From Famous Americans:
John Call Dalton

DALTON, John Call, physiologist, born in Chehnsford, Massachusetts, 2 February 1825. He was graduated at Harvard in 1844, and at the medical department of that University in 1847. His attention was at once directed to physiology, and in 1851 he obtained the annual prize offered by the American medical association by his essay on "Corpus Luteum." Subsequently his researches on the anatomy of the placenta, the physiology of the cerebellum, intestinal digestion, and other experimental observations, embodied in his treatise on physiology, gained for him a reputation as one of the first of modern physiologists.

He became professor of physiology in the medical department of the University of Buffalo, and was the first in the United States to teach that subject with illustrations by experiments on animals. This chair he resigned in 1854, and accepted a similar professorship in the Vermont medical College in Woodstock, where he remained until 1856. From 1859 till 1861 he filled the chair of physiology in the Long Island College hospital in Brooklyn. During the winter of 1854-'5 he lectured on physiology at the College of physicians and surgeons, New York, temporarily filling the place of Dr. Alonzo Clark. In 1855 he was elected to that professorship, which he continued to fill until his resignation in 1883. In 1884 he again succeeded Dr. Clark as president of the College of physicians and surgeons.

During the civil war he was a surgeon in the national service, going to Washington in 1861 in that capacity with the 7th New York regiment. Subsequently he was appointed surgeon of volunteers, and held important offices in the medical corps until his resignation in March 1864.

Dr. Dalton has been an active member of many medical societies, and held prominent offices in them. In 1864 he was elected a member of the National academy of sciences. His contributions to the literature of physiology have been numerous since 1851. He has published articles in the "American Journal of the Medical Sciences," the "Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences," the "American Medical Monthly," and other medical journals in New York; and also many valuable articles in his specialties in the American and other cyclopaedias.

He has published in book-form "A Treatise on Human Physiology" (New York, 1859; 6th ed., 1882);" A Treatise on Physiology and Hygiene for Schools, Families, and Colleges" (1868); "The Experimental Method of Medicine" (1882); "Doctrines of the Circulation" (1884); and "Topographical Anatomy of the Brain" (1885).

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