Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/558

NAME HODGEN 536 HODGES Hodgen, John Thompson (1826-1882). John Thompson Hodgen, surgeon, was born at Hodgenville, La Rue County, Kentucky, on the nineteenth of January, 1826. His father was Jacob Hodgen ; his mother, Frances Park Brown. His early years were spent in the common schools of Pittsfield, Pike County, Illinois, and his collegiate course at Bethany College, West Virginia. In his twentieth year he entered the medical department of the University of the State of Missouri. He graduated in March, 1818; was the as- sistant resident physician of the St. Louis City Hospital from April, 1848, to June, 1849, and demonstrator of anatomy in his alma mater, from 1849 to 1853. He was appointed to the chair of anatomy by Joseph Nash Mc- Dowell (q. v.), a position he occupied from 18S4 to 1858. From 1858 to 1864 he filled both chairs of anatomy and physiology. In 1864 the Missouri College building, hav- ing been seized by the government, and Dr. McDowell, its head, having gone south. Dr. Hodgen transferred his allegiance to the St. Louis Medical College, where he filled respec- tively the chairs of physiology and of anatomy, and in 1875 assumed" the chair of surgical anatomy, fractures and dislocations, and was created dean of the faculty, a position he held at the time of his death. From 1864 to 1882 he taught clinical surgery at the City Hospital. During the Civil War he served in the ca- pacity of surgeon-general of the Western Sani- tary Commission, 1861 ; surgeon. United States Volunteers, 1861 to 1864 ; and surgeon-general. State of Missouri, 1862 to 1864. He served as consulting surgeon to the City Hospital from 1862 to 1882; was president of the St. Louis Medical Society in 1872, president of the State Medical Association in 1876, and president of the Arnerican Medical Associa- tion in 1880. Quick and clear in apprehension, terse and forcible in e.xpression, he was a powerful debater, whom no sophistry confused, and one who never lost sight of controlling principles, or confounded ideas with facts. In the Inter- national Medical Congress of 1876, at Philadel- phia, he won substantial honors, and made a record that stamped him as a great man. He possessed decided mechanical genius, his inventions most worthy of note being a wire splint for fracture of the thigh ; suspen- sion cord and pulleys permitting flexion, ex- tension and rotation in fracture of the leg; forceps dilator for removal of foreign bodies from the air passages, without tracheotomy; cradle-splint for treatment of compound frac- ture of the thigh ; wire suspension splint for injury of the arm; double action syringe and stomach pump; hair-pin dilator for separating the lips of the opening in the trachea, and as a guide to the tracheal tube. His chief contributions to medical literature were : "Wiring the Clavicle and Acromion for Dislocation of the Scapular End of the Clavi- cle" ; "Modification of the Operation for Lacer- ated Perineum" ; "Dislocation of Both Hips" ; "Use of the Atropia in Collapse of Cholera" ; "Three Cases of Extra-Uterine Fetation" ; "Skin Grafting" ; "Nerve Section for Neural- gia" ; "Report on Antiseptic Surgery" ; "Shock, and Effects of Compressed Air, as Observed in the Building of the St. Louis and Illinois Bridge." He died in his fifty-seventh year, April 28, 1882, of acute peritonitis, caused by ulceration of the gall-bladder, after a short and painful illness. He married a Miss Mudd, of Pittsfield, Illi- nois, who survived him. Aaron J. Steele. Med. News, Pliiladelphia, 1882, vol. xi. Med. Rec., New Yorl<, 1882, vol. xxi. Trans. Amer. Med. Assoc., Philadelphia, 1882. vol. xx-xiii. St. Louis Med. Rev., May 11, 1907 (Supplement). Portrait. Med. Mirror, St. Louis, 1890. vol. i. Portrait. Hodges, Richard Manning (1827-1896). Richard M. Hodges was born at Bridge- water, Massachusetts, November 6, 1827. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1847, and received his M. D. at the Medical School in 18,50. After a course in midwifery at Dub- lin and a course in anatomy and surgery in Paris, he returned to Boston, and began the practice of medicine. Among Hodges's con- temporaries in Paris were Calvin Ellis (q. v.), C. D. Homans (q. v.), J. Nelson Borland and B. S. Shaw. Hodges was appointed deinonstrator of an- atomy at the Harvard Medical School, on Sep- tember 24, 1853, and served for eight years. O. W. Holmes (q. v.) was the professor of anatomy and physiology at the School in this period. The preparation and material for the class was a matter of great personal pride to Holmes. Every little detail was arranged with special care, and nothing was left undone to present the subject-matter properly and effec- tively. Hodges was fitted to meet the wishes of his chief. He had an exceptional knowl- edge of anatomy, and competent judges say that his dissections "were marvels of beauty and skill."