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perior qualifications, to unfaltering application, to earnest purpose and to methods above reproach. Dr. Bittle Cornelius Keister, of Roanoke, Virginia, has achieved a position of eminence in his profession which is due to the possession of qualifications far above the ordinary. He represents the fourth generation of his family in this country, his great-grandfather having been a native of Hamburg, Germany, from whence he emigrated to America in 1750, and settled in Pennsylvania.

William Keister, father of Dr. Keister, was a farmer and leather dealer of Newport, Giles county, Virginia, and was one of the most influential men of the community. He entertained broad and liberal views, and, when the town was first incorporated, was honored by election as mayor, and was also a member of the town council. He married Nancy Epling, whose grandfather was an Englishman who came to this country about the year 1770.

Dr. Bittle Cornelius Keister was born at Newport, Giles county, Virginia, January 29. 1857. He was endowed with a vigorous constitution, and in addition to assisting his father in the laborious work of the farm he spent much of his time in reading and private study. From earliest boyhood he developed the taste in reading which led to his subsequent choice of a profession in opposition to the wishes of his father, whose desire it was that his son should enter the ministry. His elementary education was acquired in the public schools of Giles county, and after a course at the White Gate Academy he became a student at Roanoke College, Salem, Virginia, and was graduated from this institution in the class of 1878 with the degree of Master of Arts. Owing to the opposition of his father, Dr. Keister was obliged to work his way through college and university, and this additional effort appears to have strengthened his love for his profession. He matriculated at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, at Baltimore, Maryland, and was graduated in 1882 with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Two years later he took a post-graduate course at the New York Polyclinic, and in 1894 a similar course at the Chicago Poly-clinic. He is one of those physicians who firmly believe in the virtue and necessity of continued study, and in 1900 he took a year's course in the Physiological and Bacteriological Institute of Berlin, Germany, while at the same time he was a student in the Berlin University. As a means of paying his expenses when he entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons, he obtained a position as principal in the graded school in the village of Newport, and was thus engaged for a considerable period of time. After his graduation as a physician, he made his home in South Boston, Halifax county, Virginia, where he established himself in the active practice of his profession. This he interrupted in 1900 in order to continue his studies in Germany, and upon his return to his native land he established the Keister Home Sanitarium, at Roanoke, Virginia, for the treatment of various chronic ciseases and nervous affections. This institution has met with the success it so richly merits, and the patients who are treated there have come from all parts of the country. While Dr. Keister was studying in Europe, he attended clinics at hospitals in Paris, Berlin and London, and acted as foreign correspondent for a number of medical journals published in this country. He is a member of the American Medical Association, Virginia State Medical Society, Southern Southern Medical Association, American Academy of Political and Social Science, American Society for the Study of Alcohol and other Narcotics, etc. In 1900 he was appointed by Commissioner-General Peck, delegate to the first Congress on Professional Medicine, which was held in Paris, and on this occasion read a paper before this assembly on "The Attitude of the Medical Profession of the United States on the Subject of Proprietary Medicines." Extracts from this address were published in the "London Lancet" and other foreign medical journals. journals. The American Medical Association elected him a delegate to the Thirteenth International Medical Congress, which met in Paris in 1900. He has read a number of other papers before medical bodies in this country and abroad, and published a number of others. Among those read are: "A Plea for a Modern Code of Ethics;" "Cancer and Reports of Cases;" "Preventive Medicine and its Relation to Society;" Spasmodic Asthma:" "Malaria;" "Puerperal Dropsy:" "Alcohol as Food and as a Poison;' Alcohol a greater menace to Civilization than Contagious Diseases;" "The Medical Man of Today, Yesterday and