John Ordronaux ( doctor ) John Ordronaux ( 1830 - January 20 , 1908 ) was an American Civil War army surgeon , a professor of medical jurisprudence , a pioneering mental health commissioner and a generous patron of university endowments . Between 1859 and 1901 Ordronaux published at least fifteen books and articles about subjects as diverse as heroes of the American Revolution of 1776 , military medicine , medical jurisprudence , mental health , United States constitutional law and historical treatises . He left an estate worth $ 2 , 757 , 000 much of which he gave in endowments to several US universities and other institutions . He did not marry . Early life . Ordronaux was the only son of Captain John Ordronaux ( a notable privateer of the War of 1812 ) , and his wife Jean Marie Elizabeth Ordronaux ( née Charretton ) . This is supported by the younger Ordronaux ' s will which mentions a bequest to his sister Florine , and to his nieces Clara and May Molan , matching genealogical information prepared by an Ordronaux family member . He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1850 , from Harvard Law School in 1852 , and from the National Medical School in 1859 . In 1859 he published his first book a " Eulogy on the life and character of Rev . Zachariah Greene " , who , before taking Holy Orders , had fought under Washington in the revolution of 1776 at the age of seventeen . In 1860 Ordronaux became a Professor of medical jurisprudence at Columbia Law School , a post that he held until 1887 . Since 1861 he had also been a lecturer at Dartmouth College , The University of Vermont and Boston University . American Civil War . During the American Civil War Ordronaux served as an army surgeon stationed in New York . He also acted as a military medical advisor and between 1861 and 1863 he published two textbooks on the health of armies , and an instruction manual of medical criteria for examining recruits . In the introduction to the latter , which was written for the United States Sanitary Commission , he said , " The preservation of health in armies , is everywhere a subject of recognized importance . So much , in fact , depends upon it , that precautionary measures in this behalf can never be exaggerated . All that can be done , should be done to protect troops against preventable disease . It seems to have been formerly believed , that the presence of a surgeon in each regiment was all sufficient for this purpose ; and that officers and men could go their way free from any responsibility or apprehension on that score . But experience has proved that the preservation of health , in either one man , or many , is not purely objective with surgeons . Too much , in this particular , is expected from them , and too little is done by officers to cooperate with them . Armies , like patients , must act in concert with their medical advisers , and make the matter of health subjective as well as objective . Officers and men need an insight into the general principles of hygiene , in order to be able to assist , themselves , in furthering prophylactic measures . To supply them with the requisite amount of information , the accompanying popular manual has therefore been prepared . " In 1863 he wrote a historical treatise in French ( with Reinaud ) on the commercial and political relations between the Roman Empire and the countries of Oriental Asia . In 1864 he wrote a second report for the United States Sanitary Commission . This concerned pensions for the war wounded and was subtitled , " On a system for the economical relief of disabled soldiers , and on certain proposed amendments to our present pension laws " . After the war . After the war he returned to Columbia Law School and began writing again . Between 1867 and 1871 he produced a book on preventative medicine and two textbooks on medical jurisprudence . He also translated into English verse the medieval Latin text of Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum , the medical encyclopedia of the Scuola Medica Salernitana . in Salerno , Italy was the pre - eminent medical school in Europe in the 11th century . This was not the first English translation but an attempt to make a medically accurate one . He appears to have done this as a tribute to former members of his profession and in an introduction to his work he said , " " Regimen Sanitatis Salerni " was a work of transcendent merit . Though written in the early twilight of the Middle Ages and in inferior Latin , it at once took its place alongside of such classic productions as the Aphorisms of Hippocrates . No secular work , indeed , ever met with more popular favor , nor infused its canons so radically into the dogmas of any science . It was for ages the medical Bible of all Western Europe , and held undisputed sway over the teachings of its schools , next to the writings of Hippocrates and Galen " . Work on mental health . Ordronaux developed an interest in mental health and between 1872 and 1882 he was a member of the New York State Commission in Lunacy writing two books on the subject . The second of these books mentions the opening of a ground breaking mental hospital and in his preface to the book he says , " The recent establishment of a department of Lunacy supervision by the State of New York , has turned public attention to it as a source for consultation , in the application of our Statute and Common Law to the legal relations of the insane . . . Insanity is a subject which touches our civil rights at so many different points , that it may be said to have a place in every problem involving human responsibility . It begins with man in the cradle , and follows him to the grave . It is often part of his physical heritage , and may become a qualifying element in all his civil acts . To collect and embody in one treatise the principles of law by which courts govern their adjudications in questions of mental incapacity , and to expound through commentaries both the philosophy of these decisions and the rules of procedure under which they are rendered , is the object aimed at in this manual of Lunacy practice " . Ordronaux ' s activity as a Commissioner was frequently mentioned in the press . In 1875 he was called in to adjudicate whether a man , who was under sentence of death for murder , was insane . The same newspaper reported again on 7 January 1876 how Ordronaux had found that Kings County Lunatic Asylum was being mismanaged by the charity commissioners ( 17 ) . He also investigated complaints from two inmates in Buffalo asylum of abusive behaviour by their carers . In his report Ordronaux upheld the complaints and recommended the discharge of the two staff involved . By 1882 his forward thinking and outspokenness had made him some enemies and in 1882 his salary of $ 4000 as Commissioner in Lunacy was temporarily opposed in debate in the finance committee of the New York State Senate . U . S . Constitution . Ordronaux ' s work on State law in New York led him to consider its relationship with Federal law , and in 1891 he published what may be his most important book , on the relationship between the powers of Congress and State legislatures . About this book of more than 600 pages , Ordonaux said in the preface , " The accompanying work is an attempt to present in a concrete form the entire system of Federal and State legislation , as practised under a written Constitution in the United States . Its object is to expound those administrative powers which , in our dual form of representative government , are sovereign within their several spheres of action . . . A written Constitution is a political grammar to whose rules administrative laws must conform , in order to give them judicial validity . . . The government of forty four independent States , dwelling in harmonious relations under a supervisory Federal sovereignty , would seem , therefore , to justify the treatment of Legislation as a department of jurisprudence meriting more textual consideration than it has yet received . . . the present treatise has been prepared to meet the wants of those who , desiring to practise or interpret the canons of representative government in the United States , may seek to master the secrets of its architecture through a study of the labors of its founders , and to trace its genesis and development to a providential origin in the Spartan Commonwealths of our colonial period . " Later life . In 1898 Ordronaux wrote a biography of a Leonice Sampson Moulton , a presumed relative of his foster father , possibly his foster mother . She was born in 1811 and descended from the original Mayflower settlers to America . As Miss Sampson , she was sent on a secret mission to the US embassy in Buenos Aires to enquire into the sovereignty dispute between Great Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands . She is interesting according to Ordronaux for , among other things , keeping a very detailed diary which was far more comprehensive than the logs of the ships upon which she travelled . On 27 June 1901 Ordronaux addressed the graduate students of The University of Vermont . Reading like a tribute to his own life ' s work he says , " A strange feeling possesses me as I rise to address you . . . I am here to perform , with much surprise to myself , the same duty which devolved upon me , on a similar occasion , thirty six years ago . . . I stand in the presence of two distinct periods with all their differing and startling results . In this long interval , too long to be measured by the standard of months , and falling more properly in the category of cycles , the drama of human society has moved with accelerated pace . A generation has acted its part of good and evil , then passed to its final account . Science , the industrial art , Education , Commerce , Navigation , have all spread their wings as never before . Our country has added nine states to the framework of our Federal Union , and buttressed its Constitution with armor plated Amendments whose necessity had never been contemplated . Our very name , the United States , has changed its former significance and been adjudicated by our highest Appellate Tribunal to be no longer a plural substantive , but a noun in the singular number describing a nation of political equals , and not a league or partnership of States . " Ordronaux died of " apoplexy " at his home , Glen Head , in Roslyn , New York on 20 January 1908 . His estate was initially valued at nearly $ 1 , 000 , 000 . A large part of his bequests were to hospitals , universities , churches and other public institutions . These included $ 30 , 000 to Dartmouth College and $ 10 , 000 each to Trinity College , Hartford , Connecticut , The University of Vermont and the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island . However , the New York Times reported on 8 August 1908 that Ordronaux ' s total estate amounted to $ 2 , 757 , 000 , the bulk of which was left to his three surviving sisters .