Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/553

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

WEST


493


WESTMORELAND


and "Dysentery" in the "American System of Medicine," and the article on "Yellow Fever" in Gould and Pyle's "CH-clopedia of Medicine." H. E. H.

West, Henry S. (1827-1876).

Died at Sivas, in Turkey in A.sia, April 1, 1876, Henry S. West, M. D., a missionary physician, formerly of Bine;- hamton, New York, aged forty-nine years, three months.

Such was the announcement which reached the friends of Dr. West, causinp; the most profomid regret throughout a large circle.

He was born in Binghamton, New York, January 21, 1827, the only son of Silas West, M. D. He entered Yale College in the class of 1844. He gradu- ated at the College of Phy.sicians and Surgeons in New York city, March, 1850. Immediately after graduation he began to practise in Binghamton, in company with his father, and so continued for a number of years. In 1858 he accepted an appointment as missionary physician from the American Board of Commis- sioners for Foreign Missions. The field of service assigned him w-as Turkey in Asia, and, accompanied by his wife, he sailed from Boston to join that mission in January, 1859. He was stationed at Sivas, a city containing a population of 35,000 or 40,000 inhabitants, situated about 450 miles southeast of Constanti- nople.

On reaching the station assigned him, Dr. West entered at once upon his duties and his services soon became in great demand. The center of his prac- tice was at Sivas and the numerous towns and villages by which it is sur- rounded. There were other important cities in Asia Minor into which the prac- tice of Dr. West extended — the nearest of these being Tokat, about fifty miles to the northwest, containing about 30,000 people, and Kaisarieh, 100 miles to the southwest, embracing, with its suburbs, a population of 150,000. In giving a description of the extent of his practice, the doctor remarks: "My practice was


largely in these cities also, therefore I had frequent occasion to visit them pro- fessionally, when I was always thronged with patients, and many came to me to be treated from those places, at Sivas. I was frequently called also to other important towns and cities of Asia Minor, distant from 150 to 300 miles."

Many of these calls were to surgical cases, and in treating them the doctor developed a tact and an operative ability, of which he himself was probably unaware until they were brought out by the emergencies of his position. Of the surgical cases, affections of the eye, and of the urino-genital organs, were largely ])redominant.

In 1868 he re-vi.sited the United States and reported upward of sixty-eight opera- tions for stone in the bladder. He read before the Medical Society of the State of New York a paper " Medical and Surgical Experience in Asia Minor," published in the "Transactions," of that year. In 1870 he was elected an honorary member. G. B

Obituary Notice of Henry S. West, M. D., by George Burr, M. D., Tran.s. of the Med. Soc. State of N. York, 1877.

Westmoreland, John Gray (1816-1887).

Born in Monticello, Jasper County, Georgia, in 1816. When John was about five years of age his father removed to Fayette County, near the Pike County line, when that county was inhalnted principally by a friendly tribe of Indians. As soon as the Westmoreland family arrived, these Indians with a couple of negro men, which the old gentleman owned, built him a two-room house out of logs, v/hich they cut and hewed to proper shape. John Gray was the second son of a family of eight, raised on this pioneer farm, working on the farm in the summer and going to school in the winter, till at the age of eighteen, he finished his education at the Fayetteville Academy, and studied medicine with a neighboring country doctor, graduating at the Medical College of Georgia in March, 1843, and directly commencing to