John Call Dalton, an American physiologist, born at Chelmsford, Mass., Feb. 2, 1825. He graduated in arts at Harvard college in 1844, and in medicine in 1847. He first attracted attention as an original physiological writer by an essay on the corpus luteum, which received the annual prize offered by the American medical association in 1851, and he was appointed professor of physiology in the medical department of the university of Buffalo, where he inaugurated in this country the teaching of physiology with illustrations by vivisection. He resigned this professorship in 1854, and occupied the chair of physiology in the Vermont medical college from 1854 to 1857, and in the Long Island College hospital from 1859 to 1861. In 1854-'5 he gave a course of lectures on physiology in the college of physicians and surgeons in New York, in place of Prof. Alonzo Clark. In 1855 he was appointed to that chair, which he has since filled. His contributions to the literature of physiology have been numerous since 1851. He has published several important articles in the " American Journal of the Medical Sciences," and has contributed largely to the "Transactions of the New York Academy of Medicine," the "American Medical Monthly," and other medical journals of New-York. In 1859 he published a "Treatise on Human Physiology," which immediately became a standard work; and in 1868 a "Treatise on Physiology and Hygiene " for schools, which has been translated into French. In April, 1861, he went to Washington as surgeon to the 7th regiment of the city of New York. He was appointed brigade surgeon of volunteers in August, 1861, and resigned in March, 1864, having filled several important positions in the medical corps.

As an original worker in physiology, he is best known by his researches on the corpus luteum, the anatomy of the placenta, the physiology of the cerebellum, intestinal digestion, and the other experimental observations embodied in his treatise on physiology. These, with other original investigations, have placed him in the front rank of living physiologists.