Philip Syng Physick was an American surgeon born in Philadelphia.
Background
He was born on July 7, 1768 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, the son of Edmund and Abigail (Syng) Physick. His father was keeper of the Great Seal and receiver-general of Pennsylvania, and later agent for the Penn estates.
He was anxious that his son should study medicine, but the son was not eager to do so, preferring the art of the goldsmith practised by his maternal grandfather, Philip Syng.
Education
He attended a local school and took his college course at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in arts in 1785. Yielding to his father's desire, he then began the study of medicine under Dr. Adam Kuhn, who had been a pupil of Linnaeus, and in 1788 went to London, where John Hunter accepted him as a house pupil and later invited him to remain in London as his assistant. Physick studied at the Great Windmill Street School established by William Hunter.
He then went to Edinburgh, where he graduated in medicine in 1792, his thesis, Dissertatio Medica Inauguralis de Apoplexia (1792), being dedicated to John Hunter.
Career
He was fortunate in being associated with John Hunter, who had one of the most fertile surgical brains the world has ever possessed. In 1790 he was appointed a house-surgeon to St. George's Hospital, which position he held for a year.
On his return to Philadelphia after receiving his degree in Edinburgh he began practice, but at first patients came so slowly that he was greatly discouraged. He rendered good service in the yellow-fever epidemics of 1793 and 1798, contracted the disease himself and, it is said, even had a second attack. He gained one powerful friend, Dr. Benjamin Rush, who did much to advance his fortunes, and came into contact with Stephen Girard, who gave material aid to the yellow-fever hospital during the epidemic. He subsequently served as Girard's physician.
He was elected to the staff of the Pennsylvania Hospital in 1794, holding this position until 1816. He was appointed surgeon to the Almshouse and about the same time he gave lectures in surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. At that time the subjects of anatomy and surgery were combined in one chair, but in 1801, Physick was asked by the University students to give independent lectures in surgery at the Pennsylvania Hospital, and these were so successful that in 1805 a separate chair of surgery at the University was created for him. He retained this chair until 1819, when failing health compelled his resignation. In 1804 he reported a successful operation on an arteriovenous aneurism which had followed venesection.
Physick was not a prolific writer; his publications were chiefly reports in medical journals. His views are well represented, however, in The Elements of Surgery (1813), by his nephew, John Syng Dorsey, and in The Institutes and Practice of Surgery (1824).
He died in 1837.
Achievements
Views
Physick persistently believed in the virtues of venesection, and is said to have regretted in his later years that he had bled not too much, but too little.
Membership
He was honored by election to English and French medical societies and to the American Philosophical Society.
Personality
His mind was evidently disposed more toward the invention and perfection of mechanical devices and the designing of improved methods of mechanical treatment than toward writing.
Physick had many illnesses throughout his life; after an attack of fever in 1813, possibly typhoid, he never regained robust health and thenceforth suffered from renal calculus and gradually advancing cardiac disease.
Connections
On September 18, 1800, Physick married Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Emlen of Philadelphia; they had seven children, of whom four survived infancy.