Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1195

NAME VAN BUKEN 1173 VANCE Van Buren, William Holme (1819-1883) William H. Van Buren was one of the earli- est specialists in genito-urinary diseases. "This Say (March 25, 1883) ought to be a sad one to the profession; it certainly is so to me," says S. D. Gross in his autobiography, "for one of our most distinguished men has dropped out of our ranks. Van Buren died this morning at his residence in New York after a protracted illness in which he endured much suffering, from softening of the brain, attended with paralysis and albuminuria." Born in New York April 5, 1819, of parents of Dutch descent, the great grandfather hav- ing studied medicine under Boerhave in Ley- den and emigrated to New York in 1700, Van Buren entered Yale and took his A.B. as of the Class of 1838 (conferred in, 1864). He attended medical lectures in the University of Pennsylvania, but before taking his M. D. there in 1840, he went to Paris and studied luider Velpeau. On his return he wrote his thesis on "The Use of the Immovable Dress- ing in the Treatment of Fractures." His was the first attempt to introduce this practice, and the thesis made a strong impression on the profession. The first five years of his post- graduate life were spent in the army, chiefly as assistant surgeon under General Winfield Scott, but in 1845 he began practice in New • York, for a time acting as prosector to his father-in-law, Valentine Mott (q.v.). Seven years later he became professor of anatomy in the University of New York and held the post for fourteen years, and for sixteen years that of professor of the principles of surgery in the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, lectur- ing also on clinical surgery, particularly in following out the complicated affections of the genito-urinary organs, and finally becoming a specialist in these affections, when a special chair was created for him in 1866 in Bellevue. He was visiting surgeon to St. Vincent's Hos- pital from its organization in 1849 and occu- pied a similar position at the New York Hos- pital from 1852 to 1868, while he was surgeon to Bellevue Hospital during his entire career. The active part he took in the organization of the United States Sanitary Commission should be remembered, for he spared neither time nor money and the sacrifice he incurred from loss of practice must have been consider- able. He did some good writing, translating Bernard and Huette's "Manual of Operative Surgery," 1855, and Morel's "Histolog-," 1861, and publishing "Lectures on Diseases of the Rectum," 1870. With his assistant. Dr. E. L. Keyes, he made an exhaustive treatise on "Dis- eases of the Genito-urinary Organs, with Syphilis, 1874. This went through several edi- tions. A valuable paper on "Aneurysms" at- tracted some attention and an erudite article on "Inflammation," in the "International En- cyclopedia of Surgery" also came from him. Dr. Gross says of Van Buren : "He was of lofty stature, well proportioned, gentle in his voice, bland and courtly in his manners, and scrupulously neat in his dress. As a lecturer he was clear, distinct and instructive, but at times rather prosy." In 1842 he married the eldest daughter of Valentine Mott. Autobiography of Dr. S. D. Gross, Phila., 1887. Distinguished Living New York Surgeons, S. W. Francis, N. Y., 1866. Biog. Emin. Amer. Phys. & Surgs., R. F. Stone, Indianap., 1894. Vance, Ap Morgan (1854-1915) Ap Morgan Vance, surgeon and orthopedist, was born in Nashville, Tennessee, May 24, 1854, son of Morgan Brown and Susan Preston Thompson Vance. His father was a Mississippi planter and his mother was of Mercer County, Kentucky; his ancestry was Scotch-English. His childhood was spent mostly in Mer- cer County, but in 1868 his family moved to New Albany, Ind., where he lived until 1880. Vance entered the medical department of the University of Louisville, in 1876. He was a pupil of Lunsford P. Yandell (q.v.), and during his student life and after graduation in 1878, he was associated with David W. Yan- dell (q.v.), in his office at Louisville. On graduation he became an interne at the Hospital for Ruptured and Crippled in New York. His greatest surgical contribution was his advocacy of subcutaneous, bloodless osteot- omy ("Femoral Osteotomy," 1887) with a small chisel introduced through a minute open- ing in the skin. He says regarding its use : "I have broken a number of bones subcutane- ously and have never had a feeling of doubt of exactly what was being done and have never had a single mishap ; everj' case in its progress being practically a simple fracture." Vance returned to Louisville in 1881, and began to practise, and was the first in Ken- tucky to limit himself to surgery. Vance, like many of the older anatomists, was a resurrectionist. During the middle eighties he was doing special work with Dr. John Williams, of the Hospital College of Medicine ; anatomical material was scarce, and so when a message came that a negro wench had just been buried, he went to resurrect her. He dug a narrow hole down to the head of the coffin and broke the board, and so hauled out the body; upon reaching the college the build- ing was found locked, so a window was forced