DAVIS 294 DAVIS vania, and continuing to 1871, at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in which place he practised till his death in August, 1895. A physician and surgeon of great ability, he was the first man in his section of the state to perform ovariotomy, and did this many times successfully at a time when this operation was rare. According to Professor William Goodell (q. v.), who quotes him at great length. Dr. Davis performed the second vaginal ovaritomy on record. This case reported originally in "Transactions of the Medical Society of Pennsylvania," 1874, vol. X, p. 221. Dr. Ashhurst in his "Surgery" quotes Dr. Davis as an ovariotomist and cites the above case. Dr. Davis' paper "On a New Tethod of Treating Placenta Previa," read before the Pennsylvania State Medical Society in 1876, attracted much atten- tion, and on its merits he was elected an honor- ary member of the Philadelphia Obstetrical Society. He was on the surgical staff of Wilkes-Barre City Hospital until his death, and president of the State Medical Society in 1886. Dr. Davis was an extensive contributor of papers to medical literature, writing among others "Vaginal Ovariotomy," 1874; "Placenta Previa," 1876; "Pelvic Peritonitis, Celluhtis and Hematocele," 1875 ; "Hernia of Liver in Infant," 1876; "Diphtheria," 1878; "Removal of Vesical Calculus," 1880; "Potability of the Water of Large Cities," 1885; "Rabies," 1886; "Median Operation for Stone," 1888; "The Filtration of City Water," 1894. Lewis H. Taylor. Davis, WilHam Bramwell (1832-1893). William B. Davis was born of Welsh parents in Cincinnati, July 22, 1832. He attended Woodward College and the Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware, Ohio, where he re- ceived his baccalaureate degree in 1852. In 1855 he graduated in medicine at the Miami Medical College. The Ohio College conferred the ad eundem degree upon him in 1858. Dur- ing the civil war he was surgeon of the 137th Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and had charge of a military hospital in the West End of Cincinnati. In 1860 he married Fanny R. Clark, daughter of Bishop D. W. Clark of the Methodist Epis- copal Church, and they had two sons. In 1872 he went to Europe for observation and study. Upon his return he assumed the chair of materia medica, which he held until 1888. He died in 1893. Dr. Davis was an authority on insurance matters and their relation to medicine, having been the medical director of the Union Central Life Insurance Co., which his brother, John Davis, helped to organize. In 1875 he read his much-discussed paper on "Influence of Con- sumption on Life Insurance" before the Ohio State Medical Society. It was one of the earliest statistical papers on tuberculosis pub- lished in this country. Another valuable paper was "Functional Albuminuria; or Albuminuria in Persons Apparently Healthy, and Its Rela- tion to Life Insurance," which attracted much attention among insurance examiners every- where. He wrote also : "Revaccination," Cin- cinnati M'edical Society, 1875 ; "Intestinal Ob- struction," 1880; "The Alcohol Question," 1886. Daniel Drake and His Followers, Otto Juettner, Cincinnati. Ohio, 1909, p. 350. Appleton's Cyclop. Amer. Biog., N. Y., 1887. Davis, William Elias Brownlee (1863-1902). As a gynecologist and an originator of the Southern Surgical and Gynecological Society, of which he was president in 1901, William Elias Brownlee Davis is remembered in his native state of Alabama, where he was born on November 25, 1863, in Trussville, Jefferson County, the sixth in a line of doctors, his father, a Confederate army surgeon, having been killed in the war. The boy's life was that of many another genius; farm work and study, delicate health and scanty means, yet he won through it all, graduated at the University of Alabama, began practice with his brother and took his M. D. at Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1884. From the first he devoted himself to gyne- cology and abdominal surgery, and his sudden death left unfinished a work on "Hepatic Sur- gery." In 1892 he experimented on 200 dogs for the purpose of determining the treatment of common bile duct obstruction, establishing the principle that sterile bile is inoffensive to the peritoneum, that transperitoneal gauze draining of the common duct is a safe procedure; after removal of calculi from the common duct suture of the duct is unnecessary. By diligent observation and experimentation, far from laboratories, he pursued his way of original investigation. He fully appreciated the need of a medical association, and with his brother organized the Alabama Surgical and Gyneco- logical Society. In 1900 he himself was presi- dent of the American Association of Obstetri- cians and Gynecologists, and also honorary fellow of the state societies of New York, Louisiana and of the British Gynecological Society. The end came very suddenly, as the result
