Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/543

 HODGEN

HOLBROOK

any College, West Virginia. In his twentieth year he entered the medical department of the University of the State of Missouri.

He graduated in March, 1818; was assistant resident physician of the St. Louis City Hospital from April, 1S48, to June, 1849, and demonstrator of anatomy in his alma mater from 1849 to 1853. He was appointed to the chair of anatomy by Joseph Nash McDowell, which position he occupied from 1854 to 1858. From 1858 to 1864 he filled both chairs of anat- omy and physiology.

In 1864, the Missouri College building having been seized by the government, and Dr. McDowell, its head, having gone south, Dr. Hodgen transferred his alle- giance to the St. Louis Medical College, where he filled respectively the chairs of physiology and of anatomy, and in 1875 assumed the chair of surgical anatomy, of fractures and dislocations, and was created dean of the faculty, which posi- tion he held at the time of his death. From 1864 to 1882 he taught clinical surgery at the City Hospital.

During the Civil War he served in the capacity of surgeon-general of the West- ern Sanitary Commission, 1861; surgeon, United States Volunteers, 1861 to 1S64; and surgeon-general, State of Missouri, 1862 to 1864. He served as consulting surgeon to the City Hospital from 1862 to 1882; was president of the St. Louis Med- ical Society in 1S72, president of the State Medical Association in 1876, and presi- dent of the American Medical Association in 1880.

Quick and clear in apprehension, terse and forcible in expression, he was a pow- erful debator whom no sophistry confused, and one who never lost sight of control- ling principles, or confounded ideas with facts. In the International Medical Con- gress in 1876, at Philadelphia, he won sub- stantial honors, and made a record that stamped him as a great man.

He possessed decided mechanical gen- ius, his inventions most worthy of note being a wire splint for fracture of the thigh; suspension cord and pulleys per-

mitting flexion, extension and rotation in fracture of the leg; forceps dilator for removal of foreign bodies from the air passages without tracheotomy; cradle- splint for treatment of compound frac- ture of the thigh; wire suspension splint for injury of the arm; double action syringe and stomach pump; hair-pin di- lator for separating lips of the opening in the trachea and as a guide to the tracheal tube.

His chief contributions to medical lit- erature were: "Wiring the Clavicle and Acromion for Dislocation of the Scapular End of the Clavicle;" "Modification of Operation for Lacerated Perineum;" "Dislocation of Both Hips;" "Use of Atropia in Collapse of Cholera;" "Three Cases of Extra-Uterine Fetation;" "Skin Grafting;" "Nerve Section for Neuralgia;" "Report on Antiseptic Surgery;" "Shock, and Effects of Compressed Air, as Ob- served in the Building of the St. Louis and Illinois Bridge."

He died in his fifty-seventh year, April 28, 1SS2, of acute peritonitis, caused by ulceration of the gall-bladder, after a short and painful illness. M

He married a Miss Mudd, of Pittsfield, Illinois, who survived him.

A. J. S.

Med. News, Phila., 1SS2, vol. xi.

Med. Rec, N. Y., 1882, vol. xxi.

Tr. Am. Med. Assoc., Phila., 1882, vol. x.\Niii.

The St. Louis Med. Review, May 11, 1907

(Supplement) (portrait).

Med. Mirror, St. Louis, 1890, vol. i (port.).

Holbrook, John Edwards (1794-1871). Both anatomist and naturalist, he was

born :it I '.i:i uinoiil. South Carolina, 1 >e- ember :'.(>, 1791, the son of Silas Holbrook, a native of Massachusetts, through whom he was descended from old New England stock. His mother was Mary Edwards of South Carolina.

His early education was receive, I at

Uronihani, Massachusetts, and at Provi- dence, Rhode Island. In 1N1."> he grad- uated from Brown College with the degree of A. I',., and in 1818 he took his M. D. at the University of Pennsylvania.

lie was a member of the Royal Medical