American Medical Biographies/Turney, Samuel Denny
Turney, Samuel Denny (1824–1878).
The son of Dr. Daniel Turney and Janet Sterling Denny, he was born in Columbus, Ohio, on December 26, 1824. His father (1786–1827) had been one of the pioneers who had founded the town of Circleville, Ohio.
Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, had completed his education for the time when he went to Circleville, Ohio, to be a druggist's assistant to support his mother.
Shortly after he studied medicine with Dr. P. K. Hall, and in 1851 graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, then returned to Circleville until the Civil War began, when he was successively surgeon to the Thirteenth Ohio Volunteer Infantry; staff colonel and medical director of Van Clave's division of the Army of the Cumberland and medical director-general of the hospitals at Murfreesboro. He was very keen on the erection of blockhouses, but, as usual in war time, there was a great deal of inefficient medical aid. A medicine chest was furnished each house, but knowledge to use its contents was often lacking. Turney wrote a semi-official and amusing pamphlet to go with each chest entitled "Block-house Surgery for Block-heads."
He returned to private practice after the war and became professor of physiology and pathology in the Starling Medical College, at Columbus. After a visit to European clinics he became professor in the same college of diseases of women and children.
As an operator he was, at the beginning of an operation, somewhat nervous, but afterwards rapid and brilliant. He kept well up with the times both in work and reading, and his writings included: "History of the War of the Rebellion," "A New Principle in the Application of the Obstetric Forceps," The Use of Esmarch Bandages in Chronic Ulcers," and "Solid Food in Typhoid Fever."
Turney died after an attack of inflammation of the brain on January 18, 1878.