These unique tales come from the “Memoirs of William Williams Keen.”
Known as Dr. W.W. Keen. He was born in 1837 and died at age 95 in 1932. He lived to see some dramatic advances in medicine - such as the germ theory, as this first anecdote will show.
Keen attended Jefferson Medical School where he studied under the nation’s greatest surgeon, Dr. Samuel Gross, whose books on military surgery were used by both sides in the Civil War.
One evening in 1862 Gross asked student Keen to assist in removing a damaged piece of bone in the calf area of an old soldier wounded 50 years ago. Just the fact that Gross would operate on the old man’s home sofa, tells us something about the lack of knowledge of cleanliness and infection.
Even worse, Keen tells us: “as was often his custom Dr. Gross whetted his knife on his boot.”
By 1887, thanks to Joseph Lister, a great deal was known about cleanliness and germs and Keen was on his way to becoming Philly’s top surgeon. He was one of the world’s first surgeons to remove a brain tumor.
Of course, Keen did not whet his scalpel on his boot. He didn’t even use a scalpel.
He proudly writes that the brain tumor was exactly where he predicted. But it was large (7 1/2inches), so Keen had to remove additional bone.
“My heart sank within me at the prospect of only attempting its removal. But no other course was possible, so I passed my little finger around its margin and peeled it out as easily as one scoops a hard-boiled egg out of its shell with a spoon.”
Keen writes that only two or three brain tumors of this size had ever been removed at the time. He tells us the patient was alive and healthy 28 years later.
So, there it is: two of the greatest surgeon of their times - one honed a scalpel on his boot, and the other removed a tumor with his fingernail.