Some American medical botanists / Howard A. Kelly.

  • Kelly, Howard A. (Howard Atwood), 1858-1943.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Some American medical botanists / Howard A. Kelly. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    was ending. After a short confinement of three weeks to the house, but suffering no pain, Adam Kuhn passed, away on July 5, 1817, in full serenity of mind and heart, leaving behind him a friend and fellow-worker in natural science named Caspar Wistar. Wistaria, the beautiful flowering vine, is known, of couf^e, to all: “Wistar parties’’ to most of us, so it comes to pass that the memory of one of our great sur- geons is conserved in two emblems of festivity rather than, as he perhaps imagined, in his original observa- tion and “Description of the Posterior Portion of the Ethmoid bone with the Triangular Bones Attached.” (Thaeher.) His grandfather, Caspar Wistar, a German, came to Philadelphia in 1717, and Dr. Wistar was l)orn there in 1761. He had the advantage as a medical student of sitting under Morgan, Shippen, Push and Kuhn, after wliich, like most men of his day, he went to Europe, taking his M.D. at Edinburgh University. His inaugu- ral thesis, “De Animo Demisso,” was dedicated to Franklin and Cullen. He studied under Cullen and, rare honor for a youthful stranger, was twice president of the Eoyal Medical Society of Edinburgh. On his return to Philadelphia after three years, he was associated with Dr. John Jones, author of the first work on surgery which appeared in America, who was delighted with Wistar’s surgical skill. Wistar became professor of chemistry and physiology in the College of Philadelphia, and held other appointments, among them the adjunct professorship of anatomy and surgery with William Shippen. He wrote “A System of Anatomy” for his students, and spared no pains in securing models for his class. His. memory has been perpetuated in the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in West Phil- adelphia. The work of the Historical and Literary Committee of the American Philosophical Society aroused his keenest interest and he did much to stimu- late the society to collect the fleeting materials of Amer- ican history. He kept up a delightful correspondence with Correa da Serra, the botanist who named the wis- taria and was a frequent guest at Wistar’s house. Wis- tar also kept in touch with .Humboldt, Soemmering, Camper, Michaux, Marshall and various English scien- tists. When Humphrey Marshall, the great botanist, was 71, young Wistar ])erformed on him the o]3eration of