McCOSH
125
McCREERY
The collection of portraits in the
Library of the Surgeon-general contains
one of Dr. McClurg. R. M. S.
Virginia Med. and Surg. Jour., vol. ii., 18.54 (port.).
McCosh, Andrew J. (1858-1908).
Bora in Belfast, Ireland, in 1858, Andrew J. McCo.sh was the son of the Reverend Dr. James McCosh, who came from a professorship in Queens College to be president of Princeton College, now Princeton University.
Although only fifty years old, he was one of the leading surgeons of this country, and, in spite of active practice, had contributed much to the advancement of his profession along the modern lines of scientific research. For twenty years he had been surgeon to the Presbyterian Hospital, and his specialty in his own practice was ap- pendicitis.
He graduated from Princeton in 1877, took the master's degree in 1878, re- ceived his degree of doctor of medicine from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1880, and then had a two-year post-graduate course in med- icine at the University of Vienna. He began practice in New York in 1883. In 1905 Columbia University conferred upon him the degree of LL. D., and Pi'inceton paid him a simi- lar honor a year later.
Dr. McCosh was professor of chnical surgery in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, and a fellow of the American Surgical Association.
Books written by Dr. McCosh, many of which were translated into foreign lan- guages, included " Appendicitis in Child- ren," "Iodoform Poisoning," "Observa- tions on the Results in 125 Cases of Sar- coma," "Remarks on Spinal Surgery," "Four Cases of Brain Surgery," "The Treatment of General Peritonitis," and ' 'Surgical Intervention in Benign Gastric Lesions." He assisted Dr. M. Allen Starr in writing " A Contribution to the Local- ization of the Muscular Sense."
He died at the Presbyterian Hospit-
al, as a result of an accident, in which he
was thrown from his carriage and his
skull fractured.
New York Even. Post., Dec. 3, 1908.
McCreery, Charles (1785-1826).
The following extract is from a letter of Miss Tula Clay Daniel of Hardins- burg, Kentucky, a grand-daughter of Dr. Charles McCreery. She writes: Family records show Dr. McCreery to have been of Scotch-Irish descent. His grandfather moved to this country and settled in Maryland in 1730. His father married Mary McClanahan and Charles, the seventh son, the youngest of nine children, was born June 13, 1785, near Winchester, Clark County, Kentucky. His brother Robert was father of Thomas Clay McCreery, the noted Senator, lawyer, orator from Daviess County, and his brother James the grandfather of Senator James B. McCreery. Dr. McCreery studied medi- cine under Dr. Goodlet of Bardstown, moved to Hartford, Ohio County, Kentucky, in 1810. In 1811 he married Ann Wayman Crowe, whose parents came from Maryland with their re- lations, the Tevis family. In Hart- ford a family of seven children were born to them.
Dr. McCreery did a large practice in Ohio and adjoining counties, making extended rides on horseback and yet found time to deliver lectures regularly in his home to his own as well as other students. His surgical instruments were made under his own supervision by an expert silversmith in Hartford. His chief operation, the one that makes his fame enduring, was the extirpa- tion of the entire collar bone in 1813, the first on record. "New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal," January, 1850. This operation, done upon a young man, though the bone was said to be scrofulous, was a decided success, the patient making a complete recovery, with perfect use of the arm and living past middle life.
