Henry B. Sands / [Charles North Dowd].

  • Dowd, Charles North, 1858-1931.
Date:
[1924]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Henry B. Sands / [Charles North Dowd]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ROY MOODIE collection. Reprint from SURGERY, GYNECOLOGY AND OBSTETRICS September, 1924, pages 366-368 HENRY B. SANDS By CHARLES N. DOWD, M.D., F.A.C.S., New York DR. HENRY B. SANDS, a native of New York City, whose life span extended from 1830 to 1888, occupied a pre-eminent place in American Surgery during an epoch of wonderful surgical development; and he added much to surgical progress in this remarkable period. He was educated in the schools of his city and was graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1854, served his interneship in Bellevue Hospital and then studied in Europe according to the custom of his time. For ten years he was a member of the eminent group of men whom Dr. Willard Parker gathered about him. He was demonstrator of anatomy in the College of Physicians and Surgeons from 1854 to 1867, professor of anatomy from 1867 to 1879, and professor of surgery from 1879 to 1888. He was visiting surgeon to many hospitals, Bellevue, Charity, Mt. Sinai, St. Luke’s, the New York Hospital, and the Roosevelt Hos¬ pital. He appreciated the disadvantages of the short terms of hospital service then in vogue, and finally obtained a continuous active service of more than 75 beds at the Roosevelt Hospital. This was a notable service, one of the very best in the country. He gathered about him a particularly capable group of associates and assistants and main¬ tained a model hospital organization. William H. Halsted, Frank Hartley, Richard Hall, and George Woolsey were among the surgeons whom he trained during this period. Many visitors came to his clinic. I well remember hearing Dr. William J. Mayo tell of going into the ward with Dr. Sands to see him aspirate an appendiceal abscess—a procedure which made a profound impression on Dr. Mayo and led him to treat radically similar conditions after his return home. As a consultant, his judicial attitude, his great experience, his courage, his fairness and wisdom, and his warm and appreciative nature made him the leading surgical authority of our city for many years. In this capacity, Dr. Arpad Gerster states in his delightful memoirs that “he was a man according to my own heart” and that he never knew a man “who had more of what is called the courage of convictions.” As a surgical investigator and writer he considered many and diverse problems: haemorrhage from the internal carotid artery, aneurism of the subclavian artery, 1 Published by Surgical Pub. Co., Chicago, U.S A.