Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/962

NAME PREWITT 940 PRICE whom he married in 1875, was Martha E. Sheffey, and they had two children, Ellen F. and Robert J., both of whom graduated in medicine. In 1902 he married Mrs. Elizabeth Gravely (nee Stuart), who with a son sur- vived him. In 1906, while en route for Toronto, Canada, to attend a meeting of the British Medical Association, he was taken ill at Lewiston, New York, and died suddenly at that place on the twentieth of August. His contributions to medical literature were numerous. Robert M. Slaughter. Va. Med. Semi-monthly, vol. xi. Men of Mark in Virginia, vol. v, with a full page portrait. Prewitt, Theodore F. (1832-1904) Theodore F. Prewitt was born in Fayette, Howard County, Missouri, on March 1, 1832, the son of Joel and Mary Trimble Prewitt. Owing to the death of his father, and being one of a family of eleven, he was thrown upon his own resources at the early age of fourteen. He entered the St. Louis Medical College, whence he graduated in 1856, and married Mary Ingram, of Virginia, during the last year of his medical course. After the death of his wife in 1862, he went to St. Louis and again married in 1871, this time Mary Sowers ; and the same year was appointed superintendent of the City Hospital, a position he held for three years. He spent some time at a number of the leading European hospitals. On his return to St. Louis he accepted the chair of surgery in the Missouri Medical Col- lege, and later was elected dean. On the consolidation of the Missouri Med- ical College and the St. Louis Medical Col- lege to form the Medical Department of Wash- ington University, he was continued in the chair of surgery and held this position until his death. For twenty-five years he was surgeon to St. John's Hospital and the surgical clinic at that institution. An untiring energy enabled him to prosecute with vigor whatever matter claimed his atten- tion. While occupied with the cares of a large practice, he at all times had at heart the cause of medical education. Prewitt was president of the American Surgical Association, of the Missouri State Medical Society, the St. Louis Medical Society, the St. Louis Surgical Society, and the St. Louis Obstetrical Society, and a fellow of the Philadelphia Academy of Surgery. Am. Med., Phila., 1904. vol, viii, 789. Med. Bull., Wash. Univ., St. Louis, 1904, vol. iii, 341. St. Louis Cour. Med., 1904, vol. xxxi, 338. Portrait. Price, Joseph (1853-1911) Joseph Price, one of the foremost figures in the development of American Gynecology in the eighties and nineties of the nineteenth century, found gynecology and abdominal surgery twin babes in swaddling clothes and left them, after a life of e.traordinary activity, full grown specialties. He made common and safe the radical operation for the treatment of pelvic suppurations, and taught men in this country how to operate with clamp, scrre Hoeud, pins, and e.xternal treatment of the stump, and so made hysterectomy for fibroid tumors a safe operation instead of a most dangerous one. Price's personality reached the hearts, while his writings and clinical teachings in some degree moulded the activi- ties of every surgeon in this country and in Canada. To few men has it been given so to impress their personality and their sturdy con- victions on their fellows. Joseph Price was born in Rockingham County, Virginia. January 1, 1853. He re- ceived his early schooling at Fort Edward, N. Y., and attended Union College from 1871 to 1872, but left college to join the engineering corps of the New York Central Railroad. He took his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania in the class of 1877, and then served as surgeon on a transatlantic passenger steamer between Philadelphia, Antwerp and Liverpool, making three voyages in all. He began his life's work at the old Phila- delphia Dispensary where he found a hearty coadjutor in one of its directors. Dr. Thomas Wistar. The class Price was raised up to examine and treat and become intimate with in their wretched dwellings, was the oflf- scourings of a corrupt, boss-ridden, badly gov- erned city and it is due to his fidelity to these usually neglected opportunities in a most de- pres.^.ing field that he owed his subsequent rapid advancement to the position of one of the foremost surgeons of America. If the slum poor of the city had been queens, in- stead of queans, they could not have received better and more faithful care at his hands ; often did he, at his own expense, when he was struggling for recognition and for a liveli- hood, send some sad, worn-out creature to the country for several weeks to convalesce from a severe operation ; his warm, Virginia heart was ever peculiarly tender towards the colored women under his care. "Joe Price," as every one called him, had a racy humor and often found relief from care and gained complete relaxation following his work in relating to chosen spirits the comi-