Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/365

 DO UGLAS 2

Lives of Eminent Amer. Physicians.

Am. Med. Recorder, Phila., 1S19, vol. ii, (por-

trait).

St. Louis Med. and Surg. Jour., 1S51, vol. ix

(H. Shoemaker).

There is a portrait in the Surg. -gen. Lib.,

Wash., D. C.

Douglas, Richard (1860-1908).

Born on December 20, 1S60, the son of Byrd and Sarah Cragwall Douglas, he was commonly known, as "Dixie," because he arrived in this world the year South Carolina seceded.

Douglas belonged to the group of young surgeons who derived their in- spiration from Lawson Tait and his contemporaries, they who began thei ' work in the abdomen in the early nine- ties. He was a student under Granville Bantock in London and graduated from the medical side of the University of Nashville in 1S81, completing his course in the Jefferson Medical College. From the beginning he gave promise of that brilliance which afterwards characterized his subsequent work, the painstaking care he showed as diagnostician being only exceeded Yjy untiring zeal in his library and his keen interest in operating. He held the professorship of gynecology and obstetrics and later that of abdominal surgery in Vanderbilt University, also he was one of the founders of the South- ern Surgical and Gynecological Society, his first paper contributed being one on the subject of "Peritonitis" in 1894, fol- lowed by "Splenectomy Statistically Con- sidered," in 1896. His beautiful delivery and thorough mastery of his subject made a refreshing feature in medical meetings. A most exhaustive monograph on "Retroperitoneal Neo] his thesis in 1898, and his address on "Acute General Peritonitis," when elected president of the Southern Surgical and logical Society, 1S98, was equally

societies, being made president

lica) Society of Ala-

Georgia and Tennessee. His

"Cysts of the Urachus," one of the best

papers ever written, and "Gun-shot

I DOUGLAS

wounds of the Abdomen" ably embodied his experiences in the Nashville Hospital. Later he became very interested in tubercular peritonitis, his last paper before the Nashville Academy of Medicine being on that subject.

He was easily the leader in his state and had phenomenal success, but with the many endowments which nature lavished upon him he was also chastened with a peculiarly irritable disposition, with the result that he had many imaginary and real grievances which embittered his professional life but drew closer his devoted friends particularly a notable group of young men of his state for whom he had a great fascination. But his work on "Surgical Diseases of the Abdomen," 1904, had given him also an international reputation, and his comparatively early death which occurred from chronic nephritis on February 19, 1908, in Nash- ville, left a great regret that he had worked so hard and too feverishly for nature to fulfil his exhaustive demands. W. D. H.

Trans. Southern Surg, and Gyn. Socvol xxi, 1909 (W. D. Haggard) (portrait).

Douglas, Silas Hamilton (1S16-1S90).

Silas Hamilton Douglas, physiolo- gist, was born in Fredonia, Chautauqua County, New York, October 16, 1816 and had his general education in the Academy there and at the New York University. In 1S3S he came to Detroit and studied medicine under Dr. Zina Pitcher, in J taking a course of lectures at the Medical Department of the Urn of Maryland, and on June 3, 1842, was by 1 he Censors, ii Stale Medical Society. At various times he accompanied Dr. Douglas Houghton on his gei surveys of Michigan

i ician on the staff of <

R. Schoolcraft, in 1843 beginning to

practise at Ann Arbor. 1844 saw him

nt. to Prof. Houghton in the

ily and in charge of cl •

during the professor's absence in the