Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/272

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

CARNOCHAN


CARPENTER


ity, which had resisted all known methods of treatment; the patient finally recover- ed, and sixteen months after the opera- tion was well. He was the first to re- move the entire lower jaw at one opera- tion, which he did on the thirteenth day of July, 1S51, for bone necrosis following a severe attack of typhus fever. The pa- tient recovered and was well in 1S55. Dr. Carnochan was the first to perform the operation of exsecting the superior maxillary nerve for the cure of facial neu- ralgia, his operation being made on the sixteenth of July, 1856. He trephined the superior maxilla just below the in- ferior orbital foramen, removed the nerve from its groove in the orbital plate and divided it at its exit from the foramen rotundum, at the same time removing Meckel's ganglion, which he maintained was essential to the success of the opera- tion. During the next three or four years he made at least three similar operations. He was a bold and dexterous operator, and did not hesitate to make any opera- tion in which there seemed to be a fair chance of success. From 1851 to 1863 Dr. Carnochan was professor of surgery in the New York Medical College. For two years, 1870-71, he was health officer of the Port of New York. He died at his home in New York City of apoplexy on October 28, 1887.

Among his surgical writings should be noted :

"The Pathology of Congenital Dislo- cation of the Head of the Femur upon the Dorsum of the Ileum." New York, 1848.

"Amputation of the Entire Lower Jaw, with Dislocation of Both Condyles." New York, 1852.

"Exsection of the Entire Ulna." New York, 1854.

"A Case of Exsection of the Entire Os Calcis." New York, 1857.

"Contributions to Operative Surgery and Surgical Pathology." New York, 1877.

Med. and Surg. Reporter, Phila., 1864. Med. Reg. of New York, 1888. There ia a portrait in the Surg.-Gen. Col- lection, Wash., D. C.


Carpenter, Henry (1819-1887).

Descended from a long line of physi- cians, Henry, son of Henry Carpenter, a surveyor, was born in Lancaster, Penn- sylvania, on the tenth of December, 1S19.

A hanging lantern dated 1698 has been in the possession of his family since it was brought by his paternal ancestor, Dr. Heinrich Zimmermann, to Germantown in 1698, from Switzerland. He remained two years in medical practice then re- turned to Switzerland where he married and came back permanently to America in 1706. and removed to West-Earl Township, Lancaster County, Pennsyl- vania, in 1717. When the patents were issued for the land the clerk at Philadel- phia, evidently wishing to render his name conformable to the tongue of his adopted government, anglicized the name Zimmermann to Carpenter. The first Dr. Carpenter farmed his fields, physicked his neighbors and transmitted his professional talents to posterity, many of whom became doctors. Henry's education was in the schools of Lancaster and afterwards under a tutor.

In 1836 he began the study of medicine under Dr. Samuel Humes with whom he remained for five years, going in 1839 to Philadelphia to attend lectures, but un- decided which college to enter, he finally settled on that of Pennsylvania.

He graduated in February, 1841, re- turned to Lancaster and began practice in the office previously occupied by his father as a scrivener. Henry Carpenter was one of the founders of the Lancaster County Medical Society in 1S44, and its president in 1S55, also secretary and vice-president of the Pennsylvania State Medical Society. He was a man of mechanical genius, constructed his own apparatus and drew plans for his in- struments, and invented an obstetric for- ceps manufactured in Philadelphia by Gemrig which he used for forty-four years, and with which it is said he never failed to effect delivery. His obstetric ex- perience covered nearly 5,500 cases, and his experience in gynecology was equally large.