Fellows of the Association: In the endeavor to chronicle the lives andachievements of Kentucky Pioneers in Surgery, I shall not attempt theresurrection of village Hampdens or mute inglorious Miltons. The menwith whom I deal were men of deeds, not men of fruitless promise.
It may with truth be said that from Hippocrates to Gross few in ourprofession who have done enduring work have lacked biographers to payliberal tribute to their worth. In justice to the unremembered few, Iturn back the records of medicine for a century, and put my finger upontwo names that in the bustling march of science have been overlooked,while I try to set in fuller light two other names of workers in thatday, which have and will hold an exalted place in history. The worthiesto whom these names belong were pioneers in civilization as well as insurgery. I shall introduce them in the order of their work.
1806. The earliest original surgical work of any magnitude done in[Pg 4]Kentucky, by one of her own sons, was an amputation at the hip-joint.It proved to be the first operation of the kind in the United States.The undertaking was made necessary because of extensive fracture of thethigh with great laceration of the soft parts. The subject was a mulattoboy, seventeen years of age, a slave of the monks of St. Joseph'sCollege. The time was August, 1806; the place, Bardstown; the surgeon,Dr. Walter Brashear; the assistants, Dr. Burr Harrison and Dr. JohnGoodtell; the result, a complete success. The operator divided his workinto two stages. The first consisted in amputating the thigh through itsmiddle third in the usual way, and in tying all bleeding vessels. Thesecond consisted of a long incision on the outside of the limb, exposingthe remainder of the bone, which, being freed from its muscularattachments, was then disarticulated at its socket.
Far-seeing as the eye of the frontiersman was, he could not havediscerned that the procedure by which he executed the most formidableoperation in surgery came so near perfection that it would successfullychallenge improvement for more than fourscore years.
Hundreds of hips have since been amputated after some forty differentmethods; but that which he introduced has passed into general use, and(though now known under the name of Furneaux Jordan's) remains the[Pg 5]simplest, the least dangerous, the best.
The first genuine hip-joint amputation executed on living parts was doneby Kerr, of Northampton, England, 1774. The first done for shot woundswas by Larrey, in 1793. I feel safe in saying that Brashear had noknowledge of either of these operations. He therefore set about his workwithout help from precedent, placing his trust in himself, in theclearness of his own head, in the skill of his own hands, in the courageof his own heart. The result shows that he had not overestimated whatwas in him. But whether or not Brashe