American Medical Biographies/Andrews, Edmund
Andrews, Edmund (1824–1904)
Edmund Andrews, physician, was one of the founders of the Chicago Academy of Sciences and also of the Northwestern University Medical School. In Mercy Hospital, the institution in which he and his two sons did so much earnest and conscientious surgical work, he suddenly passed away on the twenty-second day of January, 1904. Edmund Andrews had been engaged in surgical work in Chicago for forty-eight years. He was born in Putney, Vermont, of sturdy New England stock, on April 22, 1821. Removing in 1840 to Detroit, Michigan, he completed his literary studies in the University of Michigan, graduating in 1849. Three years later he finished his medical course in the University of Michigan and went to Chicago. In 1855 he became a professor at Rush Medical College, which then maintained a course of two years. Dissatisfied with this brief course, he severed his connections with Rush, and with Dr. Hosmer Johnson, N. S. Davis, W. H. Byford, Titus Delville, Ralph Isham and Dr. Rutter established the Lind University Medical School, which eventually became the medical school of the Northwestern University where for forty-six years Dr. Andrews was professor of surgery. At the beginning of the Civil War he was appointed surgical chief at Camp Douglas, and later, becoming surgeon to the First Regiment of light artillery, he served in Tennessee and Mississippi. In 1854 he founded the Chicago Academy of Sciences. During his long career Dr. Andrews gave to the medical profession a number of valuable surgical instruments and devices and contributed liberally to the current medical literature, chiefly on statistical, orthopedic and operative surgery.
He married in April, 1853, Eliza, daughter of N. T. Taylor of Detroit, and had five children, two of whom, E. Wyllys and Frank Taylor, worked with their father.