NEWSLETTER - Columbia University Department of Surgery

ter the birth of their twin sons in 1938, just 4 years after they were
married, leaving Jerome with their first born daughter and two baby
boys. Within a year he had engaged trustworthy caretakers and servants
to allow him to work long hours at the hospital and return
to his civic and social activities. Geraldine Webster had studied the
Montessori Method herself and engaged a nursery school teacher for
her two-year old daughter that evolved into a Montessori nursery
school for all three children and those of Webster’s P&S colleagues
and friends. He had sufficient confidence in his “home staff” to accept
the nights away, inherent in his accepting Trustee appointments
at both Trinity College and the Holderness school, and continuing
in both positions until 1960.
He entertained frequently and from about 1943 to 1957, hosted
an annual June “Holderness Frolic,” bringing current Holderness
students and alumni together at his Riverdale home, overlooking
the Hudson. The boys were 12 when Jerome married Emily Brune
Randall in 1951. She proved to be a good companion for him but
integrating into a family accustomed to relating to servants and an
often away father was not an easy process for all participants.
Webster Family’s 1958 Christmas Card: front row, Jerome, Emily, and Hartley
Webster; rear row, Dine and Bob Dellenback and Jay (JP Jr.) Webster (The
Chesapeake Bay Retrievers are L→R, littermates Taffy and Fudge and their
offspring, “Pupnik,” whose birth coincided with Sputnik’s Oct 4, 1957 launch.)
Webster gave the commencement address to Jay and Hartley
Webster’s Holderness Class of 1957, which exhibits humility and
begins and ends with an allusion to the teachings of his church.
On such a perfect day as this, I like to think of the second
verse of the 29th Psalm and wish to change it from “Worship
the Lord in the beauty of holiness” to “in the beauty of
Holderness…it was my home for 30 years as son of its headmaster,
my school for six years… for many years I have been
a Trustee, and for four years I have been a parent of two of
its students… Thank you Mr. [Headmaster]… for the opportunity
to express my sentiments in this, my maiden commencement
address.
Now let me [conclude] with the words of a man who
spent five years in prison, often in chains, 1900 years ago:
“And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and
more in knowledge and in all judgment.” (Philippians I:9…)
Emily died in 1965. Webster’s sister, Bobbie, who favored her
second given name as an adult, outside of the family, married William
Starr and became a noted miniaturist as Lorraine Starr, sug-
John Jones Surgical Society Volume 13, Number 2 Winter 2010
gesting a family trait for fine motor skills. Lorraine died in 1966
from complications following multiple fractures and a closed head
injury, sustained as a right front seat passenger in an automobile
crash. Harold Webster always remained in the Plymouth NH area
and passed away in 1968.
The Webster Library of Plastic Surgery
An upperclassman at the Johns Hopkins medical school (the
snake in the Library’s Genesis) offered to give Webster an entire
medical library which was a legacy from his wealthy physician father.
Webster declined the offer, given the difficulties and expense
of storing the collection for six or seven years during “the pursuit of
Medicine,” and after being told by the potential donor that only the
latest books were of value. Ruminative regretting over those missed
“gems and incunabula † ” and the personage of 16th century Gaspare
Tagliacozzi afflicted Webster with a bibliomania that produced the
world’s most comprehensive plastic surgery library.
In 1929, Elizabeth Schramm, the Medical Center’s assistant
medical librarian, (and the Eve in this story) introduced Webster to
the “pleasurable but pocket-emptying delights of book catalogue perusal.”
She directed his attention in particular to “an enticing item”
for sale – a first folio edition of Gaspare Tagliacozzi’s 1597 classic, De
Curtorum Chirurgia per Insitionem (The Surgery of Deformities by
Transplantation), the first book published on plastic surgery (Fig. 7).
The price was 50 pounds ($250), a substantial sum at the time, and he
happily paid it. 19 Webster’s library would eventually hold seven copies
of this 1597 printing, two copies of the extremely rare pirated edition
of the same year, and three of the Frankfurt third edition of 1598.
“The possession of a copy of this early monument in the specialty
whetted not only my interest in the history of the subject, but
also my desire to learn all I could about the life of this pioneer.” This
provoked multiple transatlantic crossings and searching libraries in
Copenhagen, Berlin, Leipzig, Bologna, Paris, and London for information
about Tagliacozzi and early reconstructive and tissue transferring
procedures. Webster was in Europe in 1931 when he discovered
a description of the earliest known methods for transferring
full thickness flaps from one lip to the other. He also had a chance to
chat with P&S alumnus William H. Welch, who was nearing the end
of his reign as the most influential physician in America. 20 Welch
was collecting books for a new Hopkins library named in his honor.
On his next trip in 1932, Berlin bookseller, Oscar Rothacker was offering
the combined libraries of two recently deceased plastic surgeons,
comprising thousands of books and theses relating at least in
part to plastic surgery. Rothacker’s asking price was astronomical,
and another bidder was involved, so Webster cabled Whipple for an
advance from the Plastic Surgery Fund and sealed the deal.
The Rothacker purchase filled two of the three rooms beneath
the McCosh surgical amphitheater. 21 Webster found that it included
two extremely rare volumes in mint condition – Argellata’s Chirurgia,
1497, and Nicolaus Falcutius’ Sermones medicinales, 1490-91. He
also spotted an 1863 bibliography compiled by Eduard Zeis, entitled
Die Literature und Geschichte der Plastischen Chirurgie (The literature
and history of Plastic Surgery), which launched another search
to obtain all of its listings.
When Webster died in 1974, his library held more than 5,500
books dating from 1490 into the 20th century, several thousand
medical school dissertations, and at least 29,000 reprints. Besides
the seven copies of De Curtorum Chirurgia, the library includes
books by or about Tagliacozzi’s colleagues; histories of Bologna and
†Books published before 1501 or early artifacts The American Heritage College Dictionary, 3rd edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1992
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