Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/126

 ANTONY

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APPLETON

requirments for graduation being two courses, so he returned to Georgia with- out a diploma. Reaching home without funds, he began his professional life with no other asset than determination and ambition, and shortly after reaching home, moved to Monticello, Georgia, where he began his active professional life, within a short time building up an extensive practice. After the expiration of seven years, desiring a larger field with greater opportunity for study, he moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, staying there however, but a short time, eventually, in 1819, settling in Augusta, Georgia. A man of broad mind and with an earnest desire for the elevation of his profession, he was active in establishing the State Board of Examiners, whose duty it was to examine and license all applicants to practice in the state. In 1828, in con- nection with the physicians of Augusta, and a few distinguished men in the State, he applied to the Legislature at Milledge- ville for a charter to organize a medical academy, its object to make the academy a school to more thoroughly prepare students for the northern universities. The school was opened with three pro- fessors and a large class, not long after becoming an institute and allowed to confer the degree of bachelor of med- icine.

Its success was so great that in 1S33 he and his co-laborers asked the State Legislature for a charter for the Medical College of Georgia, the charter carrying with it full power to lecture, examine, and confer the degree of doctor of medi- cine upon its graduates. His last effort for a higher standard of medical litera- ture; to accomplish this he established the " Southern Medical Journal," and was for several years its editor. Dr. Antony rapidly made a reputation, becoming highly esteemed and honored, and attracting the attention of the profession outside his state, and receiving the honorary M. D. from two distinguished unversities. In the school which he established he ably filled the chair of the "institutes and practice of medicine,"

obstetrics and diseases of women and children. As often the case with the gen- eral practitioner of long ago,he was equally skilled in the different departments of medicine and was the first gynecologist to adopt and point out the knee-chest posture in the treatment of uterine dis- placements. It is also to be noted that he perfected the treatment of fractures of the thigh by weight exten- sion. His skill and boldness as a sur- geon can be fully realized when it is known that in 1S21 he excised the fifth and sixth ribs, and removed a portion of gangrenous lung. This remarkable piece of work is reported in the "Philadelphia Journal of Medical and Physical Sciences," 1823, vol. vi.

The article was so original and bold that it was republished in 1893 by Dr. George Foy of the Royal College of Sur- geons of Dublin, Ireland, in the "Medical Press and Circular." Dr. Antony's con- tributions to medical literature, while numerous and valuable, are not obtain- able.

Though the life of this distinguished man began with all the disadvantages consequent to poverty and want of education, his energy and perseverance enabled him to attain a high position in his profession and to maintain it until the fatal epidemic of yellow fever in Augusta, Georgia, in 1S39, brought his life to a close. He was editor of the "South- ern Medical and Surgical Journal" as far as its first two volumes.

He had done a great work. At the request of his faculty, his body was buried in the college grounds and a tablet to his memory stands in the wall of the principal lecture room of the college which he founded. T. R. W.

Appleton, Moses (1773-1849).

The Appletons, of New Ipswich, New Hampshire, descended from Samuel and Mary Everad Appleton. They left Wal- dringfield, Suffolk County, England, for religion's sake, and came to Ipswich, Massachusetts about 1035, afterwards to Waterville, Maine.