WOOD,
James Rushmore, surgeon, born in Mamaroneck, Westchester County, New
York, 14 September, 1816; died in New York city, 4 May, 1882. He was
the son of a Quaker merchant. After studying medicine in New York
city, and at the Castleton, Vermont, medical college, he was
graduated at the latter institution in 1834, and appointed
demonstrator of anatomy. Soon afterward he began the practice of
medicine in his native city, and in 1847 he became a member of the
medical board of Bellevue hospital, New York. At that time tills
institution was a receptacle for lunatics, paupers, criminals, and
other victims of a depraved life. The most rudimentary hygienic laws
were grossly violated in its management, and the nursing was
inefficient and untrustworthy. With the assistance of Morris
Franklin, president of the board of aldermen, Dr. Wood set about
reforming this state of things, and labored so successfully that he
soon reduced the annual death-rate by 600. He also made all the
post-mortem examinations, amounting to many hundreds yearly,
established Saturday surgical clinics, and founded the Wood prize
for the best anatomical dissection. In 1847 Dr. Wood began to
collect material, with the intention of founding a museum, and this
collection, together with the accumulated specimens of twenty years'
practice, he presented in 1856 to the commissioners of public
charities and corrections. This, with later additions, constitutes
the "Wood museum," which Dr. Willard Parker has styled "the grandest
monument ever erected to any surgeon in this country." In 1857 Dr.
Wood was mainly instrumental in procuring the passage by the
legislature of the dissecting bill, which provided that the bodies
of all unclaimed vagrants should be given for dissection to the
institutions in which medicine and surgery are taught. It took four
years to secure the enactment of this law, and so great was the
public prejudice against it that it finally passed by only one
majority.
In 1861 Dr. Wood,
in association with many physicians and surgeons of the metropolis,
and under the auspices of the almshouse commissioners, founded
Bellevue hospital medical college.
The same year he was called to occupy the chair of operative surgery
and surgical pathology in that institution, which he held until his
death, being made professor emeritus in 1868. Dr. Wood paid especial
attention to the bones and their growth, and succeeded in
establishing beyond dispute the fact of a second growth of bone by
separating the periosteum from the
necrosed bone and carefully enucleating it. In his anatomical and
pathological museum he had on exhibition an entire jaw that he had
removed for phosphor-necrosis, and also a second jaw that had
attached itself to the skull of a patient who had been operated upon
and had subsequently died of another disease. In fact, he had
specimens to show the reproduction of almost every bone in the human
body. Among his other successful operations were the tying of both
carotids in the same patient for malignant disease of the antrum,
placing the ligature on the subclavian on several occasions, and
tying the external iliac artery. Dr. Wood was also surgeon to St.
Vincent's hospital and to the New York ophthalmic dispensary. He was
a member of many medical and other learned associations, and twice
president of the New York pathological society. Besides papers on
"Strangulated Hernia" (1845), "Spontaneous Dislocation of the Head
of the Femur into the Ischiatic Notch" (1847), and an essay on
"Medical Education" (1848), he published "Ligature of the External
Iliac Artery followed by Secondary Haeorrhage" and
"Phosphor-Necrosis of the Lower Jaw" (1856), and " Early History of
Ligation of the Primitive Carotid."
Edited Appletons Encyclopedia, Copyright © 2001 VirtualologyTM
_______________
From Bellevue
Hospital:
1847
Wood, James Rushmore
1882.
M. D., Castleton (Vt.), 1846; LL.
D., Geneva (N. Y.); Demon. Anat., Castleton, 1846-47; Pres. N. Y.
Pathol. Soc.; Vis. Surg., St. Vincent's and N. Y. Opthal. Disp.;
Cons. Surg., Colored Orphan Asyl. Ligated carotid and sub-clavian
arteries, same side, for aneurism of innominate — successful; one of
first to cure aneurism by digital compression, 1848; operated for
removal of Meckel's ganglion with superior maxillary division of
tri- geminus in nearly one fourth of all the cases in the world,
prior to 1879; devised the operation of division of pero- neus
muscles in chronic inflammation of the tendon, and was the first to
devise a treatment for chronic inflammation of knee-joint by
division of hamstrings and tendo Achilles; among first in America to
perform resection of shoulder and elbow-joints; pioneer in
periosteal surgery. Author of " Removal of Entire Lower Jaw "; "
Ligation of External Iliac Artery"; "Spontaneous Dislocation of Head
of the Femur into Ischiatic Notch Occurring in Morbus Coxarius,"
1847; "Early History of Operation of Ligation of Primitive Carotid
Artery," 1857; "Strangulated Hernia," N. Y. Med. and Surg. Rep.,
1845 ; "Ligation of External Iliac Artery, Followed by Secondary
Hemorrhage," 1856; "Phosphorous Necrosis of Lower Jaw," 1856. Died
in N. Y. City, 1882, aet. 69; cause, acute lobar pneumonia.
_______________
Dr. J. R. Wood, born in
New York, 1816. Died in
New York, 1882. M. D., Castleton
(Vt.), 1846; I,L.D., Geneva (N. Y.) Demon. Anat., Castleton, 1846 to
1847. Twice Pres. N. Y. Pathol. Soc. Vis. Surg., St. Vincent's and
N. Y. Opthal. Disp. Cons. Surg., Colored Orphan Asylum, 1861. Chair,
of Operative Surgery and Surg. Path, in Bellevue Hosp. Coll. and
Emeritus Prof. of Surgery until 1882. Dr. Wood was the most famous
American Surgeon of his day and the pioneer in Periosteal Surgery.
Author of many papers and treatises. See Carlisle's History of
Bellevue
