Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/397

 ELIOT 2

not reach it. It continued for some time, and then came out of itself. He quickly found the inconvenience of the spawn there lodged ; the pain and tumult in his head grew great and almost in- tolerable, but was soon eased by thrust- ing into his ear a feather dipped in warm oil. There came out forty mag- gots. This was in May, 1729."

E. E.

Russell's Early Medicine and Early Med- ical Men in Connecticut.

Eliot, Johnson (1815-1SS8).

Born in the city of Washington, District of Columbia, on the twenty- fourth of August, 1815, Johnson Eliot was a son of Samuel and Mary John- son Eliot, Jr., of Boston, Massachusetts. Upon his father's side he traced his ancestry back to Sir John Eliot, of Devonshire, England, in 1373.

When only thirteen, after a common school education, he apprenticed him- self, very much against the wishes of his widowed mother, to Charles Mc- Cormick, a druggist of Washington, and continued in the drug business for about fifteen years, when he dis- posed of his store and in 1839 was ap- pointed hospital steward at the Naval Hospital, Washington, District of Co- lumbia, serving under Surgs, Foltz and Jackson. During the same year he began to study medicine under Dr. Thomas Sewall, matriculating in the medical department of Columbia Col- lege, District of Columbia (now George Washington University) and graduating in 1S42 with a thesis entitled "Humoral Pathology."

Immediately upon graduation he was appointed demonstrator of anatomy there by Dr. Thomas Miller, professor of anatomy. He was zealous and faithful in the discharge of his duties; this position he resigned in 1849 to be- come one of the founders of the Medical Department of Georgetown University and the same year professor of anatomy and physiology, three years later re- signing the physiology chair but con-

) ELIOT

tinuing to fill that of anatomy. At this time the material for dissection was very scarce and the rivalry between the two colleges often lead to personal conflict.

When the chair of surgery in George- town Medical Department became va- cant in 1861, he accepted the position and very soon forged his way to the front rank of the surgeons in this sec- tion of the country.

At the call of Pres. Lincoln, he was among the first local surgeons who volunteered their services, starting for the battlefield of Bull Run with a pass to the front signed by secretary of war Stanton, not waiting for a commission. Here he busied himself with the sick and wounded of both armies, amputing when necessary, dress- ing wounds, undertaking to deliver letters and notes for the unfortunates to their home folks.

A thorough anatomist, a bold and deliberate operator, he was one of the pioneers in ovariotomy, and among some of his brilliant operations may be mentioned three cases of removal of the superior maxilla, two cases of amputation at the hip-joint, a case of removal of seven and a half inches of the humerus, and also one of the early successful excisions of the head of the humerus, simultaneous ligation of the carotid and subclavian arteries for an- eurysm of the arteria innominata, two cases of removal of palatopharyngeal sar- coma, ligation of the subclavian artery, simultaneous amputation of both legs.

Among his appointments Dr. Eliot was physician-in-charge of the Wash- ington Small-pox Hospital from 1S62- 4; consulting surgeon and one of the directors of St. John's Hospital, Co- lumbia Hospital for Women, Children's Hospital, Central Dispensary and Emer- gency Hospital, surgeon-in-charge of l'n.\ idence Hospital, dean of the medical faculty of Georgetown University from May 12, 1856 to the re-organization of that body in 1S76, and professor of sur- gery from 1S01 to 1870, when he was elected emeritus professor of surgery, but