Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1243

NAME WEY 1221 VVHEATON occupied the chair of surgery for -at least thirty years. In 1856 he married Maria Jourdan, of LaGrange, the daughter of a leading politician ; they had two children, thp second being Willis F. Jr., who became a surgeon and after the death of his father, occupied the same chair (surgery) at the Atlanta College of Physi- cians and surgeons. Dr. Westmoreland died of apoplexy, June 27, 1890. j^ J M.ssEY. Atlanta Med. & Surg. Jour., 1884-5, n. s. i. Por- trait. South. Med. Rec., 1890, vol. .x., No. 7, 21. A. W. G. Portrait. Wey, William C. (1829-1897) The Wey family had lived for sometime in Catskill, New York; the great-grandfather of William C. Wey was a physician there, his father a druggist, and William was born on January 12, 1829, graduating from the Albany Medical College in 1849 and settling in Elmira that same year to practise. He did good work for forty-eight years for the State and the medical profession as manager of the State Reformatory; manager of the State Inebriate Asylum; senior-consultant of the Arnot Me- morial Hospital and president of the State Medical Examination and Licensing Board. On November 15, 1853, he married Mary Bowman, daughter of Dr. Edward Covell, of Wilkesbarre, and had two children, the boy, Hamilton D., becoming a doctor. A scholarly man, accomplished in other arts besides medicine, Dr. Wey was a leading phy- sician in the Chemung Valley and when he died June 30, 1897, Elmira lost not only a friend but a clear-headed adviser. His paper on "Medical Responsibility and Malpractice," read as president of the Medical Society of the State of New York in 1871, showed him to be well above the average. Memorial, Dr. W. V. Potter in Tr. Med. Soc. of the St. of N. Y., 1898, 404-408. Buffalo Med. Jour., 1897-8, vol. xxxvii, 54-58. Wheaton, Charles Augustus (1853-1916) Charles A. Wheaton was born at Syracuse. New York, March 17, 1853. He was educated in the graded schools at Northfield, Minnesota, and later attended Carlton College. He grad- uated from the Harvard Medical School of Boston in the class of 1S77, and later served as interne in the Boston City Hospital. Com- ing into practice just at the beginning of the new era of surgery, when Lister's methods of antisepsis were beginning to be adopted. Dr. Wheaton, who was fresh from the Massachu- setts General and the City Hospitals in Bos- ton, gave the new methods a thorough trial, and while he appreciated fully the principles laid down by Lister, he was not very enthu- siastic about the details as then practised, and he quickly abandoned the carbolic spray. He was one of the first to appreciate the vast difference between antisepsis and asepsis, and the latter method was urged and practised by him some time before it became general. He was a profound student of gross anatomy, and as a rapid, clean and sure operator he had few equals. A thorough mastery of the prin- ciples of surgery, a deep insight into the art of surgical diagnosis, and an unmistakable honesty and earnestness in expressing his opinion, combined to earn for him a positi'<n as a surgical consultant which no other man ever approached in this part of the country. It is a significant fact that a great majority of the leaders in surgery in Minnesota at the time of his death had been at one time or an- other either students or associates of Dr. Wheaton and owed not a little of their success to his teachings and to his example. Dr. Wheaton's contributions to medical litera- ture were not numerous, but whatever he wrote was original and based upon his own personal experience ; consequently, the papers which he did publish had a very real value. In debate he was always ready and he was al- ways listened to with great respect. His quick wit, and his unusual fund of anecdotes to illustrate the point he wished to make, made his remarks at medical meetings particularly charming. He was a deep student of surgical literature and especially of the writings of the old surgi- cal masters, and had accumulated a very valuable library, particularly rich in the works of the older teachers of anatomy and surgery, which he presented some time before his death to the University of Minnesota, where he had for so many j-ears taught surgery. Accomplished as he was in every depart- ment of surgery and surgical technique, it would be difficult to point out just where Dr. Wheaton chiefly excelled in his operative work. It is certain that his work on the blad- der and prostate was far and away the best which has ever been done by any surgeon in this part of the country, and he was a pioneer in gall-bladder surgery. In bone surgery, too, he was bold and radical, and hundreds of his patients owe it to his wisdom and skill that they now have sound and useful limbs. Dr. Wheaton had retired from practice, on account of failing health, a few years before his death, which occ'urred April 29, 1916. He left a widow and three children. BuRNsiDE Foster.