Henry Gassett Davis

Background

Henry Gassett Davis was born on November 4, 1807 at Trenton, Maine, United States. He was the son of Isaac Davis, manufacturer and mechanic, by his wife, Polly Rice, and grandson of Deacon Isaac Davis of Northboro, Massachusetts, United States, who was descended from Dolor Davis, an early settler at Cape Cod (1634).

Education

In March 1839 Davis received his Doctor of Medicine from Yale School of Medicine.

Career

Henry Davis intended to follow his father’s trade and was on his way South to set up an establishment for the manufacture of cotton-bagging when, en route, he stopped to visit a sister who was under treatment for scoliosis.

The treatment appeared to him completely to ignore certain elementary mechanical principles, and he forthwith gave up his intended career to begin the study of medicine.

He spent the first fifteen years of his medical career practising at Worcester and Millbury, Massachusetts, after which he settled in New York. He gained wide experience as a general practitioner and surgeon, and it was not until his removal to New York that he directed his attention more exclusively to the problems of orthopedics. While still in Millbury his interest had been aroused in the treatment of fractures and deformities, and he advocated energetically the use of continuous traction for the correction of deformity and for relief of joint irritation.

His first use of weights and pulleys and of other traction devices for treatment of fracture preceded those introduced in 1860 by Gurdon Buck and met with equal success. His practise eventually grew so large that he opened a private hospital at Thirty-seventh Street and Madison Avenue, chiefly to receive patients from abroad.

Davis’s beliefs, new in their day, concerning the nature and treatment of club foot, congenital dislocation of the hip, chronic diseases of the joints, and the deformities resulting from poliomyelitis, formed the basis for the modern approach to these problems.

It is interesting that in dealing with abscesses he recommended opening and evacuation, and subsequent lavage with warm water and a French preparation of chlorine, thus anticipating the Carrel-Dakin therapy used at the present time.

Davis was also a physician in the broad sense of the term, for in treating the part he did not neglect the whole, and constitutional treatment is not more wisely taught today than by him in the middle of the nineteenth century.

He influenced younger men who were about him, notably Lewis A. Sayre, Charles Fayette Taylor and, though less directly, Edward Hickling Bradford.

His most important work, Conservative Surgery, as Exhibited in Remedying some of the Mechanical Causes that Operate Injuriously both in Health and Disease (1867), is a volume of unusual clarity and literary excellence, and was the first notable textbook in the history of American orthopedic surgery.

Several other contributions were important : “On the Effect of Pressure upon Ulcerated Vertebrae” (New York Journal of Medicine, 1859), “On the Pathological Basis of the Treatment of Joint Disease” (American Medical Monthly, 1862), “The American Method of Treating Joint Diseases and Deformities” (Transactions of the American Medical Association, 1863).

At the age of eighty-nine he died at his home in Everett, Massachusetts. He was survived by his widow.

He is said to have been the first to suggest to railroad engineers the advantage of elevating the outer rail of the track at curves.

Achievements

• Davis became the founder of the so-called “traction school” of orthopedic surgery. He was the first to devise a splint for traction and the protection of the hip joint. Davis also published the first notable textbook in the history of American orthopedic surgery. He was elected an honorary member of the newly formed American Orthopedic Association.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The American Method of Treating Joint Diseases and Deformities

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

  • Medical Testimony in Regard to the Proper Mechanical Treatment of Joint Diseases (1862) BY Davis, Henry Gassett ( Author ) { Paperback } 2008
  • Conservative Surgery: As Exhibited In Remedying Some Of The Mechanical Causes That Operate Injuriously Both In Health And Disease (1867)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

Connections

Davis married Ellen W. Deering in 1856, and had a son and two daughters.

Father:

Isaac Davis

manufacturer, mechanic

Mother:

Polly Rice

Grandfather:

Isaac Davis

deacon

Wife:

Ellen W. Deering