Dates:
Notes: See also:
Allibone’s Critical Dictionary of English Literature. British and American authors living and deceased from the earliest accounts to the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. Three volumes. By S. Austin Allibone. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1858-1871. Reprint. Detroit: Gale Research, 1965. (Alli)
American Biographies. By Wheeler Preston. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1940. Reprint. Detroit: Gale Research, 1974. (AmBi)
Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Six volumes. Edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1888-1889. Reprint. Detroit: Gale Research, 1968. (ApCAB)
Biographical Dictionary of Southern Authors. Compiled by Lucian Lamar Knight. Atlanta: Martin & Hoyt Co., 1929. Reprint. Detroit: Gale Research, 1978. Originally published as “Library of Southern Literature, Volume 15, Biographical Dictionary of Authors.” (BiDSA)
Biography Index. A cumulative index to biographical material in books and magazines. Volume 1: January, 1946-July, 1949. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1949. (BioIn 1)
A Dictionary of American Authors. Fifth edition, revised and enlarged. By Oscar Fay Adams. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1904. Reprint. Detroit: Gale Research, 1969. Biographies are found in the “Dictionary of American Authors” section which begins on page 1 and in the “Supplement” which begins on page 441. (DcAmAu)
Dictionary of American Biography. Volumes 1-20. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1928-1936. (DcAmB)
Dictionary of American Medical Biography. Lives of eminent physicians of the United States and Canada, from the earliest times. By Howard A. Kelly and Walter L. Burrage. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1928. Reprint. Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands: Longwood Press, 1979. (DcAmMeB)
Dictionary of American Medical Biography. Two volumes. Edited by Martin Kaufman, Stuart Galishoff, and Todd L. Savitt. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984. (DcAmMeB 84)
A Dictionary of North American Authors Deceased before 1950. Compiled by W. Stewart Wallace. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1951. Reprint. Detroit: Gale Research, 1968. (DcNAA)
Index to Scientists of the World from Ancient to Modern Times. Biographies and portraits. By Norma Olin Ireland. Boston: F.W. Faxon Co., 1962. (InSci)
The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Volume 3. New York: James T. White & Co., 1891. Reprint. Volumes 1-50. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1967-1971. Use the Index to locate biographies. (NatCAB 3)
Who Was Who in America. A component volume of “Who’s Who in American History.” Historical Volume, 1607-1896. Revised Edition. Chicago: Marquis Who’s Who, 1967. (WhAm HS)
Source:
Dates: 1797-1877
Notes: Nathan Ryno Smith wasa the second of the four sons of Dr. Nathan Smith (q.v.), the distinguished New England surgeon and founder of Dartmouth and Yale College Medical Schools. The name “Ryno” was derived from the Poems of Ossian, a favorite author of his mother. He was born on May 21, 1797, in the town of Cornish, New Hampshire, where his father had been practicing for ten years. After having received a preliminary training at Dartmouth, he entered Yale as a freshman in 1813 and graduated A.B. in 1817, at the age of twenty and in 1823 received from Yale College the degree of M.D., in his inaugural thesis defending the view that the effects of remedies and diseases are due to absorption into the blood and not to an impression on the nervous system, as many eminent writers then maintained. He continues his experiments on this subject, and his publications in 1827 are referred to by Dr. Alfred Stille (q.v.) in his work on “Therapeutics,” vol. i, p. 51.
He began practice at Burlington, Vermont, in 1824, and in the following year he was appointed to the professorship of surgery and anatomy in the University of Vermont.
While in Philadelphia he met Dr. George McClelan (q.v.), anatomist and surgeon, who was then giving private instruction in that city to large classes. This gentleman and others were then engaged in organizing a new medical school, the Jefferson Medical College. Being impressed by the ability and acquirements of Dr. Smith, they invited him to join them and offered him the chair of anatomy, and he accepted.
In 1825 he published at New York an “Essay on Digestion” of ninety-three pages and after his settling at Philadelphia, edited in 1825-26, with the cooperation of his faterh, the “American Medical Review.” In June, 1827, he founded a medical periodical entitled the Philadelphia Monthly Journal of Medicine and Surgery, which was continued into the following year and then merged into the American Journal of the Medical Sciences.
In 1827, Dr. Smith’s connection with Jefferson Medical College was severed by his acceptance of the chair of surgery in the University of Maryland, made vacant by the withdrawal of Granville Sharp Pattison (q.v.). With this event commenced Dr. Smith’s long and eventful career of fifty years at Baltimore, terminating only with his death in 1877.
In 1829 appeared his work on “Diseases of the Internal Ear,” being a translation from the French of J.A. Saissy, with a supplement of twenty pages by himself, on “Diseases of the External Ear.” In 1830 he issued a journal, entitled The Baltimore Monthly Journal, the first number of which appeared in February. It continued until the end of the year, when it ceased on account of lack of support. In the September and October numbers appeared a noteworthy article, entitled “Description of an Apparatus for the Treatment of Fractures of the Thigh and Leg, by Smith’s Anterior Splint.” One-half of the original matter of the volume of 510 pages consisted of contributions by Smith. The Medical and Surgical Memoir (of Nathan Smith, his father), appeared in 1831 with a memoir by N.R. Smith.
He was for many years a collaborator and frequent contributor to the American Journal of the Medical Sciences. He also wrote many articles for a journal published at Baltimore by Prof. E. Geddings of the University of Maryland, from 1833 to 1835; for the Maryland and Virginia Medical Journal, 1860-61, of which Dr. W. Chew Van Bibber was a co-editor, and for the Baltimore Medical Journal, founded in 1870 by Drs. Howard and Latimer. In 1832 appeared his great work on the “Surgical Anatomy of the Arteries,” quarto, of which a second edition appared in 1835.
In 1867 he published a small volume of seventy pages, giving a description of the method of using his “Anterior Suspensory Apparatus in the Treatment of Fractures of the Lower Extremity, with Cuts and Diagrams.” And finally he issued a little duo-decimo in 1869, which he called “Legends of the South, by Somebody Who wishes to be Considered Nobody.” early in his career at Baltimore he conceived the idea of writing a work on “Surgery” with good cuts, and did from time to time compose a large part of it, bit it remained at his death among his unfinished papers.
In 1867, when seventy years old, he made his first and only visit to Europe. Although he sought in it only relaxation from his labors and amusement, he naturally visited many of the great European hospitals. His reputation had preceded him everywhere and he was received with the greatest deference, Sir James Paget in London being particularly attentive and the French surgeons giving him the title of the “Nestor of American Surgery.”
He continued his active work at the University for two years longer, when he resigned and was made emeritus professor and president of the Faculty. In 1870 he was elected president of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty, and the following year was reelected to the same office, special provision being made in his case for this unusual honor. Not long after this, painful disease and infirmities of age began to oppress him. He still attended to office consultations, wrote upon his surgery, found pleasure in reviewing the classics, especially Homer and Virgil, and, above all, found that satisfaction and peace in the Christian religion which philosophy and science had been unable to secure for him. Thus engaged, the painful disease of the bladder from which he suffered slowly advanced and finally mastered his vigorous constitution on the third of July, 1877, a few weeks after he had passed his eightieth year.
He always lectured without notes and in slow, deliberate fashion. His voice of a medium pitch and distinct, though not strong. He indulged in story and humor, whenever the opportunity permitted, although he was never coarse, profane or obscene. The portrait of him at the university is an admirable likeness, and represents him in his characteristic attitude while lecturing.
Source: Kelly, Howard A. and Burrage, Walter J., American Medical Biographies Baltimore: Norman, Remington Company: 1076-1077
Medicine in Maryland, 1752-1920 