Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/360

NAME DUDLEY 338 DUDLEY cology and surgeon at the Post-graduate Med- ical School, and surgeon to the Harlem Hospital. He was also professor of diseases of women at the University of Vermont, and later pro- fessor of gynecology at Dartmouth Medical School, a position he held until death. He wrote very many vakiable papers for publication, some of them being translated for foreign medical journals. Nearly all this liter- ary work was original investigation and a re- sume of his clinical teaching. Among the most important papers are: "Vaginal Hysterec- tomy in America" ; "A New Method for Res- toration of Lacerated Perineum" ; "A New Method for Treating Certain Forms of Dis- placements." His most prominent papers were upon the conservative treatment of the uterine appendages. Dr. Dudley married twice ; in July, 1884, Susie Stephens, daughter of Jesse Mason, of Victoria, British Columbia, who died three years later of consumption, leaving no chil- dren ; in 1891, to Cassandra Coon, daughter of W. J. Adams, of San Francisco, California, who with two daughters survived him. He was a fellow of the American Gyneco- logical Society, British Gynecological Society, Maine Medical Association, New York State Medical Association, New York Academy of Medicine, and the New York Obstetrical So- ciety. After having an examination which showed tuberculosis, he decided to go to the Swiss mountains, hoping much from the sea voyage and the altitude of Davos Platz. He sailed from New York on July 5, but died in Liver-, pool, England, July 15, 1905. The body was brought to Portland, Maine. Seth Chase Gordon. Trans. Amer. C.ynec. Soc, 1906, vol. .xxxi. Dudley, Benjamin Winslow (1785-1870). This lithotomist and pioneer surgeon was bom in Spottsylvania County six miles east of Lexington, Kentucky, April 12, 1785. His father, Ambrose Dudley, was captain of a com- pany in the Revolutionary War and later be- came a Baptist minister. Benjamin Dudley received such education as the ordinary schools of his day and place of- fered. He made no pretensions to either Greek or Latin. His command of French he ac- quired abroad. He was neither a student nor were his inclinations literary. While very young he was placed under the tutelage of Dr. Frederick Ridgely (q. v.). In this he was fortunate, and it is entirely rea- sonable for one familiar with Ridgely's life to believe that this doctor, besides furnishing him with the best early example, supplied him through his lasting influence with much of the fire that characterized his life. In the autumn of 1804 he matriculated in the Lhiiversity of Pennsylvania, and among hi; fellow students were Daniel Drake, John Ester. Cooke (q. v.), and William H. Richardson, all of whom were afterwards associated with him in teaching and in practice. At the close of his course in Philadelphia during the spring and summer months of 1805, he worked with Dr. James Fishback, who was both preceptor and partner of Dudley, and characterized as an eloquent, learned, though erratic divine, an able writer, a physician in good practice, an influential lawyer, and an upright citizen. In the fall Dudley returned to the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his M. D. there in March, 1806, just two weeks before he was twenty-one, presenting a thesis on the "Medi- cal Topography of Lexington." Returning to Lexington he began to prac- tise, but being ambitious, he was dissatisfied with his knoyledge and decided to further qualify himself under some of the more fa- mous men of Europe. With this end in view he added some commercial business to the practice of physic, and in 1818 descended the Ohio River to New Orleans in a flat boat. This was just one year before the first experimental steamboat was launched upon those waters. At New Orleans he bought a cargo of flour with which he sailed to Gibraltar. Disposing of his cargo advantageously at that point and at Lisbon, he made his way through Spain to Paris. Nearly four years were spent in Eu- rope, the best part of the time passed in the hospitals and dissecting rooms of Paris. It was here that much of the foundation of his future success was laid, and his knowledge of anatomy was mainly acquired, but his sur- gical training he received in London. In his manners he was F'rench, in methods English. Larrey, the surgical genius of the Napoleonic wars, came in for a large share of Dudley's admiration, but the hard sense of the English appealed more strongly to him. Abernethy he regarded as the leading su.-geon of Europe, and Sir Astley Cooper was his ideal operator. During his stay in Europe he also traveled in Italy and Switzerland and returned to Lex- ington in the summer of 1814, a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. Collins refers to his misfortune in losing his books, instruments and a cabinet of rare min-