Charles A. Wheaton / [John T. Rogers].

  • Rogers, John T.
Date:
[1923]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Charles A. Wheaton / [John T. Rogers]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1/6
    Reprint from SURGERY, GYNECOLOGY AND OBSTETRICS November, 192j, pages 699-700 CHARLES A. WHEATON By JOHN T. ROGERS, M.D., F.A.C.S., St. Paul, Minnesota DOCTOR CHARLES A. WHEATON was born in Syracuse, New York. He was one of a family of fifteen who immigrated to Minnesota. His father settled at Northfield. His education was gotten in the local schools of Northfield and from his older sisters, two of whom were teachers. He was not a college man. His father was a literary man, being an editor for many years. As a boy he was surrounded with literary people. As a consequence, his love for literature was pronounced even at an early age and continued throughout his entire life. While still young he conceived the idea of becoming a surgeon, but for financial reasons he was un¬ able at once to begin his medical education. He became a railway express mes¬ senger in order to earn enough to take him through college and while acting as such he carried in his grip Gray’s Anatomy and Yeo’s Physiology, both of which he mastered at odd hours in his work. After a few years he had accumulated sufficient funds to enable him to matriculate at Harvard Medical School. After graduating from Harvard he spent 2 years in the Massachusetts General and Boston City Hospitals, before coming to St. Paul in 1879 to practice his profession. He early allied himself with Dr. J. H. Stewart, an old practitioner, an able man and extremely popular. Through this affiance Doctor Wheaton was en¬ abled at once to plunge with enthusiasm into the practice of his chosen profession and very soon was able to cull from a large general practice surgical material of a very general character. With this material at hand he early demonstrated his great surgical ability. As a general practitioner as well as a surgeon, he was especially noted for his clinical ability and for his remarkable personality, a personality which inspired absolute confidence on the part of his patients and of his confreres. As a diagnostician he had no superior. His interpretation of clinical signs was exact to a remarkable degree and, he depended throughout his entire career more upon clinical signs than upon laboratory or other aids in diagnosis. He deplored the growing tendency of the younger men to depend too much upon laboratory and X-ray or machine-made diagnosis. He was a pioneer of the Northwest in antiseptic and aseptic surgery and stood head and shoulders above any other man of his community. 1 Published by Surgical Pub. Co., Chicago, U.S.A.