Brown, James (1854–1895)
James Brown was born in Baltimore, Nov. 12, 1854, the son of Thomas R. Brown and Mary Elizabeth Hynson. Educated at Carey's School, he went to the University of Maryland for his medical degree, received in 1875. He was a resident physician of Bayview Hospital, Baltimore, and later assumed charge of the Genito-Urinary Dispensary in the Johns Hopkins Hospital at its opening in 1889.
In 1893–4 he was lecturer and in 1894–5 associate in genito-urinary surgery at the Johns Hopkins University.
On June 9, 1893, Brown catheterized the male ureter during life for the first time.
He was married, first, to Amanda Bechtel, and, second, to Imogene Bechtel; they had two children.
He died of tuberculosis June 16, 1895, in Boston, whither he had gone by water from Baltimore.
Brown, John Ball (1784–1862)
John Ball Brown, pioneer orthopedist of America, son of Dr. Jabez Brown of Wilmington, Massachusetts, was born in that town October 20, 1784.
Graduating from Brown University in 1806, he studied medicine with Dr. E. A. Holyoke (q.v.) and Dr. Moses Little at Salem and began practice in Dorchester in 1809 but returned to Boston in 1812, shortly after (1814) marrying the third daughter of Dr. John Warren (q.v.).
He was appointed surgeon and physician to the Boston Almshouse in 1817 and associate surgeon to the Massachusetts General Hospital when that institution was organized, while in later years he became consulting surgeon.
In 1838 Dr. Brown began to devote his attention especially to orthopedics, a new specialty, being the first to introduce it to this country. He was the first in America to do subcutaneous tenotomy and had a wide reputation in the treatment of wry-neck, club-foot and spinal curvature, patients seeking his aid from places so remote as the Sandwich Islands.
Dr. Brown was said to have great mechanical ingenuity in the invention and application of special surgical apparatus. He was assiduous in following up his patients, who were treated for the most part in his orthopedic infirmary, the first of its sort in Boston, and was an occasional writer for the medical journals on subjects connected with his specialty. In 1839 he republished from the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, "Remarks on the Operation for the Cure of Club-feet, with Cases."
He died May 14, 1862, aged seventy-nine years, being succeeded in the practice of orthopedics in Boston by his son, Buckminster Brown.
Brown, Samuel (1769–1830)
A pioneer inoculator for smallpox and one of the first two professors of the Transylvania University Medical Department, Samuel Brown was born on January 30, 1769, in Augusta, now Rockbridge County, Virginia.
He was the son of the Rev. John Brown, Presbyterian minister, and Margaret Preston, the second daughter of John and Elizabeth Patton. Samuel was the third of four brothers, Hon. John Brown, Hon. James Brown, and Dr. Preston Brown.
His early education he received from his father, who founded a grammar school for the education of his sons and other boys in the neighborhood. He went eventually to Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, where he took his bachelor of arts degree.
He immediately began to study medicine under his brother-in-law, Dr. Humphreys, at Staunton, Virginia. After several months he went to Philadelphia and became a private pupil of Dr. Rush; did not remain there long but went to Edinburgh where he had as classmates Dr. Hosack, Dr. Davidge, Ephraim McDowell and other Americans. Not having fulfilled certain requirements of the Edinburgh University, he did not graduate there. On returning to America he began to practise at Bladensburg near what is now the city of Washington. Although he prospered, a strong desire to be with his family is the reason given for his leaving the shores of the Potomac in 1797 and joining his brother, James Brown, who began the practice of law in Lexington, Kentucky.
In 1804 the health of James Brown compelled him to seek a milder climate and he chose New Orleans. Dr. Brown, unable to separate himself from his brother, descended the Mississippi in 1806 and entered upon practice in New Orleans, where, after three years, he married Katherine Percy, abandoning New Orleans and settling upon a plantation at Fort Adams, a short distance from Natchez, practically giving up medicine.
His wife died a few years after this, leaving him three children, the last of whom followed its mother to the grave.
