Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/998

NAME RICHARDSON 976 RICHARDSON Iiovv he could help hira, his eye fell upon a goose's wing, used for dusting. He took the quills, cut them in convenient sections, and uniting them together, end for end, fixed the joints with shoemaker's wax. In this way he fashioned a catheter, and hy it relieved the sulifering of the Frenchman, who considered that his life had been saved and whose grati- tude was unbounded. Dr. Richardson married Miss Mary Skirving, of Scotland, who became known as an active philanthropist. They had three daughters and four sons. One son, W. A. Richardson, entered the medical profession, and at one time had charge of the Royal Jubilee Hospital at Victoria, B. C. In 1903 a dinner was given Dr. Richardson by the medi- cal profession of Toronto and he was presented with an oil painting of himself. He died of old age, January 15, 1910. The Med. Profes. in Upper Canada. Win. Canniff, M. D. 1894. Canadian Jour, of Med. and Surg., 1903, vol. xiii, pp. 305-321. Portrait. Idem. February 1910, vol. xxvii. Richardson, Joseph Gibbons (1836-1886). Joseph Gibbons Richardson was born in Philadelphia, January 10, 1836, his family being of the Society of Friends and of English descent. He took his M. D. from the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania in 1862, and after serving as resident physician at the Wills Hospital and the Pennsylvania Hospital, he settled in practice at Union Springs, New York, where he remained five years. Returning to Phila- delphia in 1868, he devoted himself to med- ical microscopy and became microscopist to the Pennsylvania Hospital and visiting physi- cian to the Presbyterian Hospital. In 1877 he was elected professor of hygiene in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania. He held the positions of secre- tary of the biological and microscopical sec- tions of the Academy of Natural Sciences ; member of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the Pathological Society, and was a delegate to the International Medical Congress. Dr. Richardson contributed frequently to the leading medical periodicals, some of his papers being: "Cellular Structure of the Red Blood Corpuscle"; "Identity of Red Blood Corpuscles in Various Races of Mankind" ; "Detection of Elastic Tissue in the Sputum of Phthisis." His most important work was his "Handbook of Medical Microscopy," a book of 333 pages, published in 1871. He died of apoplexy at the age of fifty, November 13, 1886. Phila. Med. Times. 1886-7, vol. xvii, p. 171. Phys. and Surg, of U. S. W. B. Atkinson, 1878. Richardson, Maurice Howe (1851-1912). Maurice Howe Richardson, Boston surgeon, was born in Athol, Massachusetts, December 31, 1851, and died in Boston, July 31, 1912. He was the son of Nathan Henry and Martha Ann Barber Richardson, of New England de- scent. When he was eleven the family moved to Fitchburg, where he graduated at the High School ; he graduated at Harvard A. B. in 1873, and the following year taught in the Salem High School, where he studied with Dr. Edward B. Peirson for a year, and then entered the Harvard Medical School, second year, and graduated M. D. in 1877. On July 10, 1879. he married Margaret White Peirson, daughter of Dr. Peirson, and one of his for- mer High School pupils. They had four sons among* whom were Drs. Edward Peirson and Henry Barber and two daughters. Dr. Richardson began his career as a private assistant to the demonstrator of anat- omy at the Harvard Medical School, after resigning the position of surgical house officer at the Massachusetts General Hospital. His great desire was to be a surgeon and the most direct route to practice was through the dis- secting room. He was later demonstrator and then assistant professor of anatomy. He served under Oliver Wendell Holmes (q. v.), who resigned as professor of anatomy in 1882. In 1895 he became assistant professor of clinical surgery, and in 1907 he was made Moseley Professor of Surgery. He was surgeon to out-patients at the Massa- chusetts General Hospital in 1882 and visiting surgeon in 1886. In 1911, when a rearrange- ment of the surgical staff was made with continuity of the service, he was made sur- geon-in-chief, a position which he held up to death. During his early practice he was surgeon to the Carney Hospital, and consulting sur- geon to other hospitals in Boston, and in various New England towns. His work out- side of anatomy lay along clinical lines, and his surgery grew out of his superior anatomi- cal training and experience as a surgical as- sistant. His originality lay in his ready adap- tation of sound surgical principles and exten- sive anatomical knowledge to the many new problems created by the antisepsic era which dawned as he entered the field. When he be- gan his work abdominal surgery meant little more than an occasional ovariotomy; the surgery of the appendix, the gall bladder and the stomach did not exist. He wrote from the fullness of large personal clinical experiences, and as he worked and