Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1196

VANCE 1174 VANCE and the body thrust throiisrh into the lecture room. The blanket in which the subject was wrapped went back to the janitor's room. Word came the next day that the subject had died of smallpox ! This was the occasion and the beginning of "the great smallpox epi- demic." The incident is characteristic of a number of body-snatching stories told me by the chief perpetrator. Vance's bent was ever toward orthopedics, although he continued in the practice of gen- eral surgery. He was the ardent and earliest advocate of asepsis in Kentucky. He declined several offers of a professorship of surgery in medical colleges, preferring to remain a "free lance." He was instrumental in found- ing, and was the chief benefactor, of the Chil- dren's Free Hospital of Louisville. He was a president of the Jefiferson County Medical Society, as well as president of the Kentucky State Medical Association in 1915; he was also a member of the Southern Surgical and Gynecological Association, the American Or- thopedic Association, of which he was first vice-president in 1890; and the American As- sociation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, and fellow of the American College of Surgeons (1913). Vance was public spirited to self sacrifice, as is shown in the records of The Louisville Legion, the Children's Free Hospital, which h,as a "Vance Memorial Ward," built by vol- tnitary subscriptions contributed a few hours after his death, and the Louisville City Hospi- tal which was brought to a successful comple- tion through the giving of his time and labor. In 188S Dr. Vance married Mary Josephine Huntoon of Louisville, by whom he had eight children, one of whom practised medicine. For two years before his death Vance suf- fered from chronic nephritis and died Decem- ber 9, 1915. How.^RD A. Kelly. Vance, Reuben Aleshire (1S4S-1894) A physician and surgeon of Cleveland, Ohio, he was born in Gallipolis, Ohio, August 18, 1845. His father, Alexander, was of Virginia extraction; his mother, Eliza Shepard, of Puri- tan, and this combination produced a character unique and striking. The son was educated in the schools of Gallipolis and in the Gallia Academy, and even while a lad was precocious. At the age of nine he was an expert typesetter, and when the Civil War burst upon the land, at the age of sixteen he enlisted as a private in the Fourth Virginia Infantry, a regiment commanded by his brother ; saw much active military service, and was distinguished for a gallantry bordering upon recklessness. At the close of the w-ar he decided to study medicine and matriculated in the Bellevue Medical Col- lege, and graduated there in 1867 ; after the usual hospital service he settled down to pri- vate practice in New York City. In 1868 he was attending physician to the New York Cen- tral Dispensary; then assistant to the chair of the diseases of the mind and nervous system in Bellevue Hospital Medical College; assist- ant physician to the New York State Hospital for diseases of the nervous system ; attending physician to the Bellevue Hospital Dispensary; physician-in-chief to the New York Institution for Epileptics and Paralytics. In 1870 he was called upon, as an expert witness, to testify in the famous murder case of Daniel McFar- land. In 1873 he went to Europe for purposes of travel and study, and on his return, in 1875, married Anna Cooper, daughter of Dr. James Cooper, of New York. In 1879 he removed to Cincinnati, where foi two years he lectured on pathological anatomy in the Cincinnati College of Med- icine and Surgery. On the reorganization of the medical department of Wooster Uni- versity in 1881, Dr. Vance was given the chair of clinical and operative surgery, and removed to Cleveland. He had been in- terested in St. Alexis Hospital, of Cleveland, almost from its inception, and at the time of his death was president of the hospital staff. He died of cerebral hemorrhage, following an attack of the grippe, March 19, 1894. He was a member of the Ohio State Medical Society. A frequent contributor to the medi- cal journals of his day, he was a graceful, clear and forcible writer. Of contributions it will be sufficient to notice : "The Ophthalmo- scope in the Treatment of Epilepsy." (New York Medical Journal, 1871, vol. xiii.) ; "Writ- er's Cramp or Scrivener's Palsy." (Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 1873, vol. Ixx.xi.x) ; "Trichina Spiralis," an inaugural address before the Ohio Valley Medical So- ciety (Cincinnati Lancet and Obscn'er, 1877, vol. xx), and "Vesico-vaginal Fistula" (Cleve- land Medical Gazette, 1888.) He left a library of some five thousand vol- umes, ranging from the "Chirurgical Treatise" of Richard Wiseman and the "De Curtorum Chirurgia" of Taliacotius, to the first edition of the most obscure poet of the Elizabethan period, and reflecting in its contents both the ability and eccentricity of its collector. An excellent half-tone picture will be found in the Cleveland Medical Gazette, 1894, vol. ix. Henry E. H. derson". Cleveland Med. Gaz., 1893-4, vol. ix. Portrait.