William Gibson / [John C.A Gerster].

  • Gerster, John C.A.
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: William Gibson / [John C.A Gerster]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Reprint from SURGERY, GYNECOLOGY AND OBSTETRICS January, 1931, Vol. LII, 122-124 WILLIAM GIBSON JOHN C. A. GERSTER, M.D., F.A.C.S., New York A GREAT teacher and a great surgeon was William Gibson. He was born in Baltimore, in 1788, and as his parents were well to do they were able to give him every educational advantage. As a youth he attended Annapo¬ lis College and later he entered the sophomore class at Princeton. In the winter of 1806-1807 he attended the surgical lectures of Professor Physick in Philadelphia. Like other men of attainment, he early appreciated his own latent capacity. One day after Physick’s lecture he seemed abstracted and thought¬ ful, and when questioned by his fellow students answered that he expected some time to succeed the great Physick. Thirteen years later this actually happened. When the Physick lectures were concluded, Gibson sailed for Europe and entered the University of Edinburgh. His graduation thesis in Latin, “De Forma Ossium Genitilitae,” evoked favorable comment. Soon after he visited London and became a member of the household of Sir Charles Bell, for whom he con¬ ceived a profound admiration. He considered Astley Cooper great, but Bell even greater. Indeed, one of his sons was named Charles Bell and he subse¬ quently became a distinguished surgeon. While in London, Gibson had the opportunity of seeing many of the wounded after the battle of Corunna. Some of his biographers state that receiving news of the impending battle he managed through influential friends to board a British transport and was present during the engagement. In 1810 he returned to Baltimore. In 1811 he married for the first time, and by this marriage had five children, three sons and two daughters. By a second marriage he had two more daughters. In 1812, during the riot in Baltimore, he saw a man fall from a gunshot wound in the groin. There was a profuse haemorrhage which Gibson checked by digital compression. He then immediately obtained assistance, exposed and tied the common iliac artery, found that the distal end of the torn artery also bled, and closed two holes in the intestine. The wound was then held together with adhesive plaster, but the patient succumbed to peritonitis on the fifteenth day, from intesti¬ nal leakage. The lower extremity remained viable. This was the first demonstra¬ tion of the establishment of collateral circulation of the lower extremity after ligation of the common iliac. Copyright, 1931, by Surgical Pub. Co. of Chicago j