In politics he is a conservative and has made public battles for his principles in elections in the counties of Terrebonne, Jacques Cartier, Laval and Yamaska. However, the practice of law he considers his real life work, regarding it as abundantly worthy of his best efforts, and in his chosen profession he has made continuous and gratifying progress.
FRANK BULLER, M. D., C. M.
Dr. Frank Buller was one of the most celebrated ophthalmologists of the new world, occupying, as practitioner and educator, a position in which he had few peers. His scientific research and his broad reading gave him a knowledge far superior to that of many able members of the profession, and in the wise utilization of his time and talents he made valuable contributions to the world’s work.
Dr. Buller was born at Campbellford, Ontario, May 4, 1844, a son of Charles G. and Frances Elizabeth (Boucher) Buller, of Hillside, Campbellford. After attending the high school at Peterboro, from which he graduated in due time, he took up the study of medicine in Victoria College at Cobourg, completing his course with the class of 1869. He then went to Germany, where he spent two years in the study of the eye, ear, nose and throat, acquainting himself with the advanced methods of eminent men in the profession. While at the University of Berlin he received close personal instruction from Von Helmholtz and Von Graefe, and, during the Franco-German war, served as assistant surgeon in a number of military hospitals of northern Germany. In 1872 Dr. Buller went to London and studied for some years in “Moorfields”—the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital. He was for two years chief house surgeon of this hospital, and he introduced to London the “direct” method of ophthalmoscopy. In England he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. Dr. Buller began practice in Montreal in 1876 and rapidly advanced to a foremost position in his profession. For seventeen years he was the opthalmic and aural surgeon in the Montreal General Hospital and resigned to take the same position in the Royal Victoria Hospital. He was the first ophthalmologist to be appointed to the General Hospital—and so remarkably recent is the development of opthalmology in the new world that, prior to that time, every physician and surgeon treated his eye cases in his own clinic. For many years Dr. Buller was professor of ophthalmology and otology in McGill University, being appointed professor when the chair was founded in 1883. He was equally able in his large private practice and enjoyed an ever widening reputation. Dr. Buller received the English degree of M. R. C. S.
Dr. Buller was a powerfully built man, restless and very energetic. His students used to say of him, “Buller is a great teacher, but he wears us out.” He was forever engaged in arduous mental work but also took keen interest in matters outside of his profession. He was frank, straightforward and kind—a strong generous nature.
Dr. Buller married Elizabeth Belton Langlois, of Quebec, who died November 20, 1895. By this marriage there were two children, Marguerite and Cecil. In 1898 he married Miss Jean Brien, of New York, and they had three children, Francis, Audrey and James, the latter dying in 1909.
Dr. Buller was a member of the Church of England. He died October 11, 1905. He was followed to the grave by the entire medical profession of Montreal and numerous physicians from a distance. Also many of the city’s poor were present at the obsequies—a fact which, had he been able to know it, would have touched that great heart which had so keenly felt their sorrows.
A colleague of Dr. Buller writes as follows: “In very delicate cases, where he feared to trust patients in the hands of untrained attendants, and they were too poor to hire professional nurses, he has been known to stay with the patients all night, after an operation, and attend to the dressing himself, lest the eye, so tender and in such a precarious condition, might suffer needless pain or be injured through a slight mistake.”