Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/234

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MUNRO


200


MUNSON


1S94 and president of the Colorado State Medical Society in 1900. He paid the cost of the strenuous life, for while his energies were diverted from considera- tion of his ovm health, the insidious disease which had first ostracised him to Denver made secret strides and, after a series of liemoptyscs, he died, in the flower of his age, on March 12, 1903.

H. S.

Munro, John Cummings (1858-1910).

A Frankhn medal scholar and gradu- ate of the Boston Latin School, J. C. Munro entered Harvard University in 1877, graduated in 1881, and re- ceived the M. D. from Harvard Medical School four years later. Establishing himself in general practice in Boston, he soon began to specialize in surgery, developing a rare skill which placed him early in his career in the front rank of the profession. Dr. Munro was associated with the Harvard Medical School as assistant in anatomy from 1889 to 1893; assistant demonstrator of anatomy from 1893 to 1894; assistant in clinical surgery from 1894 to 1895; instructor in surgery, 1896 to 1902, and lecturer in surgery, 1903 to 1905. He was keenly interested in the development of surgery, towards which his work was a great contribution. He was surgeon at the Boston City Hos- pital, 1893 to 1903; consulting surgeon, St. Luke's Home, 1901 ; special consulting surgeon, Quincy Hospital, 1902; consult- ing surgeon, Framingham Hospital, 1905; and surgeon-in-chief, Carney Hospital, 1903. He was a member of the Associa- tion of American Anatomists, American Surgical Society, Clinical Surgical Society, of which he was president in 1905, and member of the Southern Surgical and Gynecological Association.

He died at his home in Boston, Decem- ber 6, 1910, from recurrent cancer, for which operation had been performed three years before.

Munro will best be known for his surgical clinic at the Carney Hospital instituted in 1903, which was the first permanent surgical service to be estab-


lished in New England. His work there served a most useful purpose in various ways. It demonstrated the possibility of doing satisfactory surgery, successful in its results, with simplicity of plant and technic and with a minimum of red tape. In its instruction, it had to do with and reached not so much the undergraduate in medicine as the general practitioner, the worker in the surgical field, the visitor in search of sensible ideas and their application in the field of surgery. Dr. Munro was well known both in this country and abroad. His contributions to the literature of surgery were numer- ous and on a variety of subjects. His skill as a surgeon was acknowledged by all. Back of it, however, and revealed to but few, were qualities of mind and heart that deserve more admiration than his skill and made the man even greater than the surgeon. Munro was keen in observation of men and their methods, he was always charitable in his judgments of both. Traveled, well versed in general literature, appreciative of art in all its aspects, he made a most charming companion. His influ- ence on his fellows was wide and stimu- lating. A hard worker himself, he incited younger men to action, and his hand was ever ready to aid and to encourage them.

J. Am. M. Assoc, 1910, Iv.

Munson, Eneas (1734-1826).

Organizer of the Connecticut Medical Society, clergyman, a physician renowned for knowledge of materia medica and the natural sciences, Eneas Munson was born in New Haven, June 13, 1734, the eldest child of Benjamin Munson, a mechanic and whilom schoolmaster.

He graduated from Yale in 1753, and immediately after taught school in Northampton; studying also divinity, he was soon Hcensed to preach. In 1755 he acted for a short time as domestic chaplain for the Gardiner family of "Gardiner's Island." Hard ptudy (so- called) and insufficient exercise, however, soon broke his health, so he relinquished the ministry for medicine, studying under