Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1057

NAME SENN 1035 SENN introduced the hydrogen gas test (1888). He did much to develop our modern ideas in surgical tuberculosis, and published an excel- lent monograph in book form on "Surgery of the Pancreas" (1885), based on extensive experimentation. He also wrote a compre- hensive work on tumors (1880). Senn was one of the first in the West to conduct elaborate systematic experiments on animals. It was said of him that "Young Senn always came to the state medical society meetings with a large manuscript, not full of words and theoretical dreams, but replete with careful experimental observations and sup- ported by specimens from his experimental laboratory^his stable loft. He presented his subjects with such enthusiasm and force that their acceptance was irresistible and we all went home from the meeting inoculated with new material for thought and reflection." Like John Ashhurst (q. v.), of Philadelphia, he was noted for citing numerous foreign authors and their works offhand in his discourses. Senn was among the early experimenters in gastro-intestinal anastomosis; his investi- gations being carried on night after night in a laboratory constructed under the sidewalk of his home in Milwaukee. In 1896 he delivered the surgical oration, and in 1897 was president of the American Medical Association. During the Spanish-American War he did heroic service, and while escorting Spanish wounded to Santiago as exchange prisoners he fell in with the young surgeon Rodondo, who afterwards translated his "Practice of Surgery" into Spanish. During this war he held the position of chief surgeon in the navy with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. In 1891 he founded the Association of Mili- tary Surgeons of the United States, was its president for two years, and had great inter- est in military surgery and pathology. His pride in his uniform and regalia greatly amused his friends, but these later war-times have put criticism to shame while demonstrat- ing his wisdom and foresight. He knew, many years before others thought of its possibility, that the great world war was inevitable. Of special interest are his works on first aid on the battlefield and the conservative surgery of gunshot wounds. In Illinois he was appointed brigadier- general by Governor Altgeld in 1892, and insti- tuted the reform of a careful physical exami- nation of recruits to the great betterment of the National Guards. His "Surgical Treatment of Cysts of the Pancreas," 58 pp., appeared in 1885 ; "Experi- mental Surgery," 522 pp., in 1889, and his "Intestinal Surgery," 269 pp. in the same year ; "Surgical Bacteriology," 270 pp., 1889; "Prin- ciples of Surgery," 611 pp., 1890; "Pathology and Surgical Treatment of Tumors," 709 pp., 1895; "War Correspondence (Hispano-Amer- ican War)," 278 pp., 1899; "Medico-Surgical Aspects of the Spanish-American War," 379 pp., 1900. His splendid gift of medical books, espe- cially rich in the older writers, to the New- berry Library, Chicago, was made up largely of the collection of William Baum, professor of surgery in the University of Gottingen, who had been gathering them assiduously for fifty years ; after Baum's death in 1886 it was purchased by Senn, including also the library of DuBois Raymond. He endowed the Senn room in St. Joseph's Hospital (Chicago) where he lay in his last illness. He gave a clinical building to Rush Med- ical College, devoted to clinical and labora- tory purposes, at an approximate cost of $100,000. Senn cultivated pathology diligently and brought it into living touch with his surgery. He was a voluminous and rapid writer; dash- ing off reams for publication while travelling, and without reference books, a fact which accounts for a loose style and for the short life of much of his work. His manuscripts consist of one hundred and sixty volumes. He was the intimate friend of Christian Fenger (q. v.), whose qualities were in a sense complementary to his own ; while Fenger was first a pathologist and then a surgeon, Senn was preeminently a 'surgeon cultivating pathology as a valuable handmaid. Allowing for the great difference of per- sonality, Senn was our latter-day S. D. Gross redivivus. In his exalted preeminence in the West zeal sometimes outran prudence, and when speaking he was not always aware of the limitations of time and the patience of his auditors as well as of the claims of others. He was short and stocky, with a hustling, nervous step, a warm impulsive heart, and a keen temper; simple-minded, sympathetic, even child-like, religious, without being specific in his faith, clean of speech and never profane or vulgar; he was an indefatigable student and worker. He was one of the first in this country to command a vast surgical service, and could at any time muster from his wards numerous phases of all the commoner sur- gical affections, and many that were unusual. He lacked the gift of drawing close around