Some Brief Notes Concerning the President’s Surgeons at Buffalo

     Many of the practitioners in attendance on the President at Buffalo are well known to our readers. We add here, however, a brief comment on those who were actually engaged in the first emergencies. [424][425]
     Dr. Matthew Mann, who performed the operation for the most part, is well known to the readers of the MEDICAL NEWS. He is fifty-six years of age and is professor of gynecology at the University of Buffalo, and gynecologist at the Buffalo General Hospital, has attained a wide reputation through his standard textbook on gynecology. He is a park commissioner of the City of Buffalo. He has practised from thirty to thirty-five years in Buffalo and has a good reputation as an eminent abdominal surgeon. He was once an instructor at Harvard University.
     Dr. Roswell Park needs no introduction. He is a surgeon of world-wide fame and author of “Park’s System of Surgery,” a standard work. He is also an acknowledged expert in cancer, being vitally interested in the laboratory at Buffalo from which Gaylord’s recent researches have come. He is about forty-eight years of age and graduated from the Rush Medical College, of Chicago, some twenty-five years ago and for a time taught there. Subsequently he spent much time in European study and upon his return earned his present reputation as a rapid and clean operator, and is one of the few ambidextrous surgeons in practice. He is chief surgeon at the Buffalo General Hospital and professor of surgery at the University of Buffalo.
     Dr. Herman Mynter is an older man, perhaps fifty-six, a Dane by birth and is well known in two continents as an expert abdominal surgeon. Mynter has given the profession an excellent work on appendicitis. Recently he went to Denmark and lectured on his chosen subject before the Danish Medical Congress at Copenhagen. He was formerly surgeon at the Sisters’ Hospital and now operates at the German Deaconess Home at the new German Hospital.
     Dr. John Parmenter is esteemed as one of the best and most careful of the younger surgeons in the western part of New York State. He is under forty years old and is professor of anatomy at the University of Buffalo.
     Dr. Eugene Wasdin, surgeon of the Marine Hospital, Department of the United States, stationed here, will be remembered as one of the experts detailed to investigate yellow fever in Cuba during the recent war. He is about forty years of age and has been a constant contributor to the MEDICAL NEWS on hygiene and bacteriological topics.
     Dr. T. W. Lee, of St. Louis, who assisted in the operation, is medical director of the Omaha Exposition and is a well known western surgeon.
     Dr. Charles G. Stockton, of Buffalo, was called into consultation because of his store of medical knowledge. He is one of the leading medical practitioners of Buffalo.
     Dr. N. W. Wilson, who was in charge of the Emergency Hospital at the time and who was in charge of the President until the surgeons arrived, won a reputation early in his career. He is and has been for three years post surgeon at Fort Porter, is connected with the staff of the Sisters’ Hospital and is the sanitary officer of the Pan-American Exposition.
     Dr. Presley M. Rixey, the physician to the McKinley family, who is with the President in Buffalo, is a medical inspector in the United States Navy. He is a Virginian, born in Culpeper in that State, and a brother of John Franklin Rixey, the Representative in Congress from the Eighth Virginia district. Dr. Rixey was appointed an assistant surgeon in the regular navy January 28, 1874. His first cruise was in the “Congress,” attached to the Eastern station, and when his service on her was completed, in 1876, he was assigned to the Marine Hospital at Philadelphia, remaining there until the following year. His next service was at the Norfolk Navy Yard, and then in 1878 he was assigned to special service. Surgeon-General Bates, of the Navy, who had been Mrs. McKinley’s physician in Washington when the President was in Congress and who had resumed that duty when the McKinleys moved into the White House, died in October, 1897. Gen. Leonard Wood, then an assistant surgeon in the army on duty in Washington, succeeded him as the White House physician, and when Gen. Wood went away from Washington as Colonel of the Rough Riders early in 1898, the President chose Dr. Rixey, and for three years he has been constantly in attendance on the President and his wife.