MEIGLER
159
MEIGS
year 1880 was spent pursuing her medical
studies in Zurich. Upon her return she
held various positions in her Alma Mater
and after Dr. Byford's death in 1890 was
appointed his successor to the chair of
gynecology.
In 1882 Dr. Meigler was appointed to the staff of the Cook County General Hospital, in 1886 one of the attending surgeons at the Woman's Hospital in Chicago and in 1890 gynecologist to Wes- ley Hospital. She held the last two po- sitions till the time of her death. In 1895 she was appointed head physician and surgeon of the Mary Thompson Hospital, in this appointment Dr. Meigler received the unanimous support of the Chicago Gynecological Society and a large major- ity of the members of the medical pro- fession of Chicago. In 1897 she was elec- ted dean of the Northwestern Woman's Medical School, having previously served as its secretary for many years.
For several years she was professor of gynecology in the post-graduate Medical School of Chicago.
Dr.Meigler was a member of the state medical society and Chicago Medical So- ciety. She gained great distinction as a diagnostician and surgeon. At the time of her death the "Gazette M^dicale de Paris" referred to her as celebrated for her success in abdominal surgery and said that Europe had no such woman operators of this stamp.
She died of pernicious anemia in California on her fiftieth birthday. May 18, 1910.
Dr. Meigler had editorial connections with the " Woman's Medical Journal of Chicago . " She wrote :
" A Guide to the Study of Gynecology," 1892; History of the Woman's Medical College of Chicago," 1893; and in colla- boration with Charles W. Earle, "Diseases of the New-born." ("American Text- book of Obstetrics.") A. B. W.
Journal Amer. Med. Assoc, vol. xxxvi.
Les femmes medicins professeurs de Chirugie
^ r^tranger. Mile, le Dr. M. J. Meigler
(Chicago).
Gazette Medicale de Paris, 1901, 12 Serie.
Woman's Journal, Boston, vol. xxxii.
Meigs, Charles Delucena (1792-1869).
Charles Delucena Meigs was the fifth of the ten children of Josiah Meigs sixth in descent from Vincent Meigs who came from Dorset, England and settled in Con- necticut about 1647. Charles was born in the island of St. George, but when two years old, his grandfather was made pro- fessor of mathematics and astronomy at Yale and the family migrated to the ruder climate, but in 1801 his grandfather had to superintend the erection of the University of Georgia and the whole fam- ily finally settled in Athens, where Char- les went to the grammar school and earned French from Petit de Clairviere a cultivated emigre. He graduated at the University of Georgia in 1809 and began that same year to study medicine under Dr. Thomas Fendall, serving as apothe- cary boy and being sent out to cup and leech by his master. In a letter he says, " I got one course of lectures at the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania then went home to set up for myself. Everybody called me doctor; I thought so myself.
After his marriage to the daughter of William Montgomery, a large cotton merchant in Philadelphia, he settled first to practice in Augusta, but afterwards went to Philadelphia, quickly obtaining, not practice, but the intimacy and esteem of men like La Roche, Hodge, Bond, Bache and Bell. He was one of the first editors of "The North American Medical and Surgical Journal" and found time to translate and publish Velpeau's "Ele- mentry Treatise on Midwifery" and seven years after he issued his "Philadelphia Practice of Midwifery" a work showing the bent of his mind to be towards ob- stetrics. Meigs drew special attention to cardiac thrombosis as a cause of those sudden deaths which occur in childbed and which had generally been attributed to syncope. In this connection T. Gaillard Thomas says: "It has been re- marked that Meigs just escaped the honor which is now and will be hereafter given to Virchow for a great pathological dis- covery," and Meigs himself said, " I have a just right to claim the merit of being the
