LUZENBKHC.
116
LYNAH
tioii the boy IkuI hojiuii in Landau
aud Weissembcrg. Attendinj!; the lec-
tures and operations of Dr. Physick
brought out still more young Luzen-
berg's svu'gioal genius, and when he
went to New Orleans in 1829, bearing
a letter to Dr. David C. Ker of the
Charity Hospital, that doctor, after
seeing his skill, soon had him elected
house-surgeon.
A paper which appeared in the tenth volume of the " American Journal of the Medical Sciences" and the "R6vue Mcdicale" for 1832 proves that if Luzenberg did not first bring into notice what was then a new idea, that is, of excluding light in various variolous disorders to avoid pox marks, he at all events revived it.
Two whole years, 1832-4, were spent studj-ing in European clinics, particu- larly under Dupuytren, and on his return to New Orleans, full of zeal and schemes for improving surgical and medical procedure, he built the Franklin Infirmary, now the Luzen- berg Hospital and there did operations which brought patients from afar to get the benefit of his skill. Among such operations was the extirpation of a much enlarged cancerous parotid gland from an elderly man. This case, reported in the "Gazette Medicale de Paris," 1835, brought a commenda- tion with a resolution of thanks to the author and enrollment as corresponding member of the Academie de Medicine. Soon after, he excised six inches of mortified ileum in a case of strangu- lated hernia. The patient was put on opium treatment and in thirty-five days the stitches came away and he entirely recovered. One other operation he took special interest in doing was couching for cataract and in this he had brilliant results.
When Luzenberg had his hospital on a permanent basis his next idea was a Medical School. Being influential, and also friends with the state gover- nor, this project, with the help of his medical confreres, was soon embodied
in the Medical College of Louisiana
with himself as dean, and, ad interim,
professor of surgery and anatomy. In
1S39 he founded the Society of Natural
History and the Sciences and to it
bequeathed a rich collection of speci-
mens. When the Louisiana Medico-
Chirurgical Society was legally incor-
porated he was, because of his help in
forming it, cho.sen first president. It
held brilliant meetings at which the
French and English physicians of the
state met to exchange views, and it
was undoubtedly the spirit of these
meetings that caused a college build-
ing to be erected for the Medical School,
and that started the "New Orleans Med-
ical and Sui'gical Journal."
One thing he had in hand was never finished — at his death piles of manu- script and a fine collection of litera- ture, old and new, on yellow fever, showed that his contemplated work on the cause and cure of the disease would have been a monument of care- ful research. The manuscript was in Latin.
A too active life caused premoni- tions of failing health to go unheeded but in the spring of 1848 actual pain in the precordial region with paroxysms of palpitation and dyspnea totally incapacitated him from work. A thor- ough change to Virginia was planned but at Cincinnati he could go no further and died there on the fifteenth of July, 1848.
D. W.
Lives of Eminent Amer. Phys. and Siirgs., S. D. Gross.
Biographies of Eminent Phys. and Surgs. , K. F. Stflne.
Lynah, James (1725-1809).
James Lynah, surgeon, was born at Dublin, Ireland, in 1725, where he re- ceived both his collegiate and profes- sional education. After graduating in medicine he entered the British Naval Service, and received a surgeon's com- mission. Rescued from shipwreck in the West Indies, he was taken to Kings-
