Mont Rogers Reid was born on April 7, 1889 on a farm near the village of Oriskany, Virginia, one of seven children, six of them boys, of Harriet Pendleton (Lemon) and Benjamin Watson Reid. Mont Reid's childhood and adolescence, spent in a remote mountain community, instilled an imperturbable poise and simplicity that he retained all his life, along with a love for the unsophisticated neighbors of his boyhood.
He received his early education from his father, a schoolteacher as well as a farmer. In 1902 he entered the normal school at Daleville, Virginia, and in 1904 enrolled at Roanoke College at Salem, Virginia, receiving the A. B. degree in 1908. Four years later he graduated from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
His class standing gained him the internship of his choice, a year's surgical clerkship at the Johns Hopkins Hospital under William S. Halsted, who exercised a strong influence on Reid's entire career. He also took a year of work in pathology under Joseph C. Bloodgood, after which he returned to the surgical service, becoming chief resident in 1918.
In 1922, now one of Halsted's more eminent disciples, Reid moved, with another Johns Hopkins surgeon, George J. Heuer, to the University of Cincinnati, where as an associate professor in the medical school's newly organized department of surgery he contributed largely to its successful development. He succeeded Heuer as chairman of the department in 1931 and held the post for the rest of his life. During his tenure Reid secured funds not only for his own department, but also for the remodeling of the Cincinnati General Hospital, which served as the base for clinical instruction of medical students.
With a strong interest in civic affairs, he made friends in many fields and in his quiet and persuasive way awakened the citizens of Cincinnati to their obligations in support of their university and medical school. Under his leadership the standards of surgical care rose and the department became one of the great training centers in the United States for residents in surgery.
Reid spent a year (1925 - 26) as visiting professor of surgery in the Union Medical College of Peking in China, followed by participation in one of the Mongolian expeditions of Roy Chapman Andrews. Malaria contracted in China weakened his health for a time.
He died at his home in Cincinnati at the age of fifty-four of a myocardial infarction.
Reid was the first surgeon to recognize the importance of placing veterans' hospitals near medical schools. On his initiative, the American Surgical Association endorsed this policy, which was later carried out after World War II. Reid's chief contribution to his science centered in his experimental and clinical studies of surgery of the thyroid gland and of the large blood vessels. Some eighty-five papers, published over a period of thirty years, reflect his work in these fields, as well as in the surgical treatment of other medical conditions, such as angina pectoris, pigmented moles, and cancer. In 1934 he was awarded the Rudolph Matas Medal for his work in vascular surgery. Probably his most enduring accomplishment is to be found in the many young surgeons he trained in the total care of the patient. For Reid, this meant a painstaking personal history, a complete physical examination, an unhurried and meticulous operation, and vigilant postoperative care.
He married Elizabeth Harmon Cassatt on January 26, 1929; they had one son, Alfred Cassatt.
