Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1241

NAME WEST 1219 WESTMORELAND He was born in Binghamton, New York, January 21, 1827, the only son of Silas West, M. D., entered Yale College in the class of 1844, and graduated at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, March, 1850. Immediately after graduation he began to practise in Binghamton, in com- I pany with his father, and so continued for a number of years. In 1858 he accepted an appointment as missionary physician from the i eign Missions. The field of service assigned him was Turkey in Asia, and, accompanied by bis wife, he sailed from Boston to join that mission in January, 1859. He was stationed at Sivas, a city containing a population of 35,000 or 40,000 inhabitants, situated about 450 miles southeast of Constantinople. On reaching the station assigned him. Dr. West entered at once upon his duties and his services soon became in great demand. The center of his practice was at Sivas and the numerous towns and villages by which it is surrounded. There were other important cities in Asia Minor into which the practice of Dr. West extended — the nearest of these being Tokat, about fifty miles to the north- west, containing about 30,000 people, and f Kaisarieh, 100 miles to the southwest, embrac- ing, with its suburbs, a population of 150,000. In giving a description of the extent of his practice, the doctor remarks : "My practice was largely in these cities also, therefore I had frequent occasion to visit them profes- sionally, when I was always thronged with patients, and many came to me to be treated from those places, at Sivas. I was frequently called also to other important towns and cities of Asia Minor, distant from 150 to 300 miles." Many of these calls were to surgical cases, and in treating them the doctor developed a tact and an operative ability, of which he himself was probably unaware until they were brought out by the emergencies of his posi- tion. Of the surgical cases, affections of the eye, and of the urino-genital organs, were largely predominant. In 1868 he re-visited the United States and reported upward of sixty-eight operations for stone in the bladder. He read before the Medical Society of the State of New York a paper, "Medical and Surgical Experience in Asia Minor," published in the "Transactions," of that year. In 1870 he was elected an hon- orary member. George Burr. Obituary Notice of Henry S. West, M. D., by George Burr. M. D. Trans, of the Med. See. State of N. Y., 1877. Westmoreland, John Gray (1816-1887) John G. Westmoreland was born in Monti- cello, Jasper County, Georgia, in 1816. When John was about five years of age his father removed to Fayette County, near the Pike County line, in a county that was inhabitated principally by a friendly tribe of Indians. As soon as the Westmoreland family arrived, these Indians with a couple of negro men, which the old gentleman owned, built him a two-room house out of logs, which they cut and hewed to proper shape. John Gray was the second son of a family of eight, raised on this pioneer farm, working on the farm in the summer and going to school in the wititer, till at the age of eighteen, he finished his education at the Fayetteville Academy, and studied medicine with a neighboring country doctor, graduating at the Medical College of Georgia in March, 1843, and directly com- mencing to practise in Pike county, afterwards settling in Atlanta, where he continued in active practice for at least forty-five years. To his brain is due the conception and put- ting into existence of the Atlanta Medical College, later known as the Atlanta College of Physicians and Surgeons, and to this col- lege Dr. Westmoreland gave much time and hard work, at the same time contributing very liberally out of his own funds to build it up. From the beginning he held the chair of materia medica and therapeutics for at least forty years, at the same time being dean of the faculty for that length of time. From an humble beginning at its first session in the- summer of 1855, with only a very few stu- dents, then as the Atlanta College of Physi- cians and Surgeons, it had in actual attendance in its various departments several hundred' students. In connection with the Atlanta medicaF college, Dr. Westmoreland originated the Brotherhood of Physicians. Each member upon joining this society was given a beauti- fully engraved certificate of membership, to which was attached an engraving of his then five-year-old son, Robert W., who, following the footsteps of his father, became an active practitioner of medicine of Atlanta. From this Brotherhood has sprung the At- lanta Society of Medicine, of which at least two hundred leading physicians of high civic and professional standing are among its members. Together with his brother, Willis F. (q.v.), Dr. Westmoreland established the Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal. When the Civil War came on and the ses-
 * American Board of Commissioners for Forr