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ОглавлениеGaynor, John Joseph
Gaynor, John Joseph, M.D., St. John, New Brunswick, was born of Irish parents, at Chatham, New Brunswick, on the 19th of March, 1854. They were educated Irish Catholics, his father being a native of the county Meath, and his mother of the county Clare, Ireland. They might well be classed as Irish-Americans, as they were both brought by their respective parents to this country while yet infants. Dr. Gaynor’s father, Thomas Gaynor, was educated at the Grammar School, Chatham; and his mother, Catharine Buckley, at a seminary for young ladies, conducted by a Mrs. Merry at Newcastle, New Brunswick. This privilege, so exceptional for Irish Catholics in those early days, was doubtless the reason which determined the doctor’s parents to bestow in turn a liberal education on their own offspring. On his father’s side Dr. Gaynor comes of the best blood of historic Meath, being a descendant of the same family that in the last century produced General Hand, of revolutionary fame as adjutant-general to Washington during the war of American Independence, and that in the present century gave birth to such eminent churchmen as the late Father Hand, founder of All Hallows College, Dublin, and the present patriotic Bishop of Meath, the illustrious Dr. Nulty. According to family tradition also, one of Dr. Gaynor’s ancestors fought under King James at the ill-fated battle of the Boyne, and was killed while defending the “Bridge of Slane.” His name, the same tradition says, was Thomas Gaynor. While on his father’s side Dr. Gaynor is thus descended from a liberty-loving race, on his mother’s side he is connected with that aristocratic class known in Ireland as “Castle Catholics.” His mother, who was born at Ferhill Castle, Blackwater, county Clare, was also closely allied by ties of blood to the famous fighting “Goughs of Clare,” whose name is historical through General Gough, of India fame. Dr. Gaynor is the eldest member of a family of twelve, eight of whom are still living. One of his brothers, the Rev. William C. Gaynor, is Roman Catholic pastor of Richmond, in Carleton county, New Brunswick. Father Gaynor is a writer of great power on theological questions, and is the author of “Papal Infallibility,” published in 1885, and of a Commentary in Latin on the Summa Theologica, of Thomas Aquinas, now in press in Paris. Another brother, P. A. Gaynor, is a member of a large lumbering house in Pennsylvania, and is now in the Redwood district of California, where he has established a branch firm. Dr. Gaynor was educated partly at St. Michael’s College, Chatham, and partly at St. Joseph’s College, Memramcook. In the former institution he studied mathematics and the exact sciences under the most distinguished teacher of his day in New Brunswick, Thomas Caulfield, M.A., of Trinity College, Dublin. His subsequent studies in logic and metaphysics were pursued at St. Joseph’s College, Memramcook. In this institution he taught the higher mathematics. It was here also that in 1877 he began the study of medicine under the preceptorship of Dr. H. E. Boissy, resident physician to St. Joseph’s, and leading medical practitioner among the Acadians of New Brunswick. From St. Joseph’s Dr. Gaynor went in 1878 to Buffalo, New York. There he attended the lectures in the medical department of Buffalo University. He followed also the different courses of the newly established College of Physicians and Surgeons in the same city. Graduating in 1881, after a four years’ course, he carried off the honours of his class, and was immediately offered the chair of chemistry and toxicology in his alma mater. This 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.
