The Midwest pioneer, his ills, cures, & doctors - University Library ...

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the patient had carried it since 1864, "probably the first
operation ever reported for suture of a heart wound." Dr.
John S. Bobbs of IndianapoKs in 1867 pioneered in cholecystotomy
(opening gall bladder for removal of stone ).^*'
The Lexington Intelligencer, December 9, 1836, considered
Dr. Benjamin Winslow Dudley, of the Transylvania
Medical College, the first surgeon in the West to remove a
cataract from the eye. During his long surgical career he
was said to have made over two hundred lithotomies (cutting
for stone in the bladder) with only four per cent mortality;
more than one hundred of these were done before
a single death was recorded. The Kentucky Gazette for
April 11, 1827, reported three lithotomies performed by
him in one day. Dr. Dudley also successfully ligated the
subclavian artery for axillary aneurysm (soft tumor, containing
blood, arising from diseased arterial coats) in 1825,
and the common carotid for an intracranial aneurysm in
1841. In 1828 he published a report of five successful cases
in which he had trephined the skull for the relief of epilepsy
due to pressure on the brain. He was probably the first
surgeon in the United States to perform this operation.
Dr. Dudley was among the first doctors of the Middle West
to discard the lancet; the stress which he laid upon the use
of boiled or boiling water in surgery at that early time is
worthy of comment. He emphasized preparatory treatment,
to which he was more inclined to attribute his success
than to his superior skill.^^
In the twenty-year period following 1835 records of one
county of Indiana showed fourteen operations for strangulated
hernia, four lithotomies, one ovariotomy (sixty-one
pounds), one ligature of the common carotid, and diagnosis
of four vesico-vaginal fistulas. Between October 28, 1847,
and February 2, 1848, Dr. Daniel Brainard, of the Rush
Medical College of Chicago, performed forty-nine opera-
A Dr. H. A. Russell, who settled on the Kankakee
tions.
River in 1832, made the first capital surgical operation in
that locality when he operated on a two and one-half year
old boy for an inguinal hernia; the child was given "a suit-