Background
James Rushmore Wood was born on September 14, 1813, in Mamaroneck, New York, United States. He was a son of a Quaker couple - Elkanah Wood, a miller, and Mary (Rushmore) Wood.
630 W 168th St, New York, NY 10032, United States
In his early years, Wood studied at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (present-day Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons).
James Rushmore Wood was born on September 14, 1813, in Mamaroneck, New York, United States. He was a son of a Quaker couple - Elkanah Wood, a miller, and Mary (Rushmore) Wood.
In his early years, Wood received a meager elementary education in a Quaker school in New York City, where his father conducted a leather shop. Later, Wood began his medical studies in the private classes of David L. Rogers, then took courses at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (present-day Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons) and at the Vermont Academy of Medicine in Castleton, graduating from the latter educational establishment in 1834.
After a period of service as a demonstrator of anatomy at the Vermont Academy of Medicine, James returned to New York City in 1837 to practice medicine on the Bowery, later moving over to Broadway. He early centered his interest on operative surgery and secured a place upon the staff of the city almshouse, out of which he and two associates created Bellevue Hospital in 1847, becoming its medical board staff.
From the time of the establishment of the Hospital to Wood's death, he was a moving spirit in the institution, with its growth becoming known as the master surgeon of the greatest hospital in the United States. He did much for the improvement of the hospital service, introducing, in 1869, the first hospital ambulance service in any city. Earlier, in 1861, with other members of Bellevue Hospital staff, Wood organized the Bellevue Hospital Medical College. The same year, he was made a professor of Operative Surgery and Surgical Pathology at the educational establishment, the post he held till 1868, when he retired as a professor emeritus. Some time later, on May 1, 1873, through Wood's efforts, Bellevue opened the first training school for nurses in the United States.
Besides his affiliation with Bellevue Hospital, Wood was also a surgeon at St. Vincent's Hospital and the New York Ophthalmic Dispensary. As a surgeon, Wood paid especial attention to the bones and their growth and succeeded in establishing beyond dispute the fact of a second growth of bone by separating the periosteum from the necrosed bone and carefully enucleating it. In his anatomical and pathological museum, he had on exhibition an entire jaw, that he had removed for phosphor-necrosis, and also a second jaw, that had attached itself to the skull of a patient, who had been operated upon and had subsequently died of another disease. In fact, Wood had specimens to show the reproduction of almost every bone in the human body. Among his other successful operations were the tying of both carotids in the same patient for malignant disease of the antrum, placing the ligature on the subclavian on several occasions, and tying the external iliac artery.
James' writings were mainly case reports in journal articles. Among his works are "Strangulated Hernia" (1845); "Spontaneous Dislocation of the Head of the Femur into the Ischiatic Notch During Morbus Coxarius" (1847); "Ligature of the External Iliac Artery Followed by Secondary Hemorrhage" (1856); "Phosphorus-Necrosis of the Lower Jaw" (1856) and "Early History of Ligation of the Primitive Carotid" (1857).
It's also worth mentioning, that, from the beginning of his connection with Bellevue, Wood collected post-mortem material, which grew into the Wood Museum, one of the richest collections of pathological material in the world.
Wood was still at the height of his professional career, when he died in New York City in 1882.
In 1857, Wood was mainly instrumental in procuring the passage by the legislature of the dissecting bill, which provided, that the bodies of all unclaimed vagrants should be given for dissection to the institutions, in which medicine and surgery are taught. It took four years to secure the enactment of this law, and so great was the public prejudice against it, that it finally passed by only one majority.
Wood was a member of the New York Academy of Medicine and the New York and Massachusetts state medical societies. Besides, he was twice president of the New York Pathological Society.
James was a bold and radical surgeon. His speed and dexterity were the marvel of the time, when these were the prime requisites of surgery, since the use of anesthetics was then just becoming popular.
While Wood was an able teacher, the handicap of his poor early education was always apparent, particularly in his frequent misapplication of Latin phrases.
Wood married Emma (Rowe) Wood, a daughter of James Rowe, a New York merchant, in 1853. They had one son, James Rushmore Wood, and two daughters, Anna Wood Bell and Ida Wood Van Schaick, besides a child, named Edith Wood, who died in infancy.