Peter Charles Remondino Autobiography (1846-1926)
Transcript of an original document on file at the San Diego Historical Society, Dr. P.C. Remondino Papers, MS-4.
It was not long after his return to Minnesota before his old Virginia begotten typho-malarial fever again seized upon him as its victim, only more fiercely than before, until the doctor was reduced to a mere shadow of his former self. Under these circumstances, his mind naturally became very much interested in medical climatology which he studied with a great deal of selfish interest. Thru these studies he became well acquainted with the climate of San Diego and that of Southern California where malarial fevers seemed to be entirely absent, so in the last months of 1873 he started for San Diego which he reached by steamer after some weeks stay in San Francisco. His weight was then 120 pounds -- now it is 196 pounds.
On arriving at San Diego he found an old classmate of his from the Jefferson Medical College, who had come to San Diego some years before on account of his health, this being Dr. Robert J, Gregg. Doctor Remondino since coming to San Diego has filled many important professional positions, he was appointed city physician in 1876, being the first president of the city board of health, a position that he occupied, off and on, since then, his last term of office in that capacity for four consecutive years having only expired within the past year, in 1921. He was a surgeon of the California Southern Railroad Company, now the Santa Fe Company, and the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, and for many years was the surgeon of the U. S. Marine Hospital Service at this port. For eight consecutive years he was the county physician and for twenty-five years physician and surgeon to St. Joseph's Hospital in San Diego conducted by the Sisters of Mercy.
The doctor has been vice-president of the State Medical Society, president of the Southern California Medical Society, and president of The San Diego County Medical Society, while he served two terms, eight years in all, as a member of the State Board of Health, and for thirty-five years was a member of the Board of the U. S. Pension Examiners. For twelve years he occupied the Chair of the History of Medicine and of Medical Bibliography in the Medical Department of the University of Southern California, in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, in Los Angeles.
The doctor has been a member of the local Masonic Lodge by a demit from his lodge in Minnesota and a charter member in most of the lodges of the higher degrees, including the 32nd degree and that of the Mystic Shrine. He is also a member of the Knights of Pythias. The doctor was the editor of the National Popular Review; a journal of Preventive Medicine and Applied Sociology which was published in Chicago, the doctor editing it from San Diego. He had taken that editorship at the solicitation of Prof. N. S. Davis and Prof. Hollister of Chicago. Besides those labors, he was a liberal contributor to many medical journals.
He has written a number of books which have enjoyed a large circulation among them being a work entitled A History of Circumcision, The Mediterranean Shores of America, and The Modern Climatological Treatment of Consumption. He is now engaged, in writing among other projected works a history of medicine which will make several volumes, a History of the Portable Arms of the U. S. Army and Navy, which will be illustrated by photogravures of over two hundred specimens in the doctor's arms collections, A History of Medical Education and A History of the Celtic Language and Some of Its People, and An Illustrated History of the Life of Mary Magdalene which will be illustrated with photogravures of over six hundred paintings and statuary of his subject, a number of which are in the doctor's collection of paintings and statuary gleaned from the galleries of Europe.
The doctor besides his direct medical associations and affiliations is a member of the National Geographical Society; of the Californian Writers' Club; and of the New York Medico-Legal Society to whose Journal he is a frequent contributor; and an Honorary member of the National Illustrated News Syndicate.
In 1877 the doctor was married to Sophia Ann Earle, a niece of the Bishop of Marlborough of London, the late Honorable Alfred Earle. There were four children born to them, Caroline Katherine, Frederic Earle, Louisa Remondino, and Charles Henry Earle. Caroline K. Franklin, the wife of Dr. B. V. Franklin, a practicing physician and surgeon of San Diego, is a member of the San Diego Woman's Press Club, of the California Writers' Club, and The Poetry Society; Frederic E. Remondino is a medical student, Mrs. Louisa Remondino Stahel is the president of the San Diego Woman's Press Club and President of the San Diego Chapter of the Poetry Society of America; Charles H. E. Remondino is a practicing physician and surgeon in San Diego.
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