Dr. Joseph Henry Wythe (1822-1901) was born in Manchester, England, on March 19, 1822, the son of Joseph Wythe and Mary Chamberlain. In 1832, J. H. Wythe accompanied his parents to America and began his education in the private schools of Philadelphia where the family had settled. Through his efforts and supplemented by private education, he became proficient in the natural sciences and in the Greek, Hebrew, and Latin languages. In 1842, J. H. Wythe became an ordained Methodist minister at the age of nineteen. Two years later, in 1844, he received the honorary degree of Master of Arts (MA) from Dickinson College Seminary, Carlisle Pennsylvania. .22 Two years later, in 1850, JH Wythe received his medical degree from the Philadelphia College of Medicine and Surgery. In 1851, Dr. J. H. Wythe published the first edition of his book The Microscopist, or a Complete Manual on the Use of the Microscope, one of the first American texts on the subject. From July, 1851, to March, 1852, Dr. Wythe practiced medicine in Philadelphia, where he then removed to Port Carbon, Pennsylvania, and practiced his profession until 1857. He subsequently became a surgeon in the coal mines of Carbon county, a position which he held until to 1860.23 Dr. Wythe practiced at Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, during the next two years. , when the Civil War began and he was commissioned by Abraham Lincoln to assume the position of Assistant Surgeon to the United States Volunteers. In July 1862 he was promoted to surgeon, and five months later he organized the Camp Parole Hospital near Alexandria, D.C., for sick and wounded soldiers released on parole. On February 28, 1863, Dr. Joseph Henry Wythe was promoted to the full rank of surgeon. After the Civil War, Wythe moved to the Pacifi......middle of paper......n Francisco and the Victoria Institute in London, a member of the Royal Microscopical Society of London and a member of the Pacific Astronomical Society of the Pacific. He received a Doctor of Laws degree (LL. D) from Willamette University in 1855 and the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity (DD) from the University of the Pacific in 1876.28 In addition to practicing surgery and medicine, Wythe served as pastor of the Powell Street Methodist Church of San Francisco, he found time to lecture the community and record astronomical observations observed from the powerful telescope he placed in his backyard.29 At Cooper Medical College in San Francisco Dr. Wythe continued to hold the chair of histology until 1897 and he was Professor Emeritus until his death at the age of 79 at his home in Oakland, California, on October 14, 1901 after a long illness. 30