[Original]
He was an early writer upon surgical pathology and anatomy, but is best known for his elaborate System of Surgery, in two large volumes, which has survived several editions and is still most highly esteemed. Among others who ought to be mentioned are Nathan R. Smith, of Baltimore, the inventor of the anterior splint; Paul F. Eve, of Nashville; John T. Hodgen, of St. Louis; Daniel Brainard, of Chicago, and his successor, Moses Gunn; Alden March, of Albany; Henry J. Bigelow, of Boston, who performed the first excision of the hip in this country, in 1852, and who invented the method of crushing and removing stone from the bladder at a single operation, known as litholapaxy; and D. Hayes Agnew, of Philadelphia, who finished, before his death, a large and elaborate treatise on surgery, in three thick volumes.
Of obstetricians and gynaecologists America has had no lack, and, in fact, the United States may almost be said to be the first home of gynaecology. Dr. Bard was the first Professor of Midwifery in King's College, now Columbia, New York, and the author of the first work upon the subject published in this country. In Philadelphia, Dr. Thomas C. James (1756-1835) was the first distinct teacher of obstetrics, his chair falling later to Dewees, already mentioned, who wrote extensively on midwifery and the diseases of children and of women. The same chair in the University of Pennsylvania was filled later by Hugh L. Hodge (1796-1873), a man of great originality and independence, who published a most elaborate and beautiful work upon his branch, which will always remain a classic. Charles D. Meigs, professor in the Jefferson School, Philadelphia, was the first to direct attention to thrombosis as a cause of sudden death in childbirth. He wrote both on gynaecology and midwifery. Bedford, of Baltimore, was another popular teacher and writer, with whom deserves to be mentioned William H. By ford, of Chicago, who wrote on both obstetrics and gynaecology.
Gynaecology owes much to the efforts of American schools and practitioners. The first successful attempt of McDowell's, already alluded to, was imitated by Nathan Smith in 1821; and during the next forty years thirty-six ovariotomies had been performed by eighteen different surgeons, with a record of twenty-one recoveries.
[Original]
Probably the most prominent passed figure in American gynaecology is J. Marion Sims (1813-1883), born in the South, where he invented his well-known speculum in 1852, whose introduction marked an epoch in the treatment of the pelvic diseases of women. It was also in South Carolina, among poor negro patients, that he perfected his method of plastic operations in the vagina for the relief of vesical fistulæ, which he later demonstrated in Paris to the astonishment of incredulous Parisian surgeons, who had almost uniformly failed in their attempts, and which he later successfully and brilliantly performed in all the capitals of Europe, where, as in this country, he enjoyed the greatest reputation. He was the founder of the great Woman's Hospital in New York, in 1855, an institution from which has proceeded more good gynæcological teaching than from any similar institution in the world Other ovariotomists and gynaecologists of great merit were John L. Atlee, and his brother Washington Atlee, of Pennsylvania; Dunlap, of Springfield, Ohio; Peaslee, of New York, who wrote the first American treatise on ovarian tumors; Kimball, of Lowell, Massachusetts; and D. H. Agnew, of Philadelphia, who is, perhaps, yet better known as a general surgeon because of his magnum opus,—his Treatise on Surgery, in three large volumes, already mentioned.
