Dr. William Thompson Briggs

Considered one of the pre-eminent surgeons of his time, Dr. Briggs began the practice of medicine with his father John M. Briggs, M.D. at Bowling Green, Kentucky in 1848. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1852 to take a position of Demonstrator of Anatomy at the Nashville School of Medicine. He practiced medicine in Nashville 1852 – 1894. During the Civil War he performed medical service for both the Confederate and Union armies distinguishing himself for his masterful surgical skills. Many of the surgical procedures he performed during the Civil War were chronicled in medical journals of the time. He was founder, publisher, and chief editor of the Nashville Journal of Medicine and Surgery from 1851 until his death in 1894. The journal continued publication until 1920. Dr. Briggs had a medical library that consisted of over 4,000 volumes and was considered one of the best medical libraries in the south. He published many articles and lectured internationally on various surgical procedures of the day and was always on the cutting edge of his profession. Following the Civil War he chaired the consolidated medical departments of the Nashville School of Medicine and Vanderbilt University Dr. Briggs was one of the founders of the American Surgical Association and served as president 1885 - 1886. He was also elected president of the American Medical Association in 1891 – 1892.

Dr. Briggs opened the Briggs Infirmary on Third Avenue and Peabody Street in Nashville in 1891 with his two sons Charles Stubbins Briggs (1851 – 1920) and Samuel Stubbins Briggs (1867 – 1944). Briggs Infirmary closed in 1920.

Dr. Briggs ranks high among the first surgeons of the continent. He has had extraordinary success in all the capital operations of surgery, and has performed operations that no other man ever did perform successfully. Endowed by nature with inflexible determination of purpose and unflinching energy, he has from the beginning shown such celerity and dexterity in his operations, or what I may denominate deftness in manipulations, that he is simply unparalleled.

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