Dr. Joseph Henry Wythe (1822-1901) was born in Manchester, England on March 19, 1822, the son of Joseph Wythe and Mary Chamberlain. In 1832, JH Wythe accompanied his parents to America, and began his education in the private schools of Philadelphia where the family had settled. Through his own efforts and supplemented by private instruction, he became proficient in the natural sciences and the languages of Greek, Hebrew and Latin. In 1842, JH Wythe became an ordained Methodist minister at the early age of nineteen. Two years later, in 1844, he received the honorary degree of Master in Arts (M. A.) from Dickinson College Seminary, Carlisle Pennsylvania. .22 Two years later, in 1850, JH Wythe graduated with a medical degree (M. D.) from the Philadelphia College of Medicine and Surgery. In 1851, Dr. JH Wythe published the first edition of his book The Microscopist, or a Complete Manual on the Use of the Microscope, one of the earliest American texts on the subject.
From July 1851 to March 1852, Dr. Wythe practiced medicine in Philadelphia, where upon he moved to Port Carbon, Pennsylvania, and practiced until 1857. He next became surgeon in the collieries of Carbon County, a post he held until 1860.23 Dr. Wythe was practicing in Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania during the succeeding two years, when the Civil War began and he received his commission from Abraham Lincoln to assume the position of Assistant Surgeon of the United States Volunteers. In July 1862, he was promoted to Surgeon and five months later organized the Camp Parole Hospital near Alexandria, D. C., for sick and wounded paroled soldiers. On February 28, 1863, Dr. Joseph Henry Wythe was promoted to the full rank of surgeon. After the Civil War, Wythe moved to the Pacifi...
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...n Francisco, and the Victoria Institute of London, a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society of London and a member of the Pacific Astronomical Society of the Pacific. He received a degree in law (LL. D) from Willamette University in 1855 and the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity (D. D.) from the University of the Pacific in 1876.28 Beyond practicing surgery and medicine, Wythe served as pastor of the Powell Street Methodist Church in San Francisco, found time to present lectures to the community, and record astronomical observation he viewed from the powerful telescope that he placed in his back yard.29 At the Cooper Medical College of San Francisco Dr. Wythe continued in the chair of histology until 1897 and was Professor Emeritus until the time of his passing at the age of 79 at his home in Oakland, California on October 14, 1901 after a long illness. 30
With advances in weaponry came an increase in deaths and major limb injuries. During WWI the primary action was to amputate the limb rather than try and salvage it. This was due to the little time nurses, surgeons and anaesthetists had with each patient in the field hospitals, because they were overrun by more than double their expected capacity. There-fore, surgeons had to choose which critical patients to treat first, resulting in 41,000 ampu-tees during the First World War, all in need of artificial limbs (Pensions, 1939).
After the war he befriended with Ulysses S. Grant and joined the Republican party. He was criticized by former confederates for losing the war and befriending with Grant and the Republican party. He served as Grants minister to Turkey. He also became a political apostate in the south. Later he served as a commissioner of the Pacific Railroads from eighteen ninety seven to nineteen o four. In the summer of nineteen o four he became very ill and was diagnosed with Rheumatism. His ear was also damaged and was forced to use an ear horn when spoken to. He traveled to Chicago for a cancerous right eye, his weight dropped from two hundred pounds to one hundred thirty five pounds.
Most qualified surgeons started off as litter bearer and would carry men off the battlefield. If any of them showed interest in the medical field, they could become a Steward. A Steward's job was to take care of patients with minor wounds such as, scratches, and bumps. The other duties of a Steward were to pull teeth and take care of medicines for the surgeons. The Steward would also guard the medicinal stores, because often soldiers would try to break into the medicinal stores where the morphine, opium, and whisky were stored. If a Steward completed these duties, then he might be allowed to assist a surgeon in an operation, which could lead to becoming an assistant surgeon. He could then later on become an experienced and qualified surgeon.
Resection was a process that “involved cutting open the limb, sawing out the damaged bone, and then closing the incision” (Jones, 1). Resection allows the patient to keep his limbs but it requires a great ordeal of time and skill. This also contributed to the common practice of amputation during the war. But there were cases where surgeons did use this method. Terry J. Jones said in his NY Times article, “resections were used more frequently after surgeons learned that amputations had a much higher mortality rate” (Jones, 1). In another article by Corydon Ireland, it describes Mitchell Adam’s, a Harvard lecturer, grandfather who served as a volunteer surgeon during the Civil War. In the article, “Adams was not a champion of hasty amputations, but argued for excision and other limb-saving measures. And he describes the everyday pressures of a country practice in Framingham, Mass” (Ireland, 1). This meant that not all surgeons at the time only wanted to amputate but strived for alternate methods. This new knowledge shows that some surgeons were more dedicated to thinking about the well-being of their patients than others and this opens up to other possibilities that may have occurred during the war. This allows an image to come to mind of a surgeon diligently operating on a soldier with care and compassion. However, even though there may be many possibilities, we can’t truly know every event that occurs during a
As a young boy, inspired by reading the biographies of Marie Curie and Louis Pasteur, Clark started doing biological experiments in his laundry. Clark finished his secondary education at Scots College in 1951. He then attended the University of Sydney, and in 1957, he graduated with honours, obtaining a Bachelor of Medicine (MB) and a Bachelor of Surgery (MS).
...ow about internal medicine with the rise of hospital-based training. Eventually, the Company of Surgeons split from the barbers, abolishing surgery training by apprenticeship, as this form of surgical education flourished and barbers were no longer allowed to carry out complex surgical procedure yet for some time they were allowed to carry out some simple procedures like bloodletting and teeth-pulling. In 1745 the London College of Surgeons was established by King George II and the Royal Academy of Surgery was established by King Louis XV in 1748, with all surgeons now being university educated, and with surgery now under a new modern reputation, considered a sophisticated medical skill that can reduce ailment, save lives, and a window to learn more about the physiology of the body as a whole, which is the same goals as that of the traditional physician of medicine.
Tycho Brahe is remembered for many things: his golden nose, his ignominious death, and his famous last words. All of these things have gone down in history. However, Tycho Brahe was well-known in his time as a respected and well-paid astronomer. His observations were second to none. He was unsatisfiable and meticulous in his profession, building two of the finest observatories of his time, the second because the first was not up to his own high standards. He is still regarded as one of the best naked-eye observationalists of all time (Burke-Gaffney, 153).
“Surgery.” Brought to Life Exploring the History of Medicine. Science Museum, London, n.d. Web. 23 Jan. 2014.
Rorke, Elizabeth. "Surgeons and Butchers." Ushistory.org. Independence Hall Association, n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2014. .
There were no real monumental changes in surgery techniques for the first half of the nineteenth century. In fact, before 1846, the only change in surgical practices was that the newer surgeons had a greater knowledge of anatomy and pathology. Surgery during this half of the century was a horrible experience that was only turned to as a last resort. Many people would choose to commit suicide rather than live through the agony of surgery, and the suffering afterwards. Operations were very brief and were accompanied by great pain. Generally the patient would be held down screaming, while the doctor performed whatever surgery was necessary. At this point in history, surgery would have been very different from what it is today. Rather than the scalpel and surgeons mask, the doctor would use a tool like a hacksaw to cut through the bone in the area being amputated. It was not until the discovery of effective anesthesia that surgery became a relatively common phenomenon. The word Anesthesia is from greek, and means "without sensibility".
Because of the lack of knowledge about many ailments, many advances in hospitals were completed. Anesthetics were developed, as well as clinics for rehabilitation and new knowledge was gained on the matter of reconstructive surgery. As a result of scurvy, soldiers frequently required reconstructive bone and joint surgery, just to be able to walk again.
One of history’s most notable woman scientist of the late 15th century and early 16th century was none other than Sophia Brahe . Sophia Brahe was profound student in the sciences which included Medicine, Chemistry genealogy, and Astronomy. She had such a strong passion for science much like her brother who is known as a famous astronomer Tycho Brahe. It was through Tycho were Sophia learned the needed skills to uplift her scientific career.
During the Civil War they really worked towards building more hospitals and it drove the nursing profession to grow and have a large demand for nurses, but they were more like volunteers, such as wives or mistresses who were following their soldier men. Being a war nursing at that time was seen as a job for the lower class and no “respectable” woman could be seen in a military hospital. During the Civil War Phoebe Levy Pember, a young widow, went north to the confederate capital of Richmond. She eventually ran the world’s largest hospital, where on an average day she would supervise the treatment of 15,000 patients who were cared for by nearly 300 slave women. The war then led to a greater respect for nurses which was noticed by Congress. They then passed a bill providing pensions to Civil War nurses, but more importantly this led to the profe...
Harold Gillies industrialized many procedures of modern facial plastic surgery. He fashioned these techniques to be able to help combatants who were in agony from mutilating facial injuries during the First World War. Sir Harold Gillies, supervised a massive treatment center for allied casualties in Kentucky. Throughout the war as well as after the war, Gillies drew in surgeons from many different countries. These surgeons came to learn plastic surgery methods from Gillies himself. There was one facial surgeon who was greatly impacted by his experience in the war with Gillies, and that was Ferris N. Smith, who later went back to the University of Michigan after the war ended and then became one of the most imperative facial plastic surgeons of the era. Ferris Smith recorded his experiences with Gillian in a paper he wrote that was called 2“Plastic Surgery and It’s Interest to the Facial Surgeon” which he then presented at the 1920 meeting of the American Medical Association. Fascinatingly enough, the practices after the war of Smith and Gillies eventually migrated toward more general plastic surgery, and both men ultimately closed their training to fellow facial surgeons. Including Ferris Smith’s trainees were a few men, Reed Dingman and Clarence Straatsman, whom later became the chiefs of plastic surgery at Universities such as Columbia, Michigan, and New