(John Miller Turpin Finney, the first President of the Ame...)
John Miller Turpin Finney, the first President of the American College of Surgeons, was also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons in Edinburgh and Ireland, and an Honorary Member of the Hunterian Society and the Medical Society of London.
(FACSIMILE: Reproduction The significance and effect of pa...)
FACSIMILE: Reproduction The significance and effect of pain FACSIMILE Originally published by Boston : Griffith-Still ings press in 1914. Book will be printed in black and white, with grayscale images. Book will be 6 inches wide by 9 inches tall and soft cover bound. Any foldouts will be scaled to page size. If the book is larger than 1000 pages, it will be printed and bound in two parts. Due to the age of the original titles, we cannot be held responsible for missing pages, faded, or cut off text. 32 pages.
John Miller Turpin Finney was an American surgeon.
Background
He was born near Natchez, Mississippi, the younger of two sons of Ebenezer Dickey Finney, a Presbyterian minister and principal of a boys' school, and Annie Louise (Parker) Finney, a music teacher in a neighboring school for girls.
His father's ancestors, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, had come from Belfast in 1720 and settled in Chester County, Pennsylvania; a branch of the family moved to Churchville, Maryland, where John's father was born.
His mother was a New Englander whose forebears had migrated to Massachusetts early in the seventeenth century.
She died when he was five months old, and for the next three years he was reared with the children of a family friend, Mrs. Stephen Turpin; in gratitude, his father added "Turpin" to the boy's name.
At the end of the Civil War the elder Finney took his sons north, where they lived with relatives in Winchester, Illinois, until 1871, when he established a household in Bel Air, Md. From earliest boyhood John Finney had wished to study medicine
Education
After attending local schools and the Bel Air Academy, he entered Princeton, where he excelled in sports, particularly football, and graduated in 1884.
He then enrolled in the Harvard Medical School, but because of an attack of typhoid he was not able to complete the three-year course until 1888.
He received the M. D. degree in 1889, after a term of service on the resident surgical staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital.
Career
In May 1889 Finney secured an appointment in the surgical dispensary of the new Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He thus joined a brilliant staff that was soon attracting the ablest graduates of American medical schools.
In addition to acting as surgeon in the outpatient department, Finney worked in the laboratory of the pathologist William H. Welch and, in particular, served as anesthetist for William S. Halsted, the chief of surgery, who stressed the use of aseptic techniques and was conducting the first surgical residency system in the United States.
Finney's appointment carried no salary, however, and in 1890 he began private practice, while continuing his work in the dispensary and acting as head of the surgical service during Halsted's absences.
The rules then prevailing at Johns Hopkins did not allow him to use its facilities for his private patients, and at first he performed his surgical operations in the patients' homes.
As his practice grew, he began using the Union Protestant Infirmary and was instrumental in modernizing and enlarging its facilities and in transforming it, in 1919, into the Union Memorial Hospital. Under his leadership a strong group of clinical surgeons was attracted to the staff.
In 1893 Dr. Finney was appointed associate in surgery at both the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. He remained on the medical faculty until his retirement in 1933, becoming associate professor of surgery in 1898 and professor of clinical surgery in 1912. During these years he refused invitations to professorships in other institutions, including the University of Texas and the Harvard Medical School; he was also offered the presidency of Princeton after Woodrow Wilson resigned in 1910.
Continuing on the staff of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, he headed its surgical clinic from 1899 to 1914 and for three years (1922 - 25) served as surgeon-in-chief, following the death of Dr. Halsted. Finney's talent lay in clinical surgery.
His abilities gained wide recognition, and celebrated patients sought his services. A general surgeon of the old school, he was skillful in all types of operation but gradually gave more and more attention to lesions of the stomach and intestines, and achieved particular renown in connection with gastric surgery.
His pyloroplasty, an operation for the relief of duodenal ulcer, remains a standard procedure and, currently associated with division of the vagus nerve, has had a considerable resurgence in popularity. As a teacher Finney exerted a considerable influence on many of the men who were surgical residents during his years at Hopkins, but his particular interest was in the direct care of patients.
Genial and courteous, a willing raconteur, Finney had a strong sense of right and wrong and was held in high esteem. He was deeply religious and served as an elder of the Presbyterian Church and as chairman of the Baltimore branch of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
A few days before his seventy-ninth birthday, Finney died at his home in Baltimore of a coronary thrombosis. He was buried in the Presbyterian cemetery at Churchville, Maryland.
He was deeply religious and served as an elder of the Presbyterian Church and as chairman of the Baltimore branch of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
Views
He had a strong interest in education, was a life trustee of Princeton, and served as chairman of the board of trustees of the Gilman Country School for Boys in Baltimore and of the McDonogh School for Boys in McDonogh, Maryland.
Membership
He was an honorary member of various foreign medical societies, including the Academie Royale de Medecine of Belgium and the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Connections
On April 20, 1892, Finney married Mary E. Gross of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a member of the first class graduating from the Johns Hopkins Training School for Nurses. Their four children were John Miller Train, Eben Dickey, George Gross, and Mary Elizabeth; the first and third sons became physicians.
and in 1937 he was honored by the establishment of the Finney-Howell Research Foundation for the Investigation of Cancer. He received honorary degrees from Tulane University (1935) and Harvard
1935) and Harvard (1937
1935) and Harvard (1937
In 1932 he was awarded the Bigelow Medal of the Boston Surgical Society