Anderson, Turner (1842–1908)
Turner Anderson, surgeon, was born in Meade County, Kentucky, August 11, 1842; his ancestors had come over here in 1770 with their relative Lord Stirling. Turner studied medicine at the Cincinnati College of Medicine and Surgery, graduating there in 1862 and settling to practise in Louisville.
Endowed with the courage which comes from a thorough acquaintance with a subject, he was a bold operator, with admirable technic. His first hundred laparotomies were all successful, and to him is ascribed priority in the subperitoneal treatment of the pedicle in hysterectomy. He promulgated Anderson's modification of Kelly's operation for perineorrhaphy and was the first surgeon west of the Alleghenies to do pneumonotomy for the draining of pulmonary abscess.
During the war he was assistant surgeon at Brown Hospital, Louisville, and afterwards surgeon major to the twenty-eighth Kentucky Infantry. When the fighting was over he married Anna Evans who died three years later, leaving him a daughter. His second wife was Sarah G., daughter of Judge Simrall, and three children survived him, Lulie, Cornelia and Simrall who became a doctor.
Anderson senior was a genial, clever but practical man greatly venerated by his students and a favorite with the faculty. His death, on the thirteenth of October, 1908, deprived Louisville of a fine surgeon and a good Christian citizen.
He was president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Louisville; a member of the Louisville Obstetrical Society, the Kentucky State Medical Society and its vice-president in 1874. He occupied the chair of materia medica and therapeutics in the University of Louisville and successively those of obstetrics and clinical gynecology.