Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Kinloch, Robert Alexander

KINLOCH, Robert Alexander, physician, b. in Charleston, S. C.. 20 Feb., 1826. He was graduated at Charleston college in 1845, and at the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1848, and subsequently spent nearly two years in study abroad. He has since practised in Charleston, S. C., where he became the first surgeon of the Roper hospital. He was a surgeon in the Confederate army, serving as medical director in the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, as medical inspector of hospitals, and as a member of the army examining boards in Richmond and Charleston. He has been president of the State medical association and vice-president of the American medical association, and since 1867 professor of surgery in the Medical college of South Carolina. In 1876 he was a delegate to the International medical congress. He has invented several surgical instruments and appliances, chiefly urethrotome stone pessaries. He was the first in the United States to reset the knee-joint for chronic disease. He is the first surgeon that ever performed laparotomy for gun-shot wound of the abdomen, without protrusion of viscera. He has contributed to medical periodicals, and at one time edited the “Charleston Medical Journal.”