Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/379

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

DUDLEY 5

hospital and with surgeons in private practice.

He took his first course of lectures at the Maine Medical School, where he was, for a time, demonstrator of anatomy. He graduated at Dartmouth Medical School in 1877, and immediately com- menced practice in Portland, where he remained until 1SS1, when his ambition led him to go to the Woman's Hospital in New York, where he remained as an interne for a year and a half. From there he went to San Francisco, California, as assistant surgeon in the State Woman's Hospital, returning to New York in 18S4. He was appointed instructor in diseases of women at the Post-graduate Medical School in 18S7 and visiting gynecologist to Randall's Island Hos- pital and Northeastern Dispensary, and was afterwards made full professor of gynecology and surgeon at the Post- graduate Medical School and surgeon to the Harlem Hospital.

He was also professor of diseases of women at the University of Vermont, and later professor of gynecology at Dartmouth Medical School, which position he held until death.

He wrote very many valuable papers for publication, some of them being translated for foreign medical journals. Nearly all this literary work was original investigation and a resume of his clinical teaching. Among the most important papers are " Vaginal Hysterectomy in America;" "A New Method for Res- toration of Lacerated Perineum;" "A New Method for Treating Certain Forms of Displacements." His most prominent papers were upon the "Conservative Treatment of the Uterine Appendages."

Dr. Dudley married twice. In July, '1884, to Susie Stephens, daughter of Jesse Mason, of Victoria, British Colum- bia, who died three years later of con- sumption, leaving no children. In 1891 to Cassandra Coon, daughter of W. J. Adams, of San Francisco, California, who with two daughters survived him.

He was a fellow of the American Gynecological Society, British Gyne-


1 DUDLEY

cological Society, Maine Medical Associa- tion, New York State Medical Associa- tion, New York Academy of Medicine, and the New York Obstetrical Society.

After having an examination which showed tuberculosis, he decided to go to the Swiss mountains, hoping much from the sea voyage and the altitude of Davos Platz. He sailed from New York on July 5, but died in Liverpool, England, July 15. The body was brought to Portland, Maine. S. C. G.

Trans. Am. Gynec, Soc, 1906, vol. xxxi.

Dudley, Benjamin Winslow (1785-1870).

This lithotomist and pioneer surgeon was born in Spottsylvania County six miles east of Lexington. His father, Ambrose Dudley, was captain of a company in the Revolutionary War and later became a Baptist minister.

Benjamin Dudley received such edu- cation as the ordinary schools of his day and place offered. He made no pre- tensions to either Greek or Latin. His command of French he acquired abroad. He was neither a student nor were his inclinations literary.

While very young he was placed under the tutelage of Dr. Frederick Ridgely. In this he was fortunate, and it is en- tirely reasonable for one familiar with Ridgely's life to believe that this doctor, besides furnishing him with the best early example, supplied him through his lasting influence with much of the fire that characterized his life.

In the autumn of 1804 he matriculated in the University of Pennsylvania, and among his fellow students were Daniel Drake, John Esten Cooke, and William II. Richardson, all of whom were after- wards associated with him in teaching and in practice.

At the close of his course in Phila- d( Iphia, during the spring and summer months of 1S05, he worked with Dr. James Fishback, who was both preceptor and partner of Dudley, and characterized as an eloquent, learned, though erratic divine, an able writer, a physician in good practice, an influential lawyer, and