Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/55

 HISTORY OF GYNECOLOGY IN AMERICA xlv

the interval, but was next taken up and made a great and successful operation by two men of the highest surgical genius, the distinguished Atlees, John Light (1799-1885) and Washington L. (1808-1878), in the forties and fifties.

John Light Atlee (1799-1885), of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, had seventy-eight cases with sixty-four recoveries. In 1843 he did the first double ovariotomy (Gross, Autobiography, p. 176). In 1855 Washing- ton L. Atlee, who was a great writer, published his first thirty-five cases. He wrote his large work, the "General and Differential Diagnosis of Ovarian Tumors," Philadelphia, 1873.

I think the high-water mark of careful analysis, good teaching and good writing was reached by E. R. Peaslee (1914-1878), of New York, who widely influenced the practice of his day and generation and pub- lished our classical work on "Ovarian Tumors" in 1872; in this Peaslee devotes forty pages to the treatment of the pedicle, the most burning subject of that time.

In 1870 T. Gaillard Thomas did a vaginal ovariotomy (" American Journal of Medical Sciences, " 1870), and in 1872 R. Davis, of Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, also successfully removed an ovarian tumor by the vagina ("Transactions State Medical Society of Pennsylvania," 1874). These pioneers in a new field were followed by J. T. Gilmore, of Alabama, in 1873 ("New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal," 1873), and Robert Battey, of Rome, Georgia, in 1874 ("Atlanta Medical and Surgical Jour- nal," 1872). H. T. Byford became a pioneer in this field in 1888. Vaginal oophorectomy and vaginal ovariotomy were thus revived by Byford, of Chicago, after earlier operators had abandoned the method. ("American Journal of Obstetrics," 1888, p. 337.) (Byford's "Diseases of Women," 1888, revised by H. T. Byford.)

J. F. Miner, of Buffalo (1823-1886), in 1869 advocated "Ovariotomy by Enucleation without Clamp, Ligature or Cautery" ("American Jour- nal of Medical Sciences," 1872, vol. lxiv, p. 391) with the object of getting rid of ligatures and so avoiding the greatest risk attending an operation in pre-antiseptic days, namely an infection so often introduced by an unsterilized ligature.

John S. Parry (1843-1870) wrote upon the "Sudden Enlargements of Ovarian Cysts from Hemorrhages" ("American Journal of Medical Sciences," January, 1871, p. 53).

Fibroid Tumors. — America has had perhaps more to do with the evolution of the surgery of fibroid tumors than any other conntry, and the early work in this important field is particularly creditable to the intrepidity and the ingenuity of our surgeons.

The history of fibroid tumors, judicially and well written by Charles P. Noble, of Philadelphia, forms one of that noted surgeon's most valuable