Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/347

 DAWSON 2

The family — father, mother, and eleven children — emigrated to Jamestown, Green County, Ohio when the boy was one year old, and there he spent his childhood and early youth. When old enough to leave home he was sent to a private school at Xenia, Ohio. After returning home from school at Xenia, he began to work for his father, but finding that rather too stren- uous for him, he followed the example of his two older brothers and began to study medicine with Dr. Matthias Winans, of Jamestown. In 1847 he took his first course in Louisville University, but did not return there to finish, going to the Medical College of Ohio, where he graduated in 18.50. As a medical student he was described as a big-headed, large- hearted rollicking country youngster, ready for any fun and at the head of almost all the pranks that students were fond of, but never neglecting any of the clinical lectures, and always a hard worker. His natural bent, even in his student days, was for surgery. After graduation he spent two years near his old home, and then returned to Cincinnati and set- tled down to practise. While profes- sionally a success from the very first, for the first two years his financial harvest was small. But he had a stout heart; the harder the work, the more determined was he to win. With the coming of the Civil War his first good fortune came, and he began to feel the tide of popularity run- ning his way. In 1853 he had been made professor of anatomy in the Cincinnati Col- lege of Medicine and Surgery which chair he occupied for three years, and while it had tickled his pride to have been known as a professor in a medical college, it did not appear to increase his paying clientele. In 18G0 he obtained the same chair in the Medical College of Ohio, his alma mater, and it was soon after this that fortune came. He remained with the college until 1864, when he received the appointment of surgeon to the Cincinnati Hospital, then known as the Commercial Hospital. With his rise in professional popularity the joyous- ness of youth returned, the years he

j DAWSON

spent as surgeon and clinical lecturer at the Cincinnati Hospital he looked upon as the best of his life. In the summer of 1S70 Dr. George Blackman died, and Dr. Dawson was immediately elected his successor as professor of surgery in the Medical College of Ohio. Then came the heyday of his life, intellectually and socially. While not so elegant or elo- quent as Graham, nor so scientifically correct as Bartholow, yet as a teacher he was superior to them all, his terse and forcible manner of presenting facts never failed to reach the intellectual center of his listeners, and his lectures were the most popular and highly appreciated of any in the city, his clinics at the hos- pital of the Good Samaritan more popular, if possible, than his teaching at the col- lege. From 1870 to 1880 was the period of his greatest success. During this decade he performed his most brilliant operations, and wrote the greater part of his papers on surgical subjects. In 1888 he was made president of the American Medical Association.

While not a specialist, but a general surgeon in its widest sense, he yet had his pet operations. At one time it was lateral lithotomy, and he claimed that he was the first American surgeon to make one hundred successive lithotomies without a death. He also claimed that his nephrotomy was the first in this country, and the first successful case anywhere. The case that gave him his greatest renown was his attendance on the Hon. Clement L. Vallandigham, who accidentally shot himself while attempting to show how the victim of an alleged murder had committed suicide.

The principal papers during this time were on abdominal tumors, hernia, carcinoma, Grave's disease and a score or more on his operations, including: "The Complete Removal of the Clavicle, with Cure; "The Removal of Seventeen Fibro- cystic Tumors from the Abdomen;" "Three Cases of Double Ligature of the Carotids and Three of Trephining for Epilepsy." During his early years and up to the time of the death of his wifo