Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/649

NAME JOHNSON 627 JOHNSON In 1855 he married Mary Jane Limberlake and had four children, three daughters and one son. About this time mutterings of war were heard and Johnson became a surgeon un- der Gen. Sterhng Price. When Lee surren- dered, and not till then, did Dr. Johnson re- turn to his desolated home. Penniless, he again started out to retrieve home and for- tune, removing to the little town of Platte City, where he soon had a good practice. His wife died, and in 1870 he married Julia M. Tillery of Liberty, Misouri. Never having been very robust, he determined to go to a city where work would be easier, so on his fiftieth birth- day he went to Kansas City, where he re- mained until his death, January 25, 1893. Johnson was a thinker and logical reasoner and evolved many ideas which at the time were looked upon as heretical by some of his fellow practitioners. In 1872 he read a paper before the Kansas City District Medical So- ciety in which he maintained a theory of the infectiousness of pneumonia, but met with no endorsement. The wide experience in obstet- rics gained in an extensive country practice led him to devote especial attention to that im- portant branch of work and he was elected dean of the college and chosen to fill the chair of obstetrics in the Kansas City Medical Col- lege in 1880, a professorship he held until his death. The clinical obstetrical department which was started during Dr. Johnson's in- cumbency averaged over eight cases of labor for each student, an unusual record at that date in the West. Dr. Johnson had a peculiar physiognomy which was masked by a long beard, giving him an expression of fierceness which much belied his gentle nature and benevolence. Shortly before his death Dr. Johnson de- vised an obstetrical forceps which included the "third curve'' of the Tarnier axis traction principle in connection with the long graceful curve of the Hodge forceps, thus supplying a principle ingenious and practical. Used with the patient drawn well over the edge of bed or table so that grasp could be effected with only slight engagement, the delivery was facil- itated with but slight danger of traumatism, as no tension was put upon the perineum. Caleb Clarke McGruder. Johnson, Henry Lowry Emilius (1858-1916) H. L. E. Johnson, gynecologist and aero- plane inventor, was born in Washington, D. C, November 11, 1858, son of Henry L. and Emily E. Johnson, and nephew of Goodyear, the famous patentee of India rubber. He gradu- ated in medicine at Columbian (now George Washington) University in 1882. From 1889 to 1906 he was professor of sur- gical gynecology in George Washington Uni- versity; in 1897 he became professor of gyne- cology at the Washington Post-Graduate School of Medicine; he was consulting gyne- cologist to the Providence Hospital, the Wo- man's Clinic, and the United States Govern- ment Hospital for the Insane. He represented the United States Depart- ment of State at the International Congress of Hygiene at Berlin (1907) ; at the International Sanitary Conference of American Republics, at Mexico City (1907); the International Medical Congress, at Budapest (1909). He was one of the organizers of the Pan- American Medical Congress and was vice- president of the First, Second, Third and Fourth Congresses; he was vice-president of the ^ First, Second and Third International Sanitary Conventions of American Republics; a member of the executive committee Inter- nationa! American Congress of Medicine and Hygiene, Buenos Aires (1910) ; and a member of the National Committee, International Hy- giene Exhibition, Dresden (1911). Johnson was a trustee of the American Med- ical Association (1898-1899), and was presi- dent of the Medical Association, District of Columbia. Interested in aviation He invented a safety aeroplane (1912), and a ship and aeroplane compass and inclinometer (1912). In 1901 he married Eugenie Reel Taylor of St. Louis. He died suddenly from heart dis- ease, December 21, 1916, at his home in Wash- ington. Jour. Amer. Med. Asso., 1916, vol. Ixvi, 132. Who's Who in America, 1914-1915, vol. viii. Johnson, Hosmer Allen (1822-1891) Hosmer Allen Johnson, a scientist who helped to found in Chicago the Academy of Natural Sciences and the Northwestern Uni- versity Medical School, was born in the village of Wales, New York, October 6, 1822. A boy- hood spent among wild natural surroundings inclined him afterwards to travel through Switzerland, California and Colorado, sleep- ing frequently "under the blue blanket," and learning to love the starlit sky. When twelve he was at Almont, Michigan, helping to cut a farm out of the woods when Indians and wolves were more in evidence than civilized man. At nineteen he entered an academy at Romeo, Michigan, preparing for the University of Michigan. There he showed remarkable talent for languages, not excluding the Ojibway tongue. From this university