Pitman was born on July 28, 1793 in Charlotte County, Virginia, United States, the second son of Gideon Spencer, a lieutenant in the Revolutionary War, colonel of militia, and member of the Virginia General Assembly, and Catherine Clements (or Clemens, as her son seems to have spelled it), daughter of Dr. John Clements of Essex County. The family medical tradition descended to her sons, Pitman and Mace Clements Spencer.
Pitman's early education was meager, a disadvantage which he overcame in later life by diligent study. For six or seven years, beginning in 1810 and interrupted only by a brief service as surgeon's mate to a detachment at Norfolk during the War of 1812, he studied medicine under his older brother, Mace. Then he went to Philadelphia for further training, became a pupil of Wistar, Chapman, and Physick, and in April 1818 received his M. D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1827 his eagerness for wider experience took him to Europe. For three years he traveled, studying surgery and anatomy in London and Paris especially. In Paris he laid the foundation for his later fame as a specialist in urinary surgery, studying under Dupuytren and observing the operations of Civiale, who had just made public a new method of lithotrity, or stone-crushing.
Spencer acquired in Paris a fine set of crushing instruments, and devoted many hours to acquiring skill in their use. Upon his return to Virginia he settled in Petersburg, where he remained the rest of his life, and rapidly acquired fame as a surgeon. In August 1833 his first published article appeared in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, with the title, "Case of Urinary Calculus successfully treated by Lithotrity. " However, he soon abandoned stone-crushing for lithotomy, which he first performed in 1833.
By 1858 his lithotomies totaled twenty-eight, with only two deaths, the first two he performed, a mortality of one in fourteen. The rate in Philadelphia was one in eight, and in French hospitals one in six. He also wrote on other subjects, describing a remarkable case of tumor removal for the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, January 1845.
He died on January 15, 1860 in Petersburg.
Quotes from others about the person
A contemporary spoke of Spencer as "a born surgeon bold to recklessness in his operations, but his success was marvelous".
He was unmarried.
