Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/963

NAME PRICE 941 PRICE cal situations and misunderstandings contin- ually arising in the course of his visits to the city's poor. Let it be noted that his jests about the poor and about the quaint old mammies he met were ever tinctured with a chivalrous, tender sympathy; it was only when discussing his rivals that his humor became grim and the bolt often carried a festering barb. Price was a devoted admirer of Marion Sims (q. v.), whose "Uterine Surgery'' he knew by heart ; he was also a follower and close friend of Sims's peer, Thomas Addis Emmet, and it was for many years his special delight to make up parties of interested Philadelphians and visiting surgeons, to run over to New York to meet Emmet, by special appointment, and see him do a vesico-vaginal fistula, or a perineal, or a cervical operation. The value of these trips was enhanced by the anticipa- tory graphic and lively picture of what we were to note particularly in the operations ; in his zeal Price would grasp his interlocu- tor's coat or a bit of handy rag, and proceed to demonstrate with a needle and thread, or perhaps he would squeeze and adjust his thumb and fingers so as to demonstrate the principles of some plastic operation under dis- cussion. His admiration for Lawson Tait, whose book, "Diseases of the Ovaries," he knew from cover to cover, drew him to Europe about the year 1887 and brought him into vital con- tact with England's pioneer surgical genius. Later he made a second visit to Birmingham and the two surgeons corresponded until Tait's death. Price's friends often dubbed him the "Lawson Tait of America." As a brilliant suc- cessful surgeon, in a large measure the in- augurator of a new era in this country, the comparison is merited, but on the other hand, although Price had the grave faults of strong bias and impulsive likes and dislikes, he was in every way immeasurably Tait's superior as a man. Joe Price's chief fault was an over- mastering jealousy of the nearby successful competitors, and inasmuch as these, too, were but frail and erring mortals, his strictures were naturally often justified; he never knowingly or deliberately falsified. His surgical technique was of the simplest — with a board for a table top and a little fist- ful of instruments, he brilliantly executed the most difficult abdominal operations. The secret of his success lay in his fixed pur- pose in life, his active restless mind, his pierc- ing vision and his long, deft, trained fingers which were at once the envy and the despair of other surgeons. Under Tait's influence and encouraged by his own phenomenal suc- cess in his abdominal surgery, he rejected and ridiculed antiseptics and the germ theory, but preached "asepsis" as some sort of a different doctrine, and thus practically attained his un- paralled results. Joseph Price easily led abdominal surgery on women in this country for nearly two decades. He naturally fell heir to the abdominal work of his professor in surgery, D. Hayes Agnew (q. v.), who was too old to master the new fields opened up ; his obstetrical skill was such that R. A. F. Pen- rose (q. v.), his professor in obstetrics, con- stantly relied upon his skill in difficult cases. He asked Price to deliver a brief series of lectures at the university. These were not successful as far as the class was concerned, and were not kept up or followed by any offi- cial appointment. Price never held any regular collegiate teaching position, and yet he taught more men how to do abdominal and pelvic operations, and had more grateful followers than any other man in America. His kindness to the poor, and a supreme indifference to the bondage of office hours (the despair of his practical brother, Mor- decai (q. v.), kept him from accumulating a substantial bank account; the emoluments of a big practice meant but little to him. He had been engaged for several years to "Lou" Troth, when Professor William Goodell (q. V.) gave up the Preston Retreat (a large endowed obstetric home), and Price's name naturally at once came up for consideration. But the holder of the position must be married! The opportunities offered in the Retreat for obstetric experience were unsur- passed, the salary was large, and with it went a big, comfortable house and grounds, the concession of office hours and an outside prac- tice, provided the institution was duly cared for. Price's candidacy was settled in the happiest manner by immediate marriage; he was elected and filled the post with zeal and success from 1887 to 1894. The issue of the marriage was three daughters and four sons, none of whom studied medicine. With C. B. Penrose he was the founder of the Philadelphia Gynecean Hospital (incor- porated January, 1888), in which he was suc- ceeded by Penrose and J. M. Baldy. Later he abandoned the Gynecean and opened a large private hospital with Dr. J. W. Ken- nedy. He was president of the American Associa- tion of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in 1895, and one of the staunch supporters of