Samuel D. Gross
Encyclopedia
Samuel David Gross was an American
academic trauma surgeon. Surgeon biographer Isaac Minis Hays called Gross "The Nestor
of American Surgery." He is immortalized in Thomas Eakins
' The Gross Clinic
, (1875), perhaps the most important American painting of the nineteenth century.
, Gross developed an interest in plants, trees, and flowers. He grew up speaking Pennsylvania Dutch
, a dialect of German
, and supposedly resolved to be a doctor when he was only five years old. At the age of 17 he was apprenticed to a local physician, then another, but both of these experiences soon proved unsatisfactory. He then started to work under the tutelage of Dr. Joseph K. Swift, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania
. Swift realized quickly that Gross' rudimentary education was insufficient training for work as a doctor. Gross then returned to preparatory school, first attending Wilkes-Barre Academy. He went on to another school in the Bowery in New York
(where he received a background in classical studies) and Lawrenceville School
in New Jersey
.
At 19, Gross returned to Swift's office, where he learned mineralogy
, anatomy
, surgery
, Meteria Medica, therapeutics, physiology
, obstetrics
, and French. He also received a fair amount of clinical experience with Swift's patients. After a year of training under Swift, he took a six-week vacation due to ill health. Swift advised him to attend the University of Pennsylvania for further training, but Gross opted for the newly-founded Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, as he greatly admired the founder of the school, Professor of Surgery Dr. George McClellan
, and his colleague, Dr. John Eberle, Professor of Medicine. Gross entered Jefferson in the fall of 1826 and graduated in 1828 in a class of 27 students.
. He also became interested in research on blood coagulation
, gastric and renal excretion, animal inoculation of smallpox
, and pulmonary pathology following strangulation. When a cholera
epidemic
struck Easton, he was sent to New York by the town council in order to learn about approved treatments for the disease.
Gross wanted to become a teacher of anatomy, and in 1833 he contacted John Eberle, his former professor at Jefferson and then professor of Materia Medica at the Medical College of Ohio in Cincinnati. Eberle was able to obtain Gross a position as demonstrator of anatomy there, and soon afterwards Gross moved to Cincinnati with his wife and two children. However, jealousy from the head of the Anatomy Department meant that he was unable to lecture in the regular amphitheater but instead was relocated to an attic space. A short time later Gross accepted a position as chief of pathological anatomy in the Medical Department of the Cincinnati College. There he met Dr. Daniel Drake, with whom he formed a close personal friendship that lasted until Drake's death in 1852.
, founded in 1833, and his influence caused Gross to accept a job at this school, refusing professorships from the University of Virginia
and the University of Louisiana
. Gross and his family took up residence at the Louisville
Hotel in 1840, and shortly thereafter he established an office and residence on the east side of Fifth Street between Green (now Liberty) and Walnut Streets. The 1847 city directory listed his office and house on the north side of Walnut Street between Third and Fourth.
Soon after his arrival, in 1841 Gross set up a dog laboratory in the basement of the college building, which was then only two years old and described "as for beauty and convenience not surpassed by any similar edifice on the continent." $30,000 had been spent on the structure and $20,000 for the purchase of books, chemical apparatus and anatomical preparations in Europe by Dr. Joshua Flint, Gross' predecessor as Professor of Surgery. Lectures at the college began the first Monday in November and lasted until March. Dissecting rooms were opened the first of October to purchasers of advance tickets. Students were also freely admitted to the wards of the Louisville Marine Hospital, in existence from 1823. Gross also entered into private practice, which he conducted at St. Joseph Hospital, opened 20 November 1836 as St. Vincent's Infirmary and housed in an eponymous orphanage on Jefferson Street. In 1853, it moved to a rented building on the west side of Fourth Street between Chestnut and Broadway.
He remained in Louisville for sixteen years, except for a year spent on the faculty of the University of the City of New York. With Drake and his colleagues, Gross helped make the Louisville Medical Institute the most important medical center in the western United States
. During Gross's time there, the institution attained a reputation equal to similar ones east of the Appalachian Mountains
, and at the time of Gross's hiring, his fellow professors at Louisville had all attained national if not international fame in their respective fields.
Gross's tenure in Louisville, however, was not without controversy. His predecessor, Joshua Flint, had become famous as a surgeon in New England
before coming to Louisville, and in 1850 Flint accepted a position as chief of surgery in the newly-organized Kentucky School of Medicine, a move which began a bitter rivalry between that institution and the Louisville Medical Institute until the two schools were merged in 1908. Gross became very popular in social circles, however. He and his family were close friends with the Crittendens, Breckenridges, Wooleys, Prestons, Wickliffes, Pirtles, Ballards, Rowans, Guthries, and Prentices. Gross had even been a guest of Henry Clay
at his estate, "Ashland," in Lexington
. He was a member of the Unitarian
Church and the St. George Lodge of Masons. In August 1855, Gross, a close friend of John Barbee, the Mayor of Louisville, helped save the Catholic Cathedral
on Fifth Street from an anti-foreign Know-Nothing Party mob that intended to burn it down.
, Gross served as a surgical consultant for the U.S. Surgeon General
, and prepared a small handbook on military medicine.
In Philadelphia Gross became one of the most prominent members of several medical organizations as physicians in the United States increasingly sought to professionalize their vocation. He served as the twentieth president of the American Medical Association
(AMA), and delivered the presidential address at the 1868 session, where the first item on the agenda was to more efficiently publish and create a more scholarly and scientific focus for the Transactions of the American Medical Association, the forerunner of the Journal of the American Medical Association
. During his time in Philadelphia Gross also helped found the American Surgical Association
and the Philadelphia Pathological Association. Earlier in Kentucky he had founded, with T.G. Richardson, the Louisville Medical Review and the North American Chirurgical Review.
In 1875 Gross returned to Louisville for a meeting of the AMA, where he was re-elected president and entertained lavishly, even being presented by the physicians of Kentucky with two thoroughbred
horses. He made his final visit to Kentucky two years later, in 1877, when he gave a memorial oration in honor of the famous surgeon Ephraim McDowell
in Danville
. Gross was presented with the original door knocker from McDowell's home; for a time the gift resided in the collection of the Museum of the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, but has since been returned to the McDowell house in Danville, where it is kept under glass.
Also in 1875, Gross was depicted by famous artist Thomas Eakins in his celebrated painting The Gross Clinic, which Eakins showed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition
in Philadelphia. However, the graphic nature of the painting led the judges in the artistic section to banish it to the section on medical displays. The painting lionizes Gross at the peak of his career, skillfully performing the removal of a malignancy in the thigh of a young patient while explaining the surgical techniques to a captive audience of students in the medical amphitheater at Jefferson Medical College. Thus Eakins depicted Gross as a titan in his dual capacities as both physician and teacher. The painting is now considered one of the greatest works of American art in the nineteenth century. Fourteen years later, Eakins would produce a similar painting, The Agnew Clinic
(1889), depicting Gross' counterpart, Thomas Agnew, performing surgery in the amphitheater at the University of Pennsylvania. The Agnew Clinic is now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
, which shares ownership of The Gross Clinic with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
after Thomas Jefferson University sold the painting in late 2006.
. Gross' estate, aside from a few bequests, was divided equally among his four children. His library, consisting of more than 5,000 volumes, was willed to the Philadelphia Academy of Surgery, along with his wet preparations, diagrams, and museum. To the same institution he left $5,000; interest on this sum is awarded every five years to the best essay on surgical pathology.
, in the Smithsonian Park of the U.S. Capitol
on a pedestal appropriated by the U.S. Congress
. It was relocated to the campus of Thomas Jefferson University
in Center City Philadelphia.
In Louisville a portrait of him hangs in the Fred Rankin Amphitheater, and since 1941, the Phi Delta Epsilon
Medical Fraternity has sponsored an annual Samuel D. Gross lectureship.
. Gross's 1859 two-volume System of Surgery is perhaps his best known work. His other publications include:
Gross was also interested in history, as he published several medical biographies and wrote on the history of Kentucky
. In 1861 he edited The Lives of Eminent American Physicians and Surgeons of the Nineteenth Century, and once gave a talk to the Kentucky State Medical Association wherein he resurrected the career of the early Kentucky physician Dr. Ephraim McDowell
. Early in the nineteenth century McDowell had removed a urinary stone from a young James K. Polk
, and distinguished himself as one of the most capable surgeons in America and the originator of abdominal surgery, as well as being the first ovariotomist.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
academic trauma surgeon. Surgeon biographer Isaac Minis Hays called Gross "The Nestor
Nestor (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Nestor of Gerenia was the son of Neleus and Chloris and the King of Pylos. He became king after Heracles killed Neleus and all of Nestor's siblings...
of American Surgery." He is immortalized in Thomas Eakins
Thomas Eakins
Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator...
' The Gross Clinic
The Gross Clinic
The Gross Clinic, or, The Clinic of Dr. Gross, is an 1875 painting by American artist Thomas Eakins. It is oil on canvas and measures by . Dr. Samuel D. Gross, a seventy-year-old professor dressed in a black frock coat, lectures a group of Jefferson Medical College students...
, (1875), perhaps the most important American painting of the nineteenth century.
Early life and training
Born on a farm near Easton, PennsylvaniaEaston, Pennsylvania
Easton is a city in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 26,800 as of the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Northampton County....
, Gross developed an interest in plants, trees, and flowers. He grew up speaking Pennsylvania Dutch
Pennsylvania Dutch
Pennsylvania Dutch refers to immigrants and their descendants from southwestern Germany and Switzerland who settled in Pennsylvania in the 17th and 18th centuries...
, a dialect of German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, and supposedly resolved to be a doctor when he was only five years old. At the age of 17 he was apprenticed to a local physician, then another, but both of these experiences soon proved unsatisfactory. He then started to work under the tutelage of Dr. Joseph K. Swift, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
. Swift realized quickly that Gross' rudimentary education was insufficient training for work as a doctor. Gross then returned to preparatory school, first attending Wilkes-Barre Academy. He went on to another school in the Bowery in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
(where he received a background in classical studies) and Lawrenceville School
Lawrenceville School
The Lawrenceville School is a coeducational, independent preparatory boarding school for grades 9–12 located on in the historic community of Lawrenceville, in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, U.S., five miles southwest of Princeton....
in New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
.
At 19, Gross returned to Swift's office, where he learned mineralogy
Mineralogy
Mineralogy is the study of chemistry, crystal structure, and physical properties of minerals. Specific studies within mineralogy include the processes of mineral origin and formation, classification of minerals, their geographical distribution, as well as their utilization.-History:Early writing...
, anatomy
Anatomy
Anatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy , and plant anatomy...
, surgery
Surgery
Surgery is an ancient medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, or to help improve bodily function or appearance.An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical...
, Meteria Medica, therapeutics, physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
, obstetrics
Obstetrics
Obstetrics is the medical specialty dealing with the care of all women's reproductive tracts and their children during pregnancy , childbirth and the postnatal period...
, and French. He also received a fair amount of clinical experience with Swift's patients. After a year of training under Swift, he took a six-week vacation due to ill health. Swift advised him to attend the University of Pennsylvania for further training, but Gross opted for the newly-founded Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, as he greatly admired the founder of the school, Professor of Surgery Dr. George McClellan
George McClellan
George B. McClellan was an American Civil War military leader, Presidential candidate and Governor of New Jersey.George McClellan may also refer to:*George McClellan , American physician who founded medical schools...
, and his colleague, Dr. John Eberle, Professor of Medicine. Gross entered Jefferson in the fall of 1826 and graduated in 1828 in a class of 27 students.
Early career in Pennsylvania and Ohio
Gross began practice in an office at the corner of Fifth and Library Streets in Philadelphia. His patients were few, and he spent much of the time translating French and German medical texts into English, but this did not augment his income sufficiently. He married a twenty-year old widow with one child, and soon moved back to Easton, where the cost of living was lower and there were greater opportunities for young physicians. He purchased a home there and built a small laboratory in the rear where he spent several hours a day on human and animal dissectionDissection
Dissection is usually the process of disassembling and observing something to determine its internal structure and as an aid to discerning the functions and relationships of its components....
. He also became interested in research on blood coagulation
Coagulation
Coagulation is a complex process by which blood forms clots. It is an important part of hemostasis, the cessation of blood loss from a damaged vessel, wherein a damaged blood vessel wall is covered by a platelet and fibrin-containing clot to stop bleeding and begin repair of the damaged vessel...
, gastric and renal excretion, animal inoculation of smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
, and pulmonary pathology following strangulation. When a cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
epidemic
Epidemic
In epidemiology, an epidemic , occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience...
struck Easton, he was sent to New York by the town council in order to learn about approved treatments for the disease.
Gross wanted to become a teacher of anatomy, and in 1833 he contacted John Eberle, his former professor at Jefferson and then professor of Materia Medica at the Medical College of Ohio in Cincinnati. Eberle was able to obtain Gross a position as demonstrator of anatomy there, and soon afterwards Gross moved to Cincinnati with his wife and two children. However, jealousy from the head of the Anatomy Department meant that he was unable to lecture in the regular amphitheater but instead was relocated to an attic space. A short time later Gross accepted a position as chief of pathological anatomy in the Medical Department of the Cincinnati College. There he met Dr. Daniel Drake, with whom he formed a close personal friendship that lasted until Drake's death in 1852.
Transfer to Louisville
In 1839, the college in Cincinnati folded. Drake had previously accepted the chair of pathological anatomy and clinical medicine at the Louisville Medical InstituteUniversity of Louisville
The University of Louisville is a public university in Louisville, Kentucky. When founded in 1798, it was the first city-owned public university in the United States and one of the first universities chartered west of the Allegheny Mountains. The university is mandated by the Kentucky General...
, founded in 1833, and his influence caused Gross to accept a job at this school, refusing professorships from the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
and the University of Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
. Gross and his family took up residence at the Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
Hotel in 1840, and shortly thereafter he established an office and residence on the east side of Fifth Street between Green (now Liberty) and Walnut Streets. The 1847 city directory listed his office and house on the north side of Walnut Street between Third and Fourth.
Soon after his arrival, in 1841 Gross set up a dog laboratory in the basement of the college building, which was then only two years old and described "as for beauty and convenience not surpassed by any similar edifice on the continent." $30,000 had been spent on the structure and $20,000 for the purchase of books, chemical apparatus and anatomical preparations in Europe by Dr. Joshua Flint, Gross' predecessor as Professor of Surgery. Lectures at the college began the first Monday in November and lasted until March. Dissecting rooms were opened the first of October to purchasers of advance tickets. Students were also freely admitted to the wards of the Louisville Marine Hospital, in existence from 1823. Gross also entered into private practice, which he conducted at St. Joseph Hospital, opened 20 November 1836 as St. Vincent's Infirmary and housed in an eponymous orphanage on Jefferson Street. In 1853, it moved to a rented building on the west side of Fourth Street between Chestnut and Broadway.
He remained in Louisville for sixteen years, except for a year spent on the faculty of the University of the City of New York. With Drake and his colleagues, Gross helped make the Louisville Medical Institute the most important medical center in the western United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. During Gross's time there, the institution attained a reputation equal to similar ones east of the Appalachian Mountains
Appalachian Mountains
The Appalachian Mountains #Whether the stressed vowel is or ,#Whether the "ch" is pronounced as a fricative or an affricate , and#Whether the final vowel is the monophthong or the diphthong .), often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians...
, and at the time of Gross's hiring, his fellow professors at Louisville had all attained national if not international fame in their respective fields.
Gross's tenure in Louisville, however, was not without controversy. His predecessor, Joshua Flint, had become famous as a surgeon in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
before coming to Louisville, and in 1850 Flint accepted a position as chief of surgery in the newly-organized Kentucky School of Medicine, a move which began a bitter rivalry between that institution and the Louisville Medical Institute until the two schools were merged in 1908. Gross became very popular in social circles, however. He and his family were close friends with the Crittendens, Breckenridges, Wooleys, Prestons, Wickliffes, Pirtles, Ballards, Rowans, Guthries, and Prentices. Gross had even been a guest of Henry Clay
Henry Clay
Henry Clay, Sr. , was a lawyer, politician and skilled orator who represented Kentucky separately in both the Senate and in the House of Representatives...
at his estate, "Ashland," in Lexington
Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington is the second-largest city in Kentucky and the 63rd largest in the US. Known as the "Thoroughbred City" and the "Horse Capital of the World", it is located in the heart of Kentucky's Bluegrass region...
. He was a member of the Unitarian
Unitarian Universalism
Unitarian Universalism is a religion characterized by support for a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning". Unitarian Universalists do not share a creed; rather, they are unified by their shared search for spiritual growth and by the understanding that an individual's theology is a...
Church and the St. George Lodge of Masons. In August 1855, Gross, a close friend of John Barbee, the Mayor of Louisville, helped save the Catholic Cathedral
Cathedral of the Assumption in Louisville
The Cathedral of the Assumption is the cathedral mother church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky. His Excellency, the Most Reverend Joseph Kurtz, D.D., the fourth and current Archbishop of Louisville, is in residence at the Cathedral. The Very Reverend Jeffery...
on Fifth Street from an anti-foreign Know-Nothing Party mob that intended to burn it down.
Return to Philadelphia
In 1856, Gross's alma mater, Jefferson Medical College, offered him a position as professor of surgery, and he accepted it despite having turned down a similar position from the University of Pennsylvania the previous year. Before he left for Philadelphia, however, the citizens of Louisville honored him with a grand ball at the Galt House. During the American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, Gross served as a surgical consultant for the U.S. Surgeon General
Surgeon General of the United States
The Surgeon General of the United States is the operational head of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and thus the leading spokesperson on matters of public health in the federal government...
, and prepared a small handbook on military medicine.
In Philadelphia Gross became one of the most prominent members of several medical organizations as physicians in the United States increasingly sought to professionalize their vocation. He served as the twentieth president of the American Medical Association
American Medical Association
The American Medical Association , founded in 1847 and incorporated in 1897, is the largest association of medical doctors and medical students in the United States.-Scope and operations:...
(AMA), and delivered the presidential address at the 1868 session, where the first item on the agenda was to more efficiently publish and create a more scholarly and scientific focus for the Transactions of the American Medical Association, the forerunner of the Journal of the American Medical Association
Journal of the American Medical Association
The Journal of the American Medical Association is a weekly, peer-reviewed, medical journal, published by the American Medical Association. Beginning in July 2011, the editor in chief will be Howard C. Bauchner, vice chairman of pediatrics at Boston University’s School of Medicine, replacing ...
. During his time in Philadelphia Gross also helped found the American Surgical Association
American Surgical Association
The American Surgical Association is the nation's "oldest and most prestigious surgical organization".-History:It was founded in 1880. Their publication, Annals of Surgery, was started in 1885.- Heads :*Edward Mott Moore...
and the Philadelphia Pathological Association. Earlier in Kentucky he had founded, with T.G. Richardson, the Louisville Medical Review and the North American Chirurgical Review.
In 1875 Gross returned to Louisville for a meeting of the AMA, where he was re-elected president and entertained lavishly, even being presented by the physicians of Kentucky with two thoroughbred
Thoroughbred
The Thoroughbred is a horse breed best known for its use in horse racing. Although the word thoroughbred is sometimes used to refer to any breed of purebred horse, it technically refers only to the Thoroughbred breed...
horses. He made his final visit to Kentucky two years later, in 1877, when he gave a memorial oration in honor of the famous surgeon Ephraim McDowell
Ephraim McDowell
Ephraim McDowell was an American physician. He was the first to successfully remove an ovarian tumor.-Biography:...
in Danville
Danville, Kentucky
Danville is a city in and the county seat of Boyle County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 16,218 at the 2010 census.Danville is the principal city of the Danville Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Boyle and Lincoln counties....
. Gross was presented with the original door knocker from McDowell's home; for a time the gift resided in the collection of the Museum of the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, but has since been returned to the McDowell house in Danville, where it is kept under glass.
Also in 1875, Gross was depicted by famous artist Thomas Eakins in his celebrated painting The Gross Clinic, which Eakins showed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition
Centennial Exposition
The Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, the first official World's Fair in the United States, was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from May 10 to November 10, 1876, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. It was officially...
in Philadelphia. However, the graphic nature of the painting led the judges in the artistic section to banish it to the section on medical displays. The painting lionizes Gross at the peak of his career, skillfully performing the removal of a malignancy in the thigh of a young patient while explaining the surgical techniques to a captive audience of students in the medical amphitheater at Jefferson Medical College. Thus Eakins depicted Gross as a titan in his dual capacities as both physician and teacher. The painting is now considered one of the greatest works of American art in the nineteenth century. Fourteen years later, Eakins would produce a similar painting, The Agnew Clinic
The Agnew Clinic
The Agnew Clinic, or, The Clinic of Dr. Agnew, is an 1889 oil painting by American artist Thomas Eakins, Goodrich #235. It was commissioned to honor anatomist and surgeon David Hayes Agnew, on his retirement from teaching at the University of Pennsylvania.-Background:The Agnew Clinic depicts Dr....
(1889), depicting Gross' counterpart, Thomas Agnew, performing surgery in the amphitheater at the University of Pennsylvania. The Agnew Clinic is now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art is among the largest art museums in the United States. It is located at the west end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park. The Museum was established in 1876 in conjunction with the Centennial Exposition of the same year...
, which shares ownership of The Gross Clinic with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is a museum and art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1805 and is the oldest art museum and school in the United States. The academy's museum is internationally known for its collections of 19th and 20th century American paintings,...
after Thomas Jefferson University sold the painting in late 2006.
Death
Gross died on May 6, 1884 at age 78, in Philadelphia. He was cremated at Le Moyne Crematory and his ashes were buried in The Woodlands CemeteryThe Woodlands Cemetery
The Woodlands is a National Historic Landmark District on the western banks of the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It includes a magnificent federal style mansion, a matching carriage house and stable, and a garden landscape that in 1840 was transformed into a Victorian rural...
. Gross' estate, aside from a few bequests, was divided equally among his four children. His library, consisting of more than 5,000 volumes, was willed to the Philadelphia Academy of Surgery, along with his wet preparations, diagrams, and museum. To the same institution he left $5,000; interest on this sum is awarded every five years to the best essay on surgical pathology.
Honors
Gross received many posthumous accolades. A bronze statue was dedicated by president William McKinleyWilliam McKinley
William McKinley, Jr. was the 25th President of the United States . He is best known for winning fiercely fought elections, while supporting the gold standard and high tariffs; he succeeded in forging a Republican coalition that for the most part dominated national politics until the 1930s...
, in the Smithsonian Park of the U.S. Capitol
United States Capitol
The United States Capitol is the meeting place of the United States Congress, the legislature of the federal government of the United States. Located in Washington, D.C., it sits atop Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall...
on a pedestal appropriated by the U.S. Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
. It was relocated to the campus of Thomas Jefferson University
Thomas Jefferson University
Thomas Jefferson University is a private health sciences university in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States. The university consists of six constituent colleges and schools, Jefferson Medical College, Jefferson College of Graduate Studies, Jefferson School of Health...
in Center City Philadelphia.
In Louisville a portrait of him hangs in the Fred Rankin Amphitheater, and since 1941, the Phi Delta Epsilon
Phi Delta Epsilon
- History :In October 1904, Aaron Brown and eight of his friends founded Phi Delta Epsilon at Cornell University Medical College. During the first decade of this century there were many doors closed to Jewish medical students and physicians, doors which would not fully open until after World War II...
Medical Fraternity has sponsored an annual Samuel D. Gross lectureship.
Writings
After Gross moved to Cincinnati, he ceased his translation work and began to publish original contributions to the scientific field. In 1839, Gross published Elements of Pathological Anatomy, the first systematic treatise on the subject in the United States; its two volumes were lavishly illustrated with woodcuts and colored engravings. The second edition received praise form the eminent German scientist Rudolf VirchowRudolf Virchow
Rudolph Carl Virchow was a German doctor, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist and politician, known for his advancement of public health...
. Gross's 1859 two-volume System of Surgery is perhaps his best known work. His other publications include:
- The Anatomy, Physiology, and Diseases of the Bones and Joints (1830)
- An Experimental and Critical Inquiry into the Nature and Treatment of WoundWoundA wound is a type of injury in which skin is torn, cut or punctured , or where blunt force trauma causes a contusion . In pathology, it specifically refers to a sharp injury which damages the dermis of the skin.-Open:...
s of the IntestineIntestineIn human anatomy, the intestine is the segment of the alimentary canal extending from the pyloric sphincter of the stomach to the anus and, in humans and other mammals, consists of two segments, the small intestine and the large intestine...
s (1843) - A Practical Treatise on the Diseases, Injuries, and Malformations of the Urinary BladderBladderBladder usually refers to an anatomical hollow organBladder may also refer to:-Biology:* Urinary bladder in humans** Urinary bladder ** Bladder control; see Urinary incontinence** Artificial urinary bladder, in humans...
, the Prostate Gland, and the UrethraUrethraIn anatomy, the urethra is a tube that connects the urinary bladder to the genitals for the removal of fluids out of the body. In males, the urethra travels through the penis, and carries semen as well as urine...
(1851) - A Practical Treatise on Foreign Bodies in the Air-Passages (1854)
Gross was also interested in history, as he published several medical biographies and wrote on the history of Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
. In 1861 he edited The Lives of Eminent American Physicians and Surgeons of the Nineteenth Century, and once gave a talk to the Kentucky State Medical Association wherein he resurrected the career of the early Kentucky physician Dr. Ephraim McDowell
Ephraim McDowell
Ephraim McDowell was an American physician. He was the first to successfully remove an ovarian tumor.-Biography:...
. Early in the nineteenth century McDowell had removed a urinary stone from a young James K. Polk
James K. Polk
James Knox Polk was the 11th President of the United States . Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He later lived in and represented Tennessee. A Democrat, Polk served as the 17th Speaker of the House of Representatives and the 12th Governor of Tennessee...
, and distinguished himself as one of the most capable surgeons in America and the originator of abdominal surgery, as well as being the first ovariotomist.