Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/547

 HOLMES

HOLMES

ecologist of the northwestern States, was born in Polk County, Oregon, July 30, 1856, the son of Horatio Nelson Viscount and Nancy Porter Holmes, and was the youngest of five brothers. His ancestors came from the north of Ireland. He graduated from the medical side of Williamette Univer- sity, 1S77; from the Long Island Med- ical College in 1SS0, and afterwards attended post-graduate schools in New York City and Harvard University. He held the membership of the Amer- ican Gynecological Society, British Gynecological Society, British Medical Association, and Oregon State Medical Society of which he was also president. His practice was exclusively gynecol- ogy and obstetrics, and from 1S94 till death he was professor of gynecology in the Williamette University and to the Portland Hospital.

His chief characteristic was his ear- nest interest in his work and his putting aside all other business to equip him- self for it.

His wife was Olivia Ernestine Swegle of Salem, Oregon, whom he married in 1877 and had one son, Guy Paul.

In the autumn of 1895 Holmes and his associates felt compelled to resign from the Portland Hospital Staff; a heated discussion followed and Holmes was attacked and shot in three places by a physician who sustained the man- agement. It was probably in conse- quence of injuries received at this time that intestinal complications arose necessitating celiotomy in a bad state of health. He never rallied, and died from the operation on Oc- tober 21, 1896.

He was the author of various gyne- cological articles in the "Transactions of the Oregon State Medical Society," 1892-3; "Ventral Fixation in Dis- placements of the Uterus," "Pacific Medical Record," February, 1893; "First Symphysiotomy on the Pacific Coast," "New York Journal of Gyne- cology and Obstetrics," July, 1893; "A Year's Work in Surgical Gynecology

including Thirty-one Celiotomies with- out a Death or Stitch-hole Abscess," "Medical Sentinel," January, 1S94; "A New Pelvic Drainage Tube," "Medical Record," March, 1893; "Ven- tro-fixation in Extreme Anterior Dis- placement of the Uterus," "Journal of American Medical Association," Au- gust 11, 1894; " Viburnum Prunifolium," idem, October 27; "Gonorrhea as an Etiological Factor in Diseases of Women," address before the Oregon State Medical Society, June 12, 1895. H. A. K.

Trana. Am. Gyn. Soc, vol. xxii, 1897.

Med. Sentinel, Portland, Oregon, Nov., 1896.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell (1809-1894).

Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in Boston, August 29, 1809, and died there, October 7, 1894, the son of Abial Holmes, pastor of the first church in Cambridge. The geneology of the Holmes family dates from Thomas Holmes, a lawyer of Gray's Inn, Lon- don, in the sixteenth century, and the first Holmes who came to this country was John, one of the first settlers of Woodstock, Connecticut, in 1686. The mother of Oliver Wendell Holmes was Sarah Wendell, a descendant of Thomas Dudley, governor of Massachusetts Bay from 1634-40, and from 1645-50.

When Oliver was fifteen he was sent to Philip's Academy in Andover and afterwards entered Harvard Col- lege, from which he graduated with the famous class of 1829. Through- out his course he held a good record in scholarship and was also socially pop- ular. After graduation he spent one year in the law school, and then turn- ed to medicine, studying in the Harvard Medical School under Dr. James Jack- son and his associates for two and a half years, and before taking Ins med- ical degree spending three years in Europe in the hospitals and lecture- rooms of Paris and Edinburgh. He took his medical degree, joined the Massachusetts Medical Society, and be- gan to practise in Boston in 1S36. In