Background
Benjamin Winslow Dudley was born on April 12, 1785 in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, United States. He was one of the fourteen children of Ambrose Dudley, a captain in the Revolutionary army and later a well-known Baptist preacher.
Benjamin Winslow Dudley was born on April 12, 1785 in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, United States. He was one of the fourteen children of Ambrose Dudley, a captain in the Revolutionary army and later a well-known Baptist preacher.
Dudley's somewhat meager early education was acquired at the Lexington schools and there he began the study of medicine under the direction of Dr. Frederick Ridgely, of whom he always spoke in terms of warmest praise.
In 1804 he entered the University of Pennsylvania and there received the degree of Doctor of Medicine (1806).
He returned home and began practise, at the same time, in order to acquire funds for further study, engaging in trade.
In 1810 he wrent to New Orleans on a fiatboat and buying a shipload of flour sailed for Europe.
In Gibraltar and Lisbon he sold his cargo and made his way through Spain to Paris.
Here and in London he spent four years of study under such masters as Larrey, Cooper, and Aberncthy.
At the founding of the medical department of Transylvania University (1817) he became professor of anatomy and surgery, his former fellow students, Daniel Drake and Richardson, also accepting chairs.
Misunderstandings characterized the opening of the new school, followed by pamphleteering, and culminating in a duel in which Dudley wounded Richardson in the thigh and then saved his life by promptly (and with Richardson’s permission) stopping the blood flow with his thumb.
In 1836 he successfully removed a cataract and gave sight to a man who had been blind since birth, the first operation of its kind in what was then called the West.
Lexington having proved too small to support a medical school, in 1837 an attempt was made to transfer the institution to Louisville, but Dudley declined to leave, and followed the waning fortunes of the school until it closed, his last lecture being delivered in 1850.
He retired from practise in 1853 except for an occasional consultation.
He condemned blood letting, saying that a man’s life is shortened a year for each bleeding. He had great faith in the value of boiled water in surgery and used quantities of it at the time of his operations and in the after care of his cases. His technique was characterized by absolute cleanliness in every detail for, though bacteriology was an undreamed-of science, he realized that filth, dirt, and impure water in some way contain the seeds of disease. His fear of impure water was particularly valuable during the cholera epidemic in Lexington (1832) when those who followed his advice escaped. He was original in the use of the trephine in traumatic epilepsy and in the treatment (by gradual pressure) of fungus cerebri, and was particularly skilful in the use of the bandage in medical as well as surgical conditions. On the other hand his treatment of tuberculous diseases by wasting diet is hard to reconcile with his otherwise sound views. His chief claim to fame as a surgeon must rest on his operation for bladder stone, in which he was more successful than any surgeon up to that time. During his life he operated in 225 such cases with a loss of only three. His work was all done without anesthesia but the patients’ suffering did not destroy his calm self-possession. His surgery was always conservative. He was a pioneer in the preparative treatment of patients requiring operation and not only attempted to return the body as nearly as possible to normal before operation, but also required of his assistants a minute examination of every organ—a forerunner of the medical surveys of the hospital of today. He had little taste for writing and had been a successful teacher for years before he published anything. Indeed it is not unlikely that the appearance of the Transylvania University Journal of Medicine and the Associate Sciences (1828), edited by his brother-in-law, Dr. Charles W. Short, which required something from his pen, was his only incentive, and apparently all his writings were published in this journal. In the first issue he described the technique of his trephining operation for traumatic epilepsy and in subsequent numbers his operations for fungus cerebri, hydrocele, fractures, calculus, ligation of the perineal artery, the use of the bandage, etc. Gross credits him with being the first in the West to ligate the subclavian artery (1825).
Dudley married Anna Maria, daughter of Major Peyton Short, who died in early life, leaving three children.
