DAWSON 298 DAYTON town. In 1847 he took his first course in Louisville University, but did not return there to finish, going to the Medical College of Ohio, where he graduated in 1850. As a med- ical student he was described as a big-headed, large-hearted rollicking country youngster, ready for any fun and at the head of almost all the pranks that students were fond of, but never neglecting any of the clinical lec- tures, and always a hard worker. His natural bent, even in his student days, was for sur- gery. After graduation he spent two years near his old home, and then returned to Cincinnati and settled down to practise. While professionally a success from the very first, for the first two years his financial harvest was small. But he had a stout heart; the harder the work, the more determined was he to win. With the coming of the Civil War his first good fortune came, and he began to feel the tide of popularity running his way. In 1853 he had been made professor of anatomy in the Cincinnati College of Medi- cine and Surgery, a chair he occupied for three years, and while it had tickled his pride to have been known as a professor in a medical college, it did not appear to in- crease his paying clientele. In 1860 he ob- tained the same chair in the Medical College of Ohio, his alma mater, and it was soon after this that fortune came. He remained with the college until 1864, when he received the appointment of surgeon to the Cincinnati Hospital, then known as the Commercial Hos- pital. With his rise in professional popularity the joyousness of youth returned, the years he spent as surgeon and clinical lecturer at the Cincinnati Hospital he looked upon as the best of his life. In the summer of 1871 Dr. George Blackman (q. v.) died, and Dr. Dawson was immediately elected his successor as professor of surgery in the Medical Col- lege of Ohio. Then came the heyday of his life, intellectually and socially. While not so elegant or eloquent as Graham, nor so scientifically correct as Bartholow, yet as a teacher he was superior to them all; his terse and forcible manner of presenting facts never failed to reach the intellectual center of his listeners, and his lectures were the most popular and highly appreciated of any in the city, his clinics at the hospital of the Good Samaritan more popular, if possible, than his teaching at the college. From 1871 to 1880 was the period of his greatest success. During this decade he performed his most brilliant opera- tions, and wrote the greater part of his papers on surgical subjects. In 1888 he was made president of the American Medical Association. While not a specialist, but a general sur- geon in its widest sense, he yet had his pet operations. At one time it was lateral lithot- omy, and he claimed that he was the first American surgeon to make one hundred suc- cessive lithotomies without a death. He also claimed that his nephrotomy was the first in this country, and the first successful case anywhere. The case that gave him his greatest renown was his attendance on the Hon. Clem- ent L. Vallandigham, who accidentally shot himself while attempting to show how the victim of an alleged murder had committed suicide. The principal papers during this time were on abdominal tumors, hernia, carcinoma. Graves' disease and a score or more on his operations, including: "The Complete Re- moval of the Clavicle with Cure"; "The Re- moval of Seventeen Fibro-cystic Tumors from the Abdomen" ; "Three Cases of Double Lig- ature of the Carotids and Three of Trephining for Epilepsy." During his early years and up to the time of the death of his wife in 1883, Dr. Dawson was a veritable glutton for hard work. He would sit up reading until one or two o'clock in the morning, and at eight he would be in his consulting-room again. Dur- ing this period he was bright, good-natured and jovial, as famous for his wit as for his learning and professional standing, for he was as popular with the profession as with the people. Soon after the death of his wife he began to lose interest in life and grew gloomy and morose, and in a few years was- . as peevish and irritable as he had formerly been bright and happy. In the winter of 1893 he had an attack of influenza, but finally got out to work again, yet towards spring he had a second attack and was never well after- wards. Early in the summer he was taken to the Hospital of the Good Samaritan, but it was soon evident that he was a mental wreck, and he was transferred to the College Hill Sanitorium, where he died February 16, Charles Anderson. W. W. Dawson, Obit., Cincinnati Lajjcet-Clinic, March 4, 1893, n. s., vol. xxx. T. A. Reamy. Dayton, Amos Cooper (1813-1865). Amos Cooper Dayton, physician and clergy- man, was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, Sep- tember 4, 1813, and died in Perry, Georgia, June 11, 1865. He was graduated at the Medi- cal College of New York City in 1834, and soon removed to the south in search of health. He was at first a Presbyterian, but became dissatisfied vnth his church relations, and in
