Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/70

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JONES

elder Monro, taking his M. D. from Rheims University in 1751.

It was as a surgeon he became noted after his settling in New York to prac- tise and his chroniclers note of him that he was the first to do the operation of lithotomy in that city, and that so well as to cause a demand for his ser- vices in the middle and eastern states of America. James A. Mease, writing of him, says "he had acquired a facility in operating to which few surgeons have arrived. I have seldom known him more than three minutes in a lithotomy and in the duties of an accoucheur. He became distinguished in colonial annals as surgeon to the troops in the French War of 1758 and on his return was made professor of surgerj' in the medical school of the College of New York. Asthma, his great enemy, was always troublesome and he took another journey to Europe and found living in London fog to give alleviation and no doubt, he also, had great joy in freshening up his mental side in visiting his old surgical masters.

Like most of the profession, he did good service during the war and hav- ing to go to Philadelphia, he found his asthma so much better in that place that he stopped there and was made a physician to the Pennsylvania Hos- pital when Redman resigned in 1780. He attended Franklin in his last illness but in 1791 was himself summoned by death if it can be called a " summons" when the illness is brought about by one of those acts of unselfish careless- ness which are done by busy doctors. He died in June from the result of chill and when good hopes were enter- tained of his recovery, was found dead in bed.

His best work, and that for which he is commonly quoted, is his "Plain, Concise, Practical Remarks on the Treatment of Wounds and Fractures," New York, 1775, reprinted in Phila- delphia in the following year with Van Swieten on the "Diseases Incident to


54 JONES


Armies and Gunshot Wounds." This little book became the vade mecum of continental surgeons during the Revolutionary War. Jones attempt- ed little more in it 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 trephining in delirium eighty days after a slight head injury. The dura was opened and drained and the patient recovered.

This book was the first written on Sur- gery in the United States.

From a sketch in Surgical Memoira, J. G. Mumford, 1908, and one by Dr. Jamea Mease in Thacher's Medical Biography.

Jones, Johnston Blakely (1814-1889).

Among those who have given life and talents 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 father, Edward Jones, a native of Ireland, was a lineal descendant of Jeremy Taylor and came to North Carolina when young and attained prominence as a lawyer, serving as solicitor-general to the state for over thirty years.

Johnston Jones received his early education in Raleigh, under a noted educator, Mr. Joseph G. Cogswell, after- wards spending several years at the University of North Carohna but not taking a degree. He began his medical studies in Charleston, South Carolina, but owing to delicate health was ad- vised to go abroad, so, choosing Paris, he studied medicine for two years. During his student days in the French capital he was known as "the hand- some American" — in fact, from youth to age he was remarkable for a physical beauty which seemed but the outward expression of the luminous mind with- in. At the expiration of his stay in Paris he made a six months' tour of Scotland and Ireland, visiting kins- folk and friends. Soon after his re-