Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/369

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DWIGHT
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DWIGHT

medical department of the Arkansas Industrial University, he being the first to receive one.

He served with Lieut. Steen's command in New Mexico as acting surgeon in the United States Army till March, 1859, when he resigned and began private practice at Fort Smith. In 1861 he was appointed surgeon in the Confederate States Army. In 1864–5 he was first assistant of the Trans-Mississippi department.

He was ex-president of the Sebastian County Medical Society and president of the State Medical Society in 1874–5.

Among Duval's published writings are: "Bucnemia Tropica" in the Louisville Medical Journal; "Malarial Hemorrhagic Fever (Ibid.); "Influenza" (Ibid.); "Cerebrospinal Fever" in the "Transactions of the Arkansas Medical Association"; "History of Cholera as It Appeared in Fort Smith in 1866." His last article was "Eclampsia Puerperalis," published in the St. Louis Courier of Medicine, January, 1886, three months after his death.

Dr. Duval married at Van Buren, May 8, 1860, Angela Medora, daughter of Dr. James A. Dibrell, and had four children—Annie, Benjamin Taylor, Dibrell LeGrand, and Angela Medora.

He died on October 7, 1885.

Dwight, Thomas (1843–1911).

Thomas Dwight, son of Thomas and Mary Collins Warren Dwight, was born in Boston October 13, 1843. As a very young boy he was taken abroad by his parents, making his first voyage in a sailing ship, and spent some years in Paris, where he attended school. On his return he completed his education in Boston and entered Harvard College with the class of 1866. After finishing two years of his college course, he entered the Harvard Medical School and. obtained his degree of doctor of medicine in 1867, and an A. B., as of 1866, in 1872. After leaving the Medical School, he spent several years of study in Europe. His chief interest, however, was in anatomical science and natural history and part of his time abroad was spent in that study under Rüdinger at Munich. There he obtained his first knowledge and experience of the use of frozen sections in anatomical work, and was one of the first to introduce this method into America. On his return home he continued in active practice for a number of years, but retired eventually in order to devote himself entirely to anatomy. During his active career as a practitioner, he was surgeon to out-patients at the Boston City Hospital, from 1877–1880, and visiting-surgeon at the Carney Hospital from 1876–1883. In 1883 he was appointed a member of the board of consultation of the Carney Hospital, and acted as president of the staff until his resignation in 1898.

In 1872 he was made instructor in comparative anatomy at Harvard, and in 1874 instructor in histology, and gave also some instruction in embryology. At this time he was offered the position of lecturer in anatomy at the Medical School of Maine at Bowdoin, and taught there until 1876, being professor of anatomy from 1873–1876, and in 1883 he was appointed Parkman Professor of Anatomy at Harvard.

Doctor Dwight was an excellent teacher and a strong, clear and forcible lecturer. His best anatomical work was on the anatomy of the skeleton and the joints and on the normal variations in the body. His study of variations was applied chiefly to the spine and to the hands and feet. He collected a remarkable series of specimens showing the chief variations in the carpus and tarsus, and including several unique cases of variations in these regions. He was the first to find and describe the subcapitatum as a separate and distinct element in both hands. In the foot he discovered an absolutely new element, the intercuneiform bone, and reported also two cases of the secondary cuboid bone, of which only one previous case had been recorded. His collection of spines, showing all possible variations, was practically unique. In 1907 Doctor Dwight published an atlas on the variations of the bones of the hand and foot, based on the specimens in his collection. He contributed the sections on bones and joints as well as those on the gastro-pulmonary system and accessory organs of nutrition in Piersol's anatomy. He made an extensive study, extending over several years, on the size of the articular surfaces of the long bones as a characteristic of sex, proving that the size of the articular ends was smaller in the female and could be used as a means of identification. He wrote several articles on the general range and significance of variations in the skeleton, and also on the question of mutations. One of his earliest publications was an atlas of the frozen sections of a child, which were among the first frozen sections to be made in this country.

Doctor Dwight devoted much of his time to the development of the anatomical part of the Warren Museum in the Medical School, and it was his intention to arrange the spe-