American Medical Biographies/Warren, Jonathan Mason
Warren, Jonathan Mason (1811–1867)
Jonathan Mason Warren was born in Boston on February 5, 1811, in the house No. 2 Park Street, then occupied by his parents, and died there on August 19, 1867.
He was the second son of Dr. John Collins Warren (q. v.) and grandson of Dr. John Warren (q. v.) In 1820 he entered the Boston Latin School and remaining there through the full term graduated with his class in 1825. After studying two years with a private tutor he entered and was admitted to the sophomore class of Harvard in 1827. At the end of three months, owing to ill health, he was obliged to leave college. He retained, however, his associations with the class of 1830 and in 1844 received the degree of A. M. from Harvard and in 1849 became a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Invalidism due to dyspepsia, brought on probably by too close an adherence to the system of the day of much and exacting attendance at school exercises which left but little time for hygienic recreation, prevented him from continuing his studies at Harvard. After a trip to Cuba in search of health in the spring of 1828 he returned to begin his medical studies under the tutelage of his father. The old homestead had been the resort of medical students who served an apprenticeship, after the custom of the time. The class occupied a room with sanded floor near the entrance, for the purpose of study, and took their meals under the same roof; a custom dating from the period when the Medical School was still at Cambridge and probably at the time in question gradually yielding to a more modern system. In the fall of 1830 he entered his name as a student at the Medical School on Mason Street from which he graduated in 1832 at the age of 21.
In March, 1832, Dr. Warren sailed from Boston for Europe, the ship Dover shaping its course first to Charleston, South Carolina. He reached Liverpool at the end of May where he found an epidemic of cholera in progress, which visited Europe that year. After visiting the clinics of Astley Cooper and Charles Bell in London and Syme, and Liston in Edinburgh, he arrived in Paris in the fall of that year. Here he studied surgery under Dupuytren, Lisfranc and Roux and medicine under Louis. Among his fellow students may be mentioned the names of Jackson, Bowditch, Holmes, Bethune, Hooper and Inches of Boston and Gerhard, Peace and Pepper of Philadelphia, forming a group of prominent Americans afterwards known as the "pupils of Louis." After two winters of study in Paris he visited, in the spring of 1834, Dublin, where Kennedy was master of the Lying-in Hospital and Macartney was presiding over his interesting museum at Trinity College. The winter of '34–35 was passed in Paris where he saw Dieffenbach, on a visit from Vienna, perform his rhinoplastic operations. He also learned from Roux his method of operating for cleft palate, an ailment with which his own name was destined later to be intimately associated. He returned home in June, 1835, prepared to begin his professional career.
On the departure of his father for a visit to Europe in 1837 a large practice was entrusted to his care. In this he was eminently successful and became prominent, both as a medical and later, as a surgical practitioner. He was well qualified for these duties not only by personal traits but by sound education backed by good judgment.
In 1843 he published his first article on staphylorraphy (New England Quarterly Journal of Medicine and Surgery, April, 1843), an operation in which he was the pioneer in this country, the method which he devised being substantially that which is employed today. A full account of this operation is given in his book "Surgical Observations and Cases," published in 1867, in which he refers to one hundred operations for fissure of the soft and hard palate performed by him.
On April 30, 1839, he married Anna Caspar, daughter of Benjamin Williams Crowninshield, congressman and at one time secretary of the navy under Madison.
In February, 1846, he was elected one of the visiting surgeons of the Massachusetts General Hospital and on October 16 of the same year he assisted his father in the operation at this hospital, which was destined to be known as the first public demonstration of surgical anesthesia. A few weeks later he substituted for Morton's apparatus the cone-shaped sponge which was used for the purpose of administering ether at the hospital for twenty years.
On the sixth of May, 1853, while returning from a meeting of the American Medical Association in New York, he was a passenger on the train which met with the so-called "Norwalk accident" in which the cars went at full speed through an open draw into the river. Several members of the Association were on the same train and Dr. Peirson (q.v.) of Salem was killed. Dr. Warren superintended the resuscitation of one of the first victims removed from the water, artificial respiration being kept up for two hours.
Dr. Warren's health, never robust, seems to have permanently suffered from the shock of this experience and necessitated two visits to Europe in the following years. In 1864 he delivered the annual address before the Massachusetts Medical Society on "Recent Progress in Surgery," which summarizes well the status of surgery immediately preceding the antiseptic era.
He was senior surgeon of the hospital for several years preceding his death in 1867. He was survived by his wife and four daughters and a son, Dr. John Collins Warren.
Dr. Warren was a man of delicate frame and of refined and distinguished bearing. He combined a cheerful disposition with qualities of mind and heart which made him popular with patients and friends alike who flocked in large numbers to pay him a final tribute.