PRESTON
293
PREWITT
first assistant physician to the South-
western State Hospital (for the Insane),
anJ in November, 18SS, superintendent
of the same, which position he filled until
his death.
Dr. Preston was a man of high order of intelligence and an excellent physician. As superintendent of the hospital he made a faithful and popular official; a good disciplinarian, using reason and persuasion rather than harshness and force; he was eminently successful in the management of his unfortunate charges.
Dr. Preston married twice; his first wife, whom he married in lS7o, was Martha E. Sheffey, and had two children, Ellen F. and Robert J.; both of whom graduated in medicine. In 1902 he married Mrs. Elizabeth Gravely (nee Stuart), who with a son survived him.
In 190G, while en route for Toronto, Canada, to attend a meeting of the British Medical Association, he was taken ill at Lewiston, New York, and died suddenly at that place on the twentieth of August.
His contributions to medical literature were numerous; some of his more impor- tant articles were:
" Rupture of the Uterus, New Symp- toms." (" Virginia Medical Monthly," vol. i, 1874.)
" Report on Advances in Diseases of Women and Children." ("Transactions of the Medical Society of Virginia," 1877.)
"Puerperal Fever." ("Virginia Med- ical Monthly," vol. ii, 1874.)
"Associated Dining-rooms, Their Moral and Curative Effect." (Ibid., vol. xvi.)
"Sexual Vices — Their Relation to Insanity — Causative or Consequent." (Ibid., vol. XV.)
"Mental, Moral and Hygienic Thera- peutics in Relation to Home Life and in General Practice," president's address to Virginia Medical Society, "Trans- actions," 189.5.
" Review of the Progress, Care, Main- tenance of the Insane in Virginia during the Years 1887-1897, Inclusive."
("Transactions of the Medical Society of
Virginia," 189S.)
" Rupture of the Carotid Artery — Successfully Ligated." ("Virginia Med- ical Semi-monthly," vol., viii.)
R. M. S.
Va. Med. Semi-monthly, vol. xi.
Men of Mark iu \irginia, vol. v, with a full
page portrait.
Prewitt, Theodore F. (1832-1904).
Theodore F. Prewitt, born in Fayette, Howard County, Missouri, on March 1, 1832, the son of Joel and Mary Trimble Prewitt. Owing to the death of his father, and being one of a familj' of eleven, he was thrown upon his own resources at the early age of fourteen. He entered the St. Louis Medical College, whence he graduated in 1856, and mar- ried Mary Ingram, of Virginia, during the last year of his medical course. aVfter the death of his wife in 1862, he went to St. Louis and again married in 1871, this time to Mary Sowers; and the same year was appointed superintendent of the City Hospital, which position he held for three years. He spent some time at a number of the leading European hospitals.
On his return to St. Louis he accepted the chair of surgery in the Missouri Med- ical College, and later was elected dean.
On the consolidation of the Missouri Medical College and the St. Louis Medical College to form the Medical Department of Washington University, he was con- tinued in the chair of surgery and held this position until his death.
For twenty-five years he was surgeon to the St. John's Hospital and the surg- ical clinic at that institution.
United to a desire for knowledge was an endowment of untiring energy, which enabled him to prosecute with vigor whatever matter claimed his attention. While occupied with the cares of a large practice, he at all times had at heart the cause of medical education.
Prewitt was president of the American Surgical Association, of the Missouri State Medical Society, the St. Louis Medical Society, the St. Louis Surgical
