Warren Stone

Background

Warren was born on February 3, 1808 at Saint Albans, Vermont, United States, the youngest child of Peter and Jerusha (Snow) Stone, and a descendant of Simon Stone, who emigrated to New England in 1635 with his brother Gregory.

Education

His early education was limited, but he later studied assiduously under private tutors. He began his medical work at Keene, New Hampshire, under Dr. Amos Twichell, and subsequently studied under Elisha Bartlett and Willard Parker at Berkshire Medical Institution, Pittsfield, Massachussets, where he secured the degree of M. D. in December 1831.

Career

Stone settled in West Troy, New York, in 1832, but in October, as few opportunities for practice arose, he sailed from Boston for New Orleans on the brig Amelia. Storms and epidemic cholera caused the ship to be beached near Charleston, South Carolina, on Folly Island, where Stone labored among the sick until he himself contracted cholera.

Arriving in December, sick, poor, friendless, he came to a New Orleans desolated by its first cholera epidemic. During his years in the city he was to serve through eighteen epidemics of cholera and yellow fever. After securing a supernumerary position in Charity Hospital, he served as assistant surgeon (1834 - 35), as resident surgeon (1835 - 39), and as visiting surgeon (1839 - 72). For many years he was consulting physician at Hotel Dieu.

In 1841 he lost his eye from an infection following an operation. During his years on the staff of the Medical College of Louisiana (later Tulane University) from its opening in 1834 until his retirement in 1872, Stone rose from the position of acting demonstrator of anatomy (1834) to that of professor of surgery (1839 - 72). Though he lectured with earnest, long-remembered emphasis, he was a discursive, not a systematic, lecturer, often talking on unannounced subjects, and as a teacher of surgery he was too erratic to do full justice to his professorship.

He died in New Orleans of diabetes mellitus.

Achievements

• Warren Stone was co-founder of the Maison de Santa, one of the earliest private hospitals in America. Moreover, he was the first to resect part of a rib to secure permanent drainage in cases of empyema; he reported in 1850 the first successful cure for traumatic vertebral aneurism by open incision and packing ("A Case of Traumatic Aneurism, " New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal); he made the first cure of an aneurism of the second portion of the subclavian artery by digital compression upon the third portion.

Views

His incorrigible spirit brought him into conflict with the Federal military authorities in New Orleans, and at one time he was confined in Fort Jackson. He has been called the "great commoner" of his profession in the South, where his kind and winning, if somewhat blunt, manners won him great popularity and inspired unbounded confidence in his ability. Although he met emergencies with ingenuity and quickness, he was not what his contemporaries would have called a brilliant operator.

He believed in the prompt opening and draining of suppurating joints, the frequent use of nourishment and stimulants, and the combination of codliver oil and phosphate of lime for use in diseases of the nutritive functions.

Personality

He was a man of unusual height and weight, with a large, rugged head and strong features. His pithy conversation was anecdotic and stimulating, and some of his sayings are still remembered.

Connections

In 1843 he had married Malvina Dunreith Johnson of Bayou Sara, who with a daughter and two sons survived him.

Father:

Peter Stone

Mother:

Jerusha (Snow) Stone

Wife:

Malvina Dunreith Johnson

Partner:

William E. Kennedy

Friend:

Jefferson Davis