Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/118

BERNAYS connected with the Holy Trinity. He was called to preach in France where he endured much persecution and was condemned to death with a young man from Genoa by the name of Durant; the latter was hanged and De Benneville was about to be guillotined when reprieved by Louis XV, imprisoned in Paris, and finally liberated at the request of the Queen. He then went to Germany where he studied medicine, but does not appear to have received a degree. He gave much time to traveling, and preached in German, French and Dutch.

He was ill and thought he was dying when he had a vision of heaven and a revelation touching "all the human species without exception" of "an eternal and everlasting deliverance, an eternal and everlasting restoration, universal and everlasting restitution of all things!" proclaimed by the heavenly host.

Emigrating to America in 1741, the first person to meet him was Christopher Sauer, the printer of Germantown, the first in America to publish a quarto Bible in German. Sauer had a vision directing him to go to meet De Benneville, who was sick on the ship, and take him to his own house.

Dr. de Benneville practised medicine in Oley, Berks County, Pennsylvania, and at the same time preached the doctrines of universal restoration. In 1745 he married Esther Bertolette of a family of Protestant refugees and French Huguenots. Her parents, Jean and Susanna Bertolette, had fled to Germany where the daughter was born, in 1720; they went to America in 1724.

After a few hours' illness, De Benneville died in Philadelphia, March 19, 1793, in the ninetieth year of his age. He was laid in the burying-ground at the corner of Green Lane and old York Road, Philadelphia.



Bernays, Augustus Charles (1854–1907)

Augustus Charles Bernays was born in 1854 and was not yet eighteen when his remarkable career of scientific study and achievement commenced. He matriculated at the University of Heidelberg in 1872 and graduated there. He also took the membership of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and was intimately associated in his surgical training with Simon, Lister, Marion Sims, Lossen and von Langenbeck, the last of whom he always characterized as the prince of surgeons.

It was his original investigations on the anatomy of the knee-joint and of the heart which first made his name familiar wherever medical science is taught. His papers included:

"Ideal Cholecystotomy, a successful case; with critical remarks on the pathology and the different operative procedures practised on the system of gall vessels," 1885; "Kolpo-hysterectomy; successful cases of total extirpation of the uterus through the vagina," 1885; "A Case of Cystic Tumor of the Jaw in a Negro, and some new observations on the pathological histology of this disease," 1885; "The Complete Method of Operation in Cases of Cancer of the Breast," 1885.

He died May 22, 1907, at the age of fifty-two, from the rupture of a cardiac aneurysm. He had been endowed with an intuitive diagnostic ability which was so marvelous at times as to be termed by those near him almost a gift of second sight.



Best, Robert (1790–1830)

A native of Somersetshire, England, and born in 1790 he came to America in 1803. As a child he had but three months' schooling, being early trained in the watch and clockmaking trade, but he devoted his leisure to the study of mechanical sciences, and extended his skill to the manufacture of various kinds of scientific instruments. In 1818 the Western Museum of Cincinnati was founded, and Best was appointed curator and artist. In the autumn of 1820 he delivered a course of experimental lectures on electricity. At this time he was appointed assistant to the professor of chemistry in the Medical College of Ohio, and in 1823 removed to Lexington, Kentucky, having been appointed lecturer on chemistry in Transylvania University. While there he published a number of papers entitled: "Tables of Chemical Equivalents, Incompatible Substances, and Poisons and Antidotes," with an explanatory introduction. In 1826 he graduated at Transylvania and began practice immediately after, rising rapidly in the profession, but was unfortunately cut down by consumption in the beginning of his career, and died in 1830.



Bettman, Boerne (1856–1906)

Boerne Bettman, an ophthalmologist of Chicago, known specially as an operator, was born at Cincinnati, Ohio, Sept. 6, 1856, of Bavarian parents. His father, a general practitioner, was a graduate of the University of Munich,