Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/231

 BUCHANAN

BUCK

man. He died when at Montreaux, Switzerland, on October 1, 1902.

His papers included :

" Clinical Notes on the Electric Cautery in Uterine Surgery," New York, 1873.

"Kolpocystotomy by galvanocautery" ("Transactions of the American Gyneco- logical Society," vol. iv, 1879).

D.W. Tr. Am. Gynec. Soc, 1903 vol. xxviii. (port).

Buchanan, George (1763-1808).

A founder of the Medical and Chirurgi- cal Faculty of Maryland, Dr. Buchanan was of Scotch descent, the son of Andrew and Susan Lawson Buchanan, and grand- son of George Buchanan, the emigrant who laid off Baltimore town in 1730. He was born at "The Palace," Baltimore County, Maryland September, 19 1763, and studied under Dr. Charles Frederick Wiesenthal, a famous Prussian surgeon of Baltimore, and under Dr. William Shippen of Philadelphia. Under the lat- ter he served in the Revolution. He be- came M. B. at the University of Penn- sylvania in 1785. He then spent about three years in Europe, chiefly in medical study at Edinburgh University. While there he held the office of president of the "Royal Physical Society." Returning to America, he received from Pennsylvania University his M. D. in 1789 his thesis being " Dissertatio Physiologica de causis Respiraticnis ejusdemque Affectibus." He began practice in Baltimore the same year. With Dr. Andrew Wiesenthal he also attempted to found a medical school, and lectured during the winter of 1789- 1790 to a class of nine students on "dis- eases of women and children and the Brunonian system." In connection with this enterprise he published a treatise on "Typhus Fever," the proceeds of which he desired to go towards the founding of a lying-in hospital. Unfortunately dis- sensions, the nature of which are not now evident, arose and, notwithstanding the efforts of Dr. Buchanan, the society wa dissolved and the school abandoned. In 1790 be issued a Idler to the inhabitants of Baltimore in which he urged the

registration of deaths, the creation of a public park, and the establishment of a humane society. In a fourth-of-July oration the following year he discoursed on "The Moral and Political Evils of Slavery." He retired from practice on account of bad health in 1800 and in 1S06 removed to Philadelphia. There he be- came resident physician to the Lazarettos, in which institution he died of yellow fever on July 9, 1808 in his forty-fifth year. In 1789 he had married Laetitia, daughter of Thomas McKean of Pennsyl- vania, a signer of the "Declaration of Independence." E. F. C.

Cordell'a Med. Ann. of Maryland.

Buck, Gurdon (1807-1S77).

Gurdon Buck was born in Fulton Street, New York, on the fourth of May, 1807, a son of Gurdon Buck, a New York merchant, and Susannah Manwaring Buck of Connecticut, both grand chil- dren of Gov. Gurdon Saltonstall of Connecticut. Dr. Buck went to Nelson Classical School and finally determined to study medicine. With this view he studied under Dr. Thomas Cock and in 1830 received his M. D. from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the city of New York. After passing the regular term on the medical side of the New York Hospital he went to Europe and continued his studies in the hospitals of Paris, Berlin, and Vienna for a period of about two years and a half. In 1S36 he made a second visit to Europe, and in Geneva, Switzerland, married Henrietta E. Wolff, of that city. In 1837 he was appointed visiting surgeon of the New York Hospital and held the position up to the day he died. He was also appointed visiting surgeon to St. Luke's Hospital and the Presbyterian Hospital at the time of the organization of those institutions, and was visiting surgeon to the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, from 1852 to 1862. He was a fellow of the Academy of Medi- cine from its organization, and served as its vice-president fur one term; :i member of the New York Pathological Society, serving one term as president, and mem-