JONES 639 JONES Jone*, John (1729-1791) This man of ordinary name was of extraor- dinary ability. He lived before the fashion of double-barrelled appellations, and Mease, his biographer, tells us that when "Some of the physicians of New York entered into a resolu- tion to distinguish themselves from their fel- low citizens by a particular mode of dressing their hair," John walked about plainly coifTed, refusing the "new-fashioned bob" and in con- sequence was cut in consultation for a while. Jones was of Welsh extraction, his grand- father, Edward Jones, having married Mary, the daughter of Thomas Wynne. John was born in Jamaica, Long Island, in 1729; his two grandfathers were physicians, his father, Evan, one also. The latter married Mary Stephenson of New York and had four sons, John being the eldest, and very fortunate in good opportunities for learning. First came medical tutelage at the age of eighteen, under the famous Cadwalader of Philadelphia; then, in London, he attended the lectures of William Hunter, and studied under Percival Pott ; in Paris under the great French reformers. Petit and Le Dran, and in Edinburgh under the elder Monro, taking his M. D. from Rheims University in 1751. It was as a surgeon he became noted after settling in New York and his chroniclers note of him that he was the first to do the operation of lithotomy in that city, and he did it so well as to cause a demand for his services in the middle and eastern states of America. James Mease (q. v.), writing of him, says "he had acquired a facility in oper- ating to which few surgeons have arrived. I have seldom known him longer than three minutes in a lithotomy and he has sometimes finished the whole in one minute and a half." He became distinguished in colonial annals as surgeon to the troops in the French War of 1755 and on his return was made professor of surgery in the medical school of the College of New York. Dr. Jones made a study of obstetrics while in Europe and later gained a considerable reputation as an accoucheur, lec- turing on the subject in the College of New York, being one of the first lecturers on this branch in the country. Asthma, his great en- emy, was always troublesome, so he took an- other journey to Europe and found living in London fog gave alleviation. No doubt he had great satisfaction also in freshening up his professional side in visiting his old surgi- cal masters. He was largely instrumental in organizing the medical department of the Revolutionary Army, but was physically Unable to do active service during the war. Having to go to Philadelphia, he found his asthma so much better that he stayed there and was made a physician to the Pennsylvania Hospital when Redman resigned in 1780. He attended Presi- dent Washington in an illness in 1790 and Franklin in his last illness, but in 1791 was himself summoned by death. He died sud- denly in sleep at the age of sixty-two, June 23. when good hopes had been entertained of his recovery from an apparently slight indisposi- tion. His best work, and that for which he is commonly quoted, is his "Plain Remarks Upon Wounds and Fractures designed for the Use of the Young Military Surgeons of America " New York, 1755, reprinted in Philadelphik with a memoir by Dr. James Mease, 1795. This little book became the vade mecum of continental surgeons during the Revolutionary War. In it Jones attempted little more than to condense the teachings of Pott and Le Dran, but there are a few notes of originality, the most conspicuous being a case of trephin- mg in delirium eighty days after a slight head injur}-. The dura was opened and drained and the patient recovered. This was the first book written on surgery in t"he United States. In 1876 he published in Philadelphia, "The Diseases incident to Armies, with the Method of Cure; translated from the original of Bar- on Von Swieten ; to which are added. The Na- ture and Treatment of Gunshot Wounds bv John Ranby." ' Besides these writings Dr. Jones was the author of a thesis submitted to the University of Rheims, 1751; "Observations on Wounds" New York, 1765; "Account of the Last Illness of Dr. B. Franklin," 1790; "A Case of An- thrax," 1791. From a sketch in Surgical Memoirs by Dr. T. G Mumford, 1908. and one by Dr. James Mease in Thacljers Medical Biography, 182S. T.t ^,^-7o^^- T""^":' ^■^- Trans. Amer. Med. Asso., 1879, vol. x.xix, 6S9, 690 Appleton's Cyclop. Amer. Biog., N. Y., 1887. Jones, Johnston Blakely (1814-1889) Among those who have given life and tal- ents wholly to the good and upbuilding of North Carolina, none did more than Johnston B. Jones, who was born in Chatham County, North Carolina, September 12, 1814. His fa- ther, Edward Jones, a native of Ireland, was a lineal descendant of Jeremy Taylor and came to North Carolina when young and at- tained prominence as a lawyer, serving as
