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 WALLACE

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WALTER

Walker, Thomas (1714-1794).

Thomas Walker was born in King ami Queen County, Virginia, a grandson of Maj. Thomas Walker, a burgess from Gloucester in 1662. While it is not knoAvn whether or not he was a graduate in medicine, he was certainly a practi- tioner of note. He is, for instance, credited by Ashhurst ("Principles and Practice of Surgery") with having tre- phined bone for suppurative osteomye- litis in 1757, making him one of the first known to have done that operation.

He lived at Castle Hill in Albemarle County, and during his life, filled many important positions of trust, and was the guardian of Thomas Jefferson. It is believed that he was the first to explore Kentucky, which he visited in 1745 and again in 1750.

He was commissary general of the Virginia troops in the French and Indian War; a member of the house of Burgesses of the Virginia Convention of 1775; commissioner to treat with the Indians after their defeat by Andrew Lewis; and also a Commissioner to run the boundary line between North Carolina and Virginia, which was known as Walker's line.

He died on the ninth of November, 1794, in the eighty-first year of his age.

R. M. S.

Wallace, William B. (1833-1897).

William B. Wallace, president of the Kings County Medical Society, received his early education in Rothesay, Scot- land. Later he returned to his native country (Ireland) and attended Doyle College in Londonderry. He studied medicine in Edinburgh and graduated from the Royal College of Surgeons in 1856, and from the Royal College of Physicians in 1860. During the Crimean war he was acting assistant surgeon in the Royal Navy. After the war he entered the service of the Cunard Steamship Company as surgeon. In 1864 he came to the United States and practised in Brooklyn. In 1867 he married Ella Louise Ladd. He became actively iden-

tified with the educational and charitable institutions of the city and was visiting physician to several hospitals.

" There was no sacrifice within his power he was not only willing to make, but ilid make for the cause of Ireland and to the detriment of his professional ad- vancement. His death was pathetic and within a few liours of that of his son, a }'oung physician whom he had looked for- ward to helping him as a breadwinner."

A. A.

Brooklyn Med. Jour., 1897, xi. "Incidents of my Life," T. A. Emmet.

Walter, Albert G. (1811-1876).

Albert G. Walter was a pioneer surgeon and one of the first to open the abdomen deliberately for traumatism, and one of the earliest Am^erican orthopedic sur- geons, having up to the time of his death cut more tendons in one patient than any other surgeon ; added to all this he gained distinction as a skillful lithotomist and operating oculist.

He was born in Germany in 1811; studied medicine in Koenigsberg, where he received his degree, then took a post- operative course of one year at Berlin. He was pupil and assistant of the cele- brated Dieffenbach, by whom he was advised to emigrate to America. On the way he was shipwrecked upon the coast of Norway and lost all his effects. He was brought with the other passengers and landed in London, wthout friends or means, but procured a situation as clerk in a law office, where he remained one year to secure means to continue his journey, during which time he attended medical lectures and especially those of Sir Astley Cooper, who afterwards re- mained his friend. Afterwards he crossed to America and began practice in Nash- ville, Tennessee, remaining there two years, when he went to Pittsburgh and practised there until his death in 1876.

In 1867 he published a work entitled "Conservative Surgery," advocating the thorough drainage of crushed limbs by very long and deep incisions to release the imprisoned products, demonstrating