Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/495

GROSS Europe as well as of America, and won for him the LL. D. of the University of Pennsylvania, and I believe the unique honor in America of having had conferred upon him the highest degree of all three of the leading universities of Great Britain—Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh. Indeed, it is both significant and pathetic to note that he laid down his pen just after recording in his autobiography the announcement of the honor which the University of Edinburgh intended to bestow upon him at its tercentenary celebration.

Dr. Gross first established the fact that Ephraim McDowell was the father of ovariotomy and published his findings in the "Transactions of the Kentucky State Medical Society" in 1852.

As a teacher, I can speak both with personal knowledge and enthusiasm. I can see his tall, stately form, his handsome face, his glowing features, his impressive gestures. He was earnestness itself. Filled to overflowing with his subject, his one desire was to impart to us as much of the knowledge he possessed as our young heads could hold. Repetition did not blunt the novelty nor time lessen the attraction of his theme. It always seemed as if he was telling us for the first time the new story of the beneficent work that surgery could do for the injured and the suffering. His whole heart was in his work. Especially did he inculcate the principles of surgery, for he was convinced, and rightly, that one who was thoroughly imbued with these could not go far wrong in his practice.



Gross, Samuel Weissell (1837–1889)

It is very rare to find genius burning as brightly in son as in father; more frequently its rays are brightest in nephew or grandson, but great learning with regard to surgery and an acute power of diagnosis descended to Samuel Weissell, eldest son of the famous Samuel D. Gross. He was born in Cincinnati, February 4, 1837. As a boy he went to school at Shelby College, Kentucky; studied medicine at Louisville University and at Jefferson Medical College, graduating March, 1857; then settled in practice in Philadelphia, being associated with his father in the work of editing the North American Medico-Chirurgical Review. He served nearly four years in the army during the civil war as brigade surgeon with the rank of major, doing duty most of the time as medical director. In 1859 he reported in the November American Medico-Chirurgical Review "Aneurysm of the Right Femoral Artery cured by Digital Compression with Remarks on Twenty-two Other Cases so Treated." In the October number of the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, 1867, he had a review of sixty pages on eleven French and German works on "Military Surgery" and gave statistics of over thirteen—afterwards enlarged by 20,933 amputations for gunshot injuries. His predilection for studying tumors and malignant growths may be seen in his paper on "Sarcoma of the Long Bones" (American Journal of the Medical Sciences, 1879), his monograph on "Tumors of the Mammary Gland," 1880, and his "Tumors of the Breast," written for the "American System of Gynecology," edited by Mann. He wrote also a "Practical Treatise on Impotency, Sterility and Allied Disorders of the Male Sexual Organs," 1887. Gross struck a note of hopefulness in 1880, at a time when there was widespread pessimism over operations on tumors of the breast. He wrote "Surgeons are beginning to know that cancer can be cured through operations if it is attacked before it has disseminated itself extensively locally, or has tainted the general system." His writings were distinguished by their exactness of observation and induction, clearness of expression and practical application. His somewhat early death, April 16, 1889, prevented his adding valuable writings, and even on his desk when he died there was a manuscript on "Stone in Children," which he was preparing for a cyclopedia on "Diseases of Children." Dr. Gross was one of the founders of the Academy of Surgery of Philadelphia and was vice-president in 1884.

He was a member of the Philadelphia College of Physicians, the Philadelphia Pathological Society, the State Medical Society of Pennsylvania; surgeon to the Howard Hospital, to the Philadelphia Hospital, the Jefferson Medical College Hospital, and lecturer to the Jefferson College on diseases of the genito-urinary organs.

He married in December, 1876.



Gruening, Emil (1824–1914)

Emil Gruening, an ophthalmologist of New York City, the first to call attention to the dangers of blindness from wood-alcohol