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a most enviable reputation. His opera- tions were brilliantly successful, the results mainly due to the unflagging interest, unfaltering energy and untiring watchfulness. Nothing done escaped his notice and, though strict, every member and student at the hospital conceded his right to dictate and his kindly con- trol. In the periosteal reproduction of bone he had an international reputa- tion. The president of the German Congress of Surgeons invited him to send some specimens of bone repro- duction to Berlin for exhibition with similar specimens. Langenbeck greatly admired the regenerated lower jaw and said he did not believe another specimen existed. In nerve surgery Wood was equally successful, his best operation, performed four times consecutively with ultimate cure, was the removal of Meck- el's ganglion with the superior maxillary division of the trigeminus for the relief of tic douloureux. He was the first in America (1S40) to divide the masseter muscles and, as far as his biographer was aware, the first to devise division of the peronei muscles in chronic dislocation of the tendon and to treat acute and chronic knee inflammation by division of the ham strings and tendo Achilles. He had in his collection six fine specimens of osseous union of the femur with the tibia after resection. Report also gives him the credit of first curing aneurysm by digital pressure, and he tied for aneurysm the external iliac eight times in succession with only one failure.

Two rather amusing stories are told of Wood: once when making the vale- dictory address he said fervently, "Gen- tlemen, as you go out into the world remember the eyes of the vox populi are upon you." On another occasion, before his anatomy students, he said, holding up that stumbling block, the sphenoid bone, "Gentlemen, this is the sphenoid bone; damn the sphenoid bone."

With Drs. Parker, Payne and Mason he had much to do with the Act which granted for anatomical teaching "the bodies of all vagrants dying unclaimed."

His work also on behalf of the Bellevue Training School for Nurses did a great deal to systemizo this valuable science.

Death came in the hey-day of a full professional life when almost half a century had left untouched his health and skill. As an instructor he brought clinical and didactic information together in fruitful union; tradition will preserve his unsurpassed skill at the operating table, and his contributions to surgical science are permanent.

He married in 1853, Emma, daughter" of Mr. James Rowe, of New York, and had one son and two daughters besides a child who died in infancy.

His literary contributions, though not numerous were all of value, and included: "Strangulated Hernia," 1845; "Spon- taneous Dislocation of the Head of the Femur into the Ischiatic Notch During Morbus Coxarius," 1847; "Ligature of the External Iliac Artery Followed by Secondary Hemorrhage," 1856; "Phos- phorus-necrosis of the Lower Jaw," 1856; "Early History of Ligation of the Primitive Carotid," 1857.

Among his appointments one finds: professor of operative surgery and surgical pathology, Bellevue College Hospital; emeritus professor of the same; demonstrator of anatomy at Castleton Medical College; consulting surgeon, New York Academy of Medicine; twice president of the New York Pathological Society; member of the New York Acad- emy of Medicine, honorary member New York and Massachusetts State Medical Societies. D. W.

Boston Med. and Surg. Jour., 1882, vol. cvi.

Med.-Leg. Jour., N. Y., 1883-4, vol. i (port).

Med. Record, N. Y., 1882, vol. xxi.

Med. and Surg Reporter, Phila., 1884-5,

vol. xii.

N. Y. Med. Jour., 1884, vol. xxxix (F. S.

Dennis).

Wood, Thomas (1813-1880).

Thomas Wood was born in Smithfield, Jefferson County, Ohio, August 22, 1813, the son of Nathan and Margaret Wood, and the youngest of five children.

The family for three generations were