Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/992

NAME REID 970 REID (q. V.) Reid wrote "Ventilation in American Dwellings" (1858.). Reid was also the author of two text-books : "Elements of Chemistry" (1837), and "Text- book for Students of Chemistry" (1839), and of other books bearing on chemistry and ventilation. Howard A. ICelly. Diet, of Nat. Biog. Allibone's Diet, of Authors. Reid, Waiiam W. (1799-1866). William W. Reid of Rochester, New York, was the first to show the futility of trying to reduce dorsal dislocation of the hip, by for- cible longitudinal traction by pulleys, and he gave a partial explanation why the English method then in vogue was not correct. He deserves the gratitude of the world for per- fecting the comparatively painless and the effi- cient method of reduction, now in use. The known facts of his life are few, due in part to the loss by fire of the records of the Monroe County Medical Society. He was born in Arg>-le, Washington County, New York State, in 1799, and entered Union Col- lege from that town, April 26, 1823, graduat- ing A. B. with Phi Beta Kappa honors, July 27, 1825. He began the study of medicine under Dr. A. G. Smith of Rochester, and Reid says he was there in 1826, '27 and '28, but where he took his M. D. degree has eluded the careful search of many investigators in New York State. That he had an M. D. is plain, for it was signed to his published articles, and as he was president of the Monroe County Medical Society in 1836, '2i7 and '49, he was in good standing and at the same time regarded with favor by his asso- ciates. It is likely that the degree was con- ferred by the local medical society, in accord- ance with the custom of the time. His wri- tings prove him to have been an original, in- ventive and bold surgeon. He practised in Rochester from 1828 until about 1864, when he moved to the vicinity of New York City. In 1830 he married Elizabeth Manson. His death occurred December 6, 1866, by drowning in the Hudson River while crossing from Jersey City to New York. Such are the bits of information that have been preserved about this noteworthy charac- ter. As regards his contributions to the advancement of surgical practice we must turn to the Buffalo Medical Journal for August, 1851. In this publication appeared an ab- stract of a paper which Dr. Reid read before the Munroe County Medical Society, May S, 1850. The same facts were published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal for De- cember 31, 1851 (vol. xlv, pp. 441-447), and a complete exposition of the subject was pre- sented at the annual meeting of the Medical Society of the State of New York, February 3, 1852, appearing in the transactions of that year as a paper of seventeen pages, with diagrams. It is to be understood that at the time Dr. Reid arrived at the true principles and ra- tionale of the method of reduction of dislo- cation of the head of the femur on the dorsum ilii, the common practice, enunciated by Sir Astley Cooper, was what Reid called a cruel method of extension of the limb using pulleys and blind brute force, the object being to tire out the muscles which were supposed to prevent the reduction by their contraction. We know now that the traction ruptured the Y ligament. Nathan Smith (q. v.) and others had found as long ago as 1831 that some sort of flexion often effected reduction. The maneuvers advocated were haphazard and were not founded either on investigation or experience. Dr. Reid tells us that his attention was di- rected to the subject of dislocation of the hip during the years 1826, '27 and '28, while a student of medicine in Rochester, where he saw several cases that were treated by the leading surgeons of the time by inquisitorial torture of the patients, often with poor end results. Ever after he gave the subject thought and for ten years previous to 1850 the question how he might help such patients was seldom out of his mind. By manipulating the skeleton and by dissect- ing and testing the strength of the muscles of a sheep's leg he decided that the essential muscles about a dislocated hip were not con- tracted, but overstretched, and that a little too much overstrain would rupture them. These views were confirmed in 1849, after he had had several cases of reduction, by the dis- section of both hip joints of a human sub- ject in conjunction with Dr. E. M. Moore (q. v.), professor of surgery in the Woodstock and in the Berkshire medical schools. Both joints were dislocated, after being dissected, and were reduced by Reid's method, it being noted that too strong flexion of the thigh hindered reduction and that direct traction without flexion partly carried away the cap- sular ligament. Reid thought that flexion, as it relaxed the muscles, was the proper procedure in cases of dislocation and in the case of the hip he advocated flexing the leg on the thigh, the thigh on the abdomen.