Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/260

 OUCHTERLOXY

O'JO

OWEN

Louisville Medical College in 1876. From 1S76 he had no college associations. In 1S7S he accepted the chair of principles and practice of medicine in the Kentucky School of Medicine, which he filled with marked success and ability until 1882, when he resigned to accept the chair of principles and practice of medicine and clinical medicine in the University of Louisville. He filled this chair from 1882 until his death. He had been president of the Medico-Chirurgical So- ciety and of the Louisville Obstetrical Society. In 1890 he served as president of the Kentucky Medical Society; in 1891 he received from the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences the Linnean Gold Medal; in 1891, in recognition of his marked ability and renown, King Oscar of Sweden made him a Knight of the Royal Order of the Polar Star. In 1892 the University of Notre Dame conferred upon him the degree of LL. D. He was an honorary member of the Michigan State Medical Society, and had also served as vice-president of the American Medical Association. In 1894, in recognition of his ability and his devotion to his church, Pope Leo the Thirteenth made Dr. Ouchterlony a Knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great. As a diagnostician he was pre- eminent. His extremely wide medical knowledge along with constant and deep study and constant investigation gave him an extremely keen insight into the science of medicine. His contributions to medical Uterature are numerous and important. Perhaps one of his best known was a treatise in 1887 on the "Pre- ventative Treatment of Tuberculosis." \Miile he did not intend this to be ex- haustive it covered in full the delicate character of this morbid process, and with rare precision pointed out many of the present modes of attack on this dis- ease. His studies were not confined to medicine alone, for he was distinguished as a scientist and a linguist, both here and abroad. He spoke five modern languages fluently and was thoroughly conversant with Greek and Latin. In

1863 he married Kate Grainger and had one son.

O. W. D.

Mec. Rec, N. Y., 1905, Ixviii.

Owen, WUliam (1788-1875).

This obstetrician was born in Staunton, Virginia, on the twelfth of January, 1788. Three years later his family removed to Lynchburg, then known as Lynch's Ferry, and there he spent his life.

Beginning in a drug store, he pursued at the same time the study of medicine for three years under the guidance of able instructors, afterwards attending a course of lectures in the University of Pennsyl- vam'a, but being too poor to take at once the second course, and graduate, he there- fore entered upon the practice of medi- cine, returning some years later to college and completing the course and receiving his degree in 1815, the subject of his thesis being "Mercurial Disease." He was a charter member and an honorary fellow of the Medical Society of Virginia, and the first president of the Lynchburg Medical Association.

He was a man of great vigor and endurance and did an enormous amount of work. He did for many years nearly all the obstetrical and surgical operations in his town and the surrounding country.

As early as 1816 he resected the entire shaft of the tibia, preserving the perios- teum, the patient recovering with a useful limb. In 1832 he devised an anterior splint for fractured femur, which has ever since been in use in Lynch- burg, and known as his invention.

A gentle and kind man, he was much beloved by his patients. In spite of his enormous practice, he never forgot nor neglected the poor who needed his services, and died in very moderate circumstances, when he might have left quite an independent fortune, had he been less indulgent. Dr. Owen married Miss Latham, a sister of Dr. Henry Latham, a physician of Lynchburg, and one of his sons, William O. Owen, be- came a surgeon.

After several years of failing health he