Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1004

NAME RIDGELY 982 RIGGS acteristics of the blood and black vomit in yellow fever. Dr. Riddell was a frequent contributor to the Nezv Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, among his publications being noted "Probable Constitution of Matter and Laws of Motion, as Deducible From, and Explanatory of, the Physical Phenomena of Nature," 1845, volume ii, and "Nature of Miasma and Contagion," volume xvi, 1859. He died in New Orleans, October 7, 1867. Jane Grey Rogers. Xevv Orleans Med. and Sur. Jour., 1866-7, vol. Dictn'y. Amer. Biog. F. S. Drake, 1872. Appleton's Cyclop. Amer. Biog., New York, 1S87. Ridgely, Frederick (1757-1824). He was born at Elk Ridge, Anne Arundel County, Maryland, May 25, 1757, receiving his academic training at the Acadeni}' of Newark, Delaware, and beginning to study medicine in his seventeenth year, under Dr. Philip Thomas, of Fredericktown. His studies were interrupted by the Revolu- tion. At the age of nineteen we find him sur- geon to a corps of riflemen raised in the upper counties of Virginia and adjoining Maryland. With these he arrived before Bos- ton a few days after the Battle of Bunker Hill, June, 1775. He steadfastly followed the Army of Washington through the trying times of 1776, and in 1777 Maryland honored him by the surgeoncy of the Fourth Maryland Regulars. When the British Army evacuated Philadelphia he resigned to attend a course of lectures under Drs. Shippen, Kuhn and Rush. His friendship with Dr. Rush, to whom he bore, in appearance and manners, a striking resem- blance, began prior to his matriculation and lasted for life. He was not permitted to re- main long enough to obtain his degree, for early in 1779 he was appointed surgeon to a vessel about to sail with letters of marque and reprisal from that port. Tlie ship made a short cruise off the coast of Virginia, when falling in with an enemy of superior size, she was chased into the Chesapeake and after a severe engagment, captured. As his vessel struck her colors, he jumped overboard and made his escape by swimming two miles to shore. He re-entered the Army and continued as medical officer until the close of the war. After cessation of hostilities he began the practice of medicine between .Annapolis and Baltimore, but being of an adventurous turn, he joined the tide of emigration westward, arriving in Lexington in 1790. Soon after he began to practise he was ap- pointed surgeon-general to the army com- manded by General Wayne, and served in the decisive campaign of 1794; finally bidding fare- well to military life, he again began practice in Lexington, where he remained more than thirty years. He devoted much of his time to instruction, and his "shop" was thronged Avith pupils, many of whom afterwards became the most distinguished medical men in the west, among them, Benjamin Winslow Dudley (q. v.), the most successful lithotomist in the State, and Walter Brashear (q. v.), who did the first successful hip-joint amputation in the world. To Ridgely is due the honor of having been the first clinical and didactic instructor west of the Allegheny Mountains. He, with Samuel Brown (q. v.), was the first teacher of "physic" in the Transylvania L'niversity. In 1799 he was made professor of materia medica, mid- wifery and practice of "physic" in the Uni- versity. Dr. Charles Wilkins Short (q. v.) refers to "His unwearied assiduities in the dis- charge of his professional duties." He died while on a visit to his daughter at Dayton, Ohio, on November 21, 1824. August Schachner. Transvl. Tour, of Med., Lexington, Kentucky, 1828, vol.'!. " Charles Wilkins Short. Riggs, John M (1811-1885). John M Riggs, for whom Riggs' disease of the gums was named, and the first to extract a tooth under an anesthetic, was the seventh child of John and Mary Beecher Riggs, both of English ancestry, and was born in Seymour, Connecticut, October 25, 1811. His parents were both born at Oxford, Connecticut, and were well-to-do farmers of Revolutionary stock. He had no middle name, but when in college he wrote his name with "M." No one knows why. When he was at home on a visit his father said to him : "I see yoii write your name with an 'M'; what does that stand for?" "Mankey," replied young Riggs. But he never told why. Young Riggs' early boyhood was spent at the home of his parents, where he attended a district school and assisted with the farm work, which, however, was distasteful to him. Being of a mechanical disposition, he was fre- quently found engaged in building stone fences and walls about the farm. In those days fa- cilities for obtaining implements were scanty; therefore, when a tool was needed about the farm, young Rriggs went to the forge and made it. Thus he early acquired proficiency in blacksmithing and stone masonry. He was of a studious turn, and in 1835 en- tered Washington (now Trinity) College at