Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/789

NAME MARVIN 767 MASTIN a position he held to the time of the mer- ger of all of the medical schools in Kentucky with the University of Louisville, and in this school he occupied the position of chief in the medical division and professor of the prac- tice of medicine until the time of his death. Dr. Marvin was most active in the eleva- tion of medical standards and medical teach- ing and, more than any one man in his state, was he responsible for the ultimate bringing about of the merger between the medical schools in Louisville. His interests were in the scientific side of medicine, in laboratory work and medical research, rather than in actual practice. Being a man of some means, he was enabled to follow his bent in this di- rection and as a result of his independent position the influence which he wielded in his community and state was not only a very great one, but one of inestimable value and of tremendous stimulus to the profession. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1878 in the South, Louisville became the Mecca of a fleeing host in the endeavor to escape the infection. Through Dr. Marvin's efTorts and upon his initiative, a yellow fever hospital was established in. the city at this time, of which he became, and continued to be during this epidemic, the resident physician. As a result of his work he wrote a valuable treatise "On the History of the Diagnosis, Pathology and Treatment of Yellow Fever." He was the author of many other papers and reports on medical subjects which are to be found in the current medical literature. He took an active part in obtaining, for the city of Louisville, its new Municipal Hospital, and was a member of the hospital commission appointed by the mayor to supervise its con- struction. His connection with this commis- sion was terminated by his death, but during the time that he served he was successful, in causing to be accepted, his suggestion that it be made a teaching hospital and in having the plans drawn looking to that end. In addition to his medical work, Dr. Marvin found much time to devote to charity and religious work in which he took the very greatest interest. He was a trustee of the Lincoln Institute and of the Oneida Institute of Kentucky, the latter a mountain school do- ing a useful work. Dr. Marvin was married on April 30, 1879, in Louisville, Kentucky, to Juliet Henry Nor- ton, and of this union there were three chil- dren. He was a member of the staff, either active or consultant, of practically all of the hos- pitals in Louisville which had staffs. He was a member and an active and influential one of his local, state, and national societies. Dr. Marvin lost his life in a railroad acci- dent near New Haven, Connecticut, September 2, 1913. Louis Frank. Mastin, Claudius Henry (1826-1898) This Alabama surgeon was born in Hunts- ville, Alabama, on June 4, 1826, the son of Francis Turner, planter, and Ann Elizabeth Caroline Livert. His paternal grandfather, Francis Turner Mastin, came from Wales when Lord Fairfax came and settled in Mary- land. His mother was a daughter of one Claudius Livert, a physician of Lyons. The boy went to Greenville Academy, Hunts- ville, and afterwards to the University of Virginia, then studied medicine with Dr. John Y. Bassett (q. v.), who in those anti-legal dis- secting days had a room whereunto in the darkness often the dead body of a negro from some nearby plantation burial ground was con- veyed up the back stairs by the students. Mas- tin spent many night hours there over his ana- tomical studies and easily took his M. D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1849. He returned to Huntsville, then on to Nashville, Tennessee, but eventually attended lectures at Edinburgh University, the Royal College of Surgeons, London, and in Paris, finally settling in Mobile, Alabama, to practise with his uncle, Dr. Livert. In 1861 he served as a Confederate States volunteer, afterwards wnth the regulars as medical director on the staff of Gen. Leonidas Polk until after the battle of Shiloh when he became inspector of the army of the Mississippi under Gen. Beauregard. The war over, he returned to Mobile and showed him- self an expert surgeon, doing most of the major operations of his day. His uncle had made a series of experiments upon animals in 1828, using metallic ligatures for ligation of arteries, leaving the gold, silver or lead wire to become encysted. Nephew Claudius put the knowledge thus obtained into actual prac- tice upon the human subject, ligating the external iliac with a silver wire for aneurysm of the femoral artery at Scarpa's triangle, in June, 1866. He was thus the first to tie suc- cessfully with a metallic ligature a large artery in the human body. Having considerable ingenuity, he was the inventor of several in- struments; he also wrote many articles, chiefly dealing with genito-urinary surgery. In September, 1848, he married Mary E. McDowell of Huntsville, a descendant of Ephraim McDowell, the ovariotomist, and had