A Wasted Life

Feilding Star, Volume VI, Issue 87, 6 January 1885, Page 3

A Wasted Life

The death of one of the most cultivated, brilliant, and famous doctors in Connec- . ticut, gaid the N.Y. Tribune, 29th Sept., is hourly expected at the New Haven Hospital. The patient is Dr Joseph J. Barry, who was born in Ireland in 1822. He graduated in Dublin and practised on the " fever ship*" that came into New York in 1857. He went to California in the gold excitement, and made money rapidly. -A successful practitioner, he was extravagant, and as riches accumulated he took to drink. Odd and unreasonable, no one could do anything with him, and finally, he lost everything through his appetite for rum. He came to New Haven in 1872. Soon after, in a drunken spree, he lost his Dublin diploma, and unable to find it, he went to New York, took a course at the University, and procured a second sheepskin. Then he started to build another fortune. He is a most skilful surgeon. A prominent physician said that for many years Dr Barry has had the largest practice in the State. He made money fast and gave much away. About four years ago he - came again under the influence of his old ■ enemy. He made desperate struggles, and since then his life has been a perpetfejL ual fight with liquor. The enemy has defeated him. Of late he has been locked up in all the principal Eastern cities for vagrancy and drunkenness. All his for--tftnfijyyjonft.and Jus .doctors Ba y that he wtH not live till morning. A pathetic ' feature, of his life in the local prisons was . the swarming in upon him of scores of his old patients as soon as he was found ' to be in the, city .