OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# American Medical Biographies/Bird, Robert Montgomery

​Bird, Robert Montgomery (1803–1854) Robert Montgomery Bird, novelist and editor, was born in Newcastle, Delaware, in 1803 and died in Philadelphia, January 22, 1854, at the age of fifty. He was educated for the medical profession in Philadelphia, took his M. D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1827 and began practice there but soon turned his attention to literature, contributing three tragedies to the columns of the Monthly Magazine in Philadelphia. They were "The Gladiator," "Oraloosa" and "The Broker of Bogota." Edwin Forrest impersonated the chief character of "The Gladiator" and the play had a popular run. Between 1830 and 1840 Dr. Bird wrote six novels, among them being "Nick of the Woods, or the Jibbenainosay," "The Infidel," "Peter Pilgrim," his writing being marked by picturesqueness of description and an animated style. The scene of some of his works was placed in Mexico although Bird had never been in Latin America but he knew Spanish and made so good a study of the geography of the country and the habits of the people that Parkman and Prescott commended his accuracy. In 1839 he retired to his native village and cultivated a farm, and for a few years previous to his death edited the Philadelphia North-American, of which he became a proprietor.
# American Medical Biographies/Black, Greene Vardiman

​Black, Green Vardiman (1836–1914)
Green V. Black was born in Scott County, Illinois, August 3, 1836, grandson of Captain William Black of the North Carolina militia just before the Mecklenburg Rebellion, and one of the first officers to refuse allegiance to the British Crown. Dr. Black was reared on a farm and had very limited schooling, but was an apt student and tireless reader. Like Lincoln he was endowed by nature for better things. He read medicine with his brother, Dr. T. G. Black. In 1858 he opened a dental office in Winchester, Ill. He served in the hospital corps about two years. In 1864 he began dentistry in Jacksonville, Ill. He taught chemistry to the school teachers and gave instruction in microscopy to medical students. He successsfully passed the examination given by the state board of health in 1878 and was licensed to practise medicine. He was elected a member of the Moyan County Medical Society in 1880 and frequently presented papers to that organization. Dr. Black's great work was done after 1870. He was for ten years lecturer on pathology in the Missouri Dental College, St. Louis; then in the dental department of the Iowa State University. In 1890 he was appointed dean of the dental department of the Northwestern-University, and remained in this position for twenty-six years. Under his direction this became the largest dental school in the world. He was the first president of the Illinois State Board of Dental Examiners, president of the American Dental and Illinois State Dental Association, honorary president of the International Dental Association during the World's Fair in St. Louis, 1904.
Dr. Black's published books have been translated into German, French and Spanish. In 1909 he visited Europe on the invitation of the American Dental Association in Europe and delivered addresses in the leading capitals. He invented and patented the first cord transmission dental engine and many of the present dental operations are due to his genius. He invented one of the best staphylorraphy needles for his friend Dr. David Prince (q.v.), now in use by many who do not know of the inventor.
After his death the American Dental Association erected a beautiful monument in Jackson Park, Chicago, to his memory. This was dedicated in 1917. No man ever bore the high honors bestowed on him with more modesty than Dr. Black. He was almost worshipped by the dental profession.
His talented sons, Dr. Carl E. Black of Jacksonville, and Dr. Arthur D. Black, perpetuated his name.
# American Medical Biographies/Ingals, Ephraim

​Ingals, Ephraim (1823–1900)
Ephraim Ingals was descended from the Edmund Ingalls who, coming from Lincolnshire, England, with Governor Endicott's colony (landing at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1628), was the first settler of Lynn, Massachusetts. Ephraim was the youngest of nine children and was born in Abington, Connecticut, May 26, 1823. Left an orphan at the age of eight he had to work for his support and in 1837 went to Lee County, Illinois, where a branch of the Ingals family had settled, and worked on a farm for three years. He went to school, but having small means manual labor was combined with study. From 1845 to 1847 he attended Rush Medical College and graduated in February, 1847. He settled at Lee Center, Illinois, and practised there for ten years, then moved to Chicago meeting with success as a general practitioner. He was associated with Daniel Brainard (q.v.) and De Laskie Miller in running the Northwestern Medical and Surgical Journal; he succeeded John H. Rauch (q.v.)) as professor of materia medica and therapeutics at Rush Medical College (1859). Although not a brilliant lecturer he was a good teacher, and remained at the college until 1871, when he resigned and was made emeritus professor; he was treasurer of the College part of the time and was active in the construction of a new building; his private practice pressed him and he was sometimes forced to go to a morning lecture without having slept the night before.
His broad interest in the profession led him to suggest building a medical library for the use of physicians at large, but when he learned that the trustees of the Newberry Library had planned for a Medical Library Department, he heartily joined in this effort, and became specially active in advancing the standards of medical education. He believed in a better general education for intending students of medicine and longer terms of graded instruction in college before graduation.
​He strongly advocated Rush Medical College becoming the medical department of the University of Chicago and gave $25,000 to the College when the affiliation became effected. Ingals was a leading spirit in Rush Medical College which was the object of his chief medical interest, but his generosity went beyond this, for he gave $10,000 toward constructing the laboratory building of the Medical Department of Northwestern University.
Dr. Ingals' daughter, Lucy S., became the wife of Ephriam Fletcher Ingals (q. v.).
# American Medical Biographies/Irvine, William

​Irvine, William (1741–1804)
William Irvine was born in Enniskillen, Ireland, Nov. 3, 1741. He graduated in both the collegiate course and the medical school of Dublin University and soon after received a commission as surgeon in the Royal Navy. A vivid picture of the life of a ship surgeon at that time is given by Smollett, who served as ship surgeon's mate, in "Roderick Random;" candidates for medical positions in the navy were given an examination which was a "mere farce."
Irvine soon resigned and emigrated to America in 1763, settling at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he practised medicine in 1774. He was a delegate to the Provincial Congress of Pennsylvania in 1774; in 1776 he was made colonel of the Sixth Pennsylvania Battalion, and led his command on the expedition to invade Canada. As the battalion had been enlisted and equipped through his efforts, "he was greatly chagrined when they participated in the defeat of the Americans at Three Rivers, he himself being captured July 16, 1776." He was treated with great courtesy by General Burgoyne and General Carleton during his captivity. In May, 1778, he was exchanged and the same year was on the court-martial that tried General Charles Lee.
In May, 1779, he was made brigadier-general and commanded the Second Pennsylvania Brigade, seeing much active service. In 1782 he commanded the forces at Fort Pitt; active in studying the land problem in that part of the country, he was appointed by the state to "distribute the bounty lands to the troops who had served during the war." Through his efforts Pennsylvania purchased the district on the shores of Lake Erie known as "The Triangle," thus giving a lake front to the state.
In 1786 he was elected to Congress, and again in 1793, serving until 1795; in 1794 he "commanded the Pennsylvania troops who put down the 'Whiskey Insurrection'."
Irvine became superintendent of the military stares, situated at Philadelphia. He died in that city July 29, 1804.
# American Medical Biographies/Isaacs, Charles Edward

​Isaacs, Charles Edward (1811–1860)
Charles Edward Isaacs, anatomist, was born in Bedford, Westchester County, New York, June 24, 1811, the youngest of five children. His father was a merchant and a farmer, and the boy spent much time in the country in nature study. He went to the parish school kept by Samuel Holmes, and later took up medicine with Dr. Belcher, of New York, and had his first course of lectures at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York. From here he went to Baltimore, entered the University of Maryland and graduated M. D. in 1832, at ​the age of twenty-one. President Jackson appointed him to accompany the Cherokee Indians in their removal beyond the Mississippi, and he traveled among the Indian tribes through the Southern States. In 1841 he entered the army, after being examined by the Army Board, coming out first among fifty candidates. He was sent to Governor's Island, and from there to Fort Kent, Maine, after two years he was ordered to Copper, Lake Superior, at the time when the discovery of copper caused excitement.
In 1845 he went to Fort Niagara, New York; in 1846 he resigned his commisssion and opened a private medical school in Greene Street, New York City, with W. H. Van Buren (q. v.). After several changes he accepted the appointment of demonstrator of anatomy in the College of Physicians and Surgeons; later, he was adjunct professor of anatomy in the University Medical College. Between the lecture terms he served as surgeon on European steamers and thus had the chance to visit hospitals in Europe. He moved to Brooklyn in 1857 and acquired a large practice.
Isaacs is best known at home and abroad by his monograph on the structure and functions of the kidney (Tr. New York Acad. of Med. vol i, part 9), and for his researches on the pleura. The paper on the kidney was commented on by Ch. Robin of Paris, as "the most valuable contribution to structural anatomy that has been made for years."
He died of pneumonia, associated with Bright's disease, on June 16, 1860, in Brooklyn.
# American Medical Biographies/Ives, Ansel W.

​Ives, Ansell W. (1787–1838)
Born at Woodbury, Connecticut, on the thirty-first of August, 1787, Ives was the third child of a struggling farmer who had to let the boy be apprentice to a farmer till he was nineteen, when, having qualified himself to keep an elementary school, he taught for several years with credit to himself and advantage to his ​employers. Continuing at the same time, with the greatest zeal, his plan of self-instruction, he soon found himself sufficiently advanced to commence the study of a profession; and having chosen that of medicine, entered himself a student with Dr. Elisha North (q. v.), a physician of New London. On removing to Fishkill, in the State of New York, he continued his studies with Dr. Barto White, and completed them in the office of Dr. Valentine Mott (q. v.), graduating in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in the year 1814. He contributed largely to our medical journals; and some of his papers, especially that on "Humulus Lupulus," gained him much credit, both at home and abroad. He republished, with notes and additions, "Paris's Pharmacologia," and "Hamilton's Observations on the Use and Abuse of Mercurial Medicines," and also a description of the "Epidemic Influenza," which prevailed in the northern and eastern states in the year 1815; indeed, his whole time was spent in improving his own mind, or making himself useful to his fellow-men. Yale conferred the honorary A. M. on him in 1821.
Dr. Ives was well formed, his manners prepossessing, and he had a fund of humor and anecdote which made his company acceptable to his associates. He enjoyed a fine share of health, until he was attacked in February, 1837, with neuralgic pain about the left hip, which gradually increased in duration and violence until his sufferings, for hours together, were almost beyond endurance. About five months from the attack the hip and thigh began to enlarge, which they continued steadily to do with augmented pain till February 2, 1838, when death relieved him from his agony. On dissection a large tumor was found on the left ileum, extending downwards under the left gluteus muscle.
# American Medical Biographies/Hyndman, James Gilmour

​Hyndman, James Gilmour (1853–1904).
James Gilmour Hyndman was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, September 12, 1853, and died in that city, September 18, 1904. He was the son of William Graves and Barbara Gilmour Hyndman, natives of the north of Ireland, who came to America in their early childhood. Hyndman received his education in the public schools, and graduated from Woodward High School in 1870, when seventeen.
He began to study medicine under Dr. James T. Whittaker (q. v.), and in 1872 entered the Cincinnati Hospital as interne and remained in that capacity for two years. In 1847 he graduated from the Medical College of Chicago, having served as interne. In the same year he began to practise, and in July became assistant editor, and in 1875 co-editor of The Clinic, a journal then published by the Medical College of Ohio, Dr. J. T. Whittaker being editor.
In 1875 he was made physician to the dispensary and assistant to the chair of physiology in the Medical College of Ohio, and among other appointments had that of assistant to the chair of theory and practise, 1875; lecturer on laryngology and physical diagnosis, 1877; professor of chemistry, 1879; chair of laryngology, 1894.
He was a most excellent teacher, and for several years he was consulting laryngologist to the German Hospital of Cincinnati. Dr. Hyndman was a ripe scholar and one of the translators of "Ziemssen's Cyclopedia of Medicine."
On June 20, 1883, he married Mary E. Mitchell, daughter of Samuel M. Mitchell of Martinsville, Indiana, but they had no children. Hyndman died in Cincinnati, September 18, 1904, of appendicitis.
# American Medical Biographies/Isham, Ralph Nelson

​Isham, Ralph Nelson (1831–1904)
Ralph Nelson Isham was one of the original founders in 1859 of the Chicago Medical College, now the Northwestern University Medical School, which was one of the first schools to require a three years' course.
He was professor of surgical anatomy and then professor and professor emeritus of general surgery in the college from its foundation until his death. He was at one time or another connected with the Cook County, Mercy, Presbyterian and Passavant Hospitals.
He was born in Manheim, New York, March 16, 1831. His father, Nelson Isham, M. D., Yale, 1828, served in the field for four years in the 91st New York volunteer regiment. His mother was Delia Snell. Ralph was educated in the Herkimer Academy and graduated from Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1854, where he afterward served as interne. Tuberculosis of the lungs, acquired during his service, was completely cured by a few voyages to Liverpool on a clipper ship as ship's surgeon.
In 1855 he moved to Chicago and in 1857 married Katherine Snow, daughter of George W. Snow; their children were George S., Ralph, Mrs. A. L. Farwell and Mrs. George A. Carpenter. His start in his profession was made by doing a tracheotomy for quinsy on a son of the leading Presbyterian minister. This locally hitherto unheard of proceeding was seriously opposed by many of the good parishioners as a direct interference with Providence. Whether Providence, not being informed upon surgical methods, had not made the child quite sick enough, is not stated. At the beginning of the Civil War he was actively engaged with the Sanitary Commission and from 1862 to the close of the war was the chief surgeon of the Marine Hospital in Chicago which was changed to a Military Hospital.
He died in Chicago of cancer of the pylorus, May 28, 1904.
# American Medical Biographies/Ingalls, William (1769–1851)

​Ingalls, William (1769–1851)
According to S. D. Gross, William Ingalls of Boston was the first in this country to amputate at the shoulder joint for gunshot injury. This was in 1813 while he was professor of anatomy and surgery in Brown University (1811–1823). Dr. Ingalls was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, May 3, 1769. His ancestor, Edmund of Lynn, came from Lincolnshire, England, in 1629. William graduated A. B. at Harvard in 1790, M. B. in 1794 and M. D. in 1801. Brown gave him her honorary M. D. in 1813.
Dr. Ingalls suggested operation for strabismus as early as 1813, according to Hubbell's development of ophthalmology.
He was the author of "Observationes ad abscessum bursalem pertinentes" 1803; "Essay on the Ganglionary System of Nerves in the Cranium," 1832; "On Scarlatina," 1837; "Lecture on Phrenology," 1839; "Treatise on Malignant Fever," 1847, his chief work.
He married Lucy Myrick Ridgeway and their son was William Ingalls (1813–1903), a visiting surgeon at the Boston City Hospital and an obstetrician of some note who published in 1876, "Synopsis of Private Obstetrical Practice," covering a period of forty-two years of professional experience.
William Ingalls, senior, died at Wrentham, Mass., September 8, 1851.
# American Medical Biographies/Simons, Benjamin Bonneau

​Simons, Benjamin Bonneau (1776–1844)
Benjamin Bonneau Simons was of French extraction, being descended from the Merovingian Kings, and originally named Saint Simon. The first colonist, Benjamin, came to this country in 1685 and became the progenitor of the whole Simons family in the South. Benjamin Bonneau Simons was born in Charleston, December 5, 1776, and graduated at Brown University, Rhode Island, in 1796, and immediately went abroad to study medicine.
He attended the schools of Edinburgh, London and Paris, and was the pupil of John and Charles Bell and did the dissections for their famous anatomical plates.
So greatly were his capabilities held in estimation that he was told, did he remain in Europe he would be able to pave his street with gold.
Returning to America, he began to practise in his native city in 1801, as a surgeon; he drew much of his practice from the northern states. He was considered the leading surgeon of the South, some of the medical profession even coming there to hear him lecture.
He was the first man to trephine bone for abscess and did the first successful operation in South Carolina for stone in the bladder, and was said to be the only man in America who cured goiter. He treated thirteen cases of bone necrosis and first recognized the condition and treatment.
Dr. Simons was a member of the Medical University of Edinburgh; fellow of the Royal Society of London, and one of the early presidents of the Charleston Medical Society.
He was professor of chemistry and the author of a valuable treatise on the bones, as well as several other medical works. He married Maria Vanderhorst, daughter of Gov.-Gen. Arnoldus Vanderhorst and Elizabeth Raven, and had two daughters.
There is a picture of him by Bowman in the board-room of the Roper Hospital; the same artist also painted him in another position, and so good was the likeness that it is said his old negro servant on seeing it exclaimed, "lor! massa's in dere," indicating the room in which the portrait stood. Simons was fond of drawing his friends around him and entertained lavishly at his house on East Bay Street in Charleston, where he died of apoplexy, September 27, 1844.
# American Medical Biographies/Skillman, Henry Martyn

​Skillman, Henry Martyn (1824–1902)
Henry Martyn Skillman was the youngest child of Thomas T. and Elizabeth Farrer Skillman. His father, a native of New Jersey, came to Lexington, Kentucky, in 1809 and founded there the largest publishing house in the Mississippi Valley. Sprung as Dr. Skillman was from Puritan and Presbyterian ancestors, he inherited the stern sense of duty and principle that characterized them, and passed a long life without departing from the tradition of his forebears. He began life by spending two or three years at Lexington as an apothecary, but determined in 1844 to study medicine and after three years' diligence graduated from Transylvania University in March, 1847.
Early appreciated, he was appointed in 1848 demonstrator of anatomy in the medical department of his alma mater, a position he filled so ably for three successive years that he was appointed to the chair of general and pathological anatomy and physiology in 1851, a position he retained until elected to the chair of physiology and institutes of medicine in 1856, lecturing before large classes, in these branches until the close of the institution in the summer of 1857.
He was distinguished for the accuracy and clearness of his teachings, was painstaking and apt in his instructions, and his knowledge of the branches which he taught was abreast of his day and generation. He was the last surviving member of the medical department of Transylvania University.
On October 30, 1851, he married Margaret, daughter of Matthew T. Scott, president of the Northern Bank of Kentucky.
Among his other appointments he was contract surgeon for the United States Government; president of the Kentucky State Medical Society, 1869. He was the first president of the Lexington and Fayette County Medical Society, in 1889, and it is claimed that he was the first physician in Lexington to administer anesthesia.
He contributed many papers on topics particularly pertaining to medicine and materia medica to the "Transactions of the Kentucky ​State Medical Society." His knowledge of practical therapeutics was marvelous, which made him an accurate clinician, and his skill in surgery was great, his office being always an attraction for medical students.
The confidence of the people was unbounded. Some of his admirers said, with Calvinistic logic, if "we're tae dee, we're tae, and if we're to live, we're to live," but all said this for the doctor, "that whether you are to live or die, he can aye keep up a sharp moisture on the skin."
Dr. Skillman was active in all public matters and greatly interested in everything pertaining to the growth and prosperity of his native city. He died at Lexington in March, 1902.