Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/993

NAME REITER 971 REULING adduction to the sound side, then abduction and outward rotation. He was called to his first case in the spring of 1844, a stout Irish woman who had fallen down a flight of steps and dislocated her hip four days previous to his visit. In the presence of four physicians Dr. Reid, using his method, reduced the dislocation in three minutes with very little force and with trilling pain. This was before the advent of surgical anesthesia. He reported three cases, all reduced without an anesthetic, in his paper read before the Monroe County Medical Society, and in his later paper gave the data of two cases re- ported by other surgeons, one with an anes- thetic and the other without, both reduced suc- cessfully by his method. Moses Gunn (q. v.) demonstrated during the winters of 1851-52-53 by many dissections that the untorn portion of the capsule of the joint, in dislocation of the hip, caused the characteristic attitude assumed by the limb and was the true obstacle to reduction. ("Luxation of the Hip and Shoulder Joints, and the Agents which Oppose their Reduction," 1859.) Although Reid did not appreciate the full importance of the capsular ligament in the mechanism of dislocation and knew nothing of its accessory Y-ligament — a structure de- scribed in detail by H. J. Bigelow (q. v.) some twenty years later — he worked out in an in- telligent manner the correct method of rectify- ing this serious injury, thus obviating great and unnecessary suffering besides much crip- pling of joints in coming generations, and he is therefore entitled to full credit and the grati- tude of posterity. Walter L. Burrage. Person. Commun. from C. W. Hennington, M. D. Buffalo Med. Jour., August, 1S51. Boston Med. and Surg. Jour., 1S51, vol. xlv, pp. 441-447. Trans. Med. Soc. State of New York, 1852, pp. 25-41. Hist, of Med. F. H. Garrison, M. D. 2nd Ed., 1917. Reiter, William Charles (1817-1882). William Charles Reiter was a classical family physician but ^his activity was not confined to the practice of medicine ; natural history, and especially botany, a science in which he held a foremost position in his lo- cality, were a vocation of great interest and enjoyment. His father, of French Huguenot ancestry, was born in Hesse. His mother was of Hanoverian extraction. Married in Baltimore, Maryland, they removed to Pittsburg, Penn- sylvania, about 1812, where William Charles was born March 24, 1817. He attended lec- tures at Jefferson Medical College during the session of 1834-1835, after which he engaged in practice at Pleasant Unity and Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, and in 1836, on the death of his preceptor. Dr. A. Torrence, succeeded to his practice. At this time he was married and after four years of professional work he returned to Jefferson Medical College, where he grad- uated in the spring of 1839. Of a philosophic bent of mind, he took much pleasure in the study of natural history, and was looked upon as a local authority in botany. On the establishment of the Pittsburg Col- lege of Pharmacy in 1880 he was elected to the chair of materia medica and botany, an office he filled for several years till the in- firmites of age necessitated his resignation. Previous to this tiine he also delivered lec- tures at the Western University of Pennsyl- vania at Pittsburg on chemistry, geology and physiology. He was married on November 8, 1836, to Eliza Reynolds, daughter of Captain William Reynolds, of Westmoreland County, Pennsyl- vania, and had four children, three daughters and one son. Reiter died at Edgewood Park, Pennsyl- vania, a suburb of Pittsburg, on November 20, 1882, of general arteriosclerosis. At the time of his earlier life the cause of most diseases was purely a matter of specula- tion and to a man of Reiter's strong convic- tions and force of mind the need of forming a theoretical etiology based upon experience and observation, became almost mandatory. Thus he believed that diphtheria was due to an excess of fibrin in the blood, and in sup- port of this hypothesis and the treatment of the disease with enormous doses of calomel (as much as three or four drams during the course of the attack), he published, in 1878, a booklet on "The Treatment of Diphtheria Based upon a New Etiology and Pathology," which attracted wide attention. His portrait was in the possession of his daughter. Miss Mary Reiter, at Edgewood Park, Pennsylvania. AnOLPH KOENIG. Reuling, George (1839-1915). George Reuling, an ophthalmologist and oto- laryngologist of Baltimore, Maryland, known in particular as an operator on the eye, and the first American ophthalmologist to remove a cataractous lens within its capsule, was born in Darmstadt, Germany, November 11, 1839, stud- ied medicine at the University of Giessen from