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- Description:
- This 6-page letter was handwritten in black ink on slightly yellowed paper by Dr. Theodore A. McGraw, M.D., who was a surgeon. The paper is printed with faint blue lines and shows the watermark, "The Richmond & Backus Co., Detroit, Mich." The text of the letter has been transcribed as follows: "On Dec. 29th 1900 in the afternoon I received a letter from Hon. Wm. C. Mayberry, Mayor of the City of Detroit asking me to write a paper on the Progress of Surgery during the century now closing. - The paper should be finished and delivered on the last day of the year. - Had I received the request earlier, I should have been glad to undertake the labor of summarizing the achievements in the surgical art and science, which have distinguished the nineteenth century and of analyzing as well as I could the influences which had led to such wonderful changes in surgical practice. I felt, however, that a hastily written article on a subject so vast and of so much importance would convey a mean impression to our descendants, of our culture and I wrote to Mr. Mayberry, declining the commission on those grounds. - He, however, insisted upon having this department of science represented and I accordingly consented to write a short article on the subject. The growth of the surgical art and science during the last hundred years has been due to many complex causes which can hardly be enumerated here. - It has felt the impulse which was communicated to all branches of learning by the great awakening of the human mind at the time of the French revolution. - There is no science which it has not laid under contribution for its own purposes and its history therefore if carried out fully, would embrace that of all sciences and arts. - Abstaining however from a discussion, which would be endless, I will only mention a few of the many important discoveries which have had a powerful influence in changing the habits of surgical thought and practice. First of all, I must note the increasing tendency manifest even in the early part of this century to determine disputed points by an appeal to experiment. Surgical experiments have to be conducted on the lower animals and excepting anaesthesia, there is hardly a great discovery in surgery closing the last century which has not been led up to by vivisection. - Before the year 1805 the profession had been in a sad state of uncertainty regarding the proper method of ligating arteries. Every surgeon approached a large operation with a dread of the secondary hemorrhages which destroyed so many lives. - Even John Hunter, when he performed the famous operation, of tying the femoral artery for aneurism, tied the artery with a tape and inserted another tape under the artery higher up, to be tied in case of secondary hemorrhage. - Jones, an English surgeon, operated on a number of dogs and studied carefully the changes produced in their arteries by different methods of ligature and published his results in 1805. It is not so much to say that this book revolutionized the surgery of the day, for it taught surgeons, what they did not know before, exactly how an artery should be tied and thus enabled them to operate with the certainty, that their patients would for the most part escape secondary hemorrhages. The second great even in surgery was the discovery of anaesthesia. - The influence of this discovery on operative surgery is almost incalculable. Before the day of anaesthesia, no surgical operation was undertaken which was not absolutely necessary and the surgeon was obliged to operate with extreme rapidity. - After anaesthetics were introduced, patients submitted themselves to the knife for lesser troubles and the surgeon, no longer urged to rapid action, became more careful and considerate. - I need not dwell on a matter which every one fully understands. The third great change in surgery was that due to the labors of Pasteur, Lyster, and others, with reference to the nature of fermentative and suppurative processes. - The causes of sepsis were shown to be the microscopic cells, which swarm, wherever life exists, in mild climates and low altitudes. Surgery on the internal organs became possible when surgeons were enabled to shut out these organisms from the great cavities of the body. This knowledge gave an enormous impulse to operative surgery, but only we who practiced surgery before the days of Lyster can realize the differences in modes of thought and practice, which have followed his teachings. - The three events which I have noticed seem to me to stand predominantly above all others as the controlling influences which have determined the development of surgical art and science in the nineteenth century. - What can be done in the twentieth century to equal these achievements of the nineteenth. - Will it be possible for the scientist to discover the nature of cancer and sarcoma? Or to hasten the disappearance from the human body of that useless and dangerous organ the appendix? Operative surgery would seem to have nearly reached its limits. Will there arise a prophylactic surgery which will eradicate the germs of disease before they have time to develop? What will the surgeon, who on the final day of the twentieth century, shall open this paper think of our theories and practice? Will he also give chloroform and aethis for anaesthesia? Will he also extirpate uterus and ovaries? Will he too, seek a quick solution of all morbid phenomena by the use of a knife - Will he too use the elastic ligature, my own invention, for the performance of gastro-enterostomy? To you, my brother, yet unborn this paper will bring you greeting from one long since dead. - Theodore A. McGraw M.D. Detroit Dec. 31st 1900"
- Date Issued:
- 1900-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Detroit Historical Society
- Collection:
- Detroit Anniversaries
- Description:
- 16 page, stitch-bound booklet written by T.A. McGraw, and read before the American Medical Association on June 8, 1887, as noted on the front cover, detailing surgeries on the abdomen as treatments for stab, gunshot, and other puncture wounds.
- Date Issued:
- 1887-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Detroit Historical Society
- Collection:
- Medical/Dental/Pharmaceutical
- Description:
- Dr. Albert Sparrow, MD, talks about being the first fully trained pediatric cardiologist in the state, when he came to the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development in the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University. Sparrow discusses his pioneering research during a period of tremendous progress in heart surgery, treating infants and children and developing procedures to manage small patients. Sparrow says that many ground breaking open heart surgical techniques for infants came from overseas where ethical and legal considerations allowed for more human subject experimentation. He also talks about his mentors at MSU, the great freedom he was given by the college to develop his skills and comments on the move of the MSU College of Medicine to Grand Rapids, MI. Part of the Michigan State University Faculty Emeriti Association Oral History Project.
- Date Issued:
- 2011-06-21T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection
- Description:
- This small collection contains personal memorabilia, writings, correspondence, and a scrapbook from Dr. William C. Behen (1890-1971). Behen was born in Dover, Delaware, and attended the University of Delaware and medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. He was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the U. S. Army Medical Corps in 1917 and served as a medic on the front lines in the 106th infantry, 27th division. After the war he stayed on with the Red Cross. He received honors from Serbia for work done there in 1919-1920, and from Poland in 1920 for work done on the front during the Bolshevik Drive. He received his medical license and set up practice in Lansing in 1924. His speciality was ear, nose, and throat. At some point he purchased the home at 535 South Capitol Avenue and located his practice there as well. During his years in practice he traveled frequently for training and education, as well as to perform service work through a number of international charity organizations. The collection includes documentation of his efforts in Spain, Israel, India, Pakistan, and more, as well as photographs from personal travels. He also ran for Ingham County Coroner (1934) and state senate (date unknown). Although his obituary mentions a wife, Rose Lucille (1903-1972), who was living in Florida at the time of his death, this collection contains no material pertaining to her or their relationship. She was born Rose Lucille Megerle, and they married in 1940. They had no children. This collection appears to have been an estate sale purchase by David Caterino, who then left the collection to the Capital Area District Libraries.
- Date Created:
- [1917 TO 1979]
- Data Provider:
- Capital Area District Library (Lansing, MI). Forest Parke Library and Archives
- Collection:
- William C. Behen Collection
- Description:
- This 6-page letter was handwritten in black ink on slightly yellowed paper by Dr. Theodore A. McGraw, M.D., who was a surgeon. The paper is printed with faint blue lines and shows the watermark, "The Richmond & Backus Co., Detroit, Mich." The text of the letter has been transcribed as follows: "On Dec. 29th 1900 in the afternoon I received a letter from Hon. Wm. C. Mayberry, Mayor of the City of Detroit asking me to write a paper on the Progress of Surgery during the century now closing. - The paper should be finished and delivered on the last day of the year. - Had I received the request earlier, I should have been glad to undertake the labor of summarizing the achievements in the surgical art and science, which have distinguished the nineteenth century and of analyzing as well as I could the influences which had led to such wonderful changes in surgical practice. I felt, however, that a hastily written article on a subject so vast and of so much importance would convey a mean impression to our descendants, of our culture and I wrote to Mr. Mayberry, declining the commission on those grounds. - He, however, insisted upon having this department of science represented and I accordingly consented to write a short article on the subject. The growth of the surgical art and science during the last hundred years has been due to many complex causes which can hardly be enumerated here. - It has felt the impulse which was communicated to all branches of learning by the great awakening of the human mind at the time of the French revolution. - There is no science which it has not laid under contribution for its own purposes and its history therefore if carried out fully, would embrace that of all sciences and arts. - Abstaining however from a discussion, which would be endless, I will only mention a few of the many important discoveries which have had a powerful influence in changing the habits of surgical thought and practice. First of all, I must note the increasing tendency manifest even in the early part of this century to determine disputed points by an appeal to experiment. Surgical experiments have to be conducted on the lower animals and excepting anaesthesia, there is hardly a great discovery in surgery closing the last century which has not been led up to by vivisection. - Before the year 1805 the profession had been in a sad state of uncertainty regarding the proper method of ligating arteries. Every surgeon approached a large operation with a dread of the secondary hemorrhages which destroyed so many lives. - Even John Hunter, when he performed the famous operation, of tying the femoral artery for aneurism, tied the artery with a tape and inserted another tape under the artery higher up, to be tied in case of secondary hemorrhage. - Jones, an English surgeon, operated on a number of dogs and studied carefully the changes produced in their arteries by different methods of ligature and published his results in 1805. It is not so much to say that this book revolutionized the surgery of the day, for it taught surgeons, what they did not know before, exactly how an artery should be tied and thus enabled them to operate with the certainty, that their patients would for the most part escape secondary hemorrhages. The second great even in surgery was the discovery of anaesthesia. - The influence of this discovery on operative surgery is almost incalculable. Before the day of anaesthesia, no surgical operation was undertaken which was not absolutely necessary and the surgeon was obliged to operate with extreme rapidity. - After anaesthetics were introduced, patients submitted themselves to the knife for lesser troubles and the surgeon, no longer urged to rapid action, became more careful and considerate. - I need not dwell on a matter which every one fully understands. The third great change in surgery was that due to the labors of Pasteur, Lyster, and others, with reference to the nature of fermentative and suppurative processes. - The causes of sepsis were shown to be the microscopic cells, which swarm, wherever life exists, in mild climates and low altitudes. Surgery on the internal organs became possible when surgeons were enabled to shut out these organisms from the great cavities of the body. This knowledge gave an enormous impulse to operative surgery, but only we who practiced surgery before the days of Lyster can realize the differences in modes of thought and practice, which have followed his teachings. - The three events which I have noticed seem to me to stand predominantly above all others as the controlling influences which have determined the development of surgical art and science in the nineteenth century. - What can be done in the twentieth century to equal these achievements of the nineteenth. - Will it be possible for the scientist to discover the nature of cancer and sarcoma? Or to hasten the disappearance from the human body of that useless and dangerous organ the appendix? Operative surgery would seem to have nearly reached its limits. Will there arise a prophylactic surgery which will eradicate the germs of disease before they have time to develop? What will the surgeon, who on the final day of the twentieth century, shall open this paper think of our theories and practice? Will he also give chloroform and aethis for anaesthesia? Will he also extirpate uterus and ovaries? Will he too, seek a quick solution of all morbid phenomena by the use of a knife - Will he too use the elastic ligature, my own invention, for the performance of gastro-enterostomy? To you, my brother, yet unborn this paper will bring you greeting from one long since dead. - Theodore A. McGraw M.D. Detroit Dec. 31st 1900"
- Date Issued:
- 1900-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Detroit Historical Society
- Description:
- 16 page, stitch-bound booklet written by T.A. McGraw, and read before the American Medical Association on June 8, 1887, as noted on the front cover, detailing surgeries on the abdomen as treatments for stab, gunshot, and other puncture wounds.
- Date Issued:
- 1887-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Detroit Historical Society
- Notes:
- Two German doctors and a nurse pose with two wounded prisoners in the operating room at Darmstadt. The Germans maintained a state-of-the-art operating facility in the hospital of this camp. Six Catholic Sisters served the Allied prisoners during their period of recuperation from wounds or illness.
- Date Created:
- 1915-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Western Michigan University. Libraries
- Notes:
- British doctors operate on a wounded soldier in the operating theater at Kut-al-Amara during the siege. Indian soldiers at the left wait for medical attention.
- Date Created:
- 1916-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Western Michigan University. Libraries
- Description:
- Dr. Albert Sparrow, MD, talks about being the first fully trained pediatric cardiologist in the state, when he came to the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development in the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University. Sparrow discusses his pioneering research during a period of tremendous progress in heart surgery, treating infants and children and developing procedures to manage small patients. Sparrow says that many ground breaking open heart surgical techniques for infants came from overseas where ethical and legal considerations allowed for more human subject experimentation. He also talks about his mentors at MSU, the great freedom he was given by the college to develop his skills and comments on the move of the MSU College of Medicine to Grand Rapids, MI. Part of the Michigan State University Faculty Emeriti Association Oral History Project.
- Date Issued:
- 2011-06-21T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection
10. Interview of retired Lieutenant Colonel Jean Schiffman on her career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps
- Description:
- Retired Lieutenant Colonel Jean Schiffman talks about her career in the Army Nurse Corp beginning in 1949 and her service in a MASH unit during the Korean War. Schiffman says she grew up in Philadelphia, worked as an RN before enlisting in the Army and took basic training at Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco, and advanced training at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. In Korea, Schiffman says that she served with the 8063 Mobile Army Surgical Hospital and talks about "in-country" living conditions, her duties and the advance medical procedures hospital staff were able to perform under very primitive conditons. After her one year tour of duty in Korea, she says that she decided to stay in the Army and was stationed at bases and hospitals in the U.S., Germany and Japan and that she finally retired in 1970 while serving at Fort Benning in Georgia. Schiffman is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart assisted by Carol A. Habgood.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-01-14T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project