Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/141

McCANN as assistant surgeon of the Fifth Pennsylvania Artillery, in which capacity he first saw service at the battle of Gettysburg, July, 1863. Returning to graduate, he took his M. D. at the University of Pennsylvania, March 23, 1864. In 1893, on the day of his death, the LL. D. was conferred on him by Heidelberg College, of Tiffin, Ohio. Steps towards the conference of the same degree were also taken by the Western University of Pennsylvania, but his death occurred beforehand.

Dr. McCann was a member of the American Surgical Association, of the county, state and national medical societies. He was president of the Allegheny County Medical Society.

While originally a general practitioner Dr. McCann soon gravitated towards surgery and at the time of his death occupied the foremost rank in that branch of medicine in Western Pennsylvania, From the time of the establishment of the West Penn Hospital until he died he filled a position of surgeon on the staff.

In 1885 he was largely instrumental in organizing the Western Pennsylvania Medical College — now the medical department of the University of Pittsburg, where he occupied the chair of principles and practice of surgery from its inception to the time of his death.

In 1862 he married Sarah Boyd and had nine children. His wife died in April, 1883, and in 1889 he married Martha Scott, by whom he had a daughter. His oldest son, Thomas, born April 22, 1863, graduated M. D. at Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1887 but died of a chronic pulmonary affection in 1903.

Another son, John B., also adopted his father's vocation and settled in Pittsburg.

James McCann died July 13, 1893, at his house No. 928 Penn Avenue, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Several years before his death he suffered from septic infection, following an operation on a patient, from which he never fully recovered. The direct cause of death was a cerebellar abscess due it was believed to this infection.

His contributions to medical literature were numerous and continued over a long period. Among them may be mentioned:

"Clinical Observations in the Treatment of Severe Railroad Injuries of the Extremities." ("Transactions, American Surgical Association," 1884, vol. ii.)

"Splenectomy for Dislocated or Wandering Spleen; Recovery." (Ibid., 1887, vol. V.)

" FJnterectomy for Removal of Sarcoma of Mesentery; Recovery." (Ibid., 1892, vol. X.)

Chapter on "Wounds," in Keating's "Encyclopedia of Diseases of Children."

His portrait is in the assembly room of the Allegheny County Medical Society, in the Pittsburg Free Dispensary. A. K.

McCaw, James Brown (1823-1906).

An army surgeon, he was born in Richmond, Virginia, on July 12, 1823. Pie came of a race of doctors, being the great-grandson of James McCaw, a Scotch surgeon from Wigtonshire, who came to Virginia in 1771 and settled near Norfolk whose son, James D. McCaw, was a pupil of Benjamin Bell, of Edinburgh, and an M. D. of the University of that city, and returned to Virginia, and practised in Richmond until his death in 1842, and Dr. William R. McCaw was the father of the subject of this sketch.

He was educated in Richmond schools and studied medicine at the University of New York, graduating in 1844, being a pupil of Dr. Valentine Mott. Then he soon removed to Richmond, his home during the rest of his life.

He was a founder and a charter member of the Medical Society of Virginia, and a member and at one time president of the Richmond Academy of Medicine.

Dr. McCaw was editor, or co-editor, of the "Virginia Medical and Surgical Journal" from April, 1853, to December, 1855, and co-editor of the "Virginia Medical Journal" from January, 1856, to December, 1859; in 1864 he became editor of the "Confederate States Medical Journal," of which only fourteen numbers appeared — the only medical journal published under the Confederacy; in April, 1871, he be-