WOOD
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WOOD
a most enviable reputation. His opera-
tions were brilliantly successful, the
results mainly due to the unflagging
interest, unfaltering energy and untiring
watchfulness. Nothing done escaped his
notice and, though strict, every member
and student at the hospital conceded
his right to dictate and his kindly con-
trol. In the periosteal reproduction
of bone he had an international reputa-
tion. The president of the German
Congress of Surgeons invited him to
send some specimens of bone repro-
duction to Berlin for exhibition with
similar specimens. Langenbeck greatly
admired the regenerated lower jaw and
said he did not believe another specimen
existed. In nerve surgery Wood was
equally successful, his best operation,
performed four times consecutively with
ultimate cure, was the removal of Meck-
el's ganglion with the superior maxillary
division of the trigeminus for the relief
of tic douloureux. He was the first in
America (1S40) to divide the masseter
muscles and, as far as his biographer was
aware, the first to devise division of the
peronei muscles in chronic dislocation of
the tendon and to treat acute and chronic
knee inflammation by division of the ham
strings and tendo Achilles. He had in his
collection six fine specimens of osseous
union of the femur with the tibia after
resection. Report also gives him the
credit of first curing aneurysm by digital
pressure, and he tied for aneurysm the
external iliac eight times in succession
with only one failure.
Two rather amusing stories are told of Wood: once when making the vale- dictory address he said fervently, "Gen- tlemen, as you go out into the world remember the eyes of the vox populi are upon you." On another occasion, before his anatomy students, he said, holding up that stumbling block, the sphenoid bone, "Gentlemen, this is the sphenoid bone; damn the sphenoid bone."
With Drs. Parker, Payne and Mason he had much to do with the Act which granted for anatomical teaching "the bodies of all vagrants dying unclaimed."
His work also on behalf of the Bellevue
Training School for Nurses did a great
deal to systemizo this valuable science.
Death came in the hey-day of a full professional life when almost half a century had left untouched his health and skill. As an instructor he brought clinical and didactic information together in fruitful union; tradition will preserve his unsurpassed skill at the operating table, and his contributions to surgical science are permanent.
He married in 1853, Emma, daughter" of Mr. James Rowe, of New York, and had one son and two daughters besides a child who died in infancy.
His literary contributions, though not numerous were all of value, and included: "Strangulated Hernia," 1845; "Spon- taneous Dislocation of the Head of the Femur into the Ischiatic Notch During Morbus Coxarius," 1847; "Ligature of the External Iliac Artery Followed by Secondary Hemorrhage," 1856; "Phos- phorus-necrosis of the Lower Jaw," 1856; "Early History of Ligation of the Primitive Carotid," 1857.
Among his appointments one finds: professor of operative surgery and surgical pathology, Bellevue College Hospital; emeritus professor of the same; demonstrator of anatomy at Castleton Medical College; consulting surgeon, New York Academy of Medicine; twice president of the New York Pathological Society; member of the New York Acad- emy of Medicine, honorary member New York and Massachusetts State Medical Societies. D. W.
Boston Med. and Surg. Jour., 1882, vol. cvi.
Med.-Leg. Jour., N. Y., 1883-4, vol. i (port).
Med. Record, N. Y., 1882, vol. xxi.
Med. and Surg Reporter, Phila., 1884-5,
vol. xii.
N. Y. Med. Jour., 1884, vol. xxxix (F. S.
Dennis).
Wood, Thomas (1813-1880).
Thomas Wood was born in Smithfield, Jefferson County, Ohio, August 22, 1813, the son of Nathan and Margaret Wood, and the youngest of five children.
The family for three generations were
