Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/850

NAME MOTT 828 MOTT man (q. v.). Like all young physicians who could afford it, he straightway, after graduat- ing M. D. in 1806, went to Europe, first to London, where he saw all the best men at work and became a pupil of Sir Astley Cooper. At Edinburgh he consorted with men like Hope, Playfair and Gregory and wanted afterwards to get into France in spite of the Anglo-French War and Napoleon's prohibi- tion against foreigners. He had some idea of smuggling himself over on a small fishing boat, but friends dissuaded him. In the spring of 1809, he returned to New York, and, feel- ing the competency of genius, succeeded in getting permission from the trustees of Colum- bia College to lecture and demonstrate on operative surgery, being the first in New York to give private lectures. In 1811, although only twenty-six, he was elected professor of surgery at Columbia Col- lege, and when the medical faculty of that college and the College of Physicians and Surgeons were united he was soon given the post of professor of surgery. Here he con- tinued until 1826, but, difficulties arising be- tween the professors and trustees on principles of college government, he resigned and with his able associates founded Rutgers Medical College in New Jersey. The reputation which Dr. Mott enjoyed was due mainly to his original operations ; his bold carefulness and self-possession when undertaking that which was entirely new and his great success in rescuing from prolonged suffering the victims of morbid growths. Many a time was he called upon to perform at midnight by the flickering aid of a candle, operations not only difficult in themselves, but dangerous to the patient and without other assistance than that of excited relatives or ignorant friends. So intent was the young professor on practical improvement that, in the very face of severe penal laws, he went one dark night, dressed as a poor workman and driving a common cart, to a lonely grave- yard, where his confederates unearthed eleven bodies. He drove all alone to the medical col- lege with his perilous load, for he jeopardized not only his professional reputation but his life in order to advance scientific knowledge. He was the first, or one of the first, in the United States to give clinical instruc- tion. In 1818, when but thirty-three, he placed a ligature around the innominate artery only two inches from the heart for aneurysm of the right subclavian artery for the first time in the history of surgery, and the patient sur- vived twenty-eight days, dying from secondary hemorrhage. Gross said of Mott, in his memoir : "No surgeon, living or dead, ever tied so many vessels or so successfully for the cure of aneurysm, the relief of injury or the arrest of morbid growths." In all, he is said to have ligated great arteries of the body one hundred and thirty-five times. In 1828 he exsected the entire right clavicle for malignant disease, where it was necessary to apply forty ligatures and expose the pleura. He has priority, too, in tying the internal iliac artery for aneurysm successfully, and early introduced his original operation for immo- bility of the lower jaw in 1832. In 1821 he performed the first operation for osteosarcoma of the lower jaw and was the first to remove it for necrosis. He did the operation of lithotomy one hundred and sixty-five times. Sir Astley Cooper said, "He has performed more of the great operations than any man living." And all this before anesthetics, when stout arms had to hold down the writhing man and firm strength keep proportionally quiet the shrieking child. When Rutgers Medical College finally closed in 1831, Mott was re-appointed professor of operative surgery in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, but his health failing a little, in 1834 he traveled in Europe, Asia and Africa. "It was during these travels that, full of love for his profession and always ready for a surgical operation, he tied the carotids of a cock in the valley of the Peneus and sacri- ficed him to Aesculapius." Mott returned to New York in 1841, after six years' absence, to meet with a very warm welcome and the offer (accepted) of the surgical chair in the University Medical College on its foundation in 1841. This position he filled until 1850, serving also as president during this time. "His experience was so vast, his observations so acute, his enthusiasm for surgery so un- dying that his lecture hall was alwas crowded with students and physicians anxious to profit by his teaching." But during his whole career he would never sacrifice a limb for the mere eclat of an operation, but would say to his students, "Allow me to urge you when about to perform an important surgical operation to ask yourselves solemnly whether, in the same situation, you would be willing to sub- mit to it." In 1850 he went abroad again and on his return became professor of surgery in the Medical Department of New York University for a second time. His writings were rela- tively few and may be found in the Surgeon