# American Medical Biographies/Awl, William Maclay

​Awl, William Maclay (1799–1876)
His parents were natives of Pennsylvania, and both of English descent. He was born May 24, 1799, and began to study medicine in 1817 in Harrisburg under Dr. Samuel Agnew and entered the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1819, but left without obtaining a degree. In 1834 he received the honorary M. D. from Jefferson Medical College, and in 1837 a like honor from the Medical College of Ohio at Cincinnati.
During the first years of his practice his attention was directed especially to surgery, but, becoming interested in insanity, he abandoned surgery and devoted the remainder of his life to the study of that and allied conditions.
In 1835 Dr. Daniel Drake, Dr. Awl, and other prominent members of the profession assembled in Columbus and founded in 1846 the Ohio State Medical Society under the name of the Ohio Medical Convention. Dr. Awl was also president of the Association of Superintendents of Asylums for the Insane of the United States and Canada from 1838 to 1851.
In 1826 Dr. Awl came on foot, carrying necessaries in a knapsack, from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to Lancaster, Ohio. From Lancaster he removed to Lithopolis, in the same county, thence to Somerset, Ohio, and finally, in 1833, to Columbus, where he lived (with the exception of two years at Dayton, Ohio) until 1876.
Dr. Awl was tall and slender, well proportioned and vigorous, with a fair complexion, red or auburn hair, and blue eyes. Owing to an accident sustained in early life, he had persistent choreiform contractions of the sternomastoid muscle of the left side, which gave the appearance of restlessness which did not exist. He was rather fond of relating his edventures, but could never be induced to explain why he came on foot from Harrisburg to Lancaster. He admitted that while "the walking was mostly fair, it was in spots very poor, and the taverns bad," and that, on the whole, he would have preferred a coach and first class hotels! He often boasted that if he could get his eyes fixed on those of even the most violent lunatic, he would have no difficulty in controlling him. Frequently consulted in medico-legal cases and those concerning doubtful sanity, in every one he attempted his favorite maneuver. Some who knew his infirmity said the subjects got so weary in trying to follow the movement of the doctor's head that they became exhausted and were resigned to anything that might happen, and that they didn't know how the doctor could expect to fix the eyes of another, when he couldn't fix his own! The performance was certainly amusing to the "looker-on;" but the doctor had wonderful skill in the management of the insane.
He was a fine anatomist, and in the early part of his career inclined to surgery. In 1827, he tied the left common carotid artery, as preliminary (for safety) to the removal of a "tumor, hard and irregular in form, cartilaginous in structure," from the neck of a little girl. It was the first time the carotid artery had been tied west of the mountains and the fourth in the United States. The patient was reported by the operator in the Western Medical and Physical Journal for October, 1827.
The Medical Convention of 1835, which met ​on the fifth of January in the First Presbyterian Church, discussed the propriety of establishing a hospital for the care of the insane, and a school for the education of the blind, and sent a memorial, embodying their discussions, to the legislature. Before the close of their session, an appropriation was made for the erection of a hospital for the insane at Columbus, a site purchased, the building completed in 1838, and Dr. Awl became superintendent. In 1837 he headed a movement for the establishment at Columbus of schools for the blind and feeble-minded, and the original resolution (which became a law), in his own writing, properly framed, hangs in the entrance hall of the "School for the Blind" in the southeastern part of the city. The school for the feeble-minded was not established until the "sixties."
Awl was married January 28, 1830, to Miss Loughey, and had five children, John, Woodward, Mary, Jennie, and Margaret, all of whom, with their mother, survived the doctor who died in Columbus, November 19, 1876, from the consequences of an attack of cerebral hemorrhage sustained some months before.