Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/860

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MURDOCH 838 MURPHY his greatest professional activity. From 1872 until his death he was attending surgeon to the Western Pennsylvania Hospital. On the organization of the Western Pennsylvania Medical College in 1887, he became clinical professor of surgery and also dean of the col- lege, positions he held until shortly be- fore his death. In 1861 he married Jane Pet- tibone, of Oswego, who died four years later, leaving him one son. In 1868 he married Jennie Moorhead, youngest daughter of the late Gen. James K. Moorhead, of Pittsburgh, by whom he had two sons and two daughters. The only member of the family who followed the profession of medicine was Dr. J. M. Murdoch, of Polk, Pennsylvania. He was a frequent contributor to the medical journals of the country on surgical subjects. Dr. Mur- doch was an ardent advocate of the "tor- sion of arteries" for the arrest of hemorrhage in surgical operations. He died October 29, 1886, at Pittsburgh, the cause of death being diabetes. Adolph Koenic. Biog. of Emin. Amer. Phys. and Surgs., R. F. Stone, 1894. A portrait of Dr. Murdoch is in the Western Pennsylvania Medical College and in the rooms of the Allegheny County Medical Society, in Pittsburg. Murdoch, Russell (1839-1905) Russell Murdoch was born in Baltimore, February 12, 1839, but much of his early life was spent in Scotland, and his collegiate edu- cation received at Edinburgh University (1856-59), yet he returned to this country to study medicine at the University of Virginia, where he graduated in 1861. Soon after, he became resident physician at the Baltimore Almshouse, and later (1862) attending physi- cian to the Baltimore General Dispensary. In 1862 he was appointed surgeon in the Con- federate Army and served in the engineer corps until the close of the war. He was with Gen. Lee at the surrender at Appomattox. After the war he took up the study of oph- thalmology in America and abroad, and, re- turning to Baltimore, became lecturer on diseases of the eye and ear at the University of Maryland (1868-69). About this time Dr. C. R. Agnew (q. v.) invited him to come to New York as his associate, but he declined. He was one of the founders of the Balti- more Eye, Ear and Throat Charity Hos- pital in 1862, and an attending physician un- til his death, for several years professor of ophthalmology and otology at the Woman's Medical College of Baltimore (1884-87), and was elected a member of the American Oph- thalmological Society, July 21, 1868. He was married in 1873 and had four daughters, all of whom became medical mis- sionaries to China. He was in active ophthalmic practice until the time of his death. On March 18, 1905, he performed a cataract operation. After its completion, while speaking to a colleague, he suffered an attack of apoplexy, at first very slight, it increased in severity, and he died in a few hours. This is a meagre outline of the life of a man who in many ways was remarkable. He was many sided. Well trained in the natural sciences, especially in zoology and botany, he took an active and continued interest in the Maryland Academy of Sciences until his death. His special studies were in the com- parative anatomy of the eye, a subject upon which he was an authority. He had great artistic talents, to which his works in sculpture testify. Several reliefs which he executed are well known in his community and highly prized. His inventive skill produced a number of very useful instru- ments, the best known of which is his eye speculum ; an enlarged form of this he de- vised as a mouth-gag. He was an able and successful operator, and was one of the few men of his years who was ready to apply rigidly the rules of asepsis. He invented various ingenious forms of ban- dages for eye operations, particularly one that could be used for one e3'e or both. In his relation to patients, public as well as pri- vate, his gentleness and kindness and patience were extreme. He was a spiritual man and a member of the Presbyterian Church, to which he devoted much time. But though intensely religious he was very tolerant of the views of others. His great familiarity with the Bible was a con- stant source of wonder to his friends. Harry Friedenwald. Obit, by Friedenwald. Trans. Amer, Ophth. Soc, 190S. Murphy, John Alexander (1824-1900) John Alexander Murphy was born in Haw- kins County, East Tennessee, January 23, 1824, the son of Patrick and Margaret Mc- Kinney Murphy. The father, a native of Ireland, came to this country while a young man, and settled in East Tennessee, where he married Margaret McKinney, whose fam- ily came to America after the Covenanter's War in the North of Ireland. Murphy re- ceived his education in the public schools and in Cincinnati College, in 1843 beginning to study medicine with Dr. John Pollard Harri-