medal in 1886. After serving for a year as house surgeon in the Toronto General Hospital and acting for several months as medical superintendent of this institution, he was appointed demonstrator of anatomy in the recently organized faculty of medicine of the University of Toronto, and at the same time began practice. In 1889–90 he spent eight months in England and passed two examinations for fellowship in the Royal College of Surgeons, being for several years the only Canadian who possessed this qualification.
In 1890 Dr. Peters returned to Canada and was appointed associate professor of clinical surgery in his alma mater, not confining his practice solely to surgery, however, until 1900. His knowledge of anatomy, which was very accurate and extensive, his ability to devise new methods of operating and his boldness in entering new fields of surgery rendered him soon a leading surgeon of his city.
Quite the best appreciation of his abilities in this line is that conveyed in the words of Professor I. H. Cameron, formerly one of his teachers of surgery, and subsequently his colleague as the head of the surgical department in the University: "His surgical alertness and inventiveness were attested by his various modifications of the usual operations of plastic surgery (in which he excelled), by the coat-sleeve amputation of the appendix, which he was the first to do, by the transplantation of the ureters into the rectum in cases of ectopia vesicae which he made his own, and by the method of proctoplasty and suspension in cases of procidentia recti. His mechanical ingenuity was shown by his modification of Aikin's splint for fracture of the upper arm, his wrench for club-foot, his device for making plaster casts of the living head and neck by a preliminary spray of paraffin."
In 1899 he married Constance, the youngest daughter of the Honorable Sir William R. Meredith, Chancellor of the University. She and two children survived him.
Brilliant as a surgeon, he was not less so as a teacher. Extremely lucid in his ideas, with a remarkable capacity for seizing the general principle in a mass of facts, and with a terseness of speech that was his own, he never failed to win and keep the attention of students whether in the lecture room or at the bedside clinic. It was his great efficiency as a teacher, as well as his standing as a scientific surgeon, that led to his appointment as professor of surgery and clinical surgery when the amalgamation of the faculty of Trinity Medical College with that of the University of Toronto took place. Very soon thereafter, however, the indication of the condition, which ultimately cut short his life, manifested itself and he was unable to continue his life work.
Dr. Peters was not a ready or voluminous contributor to the literature of surgery, and one reason for this was his rather exacting taste for clearness and terseness of language, and he, therefore, often recast completely a manuscript before it finally left his hands. Every statement that he made was carefully thought out. Amongst the more notable articles which he prepared are those on "Surgery of the Rectum and Anus" in the "International Text-Book of Surgery," edited by Gould and Warren, and "Inflammatory Affections of Bone" in Bryant and Buck's System of Surgery.
Peters, John Charles (1819–1893)
This eminent homeopathic physician and author was born in New York City, July 6, 1819. His early education was at Nazareth Hall, Pa., and he began to study homeopathy in 1837, and five years later visited Europe, working under Schoenlein, Rokitansky and Skoda, at Berlin and Vienna, and devoting especial attention to pathology, at that time a subject but little familiar to the medical profession. On his return to New York he joined with Dr. A. S. Wotherspoon in publishing a translation of Rokitansky's Pathological Anatomy in 1849, and practised homeopathy while introducing innovations in the methods of practice then in vogue. A treatise on "Diseases of the Head" was published, 1850, and between 1853 and 1856: "Apoplexy," "Nervous Derangements and Mental Disorders," "Diseases of Married Females," and "Diseases of the Eye." With Dr. F. G. Snelling he issued a "Materia Medica," 1856–1860; he also edited the North American Journal of Homeopathy. Dr. Peters was one of the three original founders of the New York Pathological Society, and in 1859 he was president of the College of Medical Sciences and professor of materia medica and therapeutics in this institution. He was the physician and personal friend of Washington Irving. He was associated with Dr. Edmund C. Wendt in preparing a treatise on cholera, and in 1866 wrote Peters' "Notes on Asiatic Cholera." This was one of his favorite subjects, also the routes by which the diseases traveled from Asia to Europe. The Index Catalogue credits him with some ten works on this subject out of a
