Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/186

 BLACK

BLACKBURN

an operating-table out of some chairs and boards, the cooking stove furnished us boiling water, and a piece of fishing line, sterlized, served for ligatures when he found a complication in subperitoneal fibroid tumors which obliged him to re- move the uterus en masse. The mother did not long survive but the child grew up.

An interesting writing from his pen was: "Forty Years in the Medical Pro- fession" also " Consumption in Delaware" and "Snakes in Delaware."

Black was a member of the College of Physicians, Philadelphia, and the State Medical Society. In 1S72 he married Jeanie Groome Black and had two chil- dren, Elizabeth Groome and Armytage Middleton. He died of uremia at New Castle on September 27, 1909.

R. R. T.

Black, Rufus Smith (1S12-1893).

Rufus Smith Black was born in Hali- fax, Nova Scotia in 1812, and died in California, 1893. He practised in Halifax for nearly half a century, but, his health failing in 1887, he removed to California where he lived the remainder of his days.

He took his regular medical course at Edinburgh University, from which he graduated M. D. in 1836. He also won the degree L. R. C. S. (Edin.). Taking a post-graduate course in Paris, under dis- tinguished professors, he became ac- quainted with the teachings of Laennec, and subsequently became the first prac- titioner in Nova Scotia who regularly used the stethoscope as an aid to diagno- sis. After leaving Paris he spent about a year in Spain, and thus to a good clas- sical education added an intimate knowl- edge of French and Spanish.

Returning to Halifax, he soon secured a large practice.

Dr. Black was for many years one of the physicians of the Victoria General Hospital. He was a member of the Med- ical Society of Nova Scotia, and five times its president, and president of the Halifax Medical College from 1875 to his retire- ment in 1887.

His addresses and papers, on various subjects, before local societies, were marked by much literary skill, but they are not known to have been printed. One, " Value of Tartar Emetic in Rigid Cervix," appeared in the "Edinburgh Medical Journal" for 1S65, and for a time he made translations from Spanish medical pe- riodicals, which were published in the "Maritime Medical News," Halifax.

He married Miss Ferguson, of Halifax, and had five daughters and one son, John F. Black, who studied medicine in New York and graduated from the Col- ege of Physicians and Surgeons in 1882. s D. A. C.

Blackburn, Luke Pryor (1816-1887).

A surgeon during the Civil War, Luke P. Blackburn was born in Fayette County, Kentucky, June 16, 1816 and graduated from Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky in 1834, in 1835 beginning to practice in that city, but on the outbreak of cholera in Versailles he offered his services gratuitously to the sufferers and afterwards made that place his home.

In 1846 he removed to Natchez, Mississippi, which he effectually quaran- tined against the yellow-fever epidemic which occurred in New Orleans in 1S48, and at his own expense built a hospital for the marines who were suffering from the fever, an act that aroused Congress to establish ten similar institutions. In 1854 he again protected Natchez from yellow fever by rigid quarantine. He visited the hospitals of England, Scotland, France and Germany in 1857, and on his return resumed practice in New Orleans.

He was made surgeon to the staff of Gen. Sterling Price on the outbreak of the Civil War, and was commissioned by the governor of Mississippi to proceed to Canada to superintend the furnishing of supplies by blockade runners and in 1864, at the request of the governor- general of Canada, he visited the Bermuda Islands to look after the suffering citizens and soldiers, but in 1867 returned to the United States and became a planter in