Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/938

PILCHER his services ceased, by reason of the close of the war, he collapsed and it became manifest that he never could again assume the burdens of the active list.

He was married in 1883 to Mina Adela Parker of Brooklyn, who survived him.

Doctor James Evelyn Pilcher had in a high degree an unusual combination of abilities; he had fine executive talents added to great industry and an active interest in many fields of activity. In the earlier years of his military service he was the author of the first system of drill for the United States Army Hospital Corps published in the United States, which was crowned as highly meritorious by the War Department. During this period, also, he compiled his work on "First Aid in Illness and Injury," the first edition of which, published by the Scribners, was issued in 1892. It has since gone through many editions, and has maintained its position as the principal text-book for the instruction of the Hospital Corps up to the present time.

To relieve the monotony of a winter's duties at Fort Custer, Montana, he devoted himself to the translation into English of the famous book of Mundinus, "de Anathomia Humani Corporis Interioribus Membris," which remains in manuscript as a monument to his patience and classical knowledge.

During the term of his service at the army post of Columbus, Ohio, he filled the chairs of military surgery in three of the medical schools of that city, and after his retirement filled the chairs of sociology and political economy in Dickinson College, and that of professor of medical jurisprudence in the Dickinson School of Law at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he made his home during the later years of his life.

He perhaps became most widely known through his activity in the work of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States of which he became the secretary in 1897, remaining in that position until his increasing blindness necessitated retirement therefrom two years before his death.

He contributed many articles both to the medical and general press. By his versatility and breadth of mental horizon he took an interest in many things and enjoyed the friendship of many men. Upon the reorganization of the National Volunteer Emergency Relief Corps he was made director general of the corps, but his failing health prevented him from giving to the work the measure of attention which he had hoped to be able to give.



Pilcher, Paul Monroe (1876–1917)

Paul Monroe Pilcher, eminent surgeon and urologist, was born April 11, 1876, in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Lewis Stephen Pilcher, distinguished surgeon and erudite editor of the Annals of Surgery, and of Martha S. Phillips. After his early training in the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute he graduated A. B. from the University of Michigan in 1898. From the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1900, and at the same time an A. M. from Columbia University.

After two years' residence in the Seney Hospital with his father as the senior surgeon he went abroad to come in contact with Nitze and von Frisch, and to get that poise in a life-work best secured by an intimate comparison of the old world with the new. He studied for a year in Goettingen, Vienna and Berlin, and returning home received appointments in the Seney, German, St. John's and Jewish Hospitals, later he resigned these to devote his energies to the development of a private hospital which he conducted with his father and his brothers. His work here was notable, and along other than strictly surgical lines. His methods of working up cases and his hospital reports and his follow up work remain as models.

His strong bent was toward urology with a splendid experience in general surgery as a background.

He issued the translation of Rovsing's Abdominal Surgery from the Danish, and he was the author of many scientific papers. From 1907 to 1911 he edited the Long Island Medical Journal. In 1911 he published an admirable text-book on "Practical Cystoscopy and the Diagnosis of Surgical Diseases of the Kidney and Urinary Bladder," a beautifully illustrated, fresh, lucid exposition of the new science of cystoscopy, a possession of permanent value which perhaps constitutes his most important claim to recognition as a pioneer.

To Hugh Cabot's Textbook of Modern Urology he contributed the chapter on Prostatic Obstructions, in which are embodied important original studies and methods. This was his last work, fatal illness overtaking him shortly after the completion of the manuscript.

Pilcher was operating surgeon at the Eastern Long Island Hospital at Greenport, and a member of the American Surgical and American Urological Associations and other medical societies.

In 1905 he married Mary Finlay of Montclair, New Jersey, who survived him with two sons, Lewis Stephen, 2nd, and Paul Monroe.