History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Part 182

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 992

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If as a didactic teacher Dr. Gross was popular and instructive, he was, if possible, still more so as a clinical teacher. His extensive knowledge of dis- ease, acquired at an early period of his professional life, added to a ready facility in diagnosis, the result of a large private and hospital practice, enabled him to grasp at a glance the leading features of a case and to suggest a proper plan of treatment. One of his strong points as a clinician was the happy elucidation of the symptomatology and diagnosis of the diseases and injuries brought from time to time before his classes, his ready application of remedies to meet their exigencies, and every other expedient calculated to enlighten the minds of the students. Ile was never satisfied unless his work was done thoroughly. Ile felt that in every case he had a triple duty to per- form : first, and above all, to his patient ; secondly, to his pupils; and, lastly, to himself. No man was ever more conscious to the responsibility of the duties of his office, or more determined to perform them with an eye single to the best interests of all con- cerned. As an operator he did his work well, otten brilliantly, never slovenly or recklessly, or for the sake of éclat. It is his boast that he never lost a patient on the table. As a lithotomist he enjoys a high reputation. His favorite operation is the lateral, performed with the knife, guided by an ordinary statf. He is always cool and self-possessed. No man ever saw his hand tremble, or his eye express fear. His knowledge of topographieal anatomy never fails him, and this knowledge is one of the causes of his self- possession in the use of the knife.

1 In 1832, Dr. Gross performed a series of experiments on hanging and manual strangulation, the results of which were published in the Western Journal of Medicine, and afterward embodied by Dr. T. R. Beck in bis great work on medical jurisprudence. He also made numerous observations on the temperature of the blood and on the coagulation of that fluid as influenced by various circumstances.

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HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA.

Dr. Gross has long been a voluminous writer. In 1840 he published "Elements of Pathological An- atomy," 2 vols. 8vo, copiously illustrated ; third edition in 1857. This was the first systematic treatise upon the subject ever published in the Eng- lish language. The work was well received abroad, especially in Prussia and Austria. Professor Vir- chow, of Berlin, bestowed upon it the highest praise, while the Imperial Royal Medical Society, of Vienna, soon after the publication of the second edition, hon- ored him in acknowledgment of the merits of the work, with its membership. In 1843 he published " An Experimental and Critical Inquiry into the Nature and Treatment of Wounds of the Intestines," 1 vol. 8vo, a work based upon upward of seventy ex- periments upon dogs, performed with a view of ascer- taining the best mode of treating this class of lesions, a labor occupying nearly three years. In 1851 he published "A Practical Treatise on the Diseases, Injuries, and Malformations of the Urinary Bladder, the Prostate Gland, and the Urethra," 1 vol. 8vo; second edition in 1854; a volume of nine hundred and twenty-five pages, well illustrated and thor- oughly exhaustive; and a third edition in 1876, edited by Dr. S. W. Gross. In 1854 he published " A Practical Treatise on Foreign Bodies in the Air Passages," 1 vol. Svo, pp. 468. At the time of its appearance, this was the only work upon the subject in any language. In this work the author gave a full digest of the existing state of this important branch of surgery, and laid down important princi- ples of treatment since universally recognized by the profession. The same year he published a " History of Kentucky Surgery," an elaborate and painstaking report, in which he established upon an immutable basis the claims of Ephraim McDowell to the honor of having been the first to perform ovariotomy until that time erroneously awarded to other surgeons. In 1859 he published his noblest work, " A System of Surgery, Pathological, Diagnostic, Therapeutic, and Operative," 2 vols. 8vo. A sixth edition, thoroughly revised, and brought up to the existing state of the science, in 2 vols. Svo, pp. 1194, 1174, with upwards of sixteen hundred engravings, was issued in 1882. This work has everywhere been received with great favor, and was, in 1863, translated into the Dutch language. Extracts from it have also been pub- lished in China and Japan. At the outbreak of the war he published "A Manual of Military Surgery," which passed through two large editions, and ren- dered important service in fitting young military surgeons for the better and more efficient discharge of their duties on the field and in the hospital. In 1861 he edited a large volume entitled "Lives of Eminent American Physicians and Surgeons of the Nineteenth Century," of which three were furnished by his own pen. In 1876 he published a " History of American Medical Literature from 1776 to the Present Time," 1 vol. Svo, pp. 88, and in the same

year an elaborate paper, entitled "A Century of American Surgery."

In addition to the comprehensive standard works already mentioned, Dr. Gross has also made many other noteworthy contributions to the literature of the medical profession, chiefly in the form of mono- graphs and miscellaneous papers contained in the current medical press of the country. In 1856 he founded, along with Professor T. G. Richardson, now of New Orleans, and for five years edited, the North American Medico-Chirurgical Review, a bi-monthly journal of medicine and surgery, which was con- ducted with marked ability, and enjoyed a successful career for five years, when, the war of the Rebellion coming on, it was suspended, as many of its sub- scribers lived in the South.

Dr. Gross has always been actively identified with the leading medical and scientific societies, local, State, and national, as well as with many prominent kindred associations of other countries. Among such have been the following: the American Philosophi- cal Society, the Philadelphia College of Physicians, the New York Academy of Medicine, the Imperial Royal Medical Society of Vienna, the Medical Society of Christiania in Norway, the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London and of Edinburgh, the British Medical Association, the Clinical Society of London, the Medical Society of London, and the fol- lowing associations, in each of which he has been honored at various times with the office of president, namely : the Kentucky State Medical Society, the Philadelphia Pathological Society, the Philadelphia County Medical Society, the American Medical As- sociation, the Teachers' Medical Convention, which met in April, 1870, at Washington, D. C., to consider the subject of Medical Education, the Pennsylvania State Medical Society, and the International Medical Congress which met at Philadelphia in September, 1876. He was one of the founders of the Kentucky State Medical Society, and the originator of the Pathological Society of Phiadelphia, of the Phila- delphia Academy of Surgery, and of the American Surgical Association,-institutions which are now in a highly flourishing condition, and doing good work in the interests of scientific medicine and surgery.

Besides the official distinctions enumerated, Dr. Gross has been the recipient of numerous other honors, fully merited and worthily bestowed. In 1861 he received the degree of LL.D., from Jefferson College of Pennsylvania. In 1872, during his second visit to Europe, the University of Oxford, England, at its one-thousandth commemoration, conferred upon him the honorary degree of D.C.L., the only compli- ment of the kind ever bestowed upon an American physician. In 1880 the University of Cambridge, England, honored him with the degree of LL.D. His associates upon this occasion were, among others, Brown-Séquard, of Paris, Professor Donders, of Utrecht, and Sir George Burrows, Sir William

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MEDICAL PROFESSION.

Jenner, Sir William Gull, Joseph Lister, F.R.S., and William Bowman, F.R.S., of London.

Dr. Gross has always been a warm advocate of a higher grade of medical education than now obtains in our medical schools, and a more prolonged course of study on the part of the student. He has long been an avowed enemy to the unnecessary multipli- cation of medical colleges and medical journals; and in 1856 he published an elaborate "Report on the Causes which Impede the Progress of American Medical Literature," in which he took strong ground against the then prevalent habit of republishing Eng- lish works under the editorship of American physi- cians. Dr. Gross was the first to describe several surgical diseases before unknown or imperfectly un- derstood, and he has devised some useful surgical instruments and surgical operations.

In 1828, Dr. Gross married Louisa Ann Dulaney, of Philadelphia, a highly accomplished lady of Eng- lish descent, who died in 1876, leaving four children, two danghters, married, the elder to B. F. Horwitz, and the younger to Orville Horwitz, distinguished members of the Baltimore bar ; and two sons, Samuel W. Gross, one of his father's successors in the chair of Surgery in the Jefferson Medical College, and Albert Haller Gross, the present member of Select Council from the Eighth Ward.

Dr. Gross can be justly denominated one of Phila- delphia's most distinguished citizens, as he is one of America's most famous physicians. Whether as sur- geon, author, or lecturer, his individuality has been strongly impressed upon the history of the country's progress and broadening thought. He has not simply kept pace with the advanced stride of scientific re- search, but he has been the intrepid pioneer into many otherwise unexplored regions. As a result, the technical and general literature of the century has not only been enriched, but the heart of hinmanity has been made happier. With him science and philanthropy have been handmaidens.

A clinical assistant to Professors Mütter and Pan- coast, at the Jefferson College, was Benjamin Howard Rand, who was born in Philadelphia Oct. 1, 1827, the son of Benjamin and Ellen Spurrier Rand. In 1850 he was elected professor of Chemistry in the Franklin Institute, holding that position until his resignation, in 1864. Upon the foundation of the Philadelphia Medical College, an institution which ceased to exist in 1861, he was elected to the chair of Chemistry, and from 1852 to 1864 was secretary to the Academy of Natural Sciences. This latter office, as well as his professorship in the Franklin Institute, he resigned in 1864, in order to accept the chair of Chemistry in Jefferson Medical College, from which he resigned by reason of ill health in May, 1877. He was elected a Fellow of the Philadelphia College of Physicians in 1853, and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1868, and also a member of the American Medical Association. Besides frequent contributions

to scientific periodical-, he wrote "Chemistry for Students" (1855), " Elements of Medical Che nistry" (1863 and 1875), and also edited Metcalfe's " Calorie" (1859). He was married, in 1853, to Hannah M., daughter of Jacob L. Kershow, Esq. Ilis first wife died in 1854, and fifteen years later, Dee. 23_ 1869, he married Mary M. Washington, great-grandaughter of Fairfax Washington. He died Feb. 14, 1683.

Dr. Francis Gurney Smith, Jr., born in Philadel- phia March 8, 1818, received both his academical and medical education in the University of Pennsylvania, taking his degree of B.A. in 1837, and those of M.A. and M.D. in 1840. For about a year after receiving his diploma he was one of the resident physicians of the Pennsylvania Hospital, giving special attention to the department of the insane. After establishing himself in practice in Philadelphia, he turned his at- tention specially to midwifery and diseases of women. He was a member of the College of Physicians of Phila- delphia, Philadelphia County Medical Society, College of Physicians and Surgeons of Reading, Academy of Natural Sciences, Pathological Society, American Philosophical Society, Colorado State Medical Soci- ety, Rocky Mountain Medical Society, and Burling- ton County Medical Society of New Jersey. Ile was the first president of the Philadelphia Obstetrical Society, and was vice-president of the meeting of the American Medical Association which was held in Washington in 1870. Ile was well known in pro- fessional literature as one of the authors of the "Compendium of Medicine," which has passed through numerous editions. He also edited several of the American editions of Carpenter's and Marshall's works on physiology and a number of other scien- tific works, as well as translated for the first Amer- ican edition Barth & Roger's " Manual of Ausculta- tion and Percussion." For a period of nine years le was one of the editors of the Philadelphia Medical Examiner. He is well known as the author of an elaborate series of experiments on the celebrated Canadian, Alexis St. Martin, on the "Physiology of Digestion." In 1842 he was elected lecturer on Physiology by the Philadelphia Medical Association, and ten years later professor of the same branch in the Pennsylvania Medical College. In 1863 he sue- ceeded Professor Samuel Jackson in the chair of the Institutes of Medicine in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, which he resigned on account of failing health in May, 1577, when he was elected emeritus professor of the same branch in that institution. He was one of the first medical staff of the Episcopal Hospital, and for six years was one of the attending physicians and clinical lec- turer at the Pennsylvania Hospital. During the war he was connected with the medical staff of the army, and was one of the physicians in charge of a military hospital. He founded and established the first physi- ological laboratory in which physiology was taught experimentally and by demonstration in the Univer-

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HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA.

sity. For several years he held the position of medi- cal director of the National Life Insurance Company, after having organized the medical department in that company.

In 1844 he married Catherine Madeline, daughter of Edmund Dutilh, by whom he had four children, the eldest son being also a member of the medical profession and a prize essayist of his college.

Dr. D. Francis Condie graduated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1818, practiced medicine in Phil- adelphia, and died in 1876. He was at one time president of the State Medical Society, and in 1855 president of the County Medical Society. He was a voluminous writer and a brilliant speaker, express- ing his views on paper or by word of mouth with much clearness and force. He edited "Churchill's Midwifery," and among his original works was one on the diseases of children.

Dr. Benjamin Horner Coates, born in Philadelphia Nov. 14, 1797, was the grandson of Samuel Coates, one of the Pennsylvania Quakers of the seventeenth century. He was a member of the Philadelphia Medical Society, and was for five years a resident physician in the Pennsylvania Hospital. He was a Fellow of the College of Physicians, a member of the Philadelphia County Medical Society (of which he was president in 1859), a permanent member of the Pennsylvania State Medical Society, and senior vice- president of the American Philosophical Society. He was a founder of the North American Medical Journal, published from 1826 to 1831. Of his contributions to the literature of the profession may be mentioned his "Report of the Committee on Epidemic Cholera to the Philadelphia College of Physicians," April, 1832 ; oration on "Certainty in Medicine" before the Philadelphia Medical Society, Feb. 10, 1830 ; speech before the same society, April 4, 1841, on "The Pres- ent State of Evidence in Regard to the Larvæ of the Hessian Fly ;" remarks on "The Effects of Secluded and Gloomy Imprisonment on the African Variety of Mankind," May 24, 1843; and lectures, in 1821-22, on " Absorption," " A Machine-Bed for Fractures," " Gangrene of the Mouth in Children," "Delirium Tremens," and the " Origin of the American Indians." He wrote a memoir of Thomas Say, and a description of the hydrostatic balance. He was lecturer in the Philadelphia School of Medicine ou the Practice of Medicine and on Bandages. His clinical lectures in the Pennsylvania Hospital were during the years from 1828 to 1841. He was a Quaker, and was never mar- ried. He died Oct. 16. 1881.

Dr. D. Hayes Agnew, who was born in Lancaster County, Pa., Nov. 24, 1818, is the son of the late Dr. Robert Agnew, an eminent physician of that section. Ilis classical education was commenced at the Mos- cow Academy, a flourishing institution located in Chester County, then under the direction of Rev. Francis Latta. Subsequently he was under instruc- tion at Jefferson College, Cannonshurg, Pa. His edu-

cational training was finally completed at Newark College, Delaware, where Rev. John Holmes Agnew, a relative, was professor of Languages. Having con- cluded to adopt the practice of medicine as a pro- fession, he matriculated at the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated there- from in 1838.

After leaving the latter institution he entered upon the practice of his profession in the rural districts. Subsequently he removed to Philadelphia, where he continued his practice, meeting with early and flatter- ing success. Soon after settling in this city he began to deliver a course of lectures in the Philadelphia School of Anatomy, in College Avenue, which were continued for many years. At the outbreak of the Rebellion his class numbered two hundred and sixty- five students, representing every State in the Union. He also established the Philadelphia School of Oper- ative Surgery. In 1854 he was chosen one of the sur- geons of the Philadelphia Hospital, in which insti- tution he founded the present Pathological Museum, and for a while acted as its curator. In 1863 he was appointed demonstrator of Anatomy and assistant lecturer on Clinical Surgery in the medical depart- ment of the University of Pennsylvania. He was also chosen, about the same time, one of the surgeons of Wills Ophthalmic Hospital. Two years later he was elected to a similar position in the Pennsylvania Hospital, and also in the Orthopedic Hospital. In 1870 he was chosen to fill the chair of Operative Sur- gery in the University of Pennsylvania, and in the year following he became professor of the Principles and Practice of Surgery in the same institution. The last-named position he holds at the present time, as well as the professorship of Clinical Surgery in the University Hospital. A most skillful and rapid oper- ator in every department of surgery, which is his specialty, his reputation as a surgeon is world-wide. In his capacity as an efficient surgeon, as well as a consulting physician, Dr. Agnew has heen called into many cases of extraordinary importance. His great- est prominence to the general public came from his connection with the case of President Garfield, who was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, July 2, 1881. He was called to Washington by the local physicians July 5th, and from that time until the death of the victim of the assassin's bullet, Sept. 19, 1881, he was assiduous in his devotion to the illustrious patient, being in daily communication with the attending surgeons, and visiting the President twice a week. Such surgical operations as were performed were under the immediate direction of Dr. Agnew, his steady hand nsing the necessary instruments with marked delicacy and skill. The result of the cow- ardly assault of the assassin has hecome, of course, a matter of national history. As was believed by many during the course of treatment, and as was proved by the post-mortem examination, the President had been mortally wounded, and no human skill or efficiency

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could have saved his life. But that the physicians were able to prolong it for a period of over two : months, during which the passions of the nation subsided, and the interests of order and good govern- ment triumphed, is largely attributable to the dis- tinguished skill of Dr. Agnew.

During his forty-six years of active practice Dr. | on "Serous Apoplexy," " Inhalation in the Treatment Agnew has made many valuable contributions to the i of Diseases of the Respiratory Passages," and the literature of the profession. Among such may be " Physicians of the Last ('entury." enumerated the following: A work on "Practical Anatomy," one on " Lacerations of the Female Peri- neum and Vesico-Vaginal Fistula," a series of papers -sixty in number-on " Anatomy in its Relations to Medicine and Surgery," an exhaustive work on the " Principles and Practice of Surgery," and numerous contributions to medical journals on various subjects connected with surgery.

cine at the Jefferson Medical College, and in 1872 professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine. His principal writings have been upon "Medical Diagnosis, with Special Reference to Practical Medi- cine," " An Inquiry into the Pathological Anatomy of Acute Pneumonia," on " C'ancer of the Pancreas,"

At the Jefferson Medical School Dr. James Aitken Meigs was matriculated in October, 1848, and grad- uated in March, 1851. He was born in Philadelphia July 31, 1829, and passed through the Mount Vernon Grammar School and the Central High School. At his graduation at the Jefferson School he received the honorary certificate annually conferred by the lecturers of the Philadelphia Association for Medical Instruction on students who passed examination upon their lectures. The subject of his thesis was the

Among the prominent living physicians are Drs. Alfred Stillé and Jacob M. Da Costa. Dr. Stillé was born in Philadelphia in 1813, and in 1836, the year of | "Hygiene and Therapeutics of Temperament. ' He his graduation from the Pennsylvania University, began practice in 1851. He was for some years as- sylvania College, and lecturer on Climatology and Physiology at the Franklin Institute. Hle lectured frequently on physics and ethnology at the different mechanics' institutes in Philadelphia, and before the literary associations of neighboring cities. In 1855 he was elected physician to the department of diseases of the chest in the Howard Hospital and Infirmary for Incurables, a position which he filled thirteen years. In 1856 he became librarian of the Academy of Natural Sciences, and in 1657 accepted the chair of Institutes of Medicine in the l'hiladel- phia College of Medicine, which he occupied until, two years subsequently, he was transferred to the pro- fessorship of Institutes in the medical department of Pennsylvania College. Here he delivered two courses of lectures on physiology illustrated by vivisectal demonstrations, which attracted much attention, ax no previous attempts to teach physiology experimen- tally had been made in any of the four medien] schools of Philadelphia. In November, 1859, he was chosen consulting physician and clinical lecturer to the Philadelphia Hospital at Blockley, and in 1561 he resigned his positions in the Pennsylvanin College. In 1866 he delivered before Jefferson College, in the spring course of lectures, a series upon the physiology and pathology of the blood and circulation. was elected resident physician of the Pennsylvania sistant to the professor of Physiology in the Penn- Hospital, a position which he retained from 1839 to 184]. He then pursued his studies abroad. From 1844 to 1850 he lectured on Pathology and the Practice of Medicine to the Pennsylvania Asso- ciation for Medical Instruction. In 1849 he was appointed physician to St. Joseph's Hospital. In 1854 he was elected professor of the Theory and Prac- tice of Medicine in the Pennsylvania Medical College, and filled the chair for five years. On June 20, 1864, he was chosen to occupy a similar chair in the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania. He was president of the American Medical Association in 187], and of the Philadelphia County Medical Society in 1862. From 1865 to 1871 he was physician and lecturer on Clini- cal Medicine in the Philadelphia Hospital. The de- gree of LL.D. he received in 1876 from the Pennsyl- vania College, Gettysburg. In association with Dr. J. Forsyth Meigs, he translated "Pathological Hema- tology" from the French of G. Andral. His other publications are " Medical Instruction in the United States," "Elements of General Pathology," " Report on Medical Literature," " Unity of Medicine," " Hum- boldt's Life and Character," "Therapeutics and Ma- teria Medica," " War as an Instrument of Civiliza- tion," a new edition of Wharton and Moreton Stillé's " Treatise on Medical Jurisprudence," a work on materia medica, and, with Dr. John M. Maisch, the National Dispensatory.

Dr. Jacob M. Da Costa, born in the island of St. Thomas, West Indies, Feb. 7, 1833, graduated from the Jefferson Medical College in 1852, and in 1854 became a resident of Philadelphia, devoting his atten- tion mainly to diseases of the heart and lungs. He was for some time attending physician at the Epis- copal Hospital, and subsequently held the same posi- tion at the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Hospitals. In 1864 he was appointed lecturer on Clinical Medi- the College of Physicians, the State Medical Society

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History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Part 182

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co. Number of Pages: 992

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 992