Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/322

 CROSBY 2

Crosby succeeded in reviving his patient's courage so as to make a last effort for life. The next day the limb was removed and the patient recovered.

His second year of study brought out still more the resources of the young surgeon; once both father and son, while visiting a patient at night in a distant village, were suddenly called to a case of extensive laceration of the leg with pro- fuse hemorrhage. No instruments were at hand, so the son called for a carving knife, which he sharpened on a grind stone and finished on a razor strop, filed a hand saw, amputated the leg, dressed the stump, left the patient in safety and drove home with his father to breakfast. The man recovered.

Before a nature so fearless and so fertile in expedients, obstacles speedily vanish, and young Crosby found himself in possession of a large and responsible practice when twenty-three and before taking his medical degree.

In 1823 he graduated from the Dart- mouth Medical School, and for the next ten years remained in Gilmanton in practice with his father, then on to Merideth Bridge, dow Laconia, New Hampshire, where he stayed three years, until he was called to the chair of surgery at Dartmouth. As an instructor he was clear, direct and definite, imparting to his pupils his own zeal and teaching them his own self-reliance.

The practical view was always his, and the dry humor with which he never failed to emphasize his point at once fixed it in the memory of the class.

His love of nature was as instructive and as thorough as his knowledge of men. He studied the habits of birds and insects and his rooms resembled those of a naturalist.

Of his special operations here are a few: In 1824 he devised a new and ingenious method of reducing metacarpo-phalan- geal dislocation. In 1S36 he removed the arm, scapula and three-quarters of the clavicle at a single operation, for the first time in the history of surgery (" Republi- can Press Association," Concord, New

3 CROSBY

Hampshire, 1875). He was the first to open an abscess of the hip-joint.

Crosby was not a rapid operator. He often said, "an operation, gentlemen, is soon enough done when well enough done."

Having reached man's limit of three score years and ten, he withdrew from active practice and in 1870 resigned his chair in the college.

All his life he was an ardent advocate of temperance, and active in the towns in which he lived in securing the enforce- ment of the liquor laws. His last days were passed peacefully and quietly, though he sometimes said he would like to fight the battles and enjoy the pleasure of professional life over again.

He died peacefully, on the twenty- sixth of September, 1873.

He married in 1827 Mary Jane Moody of Gilmanton and had two sons, Prof. Alphemo Benning Crosby and Dr. A. H. Crosby. I. J. P.

Boston Med. and Surg. Jour., 1S73, vol.

lxxxix.

Tr. N. Hampshire Med. Soc, Concord. 1S74.

(C. P. Frost.)

Crosby, Thomas Russell (1816-1872).

Thomas Russell Crosby, ninth son and twelfth child of Dr. Asa Crosby, and the half brother of Drs. Dixi and Josiah Crosby, was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, October 22, 1816.

His early education was at Gilmanton Academy and at Dartmouth College. In addition he found leisure for his favorite studies of medicine and natural history. Pursuing these, he was able to take the degrees of A. B. and M. D. at the same time, in 1841.

After living six months with his brother Dixi, he went to Campton, New Hamp- shire, but finally settled in Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1843, entering at once upon a large practice. In about a year he found himself the victim of lead poisoning in its worst form, and for the next ten years suffered all the indescrib- able tortures of distorted joints, colic, and broken health generally. Finding he could not recover in Manchester,