Plastic Surgery: Its Principles And Practice (1919)
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
John Staige Davis was the first real plastic surgeon.
Background
John Staige Davis was born on January 15, 1872 in Norfolk, Virginia. He was the only child of William Blackford Davis and Mary Jane (Howland) Davis, both descendants of Virginia colonists. His fatherand parental grandfather were physicians. At the time of John's birth, his father was assistant surgeon in the U. S. Naval Hospital at Portsmouth, Va. ; his childhood was spent in a succession of frontier posts where his father served as a colonel in the Army Medical Corps.
Education
John spent a year (1887 - 1888) at the Episcopal High School of Virginia in Alexandria, and then entered St. Paul's School, a military school in Garden City, L. I, where he remained until his graduation in 1892.
That year he entered the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University, where he studied biology under Russell H. Chittenden and received the Ph. B. degree in 1895. He then enrolled in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and received the M. D. in 1899.
Career
After receiving the M. D. in 1899 Davis served a year as resident house officer at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and three years (1900 - 1903) as resident surgeon and superintendent at the Union Protestant Infirmary (now the Union Memorial Hospital) under John M. T. Finney.
Davis began private practice in Baltimore in 1903 and by 1908 had limited his work to surgery. In his early clinical experience he had become curious about the processes of wound healing and scar formation, an interest that led him to investigate the use of surgical methods in repairing deformities and blemishes of the skin, whether congenital or acquired. He was particularly concerned with the psychological effects of such deformities on children.
One of the first to devote all his time to the principles and techniques of general plastic and reconstructivesurgery, he developed a number of methods for repair. He perfected the "Davis graft, " in which small patches of healthy, full-thickness skin are transplanted to raw areas and allowed to grow together and cover the raw area, a technique still used in the treatment of certain badly infected wounds.
He also devised methods in the design and movement of local skin flaps for reconstructing defects around the face and jaws. He never became especially adept at taking large sheets of split-thickness skin as free grafts--perhaps because of his own skill and genius in moving tissue by the flap technique.
For about ten years he also carried on research in the Hunterian Laboratory of Experimental Surgery at Johns Hopkins on the physiology of circulation during skin transplantation.
His work and methods were described in more than seventy papers, and in his book, Plastic Surgery: Its Principles and Practice (1919), for which his wife drew many of the illustrations. This was the first definitive textbook on plastic surgery and remains a classic.
Davis continued a close association with the Johns Hopkins University, serving as instructor in surgery (1909 - 1920), associate in clinical surgery (1920 - 1923), and associate professor of surgery (1923 - 1946). Under his patient, lucid direction, a large number of medical students, residents, and house officers learned the art of reconstructive surgery, and its possibilities in relieving the awesome effects of physical deformities.
From 1917-1919, Davis served as a captain in the Army Medical Corps, as consultant in plastic surgery to the surgeon general's office and as chairman of the examining board of the Medical, Sanitary and Veterinary Corps of Maryland.
In World War II, he took an active part in organizing special units of the Medical Corps for the treatment of soldiers whose war injuries required plastic surgery. He also served on the subcommittee for plastic and maxillofacial surgery of the division of medical science of the National Research Council, as consultant to the secretary of war, and as consultant in plastic surgery to the surgeon general. Davis was also on the staff of Johns Hopkins Hospital, serving successively as assistant visiting surgeon (plastic surgery), visiting surgeon, and surgeon-in-charge. He also served as visiting surgeon at the Union Memorial Hospital, the Children's Hospital School, the Robert Garrett Hospital, the Hospital for the Women of Maryland, and the Church Home and Hospital.
Advanced age and occasional fatigue never brought his work to a stop. On the morning of his death he had his usual office hours, operated at the Union Memorial Hospital, and lunched with a group of his colleagues at the Maryland Club. That afternoon, at home, he died in his sleep, of a coronary occlusion.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
Membership
Davis was a member of the American Surgical Association (vice-president, 1937), and was president of the Southern Surgical Association in 1940. He was a founder member of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons (president, 1945), a founder and chairman of the American Board of Plastic Surgery until the year before his death, and a founder, member and fellow of the American College of Surgeons.
Personality
A member of the Episcopal church, he was a gentle, quiet-spoken man with unusual intellect, strong will, and sound judgment, and gave great sympathy to the many patients who sought his help.
Connections
On October 26, 1907, Davis married Kathleen Gordon Bowdoin; their children were Kathleen Staige, William Bowdoin (who also became a physician and plastic surgeon of national prominence), and Howland Staige.