Edward Lawrence Keyes

Background

Edward Lawrence Keyes was born on August 28, 1943 in Fort Moultrie, Charleston, Soth Carolina, United States, the son of General Erasmus Darwin Keyes and Caroline M. , daughter of Dr. James B. Clarke of New York City.

Education

Keyes was privately educated and doubtless spent much time with his father at various military posts. In 1859 he entered Yale, graduated in 1863 and then joined the Federal army as a member of his father's staff with the rank of captain. At the close of the war he began the study of medicine--influenced somewhat by the fact that both grandfathers and one great-grandfather had been successful physicians--and received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the medical department of the University of New York in 1866. His preceptor, Dr. William H. Van Buren, mapped out for him a course of study in Paris, with special emphasis on dermatology, syphilis, and male genito-urinary diseases.

Career

Keyes started his career entering practice as Van Buren's associate, later becoming his partner. Their relationship had lasted until Van Buren's death in 1883. He began as a general practitioner and so great was his hold upon his patients that he remained the family physician to some of them long after he had narrowed his practice to specialties. In 1868 he had a class in the Bellevue outpatient department and was one of the demonstrators of anatomy in the Bellevue Hospital Medical College.

In 1870 he was made a lecturer on dermatology in the same institution and delivered the first course of lectures on this subject in the United States. For some years ending in 1875 he was visiting surgeon to Charity Hospital, Blackwell's Island, and in the latter year was made professor of dermatology, associate professor of surgery, and visiting surgeon at Bellevue. In association with Van Buren he had published in the previous year A Practical Treatise on the Surgical Diseases of the Genito-Urinary Organs Including Syphilis. In 1876 he was appointed a delegate to the International Medical Congress at Philadelphia.

In January of that year he had published in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences a remarkable paper with blood count determinations in which he showed that mercury in small doses is not a poison but a tonic. This was followed in 1877 by another entitled The Tonic Treatment of Syphilis with a description of a new technique, which was of international importance. A later edition was issued in 1896, but the method having served a good purpose was superseded in time by hypodermic and intramuscular injections of mercury.

In 1880 appeared a monograph, Venereal Diseases, followed ten years later by another edition, in which Dr. C. H. Chetwood was junior collaborator. In 1886 he contributed articles on genito-urinary surgery to Ashhurst's International Encyclopedia of Surgery. In 1888 after the death of Van Buren there was published a new edition of the Van Buren-Keyes textbook under the authorship of Keyes alone, which received a Spanish translation. In 1905 with his son he published a second edition and in 1908 appeared Syphilis; a Treatise for Practitioners. A new work, Diseases of the Genito-Urinary Organs, came out in 1910, second edition, 1912; and in 1917, a final effort, Urology, second edition, 1923. A non-technical work The Fear of Death was privately printed in 1910 for circulation among his friends.

Achievements

• Keyes was known as one of the pioneers in America in male genito-urinary surgery. He introduced the technique of administering continued small dosed of mercury in treating syphilis. He contributed many important papers on his special work to medical periodicals. He was also remembered as the founder of the American Association of Genito-Urinary Surgeons and of a small school of genito-urinary surgeons.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Surgical Diseases of the Genito-Urinary Organs Including Syphilis

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Venereal Diseases, Their Complications and Sequelae

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Some Fallacies Concerning Syphilis

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • The Tonic Treatment of Syphilis

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • A Practical Treatise On the Surgical Diseases of the Genito-Urinary Organs, Including Syphilis: Designed As a Manual for Students and Practitioners : With Engravings and Cases

    (This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before ...)

  • Venereal Diseases: Their Complications And Sequelae...

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

Religion

Early in his career, Keyes became affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Pius X conferred on him knighthood in the Order of St. Gregory; and he was medical adviser to high ecclesiastical dignitaries.

Membership

Keyes was the first president of the American Association of Genito-Urinary Surgeons.

Personality

Keyes was a man of remarkable personality. With younger men he had an abrupt and military way and was a strict disciplinarian but few men equaled him in tact and savoir faire in the sickroom and in social life.

Connections

In 1870 Keyes married Sarah M. Loughborough of Georgetown, D. C. He had one son, Edward Loughborough Keyes.

Father:

Erasmus Darwin Keyes

Mother:

Caroline M. Keyes

Grandfather:

James B. Clarke

Son:

Edward Loughborough Keyes

urologist

nephew:

C. H. Chetwood

References

• History of Surgery in the United States, 1775-1900: Textbooks, Monographs, and Treatises (Norman Bibliography Series)
• Urolithiasis: A Comprehensive History