Halsted, William Stewart

SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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b. 23 September 1852 Baltimore, Maryland, USA

d. 7 September 1922 Baltimore, Maryland, USA

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American surgeon, originator of the surgical use of rubber gloves and silk ligatures.

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After education at Yale University, he studied at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York, qualifying in 1877. Following internships in New York, he spent two postgraduate years in Germany and Austria, where he became acquainted with the German methods of surgical education. He returned to New York in 1880 to practise privately and also demonstrate anatomy at the College.

In 1884, when experimenting with cocaine as an anaesthetic, he became addicted; he underwent treatment for his addiction in 1886–7 and there is also some evidence of treatment for morphine addiction in 1892. As a consequence of these problems he moved to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where he was appointed Surgeon-in-Chief in 1890 and Professor of Surgery in 1892. In this role he devoted considerable time to laboratory study and made important contributions in the treatment of breast carcinoma, thyroid disease and aneurism. A perfectionist, his technical advances were an outcome of his approach to surgery, which was methodical and painstaking in comparison with the cavalier methods of some contemporaries.

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Bibliography

1894, Johns Hopkins Hospital Reports, Baltimore (rubber gloves).

1924, Surgical Papers by William Stewart Halsted, ed. W.C.Berket, Baltimore.

Further Reading

W.G.McCallum, 1930, William Stewart Halsted, Surgeon, Baltimore.

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