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University of Maryland 1833
Nathan
Ryno Smith, born in 1797 of distinguished New England parentage, was
the son of Nathan Smith the Elder, founder of medical schools at
both Dartmouth and Yale. The younger Smith earned his M.D. at Yale
in 1823, and later ventured southward to Philadelphia, where he
accepted an invitation to assume the Chair of Anatomy at the new
Jefferson Medical College. But in 1827, a vacancy in the Chair of
Surgery at the University of Maryland beckoned him still farther
away from his native New England, and he happily remained here for
the rest of his life and career. Nathan Ryno Smith, whose commanding
presence and gentlemanly manner earned him the nickname "The
Emperor," guided the medical school's Department of Surgery for the
next fifty years. During that time, he devoted thirty years to the
development and perfection of what he considered to be his greatest
surgical accomplishment, the invention of his anterior splint. He
completed the creation of this instrument in 1860 and published this
work in 1867, describing its uses and applications.
Nathan Ryno Smith, M.D. (1797-1877)
lectured on "Surgery." Dr. Smith spent 50 years at the
Medical School, and was affectionately known as "The Emperor" by his
students. His removal of a goiter from a patient was the first procedure
of its kind in Maryland and only the second thyroidectomy in the
country. Smith was widely recognized as the inventor of the anterior
splint for fractures of the lower extremities. Perfected in 1860, the
splint was used extensively during the Civil War. Smith himself regarded
the invention as his most important contribution to medicine. He was
also founder of the Philadelphia Monthly Journal of Medicine and
Surgery, later named the American Journal of the Medical Sciences.
Nathan Ryno Smith. He was born, May
21, 1797, in the town of Cornish, on the banks of the Connecticut River
in New Hampshire. His father, Dr. Nathan Smith, had practiced his
profession in that town before his appointment to the chair of Physic
and Surgery in Yale College, in 1813, when the medical department of
that seat of learning was founded. The early education of the subject of
this sketch was received at Dartmouth, New Hampshire, and, in 1813, he
entered Yale College as a freshman, graduating there, in 1817, at the
age of twenty. After completing his academic course, and before
beginning his professional studies, he spent about a year and a half in
Virginia. On his return from Virginia he began the study of medicine in
Yale College, where his father then held the chair of Physic and
Surgery, and there, in 1823, he received the degree of Doctor of
Medicine. The following year he began the practice of his profession in
Burlington, Vermont, and the next year was appointed to the
professorship of Surgery and Anatomy in the University of Vermont, the
medical department of which was organized mainly through his own
exertions, aided, however, by his father, who, while still discharging
the duties of his chair in Yale, spent some weeks in Burlington, as the
colleague of his son. The winter of 1825-6, he spent in Philadelphia,
qualifying himself the better for his position as a teacher by attending
the lectures and observing the modes of instruction at the University of
Pennsylvania. Soon after going to Philadelphia he made the acquaintance
of Dr. George McClellan. That gentleman was just then associated with
other physicians in laying the foundation of the Jefferson Medical
School. Such was the impression made upon him and his colleagues by the
ability and professional knowledge of Dr. Smith, that they invited him
to unite with them in their enterprise and tendered to him the chair of
Anatomy in the new school. He held that position for two sessions. Dr.
Smith never returned to New England to reside; nor was his connection
with the Jefferson School of long duration.
The chair of Anatomy in the School of
Medicine of the University of Maryland becoming vacant by the
resignation of Professor Granville Sharp Pattison, in 1827, the position
was tendered to Professor Smith, and accepted. He entered upon his
duties that year as a teacher, and was soon engaged in extensive
surgical and medical practice. On the decease of Professor John B.
Davidge, in 1829, Professor Smith was at once transferred to the chair
of Surgery. About 1838, Professor Smith accepted an appointment to the
chair of Practice of Medicine in the Transylvania University at
Lexington, Kentucky, which required his attendance four months in the
year. At the close of each session there, he returned to Baltimore. He
continued that course for a few years, and then dissolved his connection
with the Western institution. It was in the position which he filled for
nearly fifty years as Professor of Surgery in the University of
Maryland, that his life-work was done; and it is in association with
that school that his name will live in the annals of American Surgery.
It was there, in his early connection with it, he prepared his work on
the Surgical Anatomy of the Arteries, which brought his name prominently
before the profession; there he gave to surgery his Lithotome; there he
invented the apparatus which he regarded as his chief contribution to
surgical appliances—his Anterior Splint; and there, as his last offering
to science, he published his work on Fractures of the Lower Extremity.
In 1867, when he had completed his
seventieth year, he visited Europe, merely for relaxation and
recuperation. He returned home in October of that year, strengthened and
refreshed to some degree. But painful disease and the infirmities of age
began to press upon him, so that he was compelled to devote less
attention to his professional work; yet he did not entirely withdraw
from practice until the last few months before his death. Finally, July
3, 1877, a few weeks after he had completed his eightieth year, life's
labors ended, and he slept in death. Professor Smith left but one son,
Dr. Alan P. Smith, who is also engaged in medical and surgical practice.
