[Original]
Philip S. Physick (1768-1837), a pupil of Hunter, has been spoken of as the "father of American surgery," which he taught in the University of Pennsylvania. He was a tremendous worker, but wrote very little. He employed animal ligatures made of buckskin. John Syng Dorsey (1783-1818) was a nephew of Physick; taught anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania; wrote a treatise on surgery, which was the second surgical text-book published in this country, and was the first in the United States to tie the external iliac artery. He died at the age of thirty-five, at a time when he was giving promise of exceeding eminence. Nathan Smith taught in Dartmouth, Yale, and Bowdoin Colleges, and 'was considered the best man of his day in New England.
[Original]
To him is justly due the great honor of having performed the first rational and deliberate ovariotomy, which he did in 1809, his patient living for thirty-two years. The operation was performed without an anæsthetic, and considering the circumstances under which it was carried out has shed a lustre upon his name and brain which nothing can ever dim. By this performance he became practically the father of modern abdominal surgery, and to him Americans and Europeans alike are delighted to render all the honor that is his due.
Perhaps the most eminent surgeon of the country was Valentine Mott (1785-1865), a pupil of Cooper and Bell, who taught in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, until 1840, and in the University Medical School until 1860. He was a man of exceeding boldness and brilliancy, whose operations were performed at a time when anaesthesia was unknown, or was in its infancy, and who probably did more work in the surgery of the vascular system than any other surgeon who has ever lived. He was the first to tie the arteria innominata,—in 1818. As Gross wrote of him, he had a record of one hundred and thirty-eight ligations of various large arteries,—a record probably never equaled. He was also the first to do a successful extirpation of the clavicle for tumor,—an operation which at that time was considered very formidable. Though not a great writer himself, he is best known among students as the translator and editor of Velpeau's large work upon operative surgery.
Dr. George McClellan (1796-1847) was the founder of the Jefferson Medical School, and its first Professor of Surgery. He was followed later by Dr. Thomas D. Mutter, who left his surgical museum to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and endowed a lectureship there. J. K. Rodger, of New York; John Rhea Barton, of Philadelphia; William Gibson, of Philadelphia; Gurdon Buck, of New York; Willard Parker, of New York; Frank H. Hamilton, of New York, who made his reputation while teaching in our Buffalo school, author of a most popular and valuable treatise upon fractures and dislocations; and Henry B. Sands, of New York, were men of greatest prominence during the middle and latter portion of the present century, each of whom has contributed in his way either to the science or to the literature of surgery. The most prominent figure in American surgery of the past forty years was Samuel D. Gross, of Philadelphia, professor in the Jefferson School, to which he moved from Kentucky, where he laid the foundation for his attainments and reputation.
