Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/53

 JAMES

who was also with him at Canton. The winter of 1791-2 was spent in London chiefly in attending lectures, and also as an attendant at St. George's Hospital.

After much deliberation respecting the relative advantages of spending a winter in Edinburgh or Paris, and after con- sulting by letter his friends on this side of the Atlantic, he finally followed the example of Drs. Physick and Cath- rall, and went to Edinburgh in the spring of 1792. Here he remained and attended the lectures during the succeeding winter, in company with Hosack of New York.

It does not appear that Dr. James graduated at Edinburgh in imitation of his friends. Dr. Wistar and Physick, being content with the honors of his own university in Philadelphia, then in its infancy. In the month of June, 1793, Dr. James, accompanied by Dr. Ryan, arrived at Wiscasset, in the then district of Maine. They reached Philadelphia a short time only before the terrible and then unknown epidem- ic, the yellow fever, visited this city. Dr. James had hardly time to receive the congratulations of his anxious friends, when the fatal scourge appear- ed, bringing dismay and terror even to the boldest spirits.

He married Hannah Morris (a lady connected with one of the first families in Pennsj'lvania, " eminently adapted by her mild, but decided character, her judicious, yet cheerful disposition to meet the peculiarities of Dr. James's character").

In 1802, November 27, James, in conjunction with the late Dr. Chxn-ch, commenced his first regular course of lectures on obstetrics.

The first course of lectures on mid- wifery in the University of Pennsjd- vania was commenced by James in November, 1810. In 1807 (January 26) he was appointed physician to the Pennsylvania Hospital, as successor of Dr. J. Redman Coxe, and on the twenty- fifth day of June, 1810, was translated

37 JAMES

at his own request to the station of obstetric physician. The duties of this appointment he continued to discharge with scrupulous attention and punctual- ity until the twenty-sixth of November, 1832. He was elected fellow of the College of Physicians and Surgeons on the sixth of October, 1795. On the fourth of September, 1810, he gave the details of a case of premature labor, artificially induced by himself, in the case of a contracted pelvis, after the expiration of the seventh month, with the gratifying result of safety to mother and child. This was the first record, we believe, in this country, of the scien- tific performance of this operation.

On the seventh of August, 1827, he read a paper on extrauterine preg- nancy, in which he seemed anxious to establish the opinion from the histor- ical detail of cases, that ventral or ab- dominal pregnancy never originally oc- curred; that tubal or uterine pregnancy had previously existed in cases where the child was found in the cavity of the abdomen, the tube or uterus hav- ing been ruptured or ulcerated so as to allow the escape of the fetus from its original location into the peritoneal cavity. His reasoning from the anat- omy and functions of the parts concern- ed, from the mode in which the fetus is sustained, and especially from the facts on record was ingenious and powerful; but facts subsequently de- tailed seem to confirm the opposite opinion, however improbable, that the ovum may be deposited in the perito- neal surface and there be developed with its contents, in some instances, even to the usual period of utero-gesta- tion.

With Hewson, Parrish and Otto, he edited the "Eclectic Repertory" which for eleven years gave medical men important abstracts from foreign jour- nals and books and also original papers.

But about the year 1825 the result of uninterrupted mental and bodily exertion began to be manifest in muscu-