Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/585

WOOD and an accomplished horseman. His physical perfection, his gentleness, generosity and unfailing courtesy, with his professional attainments made him a prominent figure in the community and his death was felt as a great public loss.

Married in 1836, his wife died in 1860, having lost three children in infancy and leaving two.

In 1869 Dr. Wolcott married a second wife, Laura J. Ross, M. D., one of the earliest women graduates.

Dr. Wolcott died January 5, 1880, of pneumonia after an illness of five days, the result of prolonged exposure to very severe cold.

Although he never reported his work, to him is due the credit of having performed the first nephrectomy, which was recorded by C. L. Stoddard in the "Philadelphia Medical Reporter," 1861-62, vol. vii, p. 126.

His surgical activities were fostered by his accurate knowledge of anatomy, his nerve, clear judgment and great deftness.

Working as he did in pre-antiseptic days he was aided by his own scrupulous cleanliness of hands and instruments and by the comparative freedom from bacteria of a newly settled community. He had few trained and frequently no assistants, often administering his own anesthetic, therefore his success in plastic surgery, in that of the head and abdomen including oophorectomy, lithotomy and in Cesarean section must be considered remarkable. M. W. Y.

History of Wisconsin, p. 760, C. R. Tuttle. Wolcott Memorial, Congressional, Yale College, Hartford, Conn., and other libraries. U. S. Biographical Diet.

History of Milwaukee, photograph, and remarks by Drs. Kempster and Marks. The first Nephrectomy, M. B. Tinker, M. D., in Johns Hopkins Bulletin, 1901, vol. xii. Portraits in possession of E. B. Wolcott Post.

Wood, Edward Stickney (1846-1905).

Edward Stickney Wood, professor of chemistry in the Harvard Medical School, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 28, 1846. About the time of the formation of Harvard College, one Jonathan Wood and William Stickney settled in Essex County, Massachusetts. In 1841 Alfred Wood, a grocer of Cambridge, a descendant of Jonathan, married Laura Stickney, a descendant of William. Their second son was Edward Stickney Wood.

He was fitted for college in the public schools of Cambridge and graduated from Harvard College in 1867, and from the Harvard Medical School in 1876, during the course serving as house pupil in the United States Marine Hospital in Chelsea, and as surgical interne in the Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1872 he spent six months studying physiological and medical chemistry in laboratories in Berlin and Vienna, and was made full professor of chemistry in the Harvard Medical School in 1876, holding the position until the time of his death, which occurred at Pocasset, Massachusetts, of cancer of the cecum, July 11, 1905.

He married Irene E. Hills, December 26, 1872, who died leaving a daughter. On December 24, 1883, he married Elizabeth A. Richardson, who survived him without children.

He was a fellow of the Massachusetts Medico-legal Society, Boston Society for Medical Improvement, and Massachusetts Medical Society and made many contributions to medical literature. He translated Neubauer and Vogel on "Urinary Analysis," and with Dr. Robert Amory, revised that portion of Wharton and Stilld's work devoted to medical jurisprudence. There was hardly a case for trial for capital crime in New England for twenty years where his knowledge of chemistry and especially his skill in the demonstration of blood stains, was not required.

W. L. B.

Bos. Med. and Surg. Journal, vol. cliii.

Bulletin Har. Med., Alumni Assoc., July, 1905.

Harvard Graduates' Magazine, Sept., 1905, (port.).

Wood, George Bacon (1797-1879).

Seen through the eyes of his generous biographer Dr. S. D. Gross, George