Stephen Rogers

Background

Stephen Rogers was born at Tyre, New York, United States. His father was a farmer.

Education

until the age of seventeen Stephen was employed on the farm, educating himself meanwhile by extensive reading.

The degree of M. D. had been granted to him by the New York Medical College in 1856, before he went to Chile.

Honorary degrees were conferred upon him by the University of Havana (1857) and the University of Chile (1857)

Career

Later, by working in a store and hiring himself out as a farm laborer, he saved enough money to obtain a scanty education in nearby schools. He read freely in the library of a local physician, spent some time in hospitals in New York, and heavily in debt, accepted an appointment as surgeon to the Panama Railroad, then being built (1849 - 55). Five years of arduous work in the tropics seriously impaired his health, but he recovered after a prolonged convalescence in Havana, Cuba. During this period he became thoroughly acquainted with Spanish and his knowledge of this language, combined with his professional skill, secured for him a post as surgeon to the Southern Railroad of Chile, with headquarters in Santiago.

Returning to New York in 1865, he practised surgery in that city and made several contributions to medical jurisprudence while connected with the coroner's office. These were contained in papers read before the Medico-Legal Society of New York, a society in which he took a great interest, serving as president in 1871. His most important medical contribution was a paper on ruptured extra-uterine pregnancy (Transactions of the American Medical Association, vol. XVIII, 1867). In it he not only gave a careful description of the signs and symptoms of this condition but also advocated immediate surgical treatment. This paper was enlarged and published as a monograph, Extra-uterine Foetation and Gestation, and the Early Signs Which Characterize It (1867). Other papers include an early report on excision of the scapula (American Journal of the Medical Sciences, October 1868), which was reprinted separately that same year; on the use of quinine in treating tropical malaria (Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of New York, 1862); and a timely protest against the hypodermic use of the same drug (New York Medical Journal, September 1874), also printed separately. In 1875, his health again somewhat impaired, he was appointed United States commissioner to the International Exhibition of Chile. While there, he resumed his practice as a surgeon in Santiago, but died three years later while on a visit to Valparaiso.

For a short period he was professor of physiological and microscopic anatomy in the New York Medical College.

Membership

member of the New York Academy of Medicine

member of the Obstetrical Society of Berlin, Germany.

Personality

Dignified in manner and military in bearing, Rogers was much beloved by his associates. He was a scholarly, able surgeon, esteemed in both Chile and New York.

Connections

in 1857, he married the daughter of Samuel F. Haveland in Santiago, Chile.

Wife:

Unknown

He married the daughter of Samuel F. Haveland in Santiago, Chile.