The physicians and surgeons of the United States / edited by William B. Atkinson.

Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The physicians and surgeons of the United States / edited by William B. Atkinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    he took up his residence permanently in New York, though his family remained in Paris to complete the education of his younger chil- dren, lie has been decorated by the Spanish and Portuguese governments, and twice by the Italian, Prof. Dotta, of New York, aiding the American minister, his excellency the Hon. George P. Marsh, in pressing his claims to this honor upon the latter government. He is, !)esides, an hon. member of learned socie- ties in London, Edinburgh, Brussels, Berlin, Christiana, and other foreign capitals, and of the State med. socs. of N. Y., Conn., Va., S. C, Ala., and other States ; and is a mem- ber of the Am. med. asso., of which he was elected president in 1875, ^'^ before which he delivered the centennial annual address in 1876. His literary contributions to medicine embrace, in addition to the address just men- tioned, papers on Trismus Nascentium; Silver Sutures in Surgery ; Clinical Notes on Uterine Surgery ; Intra-Uterine Fibroid Tumors, and the *' Microscope in the Sterile Condition , a Treatise on Ovariotomy, and a History of the Discovery of Anres- thesia. His military record is not the less interesting because it was abroad. Being in Paris on a visit to his family when the Franco- Prussian war began, he was requested, on be- half of the American colony in Paris, to take command, as surgeon-in-chief, of an ambulance corps organized by the colony, a request with which he at first declined to comply, on account of his age and profes- sional obligations to return home at an early day, but, adopting the suggestion of his wife that it was a fitting occasion to repay m some sort the obligations, they all felt for the gen- erous hospitality they had received from the French people and government, he accepted the appointment; although the corps, when ready for work, fell to pieces from dissensions as to its field of work, he and his staff resign- ing, and forthwith organizing themselves into the Anglo-American ambulance corjis, composed of eight Americans and eight Eng- lishmen, with him as surgeon-in-chief. This was on the 27th of Aug., 1870. He went immediately to the head-quarters of the so- ciele de secours aux blesses and offered his corps to Dr. Chenu, the superintendent, who promptly accepted it, furnishing it with every- thing necessary for a complete outfit, and on the next day he and his comrades left Paris, ]-)assing through Belgium to Mezieres, where lie heard that a battle had been fought the day before in the neighborhood of Sedan, to which, consequently, he pushed on, arriving -just as the great battle began, August 31st, the military train on which he entered the city receiving almost the first fire of the Prus- 4 sians, and the bridge over which it passed being blown up an hour afterwards. His am- bulance, the first to reach Sedan, was assigned by the mayor to the Cazerne d'Asfeldt, con- taining nearly 400 beds, and in the course of an hour the wounded from the battle-field began to come in, keeping the corps busy for many days, about 1,600 Frenchmen and 1,000 Germans having been treated by it. During his stay at Sedan he formed a part of the escort which attended Marshal McMahon from the battle-field to his head-quarters in the city on the occasion of his having been wounded by the fragment of a shell, the attention rendered so pleasing the marshal that he presented him with a thousand francs to purchase delicacies for the sick and wounded in his ambulance. He remained at Sedan about a month, when, the work at that place being finished, he, with his first and second assistants. Dr. Wm. McCormac and Dr. Frank, resigned and returned to their respective homes, his son in-law, Dr. Thos. T. Pratt, of Alabama, now of Paris, succeed- ing him as surgeon-in chief, and going with the ambulance to Tours and Orleans. The military service which he thus concluded he performed when fifty-seven years of age, being the oldest man who left Paris in charge of an ambulance. A record of the work done by the Anglo-American ambulance was care- fully prepared by his first assistant. Prof. Wm. McCormac, surgeon to St. Thomas' hosp., London, and published in London in 1870, having since been translated into several languages. From the opening of the woman's hosp. in 1855 to the beginning of his prolonged sojourn abroad he was surgeon-in-chief to the institution, having as his consulting board at the outset Drs. Mott, Stevens, Francis, Dela- field and Green, all of whom now rest in hon- ored graves. Of that galaxy he alone survives. He was married, Dec. 21st, 1836, to Eliza Therssa, daughter of Dr. Bartlett Jones, of Lancaster, S. C, and has had nine children, of whom all but two are living, ALLEN, NATHAN, Lowell, Mass., was born at Princeton, Mass., April 25th, 1813. His parents, Moses Allen and Me- hilable Oliver, were both born in Barre, Mass., the great ancestor of this family of Aliens hav- ing been Walter Allen, one of the original proprietors of Old Newbury in 1648, and who died at Charlestown, Mass., m 1673. He grad- uated at Amherst coll. in 1836; received the degree of M. D. from the Pa. med. coll. in 1841, and the honorary degree of M. D. from the Castleion (Vt.) med. coll. in 1847, ^^ in 1873 received from his Alma Mater the degree of LL.D. Pie settled at Lowell in
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