The toxic amblyopias: their classification, history, symptoms, pathology, and treatment (1896)
(This book, "The toxic amblyopias: their classification, h...)
This book, "The toxic amblyopias: their classification, history, symptoms, pathology, and treatment (1896)", by De Schweinitz, G. E. (George Edmund), 1858-1938, is a replication of a book originally published before 1896. It has been restored by human beings, page by page, so that you may enjoy it in a form as close to the original as possible. This book was created using print-on-demand technology. Thank you for supporting classic literature.
The Surgical Complications and Sequels of Typhoid Fever, Based Upon Tables of 700 Cases
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George Edmund de Schweinitz was an American ophthalmologist from Pennsylvania.
Background
George Edmund was born on October 26, 1858 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, of a distinguished but not affluent Pennsylvania family. From his father, Edmund Alexander de Schweinitz, Moravian bishop and historian, and his paternal grandfather, Lewis David von Schweinitz, he inherited a scholarly bent and tireless industry. His mother, Lydia Joanna de (or von) Tschirschky, came of a noble Silesian family. She died when he was eight years old, leaving two sons and two daughters, he being the next to youngest.
His father soon married again, and George acquired a stepmother, who provided him with the most sympathetic of parental attachments and to whom he often referred affectionately in later years as his "literary editor, " and subsequently a half-sister. Born in Philadelphia, de Schweinitz spent the greater part of his boyhood in the Moravian communities of Lititz and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Education
In Bethlehem George Edmund de Schweinitz attended the Moravian Parochial School and Moravian College, receiving from the latter the bachelor of arts degree in 1876.
He began his formal medical studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 1878 and was graduated three years later (M. D. ) as "first-honor" man, as president of his class, and as recipient of the Hodge Gold Medal and the Henry C. Lea Prize.
Career
Having early determined to study medicine, he taught for two years at Nazareth Hall, Nazareth, Pennsylvania, in order to obtain the necessary funds. At the same time he read medicine with a local physician, acquiring an insight into the conditions of rural practice.
After internships in the Children's and University hospitals (1881 - 83), de Schweinitz began general practice, opening an office in a boarding-house, sleeping on a couch in his office and using the sitting-room of the house as his waiting-room.
During the early years of his practice, he served as a highly popular quizmaster in therapeutics (1882 - 87) at the Medical Institute of Philadelphia under Dr. Horatio C. Wood; as a prosector in anatomy (1883 - 88) at the University of Pennsylvania under Dr. Joseph Leidy; and as surgical registrar at the University Hospital.
His turn to ophthalmology, for which he had shown no predilection, was a purely practical move, made when the university's first professor of ophthalmology, Dr. William F. Norris, offered him a position as his assistant. Once the move was made, however, de Schweinitz advanced most rapidly. He was appointed ophthalmic surgeon to the Children's Hospital in 1885; to the Orthopedic Hospital and Infirmary for Nervous Diseases (where he was associated with Drs. S. Weir Mitchell and William Osler) in 1886; and to the Philadelphia General Hospital in 1887.
In 1887 he was elected, at an unusually early age, a fellow of the then century-old College of Physicians of Philadelphia. At the same time he was developing what was to become a large and influential private practice that for some years brought under his care President Woodrow Wilson. During the 1890's de Schweinitz held chairs of ophthalmology at the Philadelphia Polyclinic and College for Graduates in Medicine and at Jefferson Medical College.
The year 1892 saw the publication of the first edition of his textbook Diseases of the Eye, which for over thirty-two years was the most admired book in its field. His most important original monograph, Toxic Amblyopias, was published in 1896. In 1902, following the death of William F. Norris, de Schweinitz was called to the University of Pennsylvania to become its second professor of ophthalmology, a post which he held until his retirement in 1924, when he moved to a similar chair in the university's Graduate School of Medicine.
De Schweinitz was for many years a member of the Army Medical Reserve Corps, which he joined in 1908 as a lieutenant. In the first World War he spent nearly two years on active military service. During this period, in addition to duty overseas, he served on the committee which organized the division of surgery of the head in the Surgeon General's office, thus bringing about the recognition of specialties in the Army Medical Corps. He was subsequently made a brigadier general in the Medical Reserve.
De Schweinitz was president of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (1910 - 13), of the American Ophthalmological Society (1916), and of the American Medical Association (1922). In 1922 he was also elected president of the International Congress of Ophthalmology.
He lived till almost the age of eighty. He died of generalized arteriosclerosis culminating in cardiac failure at his home in Philadelphia.
Achievements
George Edmund de Schweinitz became the leading ophthalmologist in the United States, the first American to deliver a Bowman Lecture before the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom. He established the army's school of ophthalmology at Camp Greenleaf, Fort Oglethorpe. Also he published several hundred articles in the course of his career, many of them containing permanently valuable descriptions of diseased conditions and all of them remarkable in medical literature: Diseases of the Eye (1892), Toxic Amblyopias(1896).
He received the Howe Medal of the American Ophthalmological Society (1934) and honorary degrees from the University of Pennsylvania (1914).
(This book, "The toxic amblyopias: their classification, h...)
Personality
The tall, erect, flaxen-haired "young Norse warrior, " a fluent conversationalist, George Edmund made friends easily without compromising a studious use of his time.
To all phases of his work de Schweinitz brought a handsome, stately presence, an inquiring mind, wide knowledge, superior intelligence, and intense application. Portraits of him in middle and later life, rather evocative of the Prussian autocrat stereotype, fail to suggest the ingratiating qualities which, quite as much as his scientific attainments, led men to take pleasure in doing him honor in his own time. In his unassailable integrity, his devotion to his work, his gentleness, and his unfailing generosity to his associates he represented, to physicians and laymen alike, a rare embodiment of the ideal physician in the unusual guise of a quite substantial Prince Charming.
