Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1192

NAME TWITCHELL 1170 TWITCHELL the New York Polyclinic Hospital in 1893, and there established the chair of rectal and in- testinal surgery, and subsequently became pro- fessor of this branch of surgery in that insti- tution. He was one of the charter members of the American Proctologic Society and was most active in its interest, the society being much indebted to him for the high plane on which it was established. Dr. Tuttle was an earnest, painstaking and euthusiastic worker in his special branch, and took a broad view of its limitations, claiming that a worker in this field should be as thoroughly equipped in the knowledge and technique of genera! surgery as in that of any other branch. These characteristics are clearly and thor- oughly exemplified in his text book on "Dis- eases of the Anus, Rectum, and Pelvic Colon," which will doubtless be a standard work of reference for years. "A Study of One hun- dred cases of Malignant Growths of the Rec- tum," which was read before the Section on Surgery of the American Medical Association, in June, 1908, and published in the New York Medical Journal of September 5, 1908, was a masterly presentation of the subject up to that date, and showed him to be a most careful and painstaking operator, his results being equal to the best surgeons of the day. His scientific attainments, his conservative views, his enthu- siastic championship for the cause of rectal surgery will illumine, as a beacon, this special branch for generations to come. Dr. Tuttle married on November 11, 1885, Laura lifarch, and they had no children. He was an active member of the Presbyterian Church. On January 31, 1913, after having suffered for six years from diabetes and having gone to Europe several times to take the cure at Vienna, under Doctor Nordhoff, he died at his home in New York City. S. T. Earle. Twitchell, Amos (1781-1850). Amos Twitchell was born in the town of Dublin, on the slopes of that grand old moun- tain, Monadnock. He was the son of Samuel and Alice Willson Twitchell, and was born April 11, 1781. His childhood was characterized by his great love of reading, and at the age of seventeen he journeyed on horseback and rapped for admittance at Harvard but was re- fused on account of lack of preliminary education. Nothing daunted, he turned his face to the North and came to old Dartmouth's door, which graciously swung open to him in 1798; so Harvard lost one whom Dr. Bowditch describes as one of "the most honest and intel- lectual men this country has protluced." His life at college was a struggle with poverty; he graduated in 1802 and at once entered on medi- cal studies under Dr. Nathan Smith (q. v.). Both men were strong characters, singular in their strength and of similar taste, so that they were drawn together, and a life long friendship resulted that was firm and mutually helpful. At that time material for dissection was hard to obtain, but Amos Twitchell possessed all he needed. In 1805 he graduated, and first practised in Norwich, Vermont, then in Marlborough, New Hampshire. He entered partnership here with his brolher-in-law, Dr. Carter, intending to devote his whole attention to surgery. About the time of his removal to Marlborough he performed an operation which if then published would have given him an in- ternational reputation. October 8, 1807, he was called to Sharon, New Hampshire, over forty miles distant, to see a lad named John Saggart, whose jaw had been shattered in a skirmish at the muster of the State Militia. All the adjacent parts were severely bruised and extensive sloughing took place. On the tenth day after the injury, while dressing the wounds. Dr. Twitchell observed that one of the sloughs lay directly over the carotid. The aged mother of the lad stood near as the sole attendant, and he said to her, "If that spot goes through the coats of the vessel, your son will bleed to death in a few moments." He dressed the wound and was unhitching his horse when the old lady frantically called, "it is bleeding." The doctor went in and found the boy deluged with blood. The dressings were removed and the blood jetted forcibly in a large stream for a distance of two or three feet. With his left thumb he compressed the artery ; the patient had fainted: keeping his thumb on the vessel, he cut down with a scalpel more than an inch below where the external branch was given off. The mother separated the sides of the wound with her fingers and at length they succeeded in separating the artery from its attachments, and the aged mother passed a string under the vessel and tied it while Dr. Twitchell con- trolled the hemorrhage and held the candle. The lad recovered. Sir Astley Cooper's claim of priority has been generally acknowledged, but he did not tie the common carotid until June, 1808, eight months after Dr. Twitchell's case. Cooper's was the first case published, but in 1817 a case appeared in print that had occurred October 17. 1803, when Mr. Fleming, of the British Navy, tied the vessel for a servant on ship