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After leaving college, in 1863, our classmate spent the three following years studying
medicine in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York City, from which he was
graduated as the valedictorian of his class in 1866. The two succeeding years he passed as
interne in the public hospitals of New York. Then followed three years of study and travel
abroad, after which he began the practice of medicine in the city of New York. During the
first five years of medical practice he was associated with the late Dr. J. Marion Sims. He was surgeon in the "Anglo-American ambulance" during the Franco-Prussian
War, in 1870, and was captured with Napoleon III, General McMahon, and 80,000 Frenchmen at Sedan, by which experience, like most prisoners of war, he acquired a very
decided distaste for military life.
Since 1872 Nicoll has been a member of the medical staff of The Woman's Hospital
of the State of New York, holding the position of attending surgeon since 1888. Since 1873
he has served as attending obstetrician and as a member of the board of managers of the
New York Infant Asylum, and for many years has been consulting physician to the Nursery
and Child's Hospital, consulting obstetrician to the Lincoln Hospital, and, this present year,
1903, he has been appointed consulting gynecologist to Presbyterian Hospital, all of New
York City. Here, certainly, is a good record made by one of the few physicians of our Class,
and by one of our youngest classmates, who had not arrived at his twentieth birthday on the
day of graduation.
On the 16th of October, 1877, Dr. Nicoll married Anne Bancker Camac, daughter
of William and Ellen Maria (McIlvaine) Camac, of Philadelphia. For what follows I venture
to quote from our classmate's own notes: "Four children have been born to us, two sons
and two daughters, one of whom, our son Henry, died at the age of thirteen years, on the
4th of December, 1892. Our elder daughter, Margaret, is the wife of William Mayo Dudley,
a banker of this city. Our second daughter, Anne Camac, is of marriageable age, but I am
happy to say that thus far I have discovered no symptoms indicating her desire to
change her local habitation and name. Our son William Leonard, at the age of fourteen years, can
dispose of his share of provender with great ease and regularity; is a handsome boy, looks
like his mother [a good omen, that; but he might be a handsome boy if he looked like his
father, as he is now, I dare say; certainly as he was in 1859, when he entered our Class only
a few weeks passed his fifteenth birthday], and says he expects to enter Harvard in 1906, but
he has still to reckon with his pa about that. Our children are all members of the
Presbyterian Church, and, I thank God, give us only happiness in their conduct. I am a
deacon and elder in the Presbyterian Church and a manager of the American Bible Society,
and have been president of the New York Bible Society." A good record straight through!
Source:
Class of Sixty-Three Williams College Fortieth Year Report, by
the Class Historian, Thomas Todd Printer, Boston, 1903
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