Elkanah Williams was born on December 19, 1822 on a farm near Bedford, Lawrence County, Indiana, the son of Isaac and Amelia (Gibson) Williams, both of Welsh lineage, who had moved westward from North Carolina by way of Tennessee. The father prospered and was able to give the best available educational advantages to the more ambitious of his large family.
Elkanah attended the Bedford Academy, and later entered the state university at Bloomington. Transferring to Indiana Asbury (now De Pauw) University, he was graduated there in 1847. After teaching school for a short time he entered the medical department of the University of Louisville, where he received the degree of M. D. in 1850.
He began practice in Bedford, but in 1852 moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and later in the same year left for a prolonged tour of graduate study in the eye clinics of Europe. Influenced by Dr. S. D. Gross of Louisville he had set out to be an operating surgeon, later centering his interest upon the surgery of the eye.
Returning to Cincinnati in 1855, he reopened his practice, devoting it exclusively to diseases of the eye and ear and thereby becoming one of the first in the country to limit his practice to this specialty. With surgery of the eye and ear in the hands of the general surgeon and diseases of these organs in the field of the general practitioner, he found opposition and disappointments in his new venture. Soon, however, he achieved a highly lucrative practice and in time became known as the foremost practitioner of his specialty in that section of the country.
In 1855 he established a charity eye clinic along the lines of European institutions in connection with the Miami Medical College and became clinical lecturer on diseases of the eye and ear. When the school was reopened in 1865, after having been closed because of the Civil War, Williams joined the faculty as professor of ophthalmology and aural surgery, thus filling the first chair devoted to this specialty in the United States.
Throughout his teaching career of over twenty years, he conducted didactic and clinical instruction of the highest order. With a gift for story telling, he made his lectures not only instructive but highly entertaining.
While in Europe in 1854 he had demonstrated its use before an English audience and published an article, "The Ophthalmoscope, " in the London Medical Times and Gazette (July 1 and 8, 1854), dealing with Dr. Andreas Anagnostakis' modification of Helmholtz' recently devised instrument. He wrote nearly fifty articles on topics relating to his specialty, nearly all of which were published in the Cincinnati Lancet and Observer, of which he was co-editor from 1867 to 1873.
For twelve years (1862 - 73) he served on the staff of the Cincinnati Hospital and during the Civil War he was an assistant surgeon in the United States Marine Hospital in Cincinnati.
He was compelled to give up his practice and teaching by an organic disease of the brain, which caused his death at the home of a friend in Hazelwood, Pennsylvania.
He was a member and one time president (1876) of the American Ophthalmological Society and a member of the American Otological Society. He was made an honorary member of the Ophthalmological Society of Great Britain in 1884.
He was a large man of jovial appearance, with a disposition full of spontaneous generosity and affection. These characteristics, with a ready conversational ability, made him conspicuous and popular in any company of which he was a member.
He was twice married: first, in December 1847, to Sarah L. Farmer of Bedford, Indiana, who died in 1851; second, on April 7, 1857, to Sarah B. McGrew, who survived him.
