William Cranch Bond Fifield, 1828-1896.
From American Series of Popular Biographies. Massachusetts Edition. This Volume Contains Biographical Sketches of Representative Citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Boston: Graves & Steinbarger, 1891
WILLIAM CRANCH BOND FIFIELD, M.D., late one of the best-known physicians of Boston, was born in Weymouth, Mass., August 27, 1828, and died in Dorchester, September 10, 1896. He was the son of Dr. Noah and Hannah Cranch (Bond) Fifield, and grandson of Ebenezer and Mary (Sanborn) Fifield, of East Kingston, N.H. His father was for sixty years a practising physician of Weymouth. His family traced its ancestry beyond the Colonial days, to England, where it gave the name to the town of Fifield. His mother, Hannah Cranch Bond, was of English parentage, a daughter of William Bond, of Bond & Son, watch and chronometer makers, Boston, and sister of William Cranch Bond, the early director of the observatory at Cambridge. She was a prominent figure in anti-slavery days, and was a warm friend of William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips.
Dr. Fifield received his early education at Phillips Exeter Academy, and in 1851 was graduated from the Harvard Medical School. He then went to England, and took the full course in the Royal College of Surgeons, graduating with honors. He was also a licentiate of the Royal Ophthalmic Hospital in London, and he studied several years in Paris.
After his return from abroad, he practised a few years with his father, Dr. Noah Fifield, of Weymouth, and moved to Dorchester, in 1861. For fifteen years he was a visiting surgeon in the Boston City Hospital, and was a member of the consulting staff at the time of his death. He was also an honorary member of the Boston Medical Improvement Society, a Fellow of the Massachusetts Medical Society, member of the Obstetric Society and of the Dorchester Medical Club and of the American Chirurgical Society. Dr. Fifield was of exceptional skill in his profession, and was a recognized authority throughout the State. As medical expert, he was many years well known to the Norfolk and Suffolk bars. His professional attainments, his unbounded generosity and kindness to the poor, his help in all movements for the public good, his keen wit and brilliant powers as a raconteur, made his name beloved and respected. For more than a quarter of a century he was the trusted friend and family physician in hundreds of homes. His anti-slavery training made him a believer in equal rights for women, and it was largely due to his efforts that they were admitted to equal fellowship in the Massachusetts Medical Society.
Dr. Fifield married Emily A. Porter, daughter of Thomas Brastow and Emily (Vining) Porter, of Weymouth, and had three children. Of these the only survivor is Mary Sanborn, wife of Sylvanus F. Freeman. Mrs. Fifield’s father, who was always prominent in town affairs, was of the seventh generation in descent from Richard Porter, who settled at Weymouth in 1635. The line was: Richard, John, Samuel, Samuel, Joseph, Lebbeus, Thomas B. Joseph Porter married Elizabeth Burrill, a school teacher, said to have been a woman of remarkable personal beauty. Lebbeus Porter’s first wife, Polly, the mother of Thomas B. Porter, was a daughter of Thomas and Susanna (Fisher) Brastow, of Wrentham. Both the Brastow and Vining families were of historic Huguenot descent.
Mrs. Fifield is an active member of the Boston School Committee, where she is now serving for the sixteenth year. She has been prominent for many years in philanthropic, religious, and educational work, and a valued force on several state and municipal boards. She has made a special study of school conditions in all parts of the country. In religion a Unitarian, she is the recording secretary of the National Alliance, which is the leading women’s organization of the Unitarian churches in America.
Dorchester doctors Erasmus Miller, William Cranch Bond Fifield, Benjamin Cushing
Boston Medical and surgival Journal, volume 143, August 9, 1900, p. 125-126
Give me leave to speak of Dr. Erasmus Miller, of Dorchester, and his vast obstetric experience, his early practice in gynecology, his uterine scarifier, his intense shrewness, his horse Stargazer and his cranberry bog in Franklin. He used to say that whatever his ability might have been on his first coming to Dorchester, his real and speedy success was due to a superb gray horse with flowing white switch tail, so handsome as to make every one turn to look and inquire who ws the owner. But a more efficient factor was his own early acquisition of snowy hair and sweeping beard, which made a conspicuous figure in any landsape or company. …
No more brilliant character shone on this stage than William Cranch Bond Fifield. After finishing his studies in London and Pari he came to Drochester in 1860, where he died in 1896. He was a man of prodigious memory, who appeared never to have forgotten anything. He could tell you on what part of any shelf in the Atheneum you could find the book you wanted, and very nearly the page which recorded the fact, phrase or case you were in search of. Indeed his mind was so stored with authors, precedents, operations, that he could not alwasys find the pigeonhole in whcih the subeject in view was packed. He made some marvellous diagnoses, but often would not see into an ordinary case, because his gaze was fixed on a visionary possibility far beyond. It was a treat to hear him detail a case or tell a story about one of his European teachers. The graphic touches with which he embroidered his subject fixed its deails in your mind, while wit and humor played around it, so as sometimes indeed, it must be owned, to obscure the judgment and make you wonder how much was fancy and how much awas fact. Besides he was an omnivorous reader; a new book of fiction, history, poetry, travel had not been long published but he could give you its scope, with apt quotations, and his opinion about it. Withal he was a musuican of no mean ability and of fastidious taste. Many aflicitions overtook and cardiac disease obscured his last days.
Those of us who were norored with the friendshp of Benjamin Cushing will call to mind no physician whose example they would sooner wish to follow. The gaunt frame carried a great heart and through the lage spectacles beamed a steady and confident gaze. No more upright man ever stood in our society. He seemed silent and reserved. You had to now him. When he could not praise or offer comfort he was silent. Once he told me of a family who had lost a child, and the parents thought him hardhearted. As he spoke his eyes filled with tears. No yorn doctor who was in trouble ever left his presence without wise counsel and just sympathy. His charities were wide and unnamed. To many of us his judgment seemed unerring. He spoke willof everyone when he possibly coul, but meanness, unerhand methods, harshness, he could not abide; and he was not slow to let the offender know it. He had a well-develped New England conscience. One nasty night he sent a poor patient to a young neighbor. After the messenger had gone, he oculd not sleep, and, as he said, pictured to himself that when he next drove by the house he might see a string of carriages before the door. So he rose, dressed, took his instruments under his arm, plodded to the place through the rain, heard the voice of the youthful accoucheur inside, returned home and slept the sleep of the just. A relative looking over his books found one day’s work, where he had made twenty visits, no great number to be sure, but one patient lived near Pine-tree Brook in Milton, another in Beacon Street, obth of whom had to be seen twice that day. And his driving was like the driving of Jehu, the son of Nimsni. A lady once asked him “Why, Dr. Cushing, do you drive so fast?” He replied, “I never drive fast, but I will admit that I like to ride behind a horse that wants go go fast.” Upon a call for surgeions after one of the murderous battles of the Civil War, he did some service. He was deeply grieved that his name was not mentioned by the authorities, the only reward he would hve accepted, but he would take no steps to publsh his claim to regocnigtion. With this right judgment and skilful, conscientious work went a delightfully dry humor, and e enjoyed a good joke in every nerve. Once a young doctor realted a case with fatal issue whre every remedy known to modern science had been faithrully employed. When he finished Dr. Cushing quietly remarked that he once signed a death certificate on the wrong ine “Cause of death, B. Cushing.” At an annual meetng he had been appointed to read the address. It proved to be a very lively meeting indeed, with altercations and personalities which prolonged the session beyond the hour set for the address. When at last he was called on, he remarked that as the society had chosen to turnthe meeting into a bear garden he considered it small honor to address them. It was never ascertained that he had any paper beyond notes scrawled on the backs of envelopes, and it was conjectured that foreseeing the posibility of disturbance, he had never got any furhter in his preparations. He was nicely axact–almost finically so–in his relations with other practitioners. Often has he said to the writer, “While you were away I saw your patients, Mr. A and Mrs. B. I didn’t waste any politeness on them.” He had no opinion at all of a physician who would do otherwise. Therefore he had disappointments. He died in 1895, aged seventy-three, leaving deep regrets and a shining example. …