Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/760

MC DOWELL 738 MC DOWELL first secured. The establishment was opened in June, 1841. In 1842 he was tendered the appointment as superintendent of the New York State Lunatic Asylum, which he de- clined. In the winter of 1845 the brothers purchased the mansion of the late Chancellor Sanford. at Flushing, one of the most costly and substantial country houses in America. To this place, which they named Sanford Hall, they removed their establishment. His only published works are: an essay on the construction and management of insane hospitals ; a review of considerations upon the insane, by G. Ferrus, Philadelphia Medical Journal, 1837 ; statistics of the Bloomingdale Asylum ; letter to the trustees of the New York State Lunatic Asylum, New York State Lunacy Report, 1842; a dissertation on puer- peral insanity. Journal of Insanity, 1848; and several reports on the condition of Black- well's Island Lunatic Asylum. He died suddenly of pneumonia, May S, 1849. Institutional Care of the Insane in the U. S. and Canada, Henry M. Hurd, 1917. McDowell, Ephraim (1771-1830) Ephraim McDowell, "Father of Ovari- otomy," was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, on the eleventh of November, 1771. His ancestors removed from Scotland to the valley of Virginia in 1737. His mother was Sarah McClung and McDowell's father was prominent in political life in Virginia, a member of the Legislature of that state, and in 1782 came as a land commissioner to Ken- tucky (then a portion of Virginia), and soon after removed his family to Danville. Ephraim McDowell went as a boy to a school at Georgetown. Kentucky, then to Staunton, Virginia, to study with Dr. Hum- phreys, and in 1793 to Scotland to attend lec- tures at the University of Edinburgh. He remained in Edinburgh during the session of 1793-94, but did not receive his M. D. As far as we know, this degree was not conferred upon him until 1832, when, entirely unsolicited on his part, the University of Maryland gave him her honorary M. D. The Medical So- ciety of Philadelphia, at that time the most distinguished of the kind in this country, sent him its diploma in 1807, two years before he performed his first ovariotomy. While taking the course at Edinburgh Uni- versity, McDowell attended the private in- structions of John Bell, the most able and eloquent of the Scottish surgeons of his day. That portion of Bell's course in which he lectured upon the diseases of the ovaries and depicted the hopeless fate to which their vic- tims were condemned, made a powerful im- pression upon his auditor. Indeed, McDowell afterwards stated that the principles and sug- gestions at this time enunciated by his master impelled him sixteen years afterwards to at- tempt what was considered an impossibility. In 1795 McDowell returned to his home in Danville, then a small village in the western wilderness, and entered upon the practice of his profession. Being a man of classical edu- cation, coming from the moSt famous medical school of the world, he easily gained the first professional position in his locality, and within a few years became known throughout all the western and southern states as the best sur- geon in his entire section of the country. Dur- ing this time his practice extended in every direction, persons coming to him from all the neighboring states, and he frequently made long journeys on horseback to operate upon persons whose conditions would not permit them to visit him at his home. As far as known, he was in the habit of performing every surgical operation then practised. In lithotomy he was especially successful, and was known to have operated, up to 1828, twenty-two times without a single death. He operated many times for strangulated hernia, and did successfully various amputations and other operations, including tracheotomy. In 1809, fourteen years after he began prac- tice, he was sent for to see a Mrs. Crawford, living in Green County, Kentucky, some sixty miles from Danville. McDowell found her to be afflicted with an ovarian tumor, which was rapidly growing and hastening to a fatal termination. In the language of Prof. Gross: "After a most thorough and critical examina- tion. Dr. McDowell informed his patient, a woman of unusual courage and strength of mind, that the only chance for relief was the excision of the diseased mass. He explained to her, with great clearness and fidelity, the nature and hazard of the operation; he told her that he had never performed it, but that he was ready, if she were willing, to undertake it, and risk his reputation upon the issue, adding that it was an experiment, but an experiment well worthy of trial." At the close of the interview Mrs. Crawford declared that any mode of death, suicide excepted, was preferable to the slow death which she was undergoing, and that she would submit to any operation which held out even a remote pros- pect of relief. Mrs. Crawford was forty-seven at the time of the operation, and died on March 30, 1841, aged seventy-eight years. It was not until seven years afterwards, and when he had twice repeated the operation, that