Cleave’s
Biographical Cyclopædia of
Homœopathic Physicians and Surgeons
By Egbert Cleave
Presented by Sylvain Cazalet
OWNER,
DANIEL AKIN, M. D., late of Elmira, N. Y., was born in Towner,
Putnam county, N. Y., on September 6th, 1806. His ancestors came from
Wales in the middle of the last century, that branch from which he was
more immediately descended, settling in the rugged but productive county
of Putnam, upon the spot where some of their name still continue to
live. Dr. Towner, early in life, manifested a taste for the profession
which he afterwards adopted, and was given as good an education as the
immediate neighborhood of his father’s home afforded. Dr. Benedict, a
Presbyterian clergyman, of Patterson, a village hard by, a gentleman
still living at an advanced age, took a number of pupils from the
well-to-do farmers of the neighborhood, and with him, Dr. Towner went
through a course of study as thorough and as advanced as could be
obtained at any college. He passed the earlier years of his medical
studies in the office of Dr. Howland, a physician in high standing in
the same village, and was graduated with honor at the Fairfield Medical
School in Herkimer county, N. Y., an institution now defunct, hut in the
time of its existence of very high repute.Soon after graduation
Dr. Towner married and commenced the practice of his profession at Etna,
Tompkins county, N. Y. From there he shortly removed to Ithaca, in the
same county. In 1837, in company with a younger brother, he shifted to
the city, then a small village, of Elmira, Chemung county, N. Y., and
engaged in mercantile pursuits. His tastes, habits, and education did
not run in this line, and he met with disaster and the loss of the
little money he had saved. He immediately turned his attention to his
profession once more, and happening at that time, in 1846, to fall in
with some homœopathic works, he read them attentively, was struck with
the power and naturalness of the theory propounded, then entirely new in
that section of the country, and without hesitation commenced the
practice of that which the books set forth. His superior medical
education, and the success which almost immediately attended him, put
him in less than two years time in the front rank of physicians in the
vicinity of Elmira.He was the first homœopathic
physician in southern and western New York, and his reputation and
success aided the spread of the new school in that part of the country
very greatly. For twenty years he enjoyed the confidence and esteem of a
very large circle of friends and patients, going into the families of
the best people in southern New York and northern Pennsylvania. In 1857,
he became engaged in some real estate operations, near Lyons, Iowa, and
going thither, with his family to settle, he was stricken down with a
Western fever, which had a fatal termination in thirty-six hours from
the first attack. He died August 28th, 1857, in the fifty-first year of
his age. His memory is yet fresh and green in the hearts of hundreds of
people, whom he had known and cared for in their distress, and whom he
had lifted out of misery and suffering.Source
: Cleave’s Biographical Cyclopædia of Homœopathic Physicians and
Surgeons By Egbert Cleave