A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time. Various
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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.
de Martigny, Adelard Le Moyne, Notary and Cashier of La Banque Jacques Cartier, Montreal, was born at Varennes, on the 25th of December, 1826. He is the son of Jacques Le Moyne de Martigny, seigneur of de Martigny, St. Michel and La Trinité, and of Dame Suzanne Eléonore Perrault, daughter of the late François Perrault, prothonotary of the Superior Court at Quebec. Mr. de Martigny is descended from that distinguished family of Le Moyne, who arrived in this country in 1611, of whom were the de Longueuil, de Ste. Hélene, d’Iberville, de Bienville, de Chateauguay, de Sévigny, and de Maricourt; one of his ancestors, J. B. Le Moyne de Martigny, was at the capture of Fort Bourbon by d’Iberville, and was left there as commander of that fort. Having terminated his classical studies at the Montreal College, under the gentlemen of the Seminary of St. Sulpice, he studied law under J. N. A. Archambault, notary, at Varennes, and was admitted to practice in January, 1848. In August, 1856, he was appointed registrar of the county of Beauharnois; and in 1871 manager of the branch of the Merchants Bank of Canada, established in the town of Beauharnois. He, however, resigned these different positions to accept the one as manager of Le Crédit Foncier du Bas Canada in 1875; and finally he was offered the position of cashier of La Banque Jacques Cartier in Montreal in 1877, which he accepted and still occupies. He is one of the executors of the estate of the late Hon. Charles Wilson. Mr. de Martigny is one of the owners of a large asbestos estate in Coleraine, Megantic county, and one of the proprietors of a pulp and paper mill in Sorel, and was president of the Joliette Railroad Company at the time of the sale of that road to the government. In 1855 he married Aglaé Globensky, daughter of Lieut.-Colonel Globensky, one of the officers under Colonel de Salaberry, at the battle of Chateauguay. He has four sons by this marriage, one of them, the oldest, Louis Le Moyne de Martigny, is manager of the Jacques Cartier Bank at Salaberry de Valleyfield. He was married again to his first cousin, Marie Malvina Le Moyne de Martigny, daughter of Hugues Le Moyne de Martigny, seigneur of de Ramezay and Bourgchemin.
Rogers, Henry Cassady, Postmaster, Peterboro’, Ontario, was born at Grafton, Northumberland county, Ontario, on the 16th of July, 1839. He is the second son of the late Lieut.-Col. James G. Rogers and his first wife, Maria Burnham. His father died at his residence in Grafton on the 27th of November, 1874, in his seventieth year, greatly regretted by all who knew him. He (J. G. Rogers) came to Grafton with his parents from the village of Brighton, his birthplace, when he was only five years of age, and his life was spent amidst a people many of whom were the contemporaries of his youth. He was an upright magistrate and a sincere Christian. His grandfather, David McGregor Rogers, was a U. E. loyalist, who came to this country from New England with the first loyalists after the termination of the revolutionary war in 1776. He settled first on the Bay of Quinté, afterwards moving to Presqu’Isle, and finally to the township of Haldimand (now the village of Grafton), where he opened the first post-office between Kingston and York (now Toronto), and where three generations of the family have been born. The homestead is now occupied by his brother, Lieut.-Col. R. Z. Rogers, commanding the 40th battalion. He (D. McG. Rogers) was for twenty-four years a member of the Upper Canada legislature; and died on the 13th July, 1824, in the fifty-third year of his age. In his political opinions he was a warm admirer of the British constitution, and during the time he sat in the legislature no member guarded the rights and interests of the people more zealously than he did. His great-granduncle was the famous Col. Rogers of “Roger’s Rangers,” who was a man of note during the last century—best known as Major Rogers. He first became famous as a scout in the Indian troubles. His exploits furnished Fenimore Cooper with the ground-work of his tales of the “Leather-stocking,” and “Horrors of the Backwoods.” He was commissioned to raise and organize a regiment of scouts during the French war. This corps rendered valuable service at the taking of Canada from the French, and on its surrender Rogers was entrusted by the commander-in-chief with the arduous duty of proceeding west from Montreal, and taking possession in the name of the king of Great Britain, of the country including forts Frontenac (Kingston), Niagara, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Mackinaw, etc., as far as the Mississippi in the west and Lake Superior north. He had therefore the honour of commanding the first British expedition that passed through the great chain of lakes, interesting accounts of which may be found in his “Journal,” published in London, England, in 1765; “Heely’s Wolfe in Canada,” “Parkman’s Conspiracy of Pontiac,” chap. vi.; and many others. The Rangers were re-organized on the breaking out of the rebellion in 1765, by a brother of the first commanding officer Colonel James Rogers who was the great-grandfather of the subject of this sketch, commanded at St. John’s, Quebec