Alexander Eddy Hosack

Background

Hosack was born in New York City, on April 6, 1805, the son of Dr. David Hosack and his second wife, Mary Eddy, adopted daughter of Caspar Wistar.

Education

Under an intensive course of private instruction he developed incipient tuberculosis which interfered with his college program, but he was able to take a degree in medicine in 1824 at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was the last private pupil of Dr. Philip Syng Physick. He at once went to Paris for the study of surgery, where he was externe for eighteen months and interne for one year at the Hotel Dieu. With Ricord and Nelaton he was a private pupil of Dupuytren, but his health did not permit him to study under Amussat, who required his pupils to rise at 3 A. M.

Career

Returning to New York after his educational period in 1827, Hosack plunged at once into a surgical career. He seems to have brought with him knowledge of the technic of Syme's new operation for exsection of the elbow and by 1833 he was distinguished for improvements in the technic of cleft palate operation. Operating in all regions of the body, he was a pioneer urological surgeon. By 1839 he had operated on twenty-three patients for stone in the bladder and was successful in employing a technic which did not leave the male patient sexually impotent. In that year appeared his paper on the removal of sensitive tumors of the female urethra (New York Journal of Medicine and Surgery, July 1839), which is regarded as a classic.

When Dr. J. C. Warren of Boston announced the memorable discovery of the value of sulphuric ether as an anesthetic, Hosack tested the new resource promptly (1847), and in a single session amputated a limb, removed two breasts, and operated for stone. He operated successfully for malignant disease of the head by ligating the carotids.

Although he had begun to operate at the early age of nineteen and had a brilliant though not extensive operative record, he seems in the end to have turned against surgery, and he once stated that he would never devote another life to it. He was not in any way active during the Civil War and his last years were passed uneventfully in Newport, R. I.

As a medical practitioner he was unfortunate in contracting diseases and suffered attacks of typhus, cholera, and yellow fever. He was greatly interested in suicide and in execution by hanging. He made a number of experiments, some of which seemed to indicate that those thus executed did not suffer pain. His writings were few in number, restricted to clinical papers.

Achievements

• He is remembered as a pioneering surgeon. In 1889 his widow, Celine B. Hosack, presented Hosack Hall to the New York Academy of Medicine, as a memorial.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Memoir of the Late David Hosack, M.D., F. R. S. L. And E., Etc., Etc (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from A Memoir of the Late David Hosack, M.D., F. ...)

Connections

He married Celine B. Hosack.

Father:

David Hosack

1769–1835

Mother:

Mary Eddy Hosack

Spouse:

Celine B. Hosack

References

• History Of Medicine In New York: Three Centuries Of Medical Progress, Volume 4