Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1081

SKENE the memory of "last in class, first in field sports." Thus he was able to carry the burdens of college teaching, hospital operating, medical society duties, the large private sanitarium, and an extensive practice. Two days before he died sixty patients came to the office.

Dr. Skene married Annette Wilhelmine Lillian Van der Wegen, of Brussels, Belgium, who survived him. They had no children.

His country home was at Highmount, in the Catskills, where his love of the mountains had full scope, and where he could indulge his affection for animals. There he had more leisure for modelling. His life-size portraits in marble are indeed noteworthy, in view of the scantiness of the time he could give to sculpture.

If one were to attempt an appreciation of Dr. Skene's work one might select certain items, such as the insistence on gynecologic and surgical methods in obstetric work (1877); the well-known observations on the urethral glands, a source of intractable trouble until recognized (1880); the many new instruments devised, the systematic hemostatic treatment of blood-vessels and pedicles by heat of moderate degree that dries and does not char (1897).

In him progressiveness and originality were balanced with caution and clear sense. Two instances will suffice. In the days when we planned to cure most pelvic pain by removing the ovaries, he was credited with timidity because of his careful restriction of this universal remedy. Again, he was said to be behind the times during the epidemic of vaginal hysterectomy. Yet the profession has come back to the conservatism from which he would not swerve.

Breadth of view was his. From the early days when he was Austin Flint's assistant he studied his patient as an individual, and overlooked nothing in the general condition nor any detail of constitutional treatment. Such detailed care prepared the patient for operation (or avoided the necessity). His technic was so quiet and seemingly simple that only a brother surgeon appreciated its speed and thoroughness.

Few men concealed more generous deeds. Strong in his likes and dislikes, tenacious of purpose, keen of insight, full of apt anecdote, tactful, discreet, hopeful, inspiriting, his impress was strong on those about him. Personal magnetism eludes biographies. The impress of vigor and simplicity, the attraction of kindliness and heartiness—these things may not be written.

A full list of his most important pamphlets can be seen in the "Surgeon-general's Catalogue," Washington, D. C.



Skillman, Henry Martyn (1824–1902)

Henry Martyn Skillman was the youngest child of Thomas T. and Elizabeth Farrer Skillman. His father, a native of New Jersey, came to Lexington, Kentucky, in 1809 and founded there the largest publishing house in the Mississippi Valley. Sprung as Dr. Skillman was from Puritan and Presbyterian ancestors, he inherited the stern sense of duty and principle that characterized them, and passed a long life without departing from the tradition of his forebears. He began life by spending two or three years at Lexington as an apothecary, but determined in 1844 to study medicine and after three years' diligence graduated from Transylvania University in March, 1847.

Early appreciated, he was appointed in 1848 demonstrator of anatomy in the medical department of his alma mater, a position he filled so ably for three successive years that he was appointed to the chair of general and pathological anatomy and physiology in 1851, a position he retained until elected to the chair of physiology and institutes of medicine in 1856, lecturing before large classes, in these branches until the close of the institution in the summer of 1857.

He was distinguished for the accuracy and clearness of his teachings, was painstaking and apt in his instructions, and his knowledge of the branches which he taught was abreast of his day and generation. He was the last surviving member of the medical department of Transylvania University.

On October 30, 1851, he married Margaret, daughter of Matthew T. Scott, president of the Northern Bank of Kentucky.

Among his other appointments he was contract surgeon for the United States Government; president of the Kentucky State Medical Society, 1869. He was the first president of the Lexington and Fayette County Medical Society, in 1889, and it is claimed that he was the first physician in Lexington to administer anesthesia.

He contributed many papers on topics particularly pertaining to medicine and materia medica to the "Transactions of the Kentucky