American Medical Biographies/Dorsey, John Syng
Dorsey, John Syng (1783–1818).
John Syng Dorsey, surgeon and writer, came of an old English family—the D'Orseys—some of whom had crossed the Atlantic and settled in Maryland.
His father, Leonard Dorsey, was a successful merchant in Philadelphia, where John was born, December 23, 1783.
It is hardly necessary to say he was a bright scholar, for after receiving his classical education at the Friends Academy at the age of fifteen he began at once the study of medicine under his illustrious uncle, Philip Syng Physick, (q. v.). His entrance into the medical world was coincident with the end of the most terrible epidemic of yellow fever which had ever stricken Philadelphia, and young Dorsey, who had taken his M. D. in 1802 from the University of Pennsylvania at the age of nineteen, was appointed one of the resident physicians at the City Hospital and entered into the fight against the scourge, the suggested danger not troubling him at all, for the Academy of Medicine held the view of Dr. Deveze, who in 1799 had maintained that yellow fever was not contagious. A hundred years later the same opinion was reaffirmed, and the non-contagious nature of yellow fever established by a commission.
While thus in the very midst of the battle Dorsey improved every opportunity of studying the disease and performed numerous autopsies, making careful bedside observations.
It was extraordinary that a youth not quite twenty should display such independent thought and action in so inticate a field as medicine, but it was a result of his inherent ability and the early training and being made to carefully enter up cases. Some of these books have been kept. The composition is simple, but the descriptions clear and accurate, presaging the future author of the first important American text-book on surgery.
In November, 1803, young Dorsey sailed for Europe with the intention of spending his time in the then two great medical centers, London and Paris. In London there lived and worked John Hunter, and it was in Hunter's private dissecting room that Dorsey's uncle had long before distinguished himself as a pupil and received from his master the flattering offer of a partnership. Sir Everard Home, Hunter's brother-in-law, gave Dorsey a kindly welcome, and the student at once plunged into hard work, attending diligently Hunter's Anatomical School. With this fine mental equipment he left the following June for Paris, where, through the influence of Boyer, surgeon-in-chief of La Charité, he had permission to dissect in the "Salle de Répos," a fine name for a gruesome place, which took Dorsey's fancy at once. It is curious that he makes no mention of the great French surgeons Sabatier, Dupuytren, Pelletan and Bichet, but enters in his diary "as to French surgery, I have learned nothing from it." In 1804 he returned to Philadelphia and took consulting rooms, but for the first few years, notwithstanding help fom his uncle, his income was not at all commensurate with his abilities. The first year he took only $325.75, but in the year of his untimely death, $10,199, this being partly from pupils and the sale of this book, "The Elements of Surgery," published in 1813 and illustrated mostly by the author. This work received a wold-wide recognition, being reprinted in Edinburgh and used as a text-book in her university. "The American Surgeon," says the author, "is or ought to be strictly impartial, and therefore adopts from all nations their respective improvements."
Amid the business of his own practice and helping Dr. Physick, he found time for both music and poetry, most of his poems bearing the impress of rhythmical beauty; one penned in 1805, on "The Incomprehensibility of God," was evidently written with the greatest care. For music he had a warm liking, and was himself proficient on several instruments. Add to this his skill in drawing, his wonderful conversational powers, his genial manners and handsome figure and you have one who stands out from the foreground of the eighteenth century prominent and attractive.
The year 1807 saw him adjunct professor of surgery at Pennsylvania University, Dr. Physick requesting this in view of his own uncertain health, and the duties of the new assistant were fulfilled so thoroughly and humanely that his students loved him no less for his skill than his thought for them. That same year he married Maria, daughter of Robert Ralston, a Philadelphia merchant, and had a son and two daughters.
In 1813 Dorsey became professor of materia medica at the Pennsylvania University, a chair filled with singular ability until, in 1818, he was called to fill the chair of anatomy left vacant by the death of Dr. Wistar. Two years before he had sent to a medical journal the particulars of a case of inguinal aneurysm cured by tying the external iliac artery, the first example of the kind which had occurred in this country.
The early age of thirty-five saw Dorsey with a prospect of ease, usefulness and increasing fame before him. His own poetic mind must have conjured up a delightful life among devoted friends and admiring pupils, but while the words of a brilliant introductory address were still fresh in the minds of his hearers Dorsey was dying from an attack of typhus which developed the evening of the same day in which he delivered his lecture, November 12, 1818.
"On approaching his bed, at the head of which his mother was sitting," wrote Dr. Janeway, "Dr. Dorsey took hold of a button of my coat and thus addressed me: 'Doctor, is it not remarkable that after having delivered my introductory lecture I was praying to my God that I might not postpone my repentance to a dying bed, and in one hour after that prayer I was smitten with my disease?'"
The large room in which he lay was filled with ladies and gentlemen, Physick, Horner, Ralston and several medical students being there also. Dorsey then asked to be baptized, which was done by Dr. Janeway. His last words were: "I have a desire to live and remain with my family, but my desire to be with Christ is far greater."
Thus died a man whom a longer life might have seen equalling a Hunter or a Wistar, a man whose short life was so remarkable that it may long attract the reader of medical biographies.