MINER
175
MINER
chusetts, and to Albany Medical College,
New York, taking his degree from the
latter in 1847. While in New York he
also took up special surgical and ophthal-
mological studies. First he practised in
New Braintree, Massachusetts, after-
wards in Buffalo, being appointed in
ISGO visiting surgeon to the Buffalo
General Hospital; in 1867, professor of
surgical anatomy and ophthalmology; in
1870, professor of special and clinical
surgery. His last course of lectures was
delivered in 1881-82. When in 1861 he
issued the first number of the " Buffalo
Medical and Surgical Journal " his idea
was to afford a means of communication
between the practitioners of the vicinity
and his editorship soon made the journal
one worth reading.
He was best known as a surgeon. He performed most of the important opera- tions of his day and in more than one instance instituted procedures which have been widely adopted. Four times he successfully performed thyroidectomy, and ligated the external iliac artery for aneurysm; the internal and external car- otid and most of the other arteries that require ligation for injury or disease: he removed a spleen weighing over seven pounds, with fatal result; exsected for traumatism and disease of the hip, knee, ankle, shoulder- and wrist-joints; in two cases he removed over four and a half inches of the femur, securing a useful limb. A similar operation was done on the humerus, removing large portions of the shaft for gunshot or other injuries; he removed the entire fibula successfully and the ulna with the elbow-joint, so saving an aim; twice he removed foreign bodies from the opening of the left bronchus; in operating for recto- vaginal fistula he instituted a procedure as suc- cessful as it was novel and ingenious. Many of these operations call for boldness and originality even at our stage of devel- opment in surgery; nearly all were specially noteworthy at that time and form a Ust of major operations equalled by few contemporary surgeons. His operation for ovarian tumor in 1869 will
be regarded as his greatest addition to
surgery. (" Buffalo Medical and Surgi-
cal Journal," June, 1869.) He had pre-
viously (1866), for the first time in the
history of ovariotomy, tied separately
the vessels of the pedicle, cut the liga-
tures short and returned the pedicle to
the abdominal cavity with success. In
an emergency he ligated the radial artery
with a pocket knife and an aneurysm
needle fashioned from a hairpin. As one
said, speaking as a layman: " With nerves
of tempered steel, he had a gentle hand,
a tender heart, a compassionate nature."
In 1867, while operating upon a charity
patient, he pricked his thumb with a
spicula of bone and received the infec-
tion which eventually ended his fife.
Iritis and other symptoms followed,
but it was not until 1873 that serious
results were observed. His lectures in
1881-82 were dehvered sitting and at
their close he resigned and became
emeritus professor. His paper on " Ovari-
otomy by Enucleation without Clamp,
Ligature or Cautery" appeared in the
"American Journal of Medical Science,"
vol. Ixiv, 1872. Late in the summer of
1886 I saw him for the last time. Our
talk ran on the production of his old
friend, the late Austin Fhnt, and we
talked of the ideas he had so well set
forth in that address. The end came
early on the fifth of November, 1886. He
sought in religion as he had sought in
medicine, to know the truth, and had
found it and faced death with the same
cheerfulness with which he had met the
weariness of protracted illness.
E. N. B.
Abridged from An Address on the Life and
Character of Julius F. Miner, by Dr. E. N.
Brush, Phila., 1888.
Buffalo Med. and Surg. Jour., 18S6-7. vol.
xxvi.
N. York Med. Jour., 1886, vol. xliv.
Med. Press, West. N. York, Buffalo, 1885-6,
vol. i.
Miner, Thomas (1777-1841).
An early investigator of epidemic cere- brospinal meningitis, one of the most learned physicians of this day, Thomas Miner was born in Westfield, the north-
