Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/213

 BRAINARD

BRASHEAR

Brainard, Daniel (1S12-1S66).

Daniel Brainard, one of Chicago's famous early surgeons, was the son of Jephai Brainard, farmer, of Western, Oneida County, New York, and born on May 15, 1S12. As a boy he went to the local schools and afterwards studied medicine under Dr. Harold Pope, gradu- ating in medicine from Jefferson College, Philadelphia in 1834. He at once be- gan practice in Whitesboro but found it rather too small a place and travelled on to Chicago. The Hon. John Dean Caton of Chicago, a fellow student of Brainard's, gives a graphic account of Brainard, " wearing pretty seedy clothes " riding up to his office on a little Indian pony. He was nearly out of funds; what would the judge advise him to do? The Pottowatomies were gathering prepara- tory to starting a new camp west of the Mississippi, so the judge advised him to go to the camp, sell his pony, take a little table in his (Caton's) office and put his shingle by the side of the door.

Three years of work brought no great success, then a canal laborer fractured his thigh bone and before complete union had taken place came to Chicago on foot, so increasing the inflammation that the two doctors, Brainard and Goodhue, decided on amputation. Brain- ard operated, while Goodhue compressed the femoral artery and found it necessary to amputate at the hip-joint. The patient went on well for a month when a fatal secondary hemorrhage occurred. The postmortem showed a large bony neoplasm attached to the pelvic bones and surrounding the femoral artery. No doubt a number of such operations had been performed in this country, but history records only two or three at the most.

In 1839 Brainard went to Paris, working hard all the time, and on his return gave a course of medical lectures in St. Louis and soon after perfected his plans for the foundation of Rush Medical

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When in Paris in 1852 with his wife he had permission to prosecute his studies

on poisoned wounds by experimenting on reptiles in the Jardin des Plantes. At that time he was made an honorary member of the Societe de Chirurgie, Paris, and of the Medical Society of the Canton of Geneva. In 1854 he gained the prize offered by the American Medical Association by his paper on "The Treat- ment of Ununited Fractures." Brainard, his biographers say, was a many-sided man, good both in botany and geology and his medical articles are master- pieces — terse, vigorous and lucid. He married Evelyn Sleight, and had four children, Daniel, Robert, Edwin and Julia.

A short time before his death, cholera had been in Chicago, but towards the middle of August it ceased. Those who had been alarmed returned to the city only to encounter a fresh outbreak in October when over a thousand died. Among those soon smitten was Brainard, who was attacked one day when leaving the college and died in a few hours. This happened on the tenth of October 1866. D. W.

Early Med. Chicago. J. H. Hyde, M. D.

Distinguished Phys. and Surgs. of Chicago.

F. M. Sperry, Chicago.

Chicago Med. Jour. 1S66, xxiii.

Chicago Med. Jour, and Exam., 1S76, xxxiii

CC. Comstock).

Brashear, Walter (1776-1860).

Walter Brashear, surgeon, was born in Prince George's County, Maryland, on the eleventh of February, 1776. Eight years after, his father, Nacy Brashear, emigrated to Kentucky and settled near the Long Lick within three miles of Shep- pardsville. Walter was the seventh son; therefore, according to the old idea, des- tined for the medical profession. After a limited education at schools then within the reach of his scanty means, he entered the literary department of the Transyl- vania University, where he acquired a good knowlege of the classics and in 1796 began to study medicine under Dr. Fred- erick Ridgely, of Lexington. Two years after he attended a course of lectures in the I University of Pennsylvania and in