of his usefulness. He is one whose course upward has been won by his own efforts, and the putting forth in a manly manner of the strength with which he was endowed. He was born on the eleventh of January, 1839, at Queensbury, Warren county, New York, where his father, Moses Brayton, had been born and reared to the life of the farm. He traces the family line back through New England, to the seventeenth century, when three brothers of the name came from England, near the time of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. They settled in different sections of New England, and their descendants may now be found in various portions of the Union.

Dr. Brayton's early life was that of a farmer's boy of near half a century ago. His childhood was spent in such rural pursuits and pleasures as fall to the lot

of the average country boy. He gave his winters to the district school and his summers to light farm work until he was fourteen, when he entered the high school at Lawrence, Massachusetts, where he received a classical education. Having determined to give his life to the medical profession, on leaving school he entered the office of the late Walter Burnham, M. D., of Lowell, Massachusetts, as a medical student. Upon the conclusion of his preliminary studies he attended the regular lecture course at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the medical department of Columbia college, New York, from which institute he graduated with a high rank in his class, in 1861. While attending these lectures he was employed as a physician and surgeon in a hospital on Sixtyfifth street, New York, where first-class opportunity was offered for a practical application of the theories he had learned in the books, and the knowledge he had gained from oral instruction.

Almost the first act of Dr. Brayton, on taking a place in his profession, was to offer his service to the cause of his

country. In 1861 he entered the navy of the United States as an assistant surgeon in the regular service, and was assigned to duty in the Boston

navy yard. He was soon after ward transferred to the United States frigate Sabine, and subsequently to the ironclad Montauk that played so conspicuous a part in the War of the Rebellion. She was the third monitor constructed by the government, and was in some of the hottest contests of the war. She it was that destroyed the Nashville, one of the most powerful and formidable of the rebel gunboats. On the day on which this great feat was accomplished, and as she was returning down the Ogeechee river, she was struck by a torpedo, disabling her so that if the tide had not been running out, while she was near a mud bank, she would have been sunk and her crew fallen into the hands of the enemy. But by good fortune she settled in the mud, which allowed sufficient time for repairs. When the tide turned she was enabled to float off and proceed to Port Royal, where a plate five feet square was rivited over the broken plates at the place where the torpedo had burst. Dr. Brayton was on board during that memorable engagement and the subsequent disaster. He was also on duty in the eight months naval contests with forts Moultrie and Sumter, off Charleston harbor.

The devoted and continued service Dr. Brayton gave during this long and trying period in a southern climate, told on him, and his health became so impaired that he was ordered home for rest and recuperation. After a respite of some three months, he was detailed to service in the Pacific ocean on board the frigates St. Mary and Cyane, where he remained two years. While in this

1 service he visited Peru, Chili, Centra America, and Mexico at the time of Maximilian's invasion. He was afforded an excellent opportunity for comparing the medical and surgical treatment of diseases in these far countries with that of his own land. In the low lands of Mexico, the intermittent fever was of such a malignant character while he was there, that many surgeons of other vessels reported it as a true type of yellow fever. It broke out on the sloop of war Cyane, Dr. Brayton's vessel, and out of a ship's company of one hundred and forty men and officers, one hundred were on the sick list in less than two weeks, and whoever suffered from it turned as yellow as gold. It so crippled the crew that the vessel was unable to put to sea for several weeks.

While his vessel was in the harbor of Panama an epidemic of small-pox was prevailing on shore, and as no medical treatment was used by the natives-incantations taking its place-the death rate was even far greater than that of Montreal during the recent epidemic, and it was not to be wondered at that the disease soon broke out on shipboard, notwithstanding all possible precautions. As soon as a man was discovered in its grasp he was removed to an island near by and placed in a tent in perfect isolation from his shipmates. This fresh air treatment, together with a little medicine, was so efficacious that only one man of those attacked died. The experience Dr. Brayton gained in this service, and that which preceded it, has been of the greatest value to him in the practice of his profession, while his

broadened acquaintance with the great world has ever been a source of pleasure and profit, not only to himself but to those thrown into his companionship.

At the conclusion of his service on the Pacific, Dr. Brayton made arrangements for joining a squadron for a cruise in the Mediterranean and in other foreign waters, but before the plan was carried into operation a business opportunity presented itself of which he decided to make use. He resigned his position in the navy and engaged in the drug business in New York, at the same time carrying on the practice of medicine. He continued therein for a year, when he disposed of his business in the city and established himself at Honeoye Falls, Monroe county, New York, where he gave himself up in earnest to the practice of his profession. The ten years of provincial practice that followed was of great assistance to him and was a valuable experience; but he came to see the need of a broader field for the exercise of the powers he felt to be within him. In 1877 he removed to Buffalo, where he formed a co-partnership with Dr. Hubbard Foster, which continued for about a year, when he succeeded to the business of the firm, and has since conducted it alone.

While he has made his profession the great aim of his life, he has sought to be of public service where he could without interfering with that high desire. He was one of the incorporators of the Buffalo College of Physicians and Surgeons, and upon the establishment of hat institution became a member of its

faculty as professor of the theory and practice of medicine. In 1881 he was promoted to the rank of dean of the college. He is a member of the New York State Homeopathic Medical society, and also of the Western New York Homeopathic Medical society. While he has been styled a homeopathist since 1868, he has not forgotten his early. teaching, and so blends the two schools of medicine that he considers his success in the treatment of diseases far greater than he could obtain by using either system alone. Holding this belief, he has written many articles for the medical press in advocacy thereof. In fact, his pen has been busy many times in the letting of light into the world, and he has sent forth a number of articles of value. He had for some time editorial charge of the Physicians and Surgeons Investigator, a monthly journal of medicine and surgery that is published as the organ of the homeopathists of Buffalo. This journal is now in its sixth volume, and its able and well filled pages speak in many ways of the help it has had from Dr. Brayton's skilled judgment and able pen.

Dr. Brayton stands in the front rank of his profession in western New York, and all who know him concede that he has well earned the success he has achieved. He is one of the busy men of Buffalo. He has given especial study and attention to ovarian difficulties, with very great success. He has performed all the capital operations, and has widened his reputation and usefulness with every year that has passed. He has given his whole life to

his profession, and has found such usefulness and rewards in that, that he has not been moved with any ambition toward public or political life. He is an enthusiastic believer in the efficacy of electricity in the treatment of chronic diseases of a non-malignant character, and uses it, probably, to a greater extent than any other physician in Buffalo. The Franklin electricity, generated by modifications of the Toëpler battery, he considers far superior to all the other batteries combined, as its effects are almost instantaneous, and permanent.

Dr. Brayton combines a fine physical presence with great mental powers, and

is one of the men whom it is a pleasure to meet, whether in a social or professional way. He is capable of great endurance, has wonderful natural forces, and the faculty of utilizing his capacities to the greatest advantage. He was married in 1868 to Miss Frances Hyslpo, of Honeoye Falls, and their life. together has been one of mutual confidence and happiness. Dr. Brayton is domestic in his tastes, and it is in his home that he finds his surest source of strength, and where his few hours of leisure are gladly spent. To it, and to his profession his whole life, service and heart are earnestly and loyally pledged. SEELYE A. WILLSON.

THE position of Dr. Joseph C. Greene in the medical and municipal life of Buffalo is such that any mention of the men who have made the city what it is without reference to him would be incomplete. While he has worked stead ily through many years for the good of his fellows and the welfare of the chosen city of his home, he has done so quietly, and sought rather to make himself felt through his works than his words. He is a self-made man in the best meaning of that term, and enjoys not only the confidence but the respect of the community in which he dwells.

Dr. Greene was born in Lincoln, Vermont, on July 31, 1829. His family

was of the best New England stock, and members of it have from time to time made their mark in the stirring scenes of colonial history. of colonial history. The paternal line runs back to Samuel Greene, a native of England who emigrated to America in 1630, and made his home in Boston. Among his descendants was Isaiah Greene who settled in Kensington, New Hampshire, and afterwards removed to Ware, of the same state. His son Simeon was in turn the father of Stephen S. Greene who removed from New Hampshire in 1827, and settled in Vermont. In the year following he was married to Lydia Chase, a daughter of Joseph Chase of Starksboro, a prominent min