Dr. Marmaduke Burr Wright

Dr. Marmaduke Burr Wright

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Dr. Wright, a physician and medical teacher in Cincinnati, Ohio, he was born in Pemberton, New Jersey on November 10, 1803. His early education was acquired in the Trenton Academy, and at the age of sixteen he began to study medicine with Dr. John McKelway of Trenton, who was an alumnus of the University of Edinburgh.

After attending three courses of medical lectures in the University of Pennsylvania he received his M.D. there in 1823, and in the same year he settled in Columbus, Ohio, and speedily established his reputation as a skilful physician and surgeon. In 1835 he married Mary E. Olmstead, of Columbus.

In 1838 he held the chair of materia medica and therapeutics in the Medical College of Ohio, and two years later was transferred to the chair of obstetrics in the same institution. From this position he was removed by the action of the trustees of the college in 1850, a step which occasioned no little controversy and bitterness of feeling, but he was reelected to the same chair in 1860, and continued to hold this position until his retirement, with the title of professor emeritus, in 1868. During a large portion of his term of service in the Medical College of Ohio Dr. Wright filled the office of dean of the faculty.

Dr. Wright was one of the founders of the Ohio State Medical Society in 1846, president of this society in 1861, corresponding member of the American Society of Physicians of Paris, an honorary member of the American Gynecological Society, president of the Cincinnati Academy of Medicine in 1864, a member of the Cincinnati Obstetrical Society, and for thirty years held a position on the staff of the Commercial and Cincinnati hospitals.

He was an early and persistent advocate of combined cephalic version in obstetrics, "Difficult Labors and Their Treatment." ("Transactions of the Ohio State Medical Society," 1854); and of the establishment of asylums for the care and cure of inebriates. A fluent and logical writer he contributed numerous papers to the journals and societies of his day. Among the more important of these were: "The Prize Essay of the Ohio State Medical Society," for the year 1854; "Drunkenness, its Nature and Cause or Asylums for Inebriates." ("Transactions of the Ohio State Medical Society," 1859); "Report of the Committee on Obstetrics to the Ohio State Medical Society." ("Transactions of Ohio State Medical Society," 1860).

He died in Cincinnati on August 15, 1879.

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MARMADUKE BURR WRIGHT. Some day when the history of American midwifery and gynecology is written, Cincinnati and her tributary territory will receive respectful, nay, even honorable, mention. All the world loves and admires the heroism of Ephraim McDowell whose wonderful surgical feat in the pioneer days of this Western country, away in the then backwoods of Kentucky, caused the exclusive gentlemen of the surgical fraternity in England and on the Continent to for the first time take notice of something medical that came to them from this side of the Atlantic. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? About twenty years after McDowell's great operation the first Caesarean section in this country was successfully performed by John L. Richmond, a poor country doctor, in Newtown, only a few miles from Cincinnati. The brave doctor's name ought to be preserved on tablets of brass because he was a great surgeon in its proudest and most comprehensive sense.

A great surgeon is a man whose intellectual resources are independent of any technical equipment or rules of convention or tradition, a man who conquers perplexing and unclassified contingencies with an ever-victorious readiness, that knows no rule o' thumb, but does the correct thing instinctively before the mind has hardly had a chance to analyze. John L. Richmond had the heroism of a pioneer and the courage that is born of absolute self-dependence.

Cincinnati counts among her great medical men one who at one time was said to have had as great an obstetrical experience as any man in America, Reuben Dimond Mussey, better known as a surgeon than an obstetrician. Landon Rives was an accoucheur of such skill that Daniel Drake considered him facile princeps in the West. Cincinnati boasts of the tokological records of Thad. A. Reamy and William H. Taylor whose names have been revered by the doctors of two generations. There is one other man whose memory is kept green by his own great and diversified achievements as well as by the high regard in which he was and is held by American obstetricians, the originator of bi-manual version, Marmaduke Burr Wright, great obstetrician, splendid and honest medical politician, brilliant teacher, man of affairs and versatile medical writer. It was he to whom James T. Whittaker, with his never-failing felicity of quotation, applied the stanza that was once penned in honor of Fielding, of obstetrical fame:

"Sir Fielding old was made a knight,
He should have been a Lord by right,
For then each lady's prayer would be:
O Lord, good Lord, deliver me!"

Marmaduke Burr Wright was a product of New Jersey, where he was born November 10, 1803, in the town of Pemberton, Burlington County. Soon after his birth his father moved to Trenton where seven more children were added to the family. Mr. Wright, Sr., was a successful land speculator and builder, who was amply able to give his talented first-born all the advantages of a good education. Young Wright attended school at Lanseville, N.J., and afterwards at Trenton where Rev. Elijah Slack, subsequently one of the founders of the Medical College of Ohio, was in charge of an academy. At the age of sixteen young Wright began to read medicine as a "surgeon's apprentice" and continued his studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated in 1823.

A few years previously Mr. Wright, Sr., had reverses in business as the result of which he came West in search of better luck. He located in Columbus. When young Wright, in the Spring of 1823, returned home with a medical diploma in his hand and fond hopes in his heart, he found his father on his deathbed. Young Wright started his battle of life with a widowed mother and her seven children depending on him for support and protection. Wright looked Fate squarely in the face and went to work. God always helps the man who helps himself. Wright was not one who waited to be helped. He soon had acquired a fair practice in the building up of which he had made a good living for his large family of mother, brothers and sisters, and incidentally a splendid reputation for himself. A notable achievement of his early professional career was the tying of the internal iliac in an emergency case. The patient got well.

Wright was distinctly a man of action, full of initiative, fearless and persevering, built after the pattern of Daniel Drake. He took an interest in public affairs and became a member of the Ohio Legislature where he was soon recognized as the Whig floor-leader. He was an aggressive, yet prudent fighter, and used his tongue and his fist with equal facility. His record in the Legislature was one of ceaseless activity, as shown by results, and of unquestionable integrity, as admitted even by his political antagonists.

1785-1909-- Daniel Drake and his followers, By Otto Juettner