The subject of this brief biography has been in the practice of medicine and surgery at Kingston for thirty-seven years, and has occupied the Chair of Medicine in Queen’s University, now the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Kingston, since 1854. He is
the son of a physician, William Yates, a native of Derbyshire, Eng., and was born in Otsego county, N. Y., February 11, 1821. His mother’s name, before her marriage, was Hannah Palmer.
In 1833 he came to Kingston to live with an uncle; here he read medicine with Dr. James Sampson; attended lectures at the Pennsylvania Medical College, Philadelphia; was there graduated in 1842; then spent a year in St. George’s Hospital, London, Eng., and since 1843, has been in the constant practice of his profession, standing second to no one here in any department of the healing art. He has had a great deal of surgical business, some of it at points remote from his home. His skill and success are well known over a wide area of country, and he commands the highest respect of the medical fraternity as well as of the community.
Besides his general practice, and his duties in the Medical College already mentioned, the Doctor is surgeon, in full pay, of the School of Gunnery connected with the Canadian Artillery, and has been Surgeon to the Kingston General Hospital for a quarter of a century, and chairman of its Board of Governors for many years. Though bordering on his sixtieth year, he retains his vigor of mind and body, and is very active, and as serviceable as ever to the community, having always taken superb care of himself. He belongs to the Church of England, and has lived an unblemished and eminently praiseworthy life. He is a very modest man, devoid of vanity, pretension or show, and very quietly and unostentatiously attends to his manifold duties.
In September 1846, Dr. Yates married Jane Bower, daughter of Rev. Joseph Bower, of Chester, England, and they have had three children, all girls, losing one of them in infancy. Agnes, the younger of the two living children, is the wife of William H. Ford, of Montreal. Stella lives with her parents.