TONER, Joseph Meredith, physician, born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, 30 April, 1825. He received his classical education at Western Pennsylvania university and Mount St. Mary's college, was graduated at Vermont medical college in 1850 and Jefferson medical college in 1853, and, after a short residence in Summitsville, Pennsylvania, and Harper's Ferry, Virginia, settled in Washington, D. C., in 1855. He was a founder of Providence hospital and of St. Ann's infant asylum, to which he is a visiting physician, and since 1856 has been the attending physician to St. Joseph's orphan asylum. Aware of the perishable character of much of the early medical literature of this country, he devised a scheme for a repository of medical works that should be under the control of that profession in the United States and located at Washington, D. C. His resolution on that subject was adopted by the American medical association in 1868, and resulted in the establishment of the library of the American medical association. The collection is placed in the Smithsonian institution, and has reached the number of 6,000 volumes, including pamphlets. In 1871 he founded the Toner lectures by placing $3,000 (which has grown to $5,000) in the hands of trustees, who are charged with the duty of annually procuring two lectures that contain some new fact valuable to medical science, the interest on the fund, save ten per cent which is added to the permanent fund, being paid to the authors of the essays. These lectures are included in the regular list of the publications of the Smithsonian institution. It is the first attempt that has been made in this country to endow a course of lectures on such conditions. He gave in 1875 and three subsequent years the Toner medal at Jefferson medical college, to be awarded to the best thesis that embodies the results of original investigation. For many years he has given a similar medal to the University of Georgetown. He was president of the American medical association in 1873 and of the American health association in 1874, a vice-president of the International medical congress in 1876, and a vice-president and registrar of the International medical congress in 1887. Dr. Toner has devoted much time and research to early American medical literature, and has collected over 1,000 treatises published before 1800, and, besides publishing numerous monographs, has in preparation a "Biographical Dictionary of Deceased American Physicians," of which more than 4,000 sketches are completed. He is an authority in the medical, biographical, and local history of the District of Columbia, and has devised a system of symbols of geographical localities, which has been adopted by the United States post-office department. In 1882 he gave his entire library, including manuscripts, to the United States government. It consisted of 26,000 books and 18,000 pamphlets, he is a member of numerous medical, historical, and philosophical associations, has published more than fifty pamphlets, which include "Maternal Instinct" (Baltimore, 1864) ; "Compulsory Vaccination" (1865) ; "Medical Register of the District of Columbia" (1867); "Necrological Notices of Deceased Surgeons in the Rebellion" (Washington, 1870); "Medical Register of the United States " (Philadelphia, 1874); "Dictionary of Elevations and Climatic Register of the United States" (New York, 1874) ; "Annals of Medical Progress and Medical Education in the United States" (1874); "Medical Men of the Revolution" (Philadelphia, 1876); "Rocky Mountain Medical Association" (187'7) ; and "Memorial Volume, with a Biography of its Members" (Washington, 1877). See life by Thomas Antisell (Washington, 1878).