Gates Horatio Jameson

Background

Jameson was born in 1778, in York, Pennsylvania, the son of Dr. David and Elizabeth (Davis) Jameson.

Education

Jameson attended no medical school, but studied medicine under his father and began practice at seventeen in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Moving to Baltimore in 1810, he followed lectures at the University of Maryland, taking the degree of M. D. in 1813.

Career

Like many early American physicians Jameson combined the practice of medicine with the business of a druggist. He became a prominent citizen of Baltimore, serving as surgeon to the federal troops in 1812, physician to the City Jail, surgeon, 1814-1835, and consulting physician, 1821-1835, to the Board of Health. He had before him a promise of an unusual medical career, but was over-ambitious and unwilling to wait. He quarrelled with the faculty of the University of Maryland Medical School, insisting that they had refused him due consideration, and founded a medical school of his own, the Washington Medical College. The University attempted to prevent the granting of a charter to the new institution but failed. The new college opened (1827) on North Holliday Street and flourished for a time. Under Jameson's ambitious influence it expanded too rapidly, securing a university charter in 1839 and erecting a hospital and college on North Broadway on the site of the present Church Home. In 1849, it moved again to the southeast corner of Hanover and Lombard Streets, but it was heavily in debt. The buildings were sold and the college closed in 1851. Jameson was greatly humiliated by its gradual failure. A secondary result of his activity in this connection was a criminal trial in which Jameson sued Dr. French Hintz for defamation of character. Jameson was finally vindicated and his opponent fined, but the inheritance of enmity and bitterness endured for many years. Jameson was a voluminous writer. He published accounts of many unusual operations, such as extirpation of the upper jaw after ligation of the carotid artery, which he performed for the first time in 1820, and the first removal in America of uterine scirrhus. After Dorsey and Post, he was the third surgeon to ligate successfully the external iliac artery. He also edited (1829-1832) the Maryland Medical Recorder, contributing many papers himself, published four papers on yellow and typhus fevers (1825-1830), American Domestic Medicine (1817; 2nd ed. , 1818), and a more ambitious Treatise on Epidemic Cholera (1855). He left a memoir of his father. In 1830, by invitation, he visited Germany and Scandinavia to read a paper before a society of German physicians, being the first American member of such a congress and the only representative on this occasion from the United States. During the cholera epidemic he had charge of several hospitals. Jameson became in 1832 superintendent of vaccination, and by passing the virus through the cow improved the process. In 1835-1836 he was for one term professor of surgery at the Medical College of Ohio, Cincinnati. Probably his most important contribution to surgery was his use of the animal ligature: a distinction which he shares with Dr. Philip Syng Physick of Philadelphia (Medical Recorder, January 1827). Jameson died while visiting New York City, in 1855, and was buried in Baltimore.

Achievements

• Jameson is chiefly remembered as a pioneering surgeon, who promoted greatly the development of medicine in general.

Works

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  • A Treatise on Epidemic Cholera (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from A Treatise on Epidemic Cholera Our therapia...)

  • The American Domestick Medicine, or Medical Admonisher: Containing Some Account of Anatomy, the Senses, Diseases, Casualties, a Dispensatory, and ... to the Diseases, &C. Of the United States

    (Excerpt from The American Domestick Medicine, or Medical ...)

  • The Maryland Medical Recorder, Vol. 2: April 1831 (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Maryland Medical Recorder, Vol. 2: April...)

  • The Maryland Medical Recorder, Vol. 3: Devoted to Medical Science in General; July, 1832 (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Maryland Medical Recorder, Vol. 3: Devot...)

  • The Maryland Medical Recorder, Vol. 1: Devoted to Medical Science in General; September 1829 (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Maryland Medical Recorder, Vol. 1: Devot...)

Personality

Jameson possessed the physical qualities necessary for a great surgeon, a habit of meticulous cleanliness, mechanical ability, and boundless energy. His faults were those of an ambitious man who tried to force circumstances to his will instead of molding them patiently.

Connections

By his first wife, Catherine Shevell of Somerset County, Pennsylvania, whom Jameson married August 3, 1797, he had seven children. All his sons became physicians, but died without issue. Following his wife's death, in 1837, he married, in 1852, Hannah (Fearson) Ely, a widow, by whom he had no children.

Father:

David Jameson

Mother:

Elizabeth Davis

Spouse:

Hannah (Fearson) Ely

Spouse:

Catherine Shevell

References

• A Brief Sketch of One of Baltimore's Greatest Men, Horatio Gates Jameson, M.D: His Most Valuable Contribution to Surgery; The Occlusion of Arteries by the Buried Animal Ligature (Classic Reprint)
• American Medical Biographies, Volume 2
• The Medical Annals of Maryland, 1799-1899; Prepared for the Centennial of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty
• Memoir of David Jameson, Esq., M. D., Lieutanant-Colonel of the Provincial Forces, and Colonel of the Revolutionary Forces of Pennsylvania, with Appendix of Genealogical and Other Supplementary Notes