James Peter Warbasse

Background

James Peter Warbasse was born on November 22, 1866 in Newton, N. J. , the son of Joseph Warbasse, a merchant, and Harriet Delphine Northrup. Among his mother's ancestors was a sister of Benjamin Franklin.

Education

James received an excellent education at the Newton Collegiate Institute, from which he graduated in 1885. Considered too young to proceed directly to medical school, he spent a year at home, working by day and studying at night in his father's well-stocked library. Here he absorbed the writings of Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Paine, and Ingersoll, developing the liberal trend of thought that was to characterize him throughout life. At Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons Warbasse attracted the attention of the surgeon Lewis Stephen Pilcher, then editor of the Annals of Surgery. He graduated with the M. D. in 1889. He studied at Göttingen under the pathologist Johannes Orth and the surgeon Franz K(tm)nig, but what proved ultimately to be of even greater importance was the fact that at Göttingen Warbasse received his first direct introduction to the cooperative movement, which was to play such a vital role in his subsequent career.

Career

He interned for two years at the Methodist Episcopal Hospital of Brooklyn and then left for a year of postgraduate study in Europe. Later he continued to Vienna, where he spent several months under Theodor Billroth, then the most famous surgeon in Europe. After returning to the United States in 1892, Warbasse joined the staff of the Methodist Hospital as assistant attending surgeon, where he set up the first American laboratory devoted exclusively to the pathology and bacteriology of surgical diseases, including cancer. He also received an appointment in 1903 at the German (now Wyckoff Heights) Hospital, of which he became chief surgeon in 1906. His practice was interrupted in 1898 by army service in the Spanish-American War. The horrors of combat seem to have accentuated an antimilitary bias that Warbasse claimed was characteristic of his family and that made him a lifelong pacifist. After the war he began to take a more active interest in organized medicine, serving the Kings County Medical Society as censor, chairman of the historical commission, and directing librarian (1905 - 1908). During this period he was also editor of the New York State Journal of Medicine. His wife entered closely into the sociological subjects that were already beginning to take up much of Warbasse's thoughts. They began a serious study of the radical movements of the period. Warbasse admitted that he "was naturally inclined to look into something that somebody condemned. " This inquisitiveness led him to study labor unionism, the IWW, socialism, the single-tax system, and anarchism. For one reason or another none of these proved entirely satisfying. At the same time he was becoming increasingly disenchanted with the economics of the medical profession as then practiced. He felt that medicine, the noblest of all pursuits, should be as deeply involved with the ills of society as with those of the body, and should speak out more vigorously against the laissez-faire tenets of contemporary capitalism. What was the point of operating on an individual, only to send him back to quarters where disease and malnutrition were rampant? Warbasse's voice was one of the first to be raised (1907) against the then popular, though often unnecessary, operation of appendectomy. This position, taken long before the antibiotic era, reflects the caution with which Warbasse regarded all surgical procedures. In "Are There Too Many Doctors?" (1912), he excoriated the profession for exploiting disease for mercenary reasons. Two years later the Journal of the American Medical Association, perhaps unaware of the controversial aspects of the subject, printed "The Socialization of Medicine, " an article by Warbasse. His thoughts were best expressed in the following statement: "The knowledge and skill which have the power of preventing disease, relieving suffering, and prolonging life should be available to all. They should not be purchaseable by some and denied to others, nor bestowed as a charity upon any. Health and life are too precious to be at the mercy of trade and barter. " Such statements did not tend to endear him to the conservative medical establishment, and Warbasse began to consider withdrawing entirely from the practice of surgery. Having decided that the cooperative movement was the one most sympathetic to his own beliefs, in 1916 he became the first president of the Cooperative League of America, a position he was to hold for twenty-five years. A year earlier his wife, the largest stockholder of the Dennison Manufacturing Company, had shown complete sympathy with her husband's advanced views by turning over this $6 million concern to employee control. During World War I Warbasse banded together with Roger Baldwin, Max Eastman, Lilian Wald, John Haynes Holmes, and others to form the American Union Against Militarism. Because of his radical views he was suspended from membership in the Kings County Medical Society on Apr. 17, 1918. Soon afterward he renounced his profession, having had the satisfaction of seeing published his successful three-volume Surgical Treatment (1918 - 1919). Now fully launched on his crusade to improve society, Warbasse traveled widely, speaking in every state of the union. His Cooperative Democracy (1923) ran through five editions and was translated into several languages. Warbasse refused to become discouraged at a lack of response that would have discouraged a less resilient person. After a disillusioning trip to the Soviet Union in 1924, he strongly resisted the attempts of the Communists to infiltrate American liberal movements. In 1933 he was invited by President Frank L. Babbitt, Jr. , of the Long Island College of Medicine to give the first course in medical sociology ever taught. Designed to give the future physician "a broad conception of his relation to human affairs and social conditions, " these lectures led to The Doctor and the Public (1935), directed to the profession, and Cooperative Medicine (1936), intended for the layman. During his later years Warbasse remained true to his liberal convictions, supporting the Spanish insurgents, civil liberties, birth control, the right to abortion, workmen's compensation, women's liberation, and similar causes. After the death of his wife in 1945, Warbasse reduced his activities and became more deeply introspective. But his final decade showed little evidence of physical or mental decay. He continued to travel, to ski, and to chop wood. He wrote incessantly. In 1956 he produced the autobiographical Three Voyages. North Star (1958), written in the last year of his life, was the final summation of his credo. He died at Woods Hole, Massachussets.

Achievements

• He founded the Cooperative League of the United States of America (which later became the National Cooperative Business Association) and was its president from 1916 to 1941. He was inducted into the Cooperative Hall of Fame in 1976. His name is memorialized in the Amalgamated Warbasse Houses of Brooklyn, a mammoth project containing over 2, 500 apartments.

Works

More photos

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  • Surgical Treatment: A Practical Treatise On the Therapy of Surgical Diseases for the Use of Practitioners and Students of Surgery

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

  • Complete Index to Volumes I, II, and III of Warbasse's Surgical Treatment (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Complete Index to Volumes I, II, and III of ...)

  • The Conquest of Disease Through Animal Experimentation

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

  • Surgical Treatment, Vol. 1 of 3: A Practical Treatise on the Therapy of Surgical Diseases for the Use of Practitioners and Students of Surgery (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Surgical Treatment, Vol. 1 of 3: A Practical...)

  • Surgical Treatment, Vol. 3 of 3: A Practical Treatise on the Therapy of Surgical Diseases for the Use of Practitioners and Students of Surgery (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Surgical Treatment, Vol. 3 of 3: A Practical...)

  • Warbasse History, A Study in the Sociology of Heredity

    (Falmouth 1954 1st Kendall. Part I: Warbasse ascendants; P...)

  • Cooperative Democracy
  • Cooperative democracy through voluntary association of the people as consumers;: A discussion of the cooperative movement, its philosophy, methods, ... to other systems of economic organization,

Connections

On April 15, 1903 Warbasse had married Agnes Dyer; they had six children.

Father:

Joseph Warbasse

Mother:

Harriet Delphine Northrup

Spouse:

Agnes Dyer