COLUMBIA LIBRARIES OFFSITE HEALTH SCIENCES STANDARD HX64105130 R233 .So8 Original contributio RECAP SOUGFOIT 0" LOUI'JiJV"" ":'■ '^DTML SOISNOE. ^L^^ ^t)^ Columbia 53nttJet^ttp College of l^i)Viiitiani anb burgeons! Hitirarp < Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Open Knowledge Commons http://www.archive.org/details/originalcontribuOOsouc 7V - 2 2- Original Contributions of Louisiana to Medical Sciences '^fl/A BIOGRAPHIC STUDY EDMOND SOUCHON, M. D. Professor Emeritus of Anatomy, Tulane School of Medicine, NEW ORLEANS Read at the Meeting of the Louisiana Historical Society on December 15th, 1915. American Ftg. C©., 535-7 Poydras. ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS OF LOUISIANA TO MEDICAL SCIENCES. By Dr. Edmoncl Souchon, Professor Emeritus of Anatomy, Tiilane School of Medicine; read at the Meeting of the Louisiana Historical Society on December 15, 1915. A BIOGRAPHIC STUDY. By original contributions is meant something new that has never been done before by somebody else. It is physically utterly impossible for people engaged in the prosaic money-getting pursuits to realize, even faintly, the tremendous significance that the intellectuals — that is, those engaged in the sciences, literature and the arts, attach to the word original. To have done something original, ever so little, is to them the supremest achievement. They feel as if by creating something new they are singled by the finger of God from the common herd and lifted up by the great Creator himself, to be one of the anointed. Thousands of wretched deluded mortals have suffered eternal poverty in the mad hope to attain this goal, ever vanishing to so many of them like the mirage in the desert. Worse than all, many have inflicted pitilessly the most cruel privations in that attempt, upon those they should love the most, their wives and children. The supreme and lofty contempt of the often dirty, hirsute creatures, oddly clad, shown by the ordinary money people is something stupendous. For some time past I have been devoting much time to the study of Original Contributions of America to Medica] Sciences. I was exceedingly happy and proud to find that Louisiana, with twenty-nine original contributors comes on a par with the great old populous cultured city of Boston which presents also twenty-nine original contributors. All the contributors belong to the City with but one ex- ception, that of Dr. Francois Prevost of Donaldsonville, who was the first to perform Cesarean Section in America in about 1830. Cesarean Section is an operation consisting in cutting through the belly and the womb to remove a child when the natural passages are obstructed. He oper- ated four times successfully, losing but one mother, and operating twice on the same woman. In the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal of June, 1879, page 933 is a record of Cesarean operations that have been performed in the State of Louisiana during the present century, by Dr. Robert P. Harris of Philadelphia. Dr. Harris says: As the State of Louisiana has the honor, so far as it is possible to ascertain, to have been the pioneer in Cesarean Section in the United States, so also is she to be credited with the largest number of operations, and the longest record of successes, of any of the States. In fact, after a laborious search covering some ten years, by which the num- ber of cases recorded has been more than doubled, I have reason for believing that in no section has there been a larger proportion of the lives saved. Nine cases are all that were published in the medical journals of our coun- try, as having been operated upon in the State ; and of these but one was fatal to the mother, although four of the child- ren perished. At present we have no record earlier than that of Dr. Francois Prevost, who was born at Pont-de-Ce, in the South of France, about the year 1764; graduated in medicine at Paris; settled in San Domingo; was driven out during the insurrection ; escaped to Louisiana, and spent the balance of his days at Donaldsonville, where he died in 1842 at the age of 78. How early in his career in Louisiana, he per- formed the operation of Cesarean Section, I know not, but do know that he was at last credited with the four cases I have given him. As he was a bold operator, and was 67 years old when he operated on the fourth case, it is probable that he may have had others prior to the first on our record, for he was engaged in an active practice for more than thirty years, in a district in which rickets was not uncommon as 2 a case of dystocia. Dr. Prevost pointed out to Dr. Cottam, a boy 6 or 7 years old as one of the results of his Cesarean deliveries. Dr. Thomas Cottam, now of New York, became the suc- cessor in practice of Dr. Prevost, in 1832, and fell heir to his books and instruments at his death ten years later. In letters received from him in March and April, 1878, says Dr. Harris, and at a subsequent personal interview, I obtained the accounts of Prevost's cases. Dr. Cottam stated that there could be no question as to the performance of the two operations on the same woman, with safety to herself and children. Dr. Prevost being an old man when Dr. C. first met him, and of a peculiarly reticent nature, will account for the latter not having been fully informed upon the Cesarean cases of the former. In one case (1831) Dr. Francois Pre- vost operated on a woman, a black, a slave of Madame Cadet Marous, aged about 28 or 29, named Caroline Bellau or Bellak, in second labor; the first child, a male, having been delivered, as nearly as can be ascertained, by craniotomy and evisceration. Dr. Prevost made his incision in the left side of the abdomen, and removed a female child, that lived, grew up, married, and was residing a few years ago in New Orleans. The child was a mulatto, and Dr. Prevost gave it the name of Cesarine, and stipulated with Madame Marous that if it lived it should have its freedom, which was ac- ceded to and subsequently given. Caroline made a good recovery, as the operation was elec- tive, and performed in good season, and lived until Cesa- rine was nearly grown up. Dr. Cottam first saw them both in 1832, and examined the cicatrix of the former. The mother is described by some of her contemporaries as "a rather stout, black woman, who carried herself erect." A curious plantation rumor was started about this woman, at the time of the operation or soon afterwards, to the effect that she had been operated upon in the same wsiy some six or seven times; and this was found to be still credited a year ago among some of the old quondam slaves 3 of the time, then living in the vicinity. It required a long search, writes Dr. Harris, and numerous letters and inter- views, before the facts could be separated from the fic- tion in this case, for which I am much indebted to Dr. John E. Duffee, of Donaldsonville, Dr. Cottam, and others." It was quite a daring feat for a country doctor to per- form such an operation and quite in keeping with Dr. McDowell, of Kentucky, who boldly first performed an ovariotomy. It is truly most remarkable that two of the most formidable operations in surgery were performed by two country doctors without hospital training of much con- sequence. Those two great men were the founders of ab- dominal surgery which has reached such a grand position in modern surgery. It is eminently and most undoubtedly an American product. Dr. Dubourg, who practised in New Orleans in the thirties, is credited by Dr. Ernest S. Lewis, of this city, to be the first to have performed vaginal hysterectomy, but this is also claimed for others, specially Dr. T. Gaillard Thomas, of New York. Vaginal hysterectomy is the re- moval of the womb through the natural passages. Dr. Du- bourg was an old surgeon of the Imperial Guard of Napo- leon. I could obtain no further data regarding this bold surgeon who performed a capital operation surely without knowing that anyone had preceded him in America. Dr. Charles Aloysius Luzenberg (1805-1848) was the first to remove a portion of gangrenous intestines in a case of hernia and to suture the end of the bowel successfully. He was born in Verona, Italy. Although a foreigner (Italian) Charles Luzenberg, a great surgeon of New Orleans may be claimed by America, for his father, an Austrian military commissariat, left Ger- many when his son was fourteen and settled in Philadel- phia, sparing no expense to complete the fine education the boy had begun in Landau and Weissemberg. Attending the lectures and operations of Dr. Physick brought out still more young Luzenberg's surgical genius. 4 A paper which appeared in the tenth volume of the "American Journal of Medical Sciences" and the "Revue Medicale" for 1832 proves that if Luzenberg did not first bring into notice what was then a new idea, that is, of ex- cluding light in various variolous disorders to avoid pox marks, he at all events revived it. Two whole years, 1832-4, were spent studying in Euro- pean clinics, particularly under Dupuytren, and on his re- turn to New Orleans, full of zeal and schemes for improving surgical and medical procedure, he built the Franklin In- firmary, later the Luzenberg Hospital on Elysian Fields Street and there did operations which brought patients from afar to get the benefit of his skill. Among such operations was the extirpation of a much enlarged cancerous parotid gland from an elderly man. This case, reported in the "Ga- zette Medicale de Paris," 1835, brought a commendation with a resolution of thanks to the author and enrollment as corresponding member of the Academie de Medicine. Soon after, he excised six inches of mortified ileum in a case of strangulated hernia. The patient was put on opium treatment and in thirty-five days the stitches came away and he entirely recovered. One other operation he took special interest in doing was couching for cataract and in this he had brilliant results. When Luzenberg had his hospital on a permanent basis his next idea was a Medical School. Being influential, and also friends with the State Governor, this project, with the help of his medical confreres, was soon embodied in the Medical College of Louisiana with himself as dean, ad interim, and professor of Surgery and Anatomy. He was the first professor of Surgery of the University of Louisiana. He founded the Society of Natural History and the Sciences and to it bequeathed a rich collection of specimens. When the Louisiana Medico-Chirurgical Society was legally incor- porated he was, because of his help in forming it, chosen first president. It held brilliant meetings at which the French and English physicians of the State met to exchange 5 views, and it was undoubtedly the spirit of these meetings that caused a college building to be erected for the Medical School, and that started the "New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal." Dr. Luzenberg was no ordinary man. He was most intel- lectual, active, energetic, ambitious, aggressive and pro- gressive. He made many bitter enemies. He quarreled with his faculty, withdrew from it in anger and never would speak after that to any of the other members. He was expelled from the Medical Society of the day and he had a suit against him for malpractice, which he won. We could not ascertain the cause of all those troubles. For all that he had a host of staunch friends and admirers. He belonged to the same faculty with Dr. Warren Stone and to the same hospital staff. There was rivalry between the two and Luzenberg's gentlemanly, refined and sensitive nature suffered much from the contact with the rugged genius that was Stone. A too active life caused premonitions of failing health to go unheeded, but in the spring of 1848 actual pain in the precordial region, with paroxysms of palpitation and dyspnea totally incapacitated him from work. A thorough change to Virginia was planned, but at Cincinnati he could go no further and died there on the fifteenth of July, 1848. He was 45 years old. A very fine portrait of Dr. Luzenberg is now in the possesion of his grandson, Mr. Chandler C. Luzenberg, at 1230 State Street in this city. Dr. John Leonard Riddell (1807-1865), invented the bi- nocular microscope. He was born in Leyden, Massachu- setts, in 1807, of fine Scotch-Irish ancestry, which could be traced to the eighth century. He held his degrees of A. B. from the Rensselear School of Troy, New York, and began his career as a lecturer on scientific subjects. In 1835 he was made adjunct profes- sor of chemistry and botany in the Cincinnati Medical College, from which he received his M. D. He published a 6 catalogue of plants in 1835 entitled "A Synopsis of the Flora of the Western States," the pioneer botany of that section of the country, and in 1836 he became professor of chemistry in the Medical College of Louisiana, a distinc- tion which he enjoyed until his death in 1865. His catalogue of Louisiana plants assures to him the dis- covery of several new, or unobserved, species, one genus being called for him, Riddellia (Riddellia tegetina, Nut- tall.) In 1838 the President of the United States appointed Dr. Riddell melter and refiner for New Orleans, as a recognition of the creditable work just performed in a scientific explo- ration conducted in Texas; his incumbency in this ofRce lasted until 1849. In 1844 he was one of a commission recommended by the governor and legislature to devise a means for protecting New Orleans from overflow. About this period he became devoted to microscopy and invented the binocular microscope, as noted on page 273, vol. xvi, edition nine, of the "Encyclopedia Britannica." According to Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography, he was the discoverer of the microscopical characteristics of the blood and black vomit in yellow fever. Dr. Riddell was a frequent contributor to the New Or- leans Medical and Surgical Journal. He was 58 years old when he died. There is an oil portrait of Dr. Riddell in the Louisiana State Museum. Dr. Warren Stone, Sr., was the first to resect a portion of rib to secure drainage in cases of abscess of the liver and of empyema. Empyema is an accumulation of pus in the chest around the lung. He was also the first to cure an aneurism by compressing the artery. Also to use silver wire to ligate arteries. He was one of New Orleans' most noted surgeons. He was born in St. Albans, Vermont, on February 3, 1808, the son of a farmer, Peter Stone. As a lad young Warren inclined to study medicine and left home to do so under Dr. Amos Twitchell, in Keene, graduating M. D. from the Medi- 7 cal School at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. But patients prov- ing scanty he went off in the Amelia to New Orleans. Cholera broke out and the passengers were landed on Folly Island near Charleston, and housed there. Stone helped with cases but had cholera also. When landed at New Orleans in December he was sick, poor and insufficiently clothed. He had a very wearying time, but faithfully ful- filled the duties of any position that came along, even of a minor one. Dr. Thomas Hunt, who had nursed him at Folly Island and previously seen his good work, got him at last the post of assistant surgeon at the Charity Hospital. In 1836 he became resident surgeon, then lecturer on anatomy and finally professor of surgery in the University of Louisi- ana, which post he held until his resignation in 1872. Early in his career he lost one of his eyes from infec- tion from a child. Dr. Stone was noted much for his diagnostic skill in sur- gery. His judgment in cases properly surgical was unequal- led. He did much to inaugurate the propriety of opening diseased joints and improving surgical technic. He had a most wonderful memory and never used any notes or forgot any fact he read and remembered patients who had been to him years before. He died in New Orleans on December 6, 1872. He died of Bright's Disease and of Diabetic Gan- grene of the leg. It much distressed him to die, he said, in such a nasty way. His old mother was still living when he died. He died at 64. Dr. Stone was a man of large and powerful build, a thorough rough diamond, with much disposition to gentle- ness although a very determined man. He was a true sur- gical genius, with a poor general education. He read very little, but what he saw at the great Charity Hospital, where he spent all of his active life, he knew admirably well, but when out of the ordinary cases presented themselves he was lost for the lack of thorough early training and for lack of reading. His heart was as big as his brain and he was charitable and generous to a fault. Of this I can personally 8 bear witness because I was the recipient of his bounty. He was, of course, a staunch Confederate and was imprisoned in Fort Jackson by General Butler for resisting his com- mands. There are oil portraits of Dr. Stone in the Charity Hos- pital and in the Josephine Hutchinson Medical College on Canal Street. Dr. Charles Jean Faget (1818-1884) discovered the lack of correlation between the pulse and the temperature in yellow fever. The discovery of a definite, practicable pathognomonic sign of yellow fever by Dr. Faget in 1858 was an invaluable find. It allowed an earlier diagnosis and stopped at once the long disputes regarding the confusion with malaria and the pernicious horror of many types of that disease. Jean Charles Faget was born in New Orleans in 1818, of French parentage. After a most solid and careful educa- tion under the Jesuit Fathers, he went to Paris for his medical education. After undergoing a rigid examination he became an interne in the French hospitals of Paris and on finishing his studies graduated with great honor. His thesis, which received cum magnum laucle, was on "Quelques faits anatomiques en faveur de la cystotomie sus-pubienne chez les tres jeunes enfants." On his arrival in New Orleans where he settled after graduation in 1845, he quickly entered into active practice. He did not find the field of the profession barren of men with ability. There was then in the city a galaxy of distin- guished men, most of them graduates of "La Faculte de Paris," men who after their splendid preparation in the hospitals and laboratories of Paris soon became brilliant practicioners in America, among them Drs. Charles Delery, Lambert, Labatut, Henri Ranee, Beugnot, and many others. Dr. Faget, though modest and retiring, was soon at the fore. Of course, it was impossible for men of such ability and forcefulness to get along in perfect harmony and peace. Our earliest masters were very prone to argumentation and to most active polemiques. 9 When Dr. Faget joined La Societe Medicale de la Nou- velle-Orleans, he soon became a propagandist of the infec- tious school of the spread of disease, while his distinguished confreres, Charles Delery, Beugnot, and Ranee were of the contagionist school. It was during the interminable pole- miques between these scientists that most of the work and labor of these gentlemen was told, couched in language most polite, but with sarcasm most biting, while they broke their lances against one another, and enunciated their theories and related the facts they had as proofs. Dr. Faget read many letters before the society, which were published in "La Gazette Medicale," all to prove that the old school which believed that the natives never had yellow fever were wrong; that the yellow fever, which was diagnosed by them with the then specific symptoms of black vomit was not yellow fever, but most of them a pernicious malarial fever, which, properly treated, answered to mas- sive doses of quinine. Finally, on July 15, 1859, Faget proved the difference between these cases and real yellow fever, a fever of one paroxysm with sometimes a remission, a flush face, red gums, frequently hemorrhagic gums, a pointed, coated tongue, red and thin at the edges, ushered by a chill at night. First day, high fever, pulse in proportion ; second day, high fever and falling pulse, some albumen in urine ; third, fourth and fifth day, even fifty, while the tem- perature is maintained. This important observation, made and given out by Dr. Faget in 1859, was bitterly assailed at the time, but its truth was quickly recognized by Dr. Thomas Layton and later by Dr. Just Touatre. In 1870 the latter, who had used for years in his service as a French marine surgeon, a larger rectal centigrade thermometer, was able to absolutely confirm the observation of Dr. Faget, that often in the first twenty-four or thirty-six hours, with a rising temperature, as shown by the thermometer, the pulse instead of becoming more rapid is proven by the watch to be gradually falling, losing entirely its usual cor- relation. This is undoubtedly due to some intense toxin absorption affecting the sympathetic nervous system. Often 10 a rising temperature of 105 or 104 Fahrenheit shows a pulse of sixty, or as low as fifty per minute. For this most important clinical observation and also his "differential symptomatic signs in hematemesic paludal fever," after the epidemic of yellow fever in 1858, he was decorated by the French government as a Chevalier de la Legion D'Honneur. And for his "Type and Specific of Malaria with Watch and Thermometer" he received twenty-four votes out of thirty- three for his candidature as a member of the Academie Medicalc de Paris. Dr. Faget was also a member of the Louisiana State Board of Health. His personality was an ideal one, for besides his great medical ability he had splendid qualities of heart and mind, modest and pure; he was a consistent Christian and always a thorough and honor- able gentleman. This well-spent life when it ended, Septem- ber 4, 1884, had certainly been a most useful one and the Faget law of pulse and temperature is as well known in the entire yellow-fever zone as the mosquito dogma is to- day. He was 66 when he died. Dr. Faget was of a very striking appearance. He was tall, sparely built with a clean cut face, a slightly hooked nose, a high receding forehead and long wavy black grizzly hair, brushed backward. He often wore a low crown silk hat with a rather broad, slightly rolled-up brim. In winter he was wrapped in a long black coat, fastened with a silver chain and hook such as priests wore then. In the summer he wore a black straw hat like the priests. In fact he looked very much like a priest, with his soft, gentle voice. He was intensely religious. But the similitude stopped there. He married a sweet, angelic-faced woman and raised a large family. He was one of those intellectuals to whom the almighty dollar was of little concern. He at one time had a large practice, but he was a poor charger, a bad collector, no in- vestor at all. He died poor. Of the fifteen or twenty young Creoles who went to Paris for their medical education. Dr. Faget is the only one who 11 has done something and has attained distinction and fame. He was the first in Louisiana to administer chloroform in childbed. There is an oil portrait of Dr. Faget in the Louisiana State Museum. Dr. H. D. Schmidt (1823-1888) discovered the origin of the bile ducts in the intercellular spaces of the liver. He was born at Marburg, Prussia, receiving the usual education of a German boy, then was apprenticed to an instrument maker at the age of fifteen, which training in after life enabled him to conceive and construct various pieces of apparatus for the benefit of his scientific investi- gations (his microtome and injector, employed in his re- searches into the histology of the liver). During his ap- prenticeship he visited the large cities of Europe and came to Philadelphia in 1848, where he began the study of anatomy and constructed papier mache models of such cor- rectness and beauty that several are still preserved in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania. At- tracting the attention of Leidy and Jackson, he became prosecutor to Dr. Jackson and assisted Prof. Leidy in many of his physiological investigations. After studying five years, he graduated in medicine in 1858 (University of Pennsylvania) and devoted himself to histology. By his own contrivance of an injecting apparatus, he was able to solve the question of the termination of the bile ducts of the liver and to demonstrate their origin in the intercel- lular space. In 1860 Dr. Schmidt went South, first to the Medical College of Alabama, in Mobile, and thence to New Orleans, succeeding Penniston as demonstrator of anatomy in the New Orleans School of Medcine. During the Civil War he served the South as a military surgeon. At the close of the struggle he returned to New Orleans and was installed as pathologist to the Charity Hospital, a position which he occupied for twenty years. He was known as a man of strong convictions, honest and earnest; never cyni- cal nor prejudiced in regard to the opinions of others. He contributed to literature: 12 "On the Minute Structure of the Hepatic Lobules/' ("American Journal of Medical Sciences," January, 1859) „ "Microscopical Anatomy of the Human Liver." (New Orleans Medical Journal of Medicine," October, 1869, and January and April, 1870) . He inaugurated the teaching of microscopy at the Charity Hospital and trained a number of pupils, among others, Dr. Matas and Dr. Bruns. He was 65 years old when he died. There is an oil portrait of Dr. Schmidt at the Charitjr Hospital. Dr. Tobias Gibson Richardson (1827-1892) was the first to amputate both legs at the hip joint at one time on the same subject and the patient recovered. This was years prior to the use of anesthetcis and asepsis. He was the first, to publish an anatomy with English names. Also the first to treat cystitis with strong solutions of nitrate of silver^ He was born in Louisville, Ky. He was a most prominent pupil of Dr. Samuel D. Gross in Philadelphia. There he was a member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. He was president of the American Surgical Association in. 1878. Dr. Richardson subsequently became a professor in one of the schools in Philadelphia. He did his best work, how- ever, in New Orleans, where he occupied the chair of sur- gery in the Tulane University, and was visiting surgeon ta^ the Charity Hospital. Dr. Richardson was tall and strongly built. He pre- sented a commanding appearance. He seemed cold and distant at first, but his manners and speech were soft, gen- tle and winning. He was a man of very strong feelings.- He was profoundly and sincerely religious and austerly just to all. He was afflicted with the most terrible ordeal that anyone could have stood. He lost his wife and three chil- dren in a steamboat explosion and he was unable to recover their bodies. This terrible event forever cast on his life a profound gloom. Several years after the loss of his wife, he married Ida 13 Ann Slocomb. After his death in 1892 Mrs. Richardson contributed $170,000 to build a memorial addition to the Tulane University in memory of her husband, and at her death left $25,000 more. Dr. Richardson was 65 when he died. A portrait of Dr. Richardson is in the Josephine Hutchin- son School of Medicine in Canal street; also a marble me- dallion in the library of the same building; also a photo- graph of this medallion in the Louisiana State Museum. At the Richardson Memorial on Tulane Campus there is a bronze medallion. An oil portrait of Mrs. Richardson is now in the president's office at Tulane University. Dr. Compton was the first to resect the radius and the ulna, i. e. the two bones of the forearm in 1853. I could find no bibliographical data concerning Dr. Comp- ton. Dr. Albert Baldwin Miles (1852-1894) was the first to apply a loop ligature around the first portion of the sub- clavian artery while operating on the third portion. A loop ligature is one that is not tied. He was born in Prattville, Ala., on May 18, 1852. His father, a farmer, removed to Arkansas in 1857 and an uncle living in El Dorado educated the boy and sent him to the University of Virginia. In 1872 he entered the medical department of the Uni- versity of Louisiana, in pursuance of a fixed intention to study medicine. He graduated from the university in 1875, being the valedictorian of his class. In April, 1877, he became assistant house surgeon of the Charity Hospital, holding this position until 1881, when he accepted the post of house surgeon of the Hotel Dieu. On April 4, 1882, he was elected house surgeon of the Charity Hospital and held this oflfice until his death in 1894. From 1875 to 1885 he was demonstrator of anatomy, and it is recorded that he never missed a single appointment with his classes. In 1886 he became professor of materia medica and therapeutics, and filled this position until the 14 end of the session of 1892-3 when he was elected professor of surgery, succeeding Dr. Logan. As a surgeon Miles possessed the clear mind and steady hand that overcome all emergencies. His executive ability was notable, and during his regime at the Charity Hospital many improvements were insti- tuted. The ambulance system was largely his plan ; his sug- gestions assisted in the planning of the outdoor clinical buildings, and the amphitheatre, which he never beheld completed. He never married. He was never known to have had a sweetheart. However, at one time it was covertly whis- pered around that he had proposed to a lovable girl, but that she was already engaged. Dr. Miles was tall, but not broadly built. He walked with a little stoop and with long steps, from driving the plow in earlier days, we all thought. He had a smooth face and a girlish appearance, with -bright shining grey eyes with dilated pupils. His speech was deliberate and his manners soft and gentle. He was very politic and always took care that any who called on him would go away pleased, specially with Dr. Miles. He was quite magnetic. The operating amphitheatre of the Charity Hospital bears his name as also the laboratory of operative surgery in the Josephine Hutchinson Medical college. He had materially contributed financially to the erection of both. He was for many years the house surgeon of the Hotel Dieu, the pet of the Sisters there and of the Charity Hos- pital. He was not a Catholic. In his short life he had accumulated a fortune said to be $125,000, from his savings and from speculations. A year or so before his death he had purchased a resi- dence on St. Charles avenue and had intended to live in it with his sister, who was then in Arkansas. He died of hemorrhagic typhoid fever. He was 42 years old. His untimely death, at the height of such an unprece- dented career, cast a deep gloom all over the city. Hls 15 funeral started most fittingly from the porch of the Charity Hospital and the services were conducted by his friend and patient, Dr. Benjamin M. Palmer. The big front iron gates of the hospital which had been closed for so many years, were, on this solemn occasion, thrown open to give passage to the mortal remains of the lamented chief. After his death, the medical faculty had a memorial tablet placed in the hall of the Medical College, now the Josephine Hutchin- son Medical College, with the following inscription : IN MEMORY OF PROFESSOR ALBERT B. MILES, BORN IN ALABAMA, MAY 18, 1852. , DIED IN NEW ORLEANS, AUGUST 5, 1894, GRADUATED IN MEDICINE, BY THIS COLLEGE, IN 1875, AND WAS VALEDICTORIAN OF HIS CLASS. DEMONSTRATOR OF ANATOMY, 1875-1885, PROFESSOR MATERIA MEDICA, ETC., 1886-1893, PROFESSOR SURGERY, ETC., 1893-1894, ASSISTANT AND HOUSE SURGEON OF THE CHARITY HOSPITAL DURING 16 OF THE 17 YEARS— 1877-1894. HE DIED HONORED AND BELOVED AND OF UNSURPASSED REPUTE IN HIS PROFESSION. HE BEQUEATHED TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE MEDICAL DEPART- MENT OF THE TULANE UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA. An oil portrait of Dr. Miles is in the Charity Hospital. There is also a memorial window with his picture at the Hotel Dieu. There is also a crayon portrait in the Jose- phine Hutchinson Medical College. Dr. Joseph Jones (1833-1896) is said to have discovered the Plasmodium of malarial fever before Laveran. He is best known for his writings on "Diseases in the Southern States." He was born on September 6, 1833, in Liberty 16 County, Ga., the son of the Rev. Charles and Mary Jones. As a lad he had private tuition and five years at the Uni- versity of South Carolina, taking his A. M. from Princeton College, N. J., and his M. D. from the University of Penn- sylvania in 1855. The University of Georgia gave him his LL.D. in 1892. The Savannah Medical College chose him as her professor of chemistry in 1858, but three years after he was one year professor of natural philosophy of and theology in the University of Athens, Ga., then pro- fessor of chemistry in the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta. During the war he was six months in the cavalry and for the rest of the time full surgeon-major in the Con- federate army. Keen in his studies of disease, he made investigations in most of the Southern States, being more in the center of things by his service as professor of chemistry and clinical medicine in the Universitj^ of Louisiana and as president of the Board of Health in this State He had the usual pleasant time given to all sanitary officers, especially at the ports. After a continuous battle of four years with the maritime and railroad interests the court voted quarantine to be a legitimate exercise of the political rights. The whole life of Dr. Jones was devoted to the thankless task of pro- moting civic and military hygiene in the city. His writings are too numerous to mention. He died at 63. There is a portrait of Jones in the Josephine Hutchinson Medical College. The original contributors now to be mentioned are still alive. Dr. Andrew Wood Smyth was the first to cure a sub- claviun aneurism of the third portion. An aneurism is a tumor on an artery and filled with blood. If not checked it will ultimately burst and kill the patient by hemorrahage. The subclavian artery is a large artery just behind the collar bone. He did it by ligating the innominate artery and the common carotid simultaneously and later on the verte- 17 bral artery. These arteries are large vessels near the heart. He was the first in the world to successfully ligate the in- nominate artery, also the vertebral in cases of such aneu- risms to control the secondary hemorrhage which had killed all previous cases. Dr. Smyth came from Ireland to New Orleans before he was 20 years old. He first worked in a drug store, then studied medicine, and, I think, graduated from the New Orleans School of Medicine. When the Federals took pos- session of the city, he was made house surgeon of the Charity Hospital, which position he occupied until the ad- v^ent of the Nicholls government in 1876. It was in 1864 that he performed the operation that immortalized him. He was then thirty-one years old. Dr. Smyth had also been director of the Mint in New Orleans. When about 61 years old, the call of the home was so strong that he returned to the old country and is still living there on the old family farm on which he was born. He is now 82 years of age. Dr. Joseph Holt was the first to successfully inject the fumes of sulphurous acid into the holds of loaded vessels for purposes of disinfection, ?'. e. of killing what germs there were in them. He succeeded in disinfecting the ves- sels, because he killed thereby the mosquitoes that were conveying yellow fever, but he did not know then how he had accomplished disinfection until the mosquito theory came to light. He was, therefore, the founder of maritime sanitation. Dr. Holt was at that time, in 1884, president of the Louis- iana State Board of Health. He was then 45 years of age. He had a particularly strenuous time to uphold his system. He retired from the board in 1889. Upon retiring from the Board of Health he continued to practice medicine. He is still living in New Orleans. He is now 77 years of age and is still practicing. Dr. Edmond Souchon was the first to preserve anato- mic dissections with permanent color of muscles, vessels and organs. Ever since, centuries ago, the celebrated 18 Andrea Vesalius inaugurated the dissection of human bodies, anatomists have ardently looked for a means of preserving them with some color, but they had all failed. Dr. Souchon, upon perfecting his discovery after several years of labor at Tulane University, has built up for Tulane a Museum of Anatomic preparations, all of which are made after his method. It is the only museum in the world in which color is seen. The Board of Administrators have named the museum the Souchon Museum of Anatomy. There are only six other museums in the world which have been named after great anatomists and surgeons. Dr. Souchon has contributed many other points to anatomy and surgery, which it would be here too long to enumerate. Dr. Souchon was educated in Paris. Returning to New Orleans he become the assistant of Professor Richardson at the Medical College of Louisiana, now Tulane University. In 1884 he was elected to the chair of anatomy and clinical surgery. Dr. Souchon is from Opelousas. He is now 75 years of age, and is devoting his remaining years of usefulness to the perfection of his museum. A portrait of Dr. Souchon is in the Josephine Hutchinson Medical College on Canal street. Dr. Arthur Washington De Roaldes was the first to es- tablish an Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital for the South, in New Orleans, i. e. from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from St. Louis to Rio de Janeiro, if not to Cape Horn. The amount of good that institution has done, is doing, and will do, is incalculable. Dr. De Roaldes hails from Opelousas. He was educated in France, but graduated from Tulane in New Orleans. He is now 66 years old. When about 48 years old he was af- flicted with the terrible misfortune of losing his eye-sight. In spite of this awful calamity, he continued the work so dear to his heart, to complete his hospital. He did so until complications compelled him to keep to his room. Here he 19 is now under the unceasing care of his devoted wife await- ing the mercy of the Almighty to put an end to his suffer- ings. He is a grand Christian and bears all his ordeals with ;great fortitude. There is an oil portrait of Dr. De Roaldes in the Eye and Throat Hospital. Dr Rudolph Matas discovered a simpler and more efficient operation to cure aneurisms. It consists in opening the tumor and suture the orifices of the vessels which open into it. He calls it the intra-saccular suture method. It is a :great advance on all former methods. It is now generally adopted all over America and partly in Europe. Dr. Matas evolved also a method of testing the collateral •circulation of a limb or of the head before ligating the main artery of the part. This is very important, as it tells before ligating what the chances of gangrene will be in case it is decided to ligate the main artery of a region. Dr. Matas comes from St. John Parish. He graduated in medicine at the old Louisiana Medical College when he was barely twenty-one. He soon developed a large practice. At the death, in 1894, of the lamented Miles, he was made professor of surgery in the Tulane School of Medicine. He was then 34 years old. It was a few years after this that he began on his great work. The doctor is now 55 years old and is one of the leading surgeons of America. There is a portrait of Dr. Matas in the Josephine Hutchinson Medical College in Canal street. Dr. Charles Warren Duval claims to be the first to obtain the bacillus of leprosy in pure culture. This is a most im- portant accomplishment as the cultivation of germs in pure culture is the first step leading to the evolution of anti- toxins and vaccines. Dr. Duval claims also to have discov- ered the germ of infantile diarrhea. Dr. Duval comes from the University of Montreal, al- though American by birth. He is now about 40 years old and is professor of pathology and bacteriology- in the Tulane School of Medicine. It is here that he made his discovery. Dr. Maurice John Couret was the first to demonstrate 20 that the fish are the host of the germs of leprosy; that is that the fish can harbor the germs of leprosy without being made sick, but those who eat such fish will develop lep- rosy. For a number of years a great English physician, Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, had advanced the idea that fish were the propagator of leprosy because leprosy was so prevalent in countries that fed mostly on fish. But Dr. Hutchinson had never proved anything. It was left for Dr. Couret to give the proof. By examining the fish of a region for the germs of leprosy it can be determined if it is safe to feed on them. Dr. Couret is a young Creole of the French Quarter of New Orleans. He is now 35 years of age and is assistant pathologist in the Charity Hospital. If he were living in Paris he would surely have been decorated with the Legion of Honor for his achievement. Dr. William Herbert Harris, by experiment, showed that pellagra could be transmitted from man to monkey. Dr. Harris is doing now for pellagra what the great Villemain did sixty years ago in inocculating tuberculosis from man to animal before the germ of tuberculosis had been discov- ered. The germ of pellagra has not yet been found, but the discovery of an antitoxin may ultimately result from the work of Dr. Harris, just as an antitoxin has been found by Pasteur for rabies, the germ of which is still unknown. Dr. Harris is an Orleanian. He is 32 years old and is an assistant professor of Bacteriology in the Tulane School of Medicine. Almost all of his time is devoted to original re- search. Dr. Charles Cassedy Bass was the first to cultivate the Plasmodium of malarial fever, that is the germ of malarial fever. This was quite an achievement and gave him world- wide fame. Dr. Bass also did original work in connection with the use of emetin in the treatment of Rigg's disease of the teeth, i. e. the suppuration affecting the root of the teeth. Dr. Bass is professor of experimental medicine in the 21 Tulane College of Medicine. He is now 40 years old. He still pursues original research. Dr. Foster Matthew Johns has been assisting Dr. Bass in his work. He is now instructor in clinical and tropical medicine in the Tropical School of Medicine of Tulane. He is 35 years old. Dr. Marion Sims Souchon was the first to remove a small urinary calculus from the vesical intraparietal portion of the ureter by the perineal route. This is quite a simplifica- tion on the other procedures. Dr. Marion Souchon is a New Orleanian. He graduated from the Tulane School of Medicine in 1894 and soon worked out a fine practice. He is now the head surgeon of the Hotel Dieu Sanitarium and of the French Hospital. He is also instructor in clinical surgery in the Tulane School of Medicine. He is 45 years old. Dr. Clyde Lynch claims to be the first who removed a tumor whole from the larynx and to have sutured a wound in the larynx. Dr. Lynch is the head surgeon of the nose and throat de- partment of the Eye, Nose and Throat Hospital. He is 35 years of age and was born in New Orleans. Dr. Ansel Marion Caine was the first to administer warm ether as an anesthetic without using a flame to heat the ether. This discovery lessens very much the risk of pneu- monia following the administration of ether. Hs is in- structor in anesthetics in the Tulane School of Medicine. He is a Tulane man. He is 33 years old. He has specialized as an anesthetist. Dr. Carroll Woolsey Allen was the first to write a com- plete treatise on "Local Anesthesia" in the English lan- guage. It is a very valuable aid to the surgeon?. Dr. Allen is assistant professor of clinical surgery in the Tu- lane School of Medicine. He has assisted Dr. Matas in several works of research and experiments. He is 45 years of age. Mr. Lloyd Arnold was the first to demonstrate that 22 Graafian follicles of the ovary may contain two or more ova. He is still a medical student and was one of the first stud- ents in America to do original research work. He is a thorough enthusiast over such research work and is de- voting a great deal of his time to it. He is 30 years old. Dr. Henry Dickson Bruns has devised a new operation for shortening the straight muscles of the eye-ball. It is quite ingenious. The doctor is from New Orleans. He is a graduate of Tulane. He is the head surgeon of the Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital. He is 56 years old. Dr. Oscar Dowling was the first president of the Louis- iana State Board of Health to equip, in the South, health trains which he carries over all the parishes of Louisiana and of the Southern States to teach the people, by actual demonstrations and lantern slide exhibitions how to pre- serve and improve their health. That is the true mission of a State Board of Health. Dr. Dowling graduated from Tulane and was practicing rhinology and laryngology before his genius found its true path. He is 39 years old. Dr. Stanford Chaille Jamison, in experimenting on dogs, made the discovery that when the large vessels of the spleen were ligated the spleen would not undergo gangrene if it was covered over by the omentum, i. e. the delicate mem- brane which lays in front of the intestines. This opens a new field in the surgery of the spleen and abdomen, and the young experimenter deserves much credit for his powers of experimentation and observation. The doctor is now 28 years old and is a Tulanian and an Orleanian. He is in- structor in clinical and tropical medicine in the Tulane College of Medicine. Finally, the State of Louisiana was the first in America to establish and maintain a leprosarium, i. e., a leper's home. 23 Date Due 1 ^ R235 So8 Souchon ■ Original contrilDutions of L ouis iar_.