TILTON, James, physician, born in Kent county, Delaware, 1 June, 1745; died near Wilmington, Delaware, 14 May, 1822. He received a classical education at Nottingham academy, Maryland, under Reverend Samuel Finley, who was afterward president of Princeton. On leaving school, he entered the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was graduated in 1771, six years after its organization. He at once settled at Dover, Delaware, where he remained until the beginning of the Revolutionary war. His sympathies being warmly enlisted in the patriot cause, he abandoned a lucrative practice to enlist, and became 1st lieutenant in a com-puny of light infantry. Subsequently he was up-pointed surgeon in a Delaware regiment, and served in the battles of Long Island and White Plains, accompanying the army in its retreat to the Delaware aver. In 1777 he was in charge of the military hospital at Princeton, New Jersey, where there was much suffering among the troops in consequence of the system of placing all the sick in one hospital. Dr. Tilton himself narrowly escaped death from an attack of fever that he contracted there. In the winter of 1779-'80 the sufferings of the sick in the tent hospitals was very great. To Dr. Tilton, then stationed at Trenton, New Jersey, has been ascribed the suggestion of the erection of the new buildings that were ordered by the authorities with the happiest results. These were log huts, roughly built so as to admit of free ventilation through the crevices, with floors of hardened clay, each being intended to accommodate not more than six patients. In September, 1781, chiefly through the exertions of Dr. Tilt on, an act was passed by congress pro'-riding for promotion by seniority in the medical corps. He was soon afterward elected a professor in the University of Pennsylvania, but declined, being unwilling to leave the service. In 1782, after the surrender of Cornwallis, he began to practise again in Dover. In 1783-'5 he was a delegate to the Continental congress, and he sat for several sessions in the legislature. He removed to Wilmington for his health, from 1785 till 1801 was government commissioner of loans, and on the declaration of war with Great Britain was appointed surgeon-general of the army. He found the hospitals on the northern frontier, and especially the one at Sackett's Harbor, filthy and neglected. He moved the latter to Watertown, New York, introduced better regulations into all of them, and was rewarded by an immediate improvement in the health of the army. Purchasing a farm near Wilmington, he devoted his time thereafter chiefly to its cultivation. In 1857 his remains were disinterred, and now lie in the Wilmington and Brandywine cemetery beneath a monument erected by the Delaware state medical society. Dr. Tilton published his graduation essay, "De Hydrope" (Philadelphia, 1771), and an elaborate plan for hospital organization, entitled " Economical Observations on Military Hospitals, and the Prevention and Cure of Diseases incident to the Army" (Wilmington, 1813). His papers include "Observations on the Yellow Fever," "Letter to Dr. Duncan on Several Cases of Rabies Canina," "Observations on the Curculio," "On the Peach-Tree and its Diseases," " A Letter to Dr. Rush approving of Bleeding in Yellow Fever," and an oration in 1790 as president of the Delaware Society of the Cincinnati.