William Wharry Reid

Background

William Wharry Reid was born about 1799 in Argyle, Washington County, New York.

Education

He entered Union College, Schenectady, April 26, 1823, and was graduated A. B. , with high scholastic standing, July 27, 1825. He began the study of medicine as a pupil of Dr. A. G. Smith of Rochester, New York, and was in that city in the years 1826, 1827, and 1828. He may have attended a medical college in the East, but it is more than likely that his degree of M. D. (he signed "M. D. " to his writings) was conferred on him by the Monroe County Medical Society, of which he was president in 1836 and 1849. The records of this society were burned and further data have been lost.

Career

Reid practised in Rochester from 1828 until about 1864 when he moved to the vicinity of New York City. He was drowned in December 1866 while crossing from Jersey City to New York, and was buried at Framingham.

During his student days in Rochester he saw several cases of dislocation of the hip and was impressed with the futility of the unscientific method, then in vogue, by which they were treated - a method which inflicted great suffering upon the patients. From that time he made a special study of this type of injury. The English plan of treatment, sponsored by Sir Astley Cooper, was to pull down the thigh by force.

With Dr. Edward Mott Moore, professor of surgery in the Woodstock medical school and in the Berkshire Medical Institution, he dissected a cadaver, dislocated the hip, and practised reduction by first flexing the leg on the thigh and the thigh on the abdomen. Then, moving the limb to the sound side, he abducted and rotated it outward, and the head of the bone slipped back into place.

Reid did not publish his discovery until he had had the opportunity of treating three cases of dislocation by his method - the first in 1844 and the third in 1849 - all painless and quick reductions.

His paper, "Dislocation of the Femur on the Dorsum Ilii Reducible without Pulleys or Any Other Mechanical Means, " a well-written exposition with a diagram explaining the process, was read before the Monroe County Medical Society, May 8, 1850, and published in the Buffalo Medical Journal of August 1851 and in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal of August 13 of the same year.

There was criticism of Reid's views and of his claims to originality. In the four and a half months between the appearance of his article and the issue of the weekly Boston Medical and Surgical Journal of December 31, 1851, in which he answered criticisms most effectively, five different writers opposed his claims to originality in this journal alone. For instance, it was alleged by two of the sons of the great Nathan Smith, that their father had advocated in his lectures previous to 1831 the use of the flexion method in reducing hip dislocations. There was no written proof, however; and since no one else had reported a case treated by this method, which has since been generally adopted, credit for perfecting and publishing it must go to Reid.

Achievements

• Reid showed by experiments on isolated muscles of a sheep's leg that, after the first stretching, a muscle cannot be lengthened without rupture, that traction is incompatible with mechanical and physiological action of the muscles, thus impeding reduction.

Connections

On October 4, 1830, he married Elizabeth Manson, of Framingham, Massachussets.

Spouse:

Elizabeth Manson