Samuel Jason Mixter / [by G.W. Brewster, E.P. Richardson].

  • Brewster, G. W. (George William)
Date:
[1927]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Samuel Jason Mixter / [by G.W. Brewster, E.P. Richardson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    2/6 (page 2)
    This was followed by a year in Vienna, where his interest was keenly stimu¬ lated in anatomical studies and by the developing microscopic pathology. On his return to Boston, his work in microscopy and anatomy was continued. In 1882 he became assistant demonstrator and in 1887 demonstrator of anatomy at the Harvard Medical School. His enthusiasm was infectious to students and drove him to continuous activity, to the painstaking care and thoroughness of which his beautiful corrosion specimens in the Warren Museum still bear witness. His teaching later swung to operative surgery, a field which gave further scope to his great mechanical ingenuity. Thus, from the first, his tastes and training led him to surgery, where his ability and special aptitude resulted in rapid progress. Appointed to the Surgical Service of the Carney Hospital in 1880, and Surgeon to the Out Patient Depart¬ ment of the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1886, he became successively surgeon to the Carney Hospital, resigning in 1897, visiting surgeon to the Mas¬ sachusetts General Hospital in 1893, chief of the West Surgical Service in 1911, resigning at the age of sixty-four in 1919. From his background and the character of his training, some inklings as to the nature of his surgery may be derived. Brought up on a sound anatomical founda¬ tion before the era of specialization, in the beginning of antisepsis, when the shadow of infection threatened, his training had a breadth and a respect for surgical dangers now vanishing. To this he added great mechanical ingenuity and a keen, conservative judgment. His operating was marked by simplicity and directness, qualities which can only come from thorough anatomical knowledge, great skill, and a keen appreciation of essentials. His sense of mechanical fitness made him dislike cumbersome instruments and technique. Intellectual honesty caused him to be impatient of shams and pretenses, and of an unbalanced interest in percentage figures of operative mortality. Sound judgment, sure and rapid operating, complete lack of mercenary traits, entire self-forgetfulness in the interest of his patients, were qualities which begat confidence in the minds of practitioners and laity alike. In surgery his resourcefulness and ability to cope with the difficult and un¬ usual attracted him to neglected fields. From this came his contribution to the surgery of the oesophagus and of the central nervous system, advances which stand out among others he added to the rapidly developing science of surgery. His contributions to operative technique, unfortunately, will be known chiefly by tradition; in the fertility of his invention they seemed to him hardly worthy of record. It is only natural and fitting, therefore, that he should have been chosen president of the American Surgical Association in 1917, and that the New England Surgical Society should have turned to him for its first president. Success in a profession is in itself an accomplishment which the world stands ready to honor. Dr. Samuel Jason Mixter’s eminence in surgery needs no com-