American Medical Biographies/Wythe, Joseph Henry
Wythe, Joseph Henry (1822–1901)
Joseph Henry Wythe, preacher-physician, was born in Manchester, England, March 19, 1822, the son of Joseph Wythe and Mary Chamberlain. He came to this country in 1835 and was licensed to preach in the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1842. He studied medicine and was graduated in 1850 at the Pennsylvania Medical College and settled in Port Carbon, Pennsylvania, where he was surgeon to the Beaver Meadow Collieries. In 1862–3 he was surgeon in the United States Army and organized Camp Parole Hospital at Alexandria, Virginia.
After the war he moved to the Pacific Coast and in 1865 was President of Willamette University, Salem, Oregon, and organized a medical department. Uniting with the conference he again began preaching.
Later he settled in Oakland, California, and in 1874 became professor of Microscopy and Histology in the Medical College of the Pacific, San Francisco, which became Cooper Medical College in 1882. Dr. Wythe continued in the chair of histology till 1897 and was Professor Emeritus till his death October 14, 1901.
He wrote several books, "The Microscopist, a Complete Manual on the Use of the Microscope" (1850), which went through several editions; "Curiosities of the Microscope" (1852); "Physician's Pocket Dose and Prescription Book" (1852, 8th ed. 1869); "Agreement of Science and Revelation" (1883); "Outlines of Normal and Pathological Histology. a Syllabus in 3 parts;" "Easy Lessons in Vegetable Biology" (1883) and "The Science of Life" (1884), also numerous articles in the medical periodical press.
Dr. Wythe was a little round man, full of energy, a splendid teacher with a charming personality and an excellent gift for free hand drawing at the black-board with colored chalk with which he illustrated his lectures on histology. In the community in which he lived he was best known as a surgeon and although most of his work was done in the pre-antiseptic era he was very successful as an operator. He did a great deal of abdominal surgery, performing hysterectomy for fibroids, ovariotomy, and other major operations, and still he found time to occupy the pulpit on Sunday morning many times during each year.