Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/137

BOBBS seven days. Here, too, is a pen sketch of old Philadelphia, the bookseller's trade, the clergy, the volunteer fire companies, the women, often doing all their own house-work, and the day's work stretching from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. This little volume is a fitting pendant to Bliss's "Blockley Days; Memories and Impressions of a Resident Physician 1883–1884" (1916). We have here the old Blockley Almshouse filled to repletion with its dregs of humanity, and scandalously managed by "the Board of Buzzards," within the memory of many of us yet living, run by a thieving superintendent who filled houses from roof to cellar with food and goods stolen from the poor, the natural outcome of Philadelphia's evil political system, which still rules the city.

Here we find intimate details of the lives of the pauper patients, the nurses promoted from the ranks of patients, nurse Owens, the one-legged sailor, like Leidy's Nash, also one-legged, and a sailor picked up in the Pennsylvania Hospital, a great anatomist and a drunkard, and nurse H. who Bliss says "ought to have been in command of a crew of pirates." Antisepsis lay in the womb of the future and the newfangled Listerism was laughed at. It was here, I think, a little later that the artistic "Kelly the bum" tatooedtattooed [sic] some sixteen men and infected as many with syphilis. Here too stands Dr. P. in the amphitheatre (undoubtedly "Bill Pancoast") "knife in hand lecturing to the students in his rather stagey manner." Here is Edmond the jail bird, "a strange combination of meanness, wickedness, low cunning and moral cussedness," who is autopsied in the celebrated "green room," and Daniel, a boy from the mines with a big sarcoma on his neck "a combination of gentleness, patience and sweet reasonableness." But this is not the place for many such details, suffice it to say that two such books are rare and valuable records of bygone days. Blockley, we are thankful to say, has been a vastly better place for many years now.

Bliss died from acute nephritis at his home in Philadelphia May 1, 1913.



Bobbs, John Stough (1809–1870)

The first cholecystotomy was performed by John Stough Bobbs of Indiana June 15, 1867, a surgeon, born of American-German descent, in Greenvillage, Pennsylvania, on December 28, 1809. He was a man well educated in the fundamental branches and had given attention to philosophical writings. When eighteen he read medicine with Dr. Martin Luther of Harrisburg and after this attended one course of medical lectures, then settled in Middletown, Pennsylvania, where he practised for four years. His final location was Indianapolis, Indiana, following on a course of lectures in Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia where he took two courses of lectures and studied with a preceptor, as required in those days.

He soon took high rank both as a physician and surgeon. When the Medical College of Indiana was organized he was elected professor of surgery and later dean of the faculty. As a practitioner one of his contemporaries states there was less sham about Dr. Bobbs than any physician he ever knew. Up to his death he had never given a placebo and always based his treatment on rational lines. Once when called to see a patient suffering from some acute malady he suspended all medical treatment, saying "why give medicine here without reason or purpose?" He believed strongly in an organized and united medical profession and labored to that end. He was first in the work of establishing the Marion County Medical Society in 1847, and prominent in helping to organize the State Society of Indiana in 1849, being elected president of the latter, when his inaugural address was upon "The Necessity of a State Medical Journal and College." His paper on lithotomy of the gall-bladder was published in the same volume as his presidential address. (Transactions Indiana State Medical Society, 1868.)

The latter part of Bobbs' life was devoted mainly to surgery, and as an operator he was bold and original. Dr. Jameson, whom I quote, mentions an operation in which he assisted in which Bobbs removed the superior maxillary bone together with the eye of the affected side for extensive carcinoma. The operation lasted several hours but the patient made a good recovery. The hemorrhage was so well controlled that little blood was lost. He also mentions a successful operation for extrauterine pregnancy and an unsuccessful one for umbilical hernia. He certainly performed all the usual major operations of the surgery of his day.

During the Civil War Bobbs was a brigade surgeon and medical director for the State of Indiana. He distinguished himself when with Gen. Morris of Indianapolis by bringing a soldier off the field under fire.

He must be remembered also as a public-spirited man intensely interested in civic and state affairs, for one year serving as senator