Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1001

NAME RICHMOND 979 RICHMOND son of Nathaniel and Susannah Lambert Rich- mond, and was born April 5, 1785, on a farm near Chesterfield, Massachusetts. When he was three years old his parents moved to Western New York. With the exception of two weeks' schooling which he received at a country school, all his education was self- acquired. His people were very poor, sup- porting themselves by hard labor. In his leis- ure hours, and also while at work, he carried books with him, and never idled away a mo- ment. He married, early in life, a woman who appreciated his talents, and aided him in every way to develop them. His wife would copy lessons from books on pieces of paper which she would pin to his sleeves so that he might study while at work. It is said that most of his knowledge of Latin and Greek was acquired in that way. By incessant effort he succeeded (1816) in getting a license to per- form the functions of a Baptist minister. On Sundays he preached in the open air or in a barn, while he continued his menial labors during the week to support his family. Finally he turned his eyes westward, where many of his friends had found new homes. Through many hardships he reached Pittsburg, where he took a flatboat (1817), which brought him and his family to Cincinnati. On Main street, near the Ohio River, Isaac Drake, father of Dr. Daniel Drake, conducfed a store. In the second story of the building the Medical Col- lege of Ohio had its home (1820-22), and here, Richmond, applying for work, was made jani- tor of the College. En'ying the students in their acquisition of knowledge, he finally of- fered to Dr. Drake half of his meagre salary for the privilege of attending lectures. Drake, mindful of his own struggles with poverty, paved the way for Richmond, so that on April 4, 1822, he received his diploma at the first Commencement of the college. He presented a thesis on "Euonymus Carolinensis," (Indian arrow- wood), which received praise from the faculty. He began his career in Newtown, Ohio, and in 1825 was appointed surgeon of the Second Regiment, Ohio State Militia. Richmond did not abandon the pulpit. Every Sunday he preached in a little church in Cluff Road, near Newtown, Ohio, and it was during the service, Sunday evening, April 22, 1827, that Richmond was summoned to per- form a surgical feat which will preserve his name for all time. He was called to see a colored woman who had been in labor about thirty hours, and was having almost contin- uous convulsions. The Little Miami River was in flood and he was obliged to row a skiff in order to reach his patient seven miles away. There he found a stout primipara with a septate vagina and undilated os, having regular labor pains that were followed by con- vulsions, fainting spells and progressive weakness. For four hours he endeavored to "prevent the convulsions and recruit the sys- tem," giving sulphuric ether and laudanum by the mouth, and applying flannel, wet with hot spirits, to the feet. As the patient's strength was giving out, and being unable to get assist- ance because of the flood and the darkness of the night, he got consent to operate, as the only means of saving his patient's life. He says : "With only a case of common pocket in- struments, about one o'clock at night, I com- menced the Cesarean section. Here I must take the liberty to digress from my subject, and relate the condition of the house, which was made of logs that were green, and put together not more than a week before. The crevices were not chinked, there was no chim- ney, nor chamber floor. The night was stormy and windy, insomuch that the assistants had to hold blankets to keep the candles from being blown out. Under these circumstances it is hard to conceive the state of my feelings, when I was convinced that the patient must die, or the operation be performed." Dr. Richmond employed the usual incision, but, having no assistance, he found great diffi- culty in delivering the child, it being large, and the mother very fat. The child's back pre- sented at the incision through the placenta, and it was impossible to dislodge the head from the pelvis. The patient was unable to endure attempts at version, and the doctor, supposing that the child was dead from the detachment of the placenta, decided "that a childless mother was better than a motherless child," made a transverse incision across the back of the fetus and delivered it. The opera- tion was completed in the usual way, drainage being left in the lower angle of the abdominal wound. The patient never complained of pain, and "began work in twenty-four days from the operation, and in the fifth week walked a mile and back the same day." The case was reported by Dr. Richmond in Drake's West- ern Journal of the Medical and Physical Sci- ences, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1830, vol. iii, p. 435. When the cholera broke out in Cincinnati, in 1831. Richmond was one of the first physi- cians who volunteered to take care of the victims. He worked day and night, contracted the disease, recovered, but was broken in health and spirit, and in 1834 he settled in