Agnew, Cornelius Rea (08 August 1830–18 April 1888), ophthalmologist and sanitarian, was born in New York City, the son of William Agnew, a prominent merchant, and Elizabeth Thomson. Agnew entered Columbia College at age fifteen and graduated in 1849. He then studied medicine with J. Kearney Rogers, a surgeon and professor of anatomy at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and in 1852 earned his M.D. After interning at the New York Hospital, where he was also house surgeon, Agnew practiced for about a year in a village that later became Houghton, Michigan. In 1854 he was asked to be a surgeon at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary and immediately went to Europe because his appointment was on condition that he first study there. Before returning to New York City in 1855, he studied diseases of the eye, ear, and skin as well as general medicine and surgery with some of the most renowned doctors in Dublin, London, and Paris. Back in New York Agnew took up his surgical duties at the Eye and Ear Infirmary while maintaining a general practice. In 1856 he married Mary Nash; they had eight children....
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Agnew, Cornelius Rea (1830-1888), ophthalmologist and sanitarian
Olive Hoogenboom
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Barrows, Isabel (17 April 1845–25 October 1913), ophthalmologist, stenographer, and reformer
Thaddeus Russell
Barrows, Isabel (17 April 1845–25 October 1913), ophthalmologist, stenographer, and reformer, was born Katharine Isabel Hayes in Irasburg, Vermont, the daughter of Scottish immigrants Henry Hayes, a physician, and Anna Gibb, a schoolteacher. The family moved to Hartland and then Derry, New Hampshire, where Isabel Hayes graduated from Adams Academy. In 1863 she married William Wilberforce Chapin, a Congregational minister. The following year the couple traveled to India for a missionary assignment. Less than a year after arriving in India, William Chapin died of diphtheria. Six months later Isabel Chapin returned to the United States. She moved to Dansville, New York, where she worked as a bath assistant at a water-cure sanatorium....
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Bausch, John Jacob (1830-1926), a cabinetmaker turned optician
Ann T. Keene
Bausch, John Jacob (25 July 1830–14 February 1926), and Henry Lomb (24 November 1828–13 June 1908), a cabinetmaker turned optician, were business partners who founded Bausch and Lomb, an optical goods company, in Rochester, New York, in 1853. Bausch was one of seven children born in Gross Suessen, Württemberg, then a German monarchy, to George Bausch, a baker, and his wife, Annie Schmidt. His mother died when he was six. As a youth he was apprenticed to a maker of eyeglasses, and he worked for a time as a lens grinder in Bern, Switzerland. In 1850, seeking greater opportunity, he emigrated to the United States. The harrowing journey by sailing ship reportedly took forty‐nine days. After landing in New York City, he made his way to Buffalo, a city in upstate New York with a large German population. He arrived in the midst of a cholera epidemic, was unable to find work, and moved on to the closest city, Rochester, some seventy miles to the northeast....
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Chisolm, Julian John (1830-1903), physician
Terry Hambrecht
Chisolm, Julian John (16 April 1830–01 November 1903), physician, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the son of Robert Trail Chisolm, a planter, and Harriet Emily Schutt. He was also known as John Julian Chisolm.
Prior to his formal training in medicine, Chisolm spent three years in the office of Elias Horlbeck, a prominent practitioner in Charleston. Following the award of his M.D. in 1850 from the Medical College of the State of South Carolina, Chisolm continued his studies in Paris, with emphasis on eye surgery. He returned to Europe in 1859 to visit hospitals in London and Paris. With the outbreak of war between Italy and Austria, he traveled to Milan to observe the treatment of the wounded from the battles at Magenta and Solferino....
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de Schweinitz, George Edmund (1858-1938), ophthalmologist
Christopher Hoolihan
de Schweinitz, George Edmund (26 October 1858–22 August 1938), ophthalmologist, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Edmund Alexander de Schweinitz, a bishop of the Moravian church, and Lydia Joanna de Tschirschky. De Schweinitz took his bachelor’s degree in 1876 from the Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where his father was president. He taught for the next two years at Nazareth Hall, a military academy in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, in order to finance his medical education and further prepared himself by reading medicine with a local physician. In 1878 de Schweinitz entered the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, from which he graduated with first honors in 1881....
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Gradle, Henry (1855-1911), ophthalmologist and early proponent of bacteriology
William K. Beatty
Gradle, Henry (17 August 1855–04 April 1911), ophthalmologist and early proponent of bacteriology, was born in Friedburg, a suburb of Frankfurt-am-Main, Prussia, the son of Bernard Gradle and Rose Schottenfels Groedel. In 1859 Bernard Gradle emigrated to the United States and eventually established himself in the tobacco business in Chicago. Rose Gradle and her son moved to Darmstadt where Henry received his early education; she died in 1866 and two years later, when Henry had finished his elementary education, he joined his father in Chicago....
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Hays, Isaac (1796-1879), physician and editor
Thomas A. Horrocks
Hays, Isaac (05 July 1796–12 April 1879), physician and editor, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Samuel Hays, a merchant, and Richea Gratz. A successful merchant in the East India trade, Hays’s father attained considerable wealth and provided his son with an excellent education and introduction to the cultural life of Philadelphia. Raised in the Jewish faith, Hays was for many years a pupil in the Philadelphia grammar school run by the eminent divine and classical scholar Samuel B. Wylie, who later became professor of ancient languages at the University of Pennsylvania. Hays entered the university in 1812 and graduated four years later with a B.A....
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Hepburn, James Curtis (1815-1911), medical missionary, oculist, and lexicographer
Sam Alewitz
Hepburn, James Curtis (13 March 1815–21 September 1911), medical missionary, oculist, and lexicographer, was born in Milton, Pennsylvania, the son of Samuel Hepburn, a lawyer, and Ann Clay, the daughter of the Reverend Slator Clay. Hepburn received his early education at home and at the Milton Academy. At the age of fourteen he matriculated as a junior in Princeton College, from which he graduated in 1832. He began his medical studies with Dr. Samuel Pollack of Milton, Pennsylvania, and then attended the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, from which he graduated with an M.D. in 1836. In 1835 he was awarded an A.M. by Princeton College....
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Knapp, Hermann Jakob (1832-1911), ophthalmologist
Daniel Myron Albert
Knapp, Hermann Jakob (17 March 1832–30 April 1911), ophthalmologist, was born in Dauborn, Prussia, the son of Johann Knapp. (His mother’s name is unknown.) He received the usual preliminary training in the humanities and aspired to become a poet. His father convinced him to turn to medicine and sent him to study at the universities in Munich, Würzberg, Berlin, Leipzig, and Giessen. Knapp received a medical degree from Geissen in 1854. The emerging field of ophthalmology fascinated Knapp. He made extended visits to Berlin, where he was an assistant to German ophthalmologist Albrecht von Graefe. He also studied in Utrecht, Holland, where Dutch ophthalmologist Franz C. Donders had begun to systematize the anomalies of accommodation and refraction. In London, he observed the ophthalmic surgery of Sir William Bowman and George Critchett, and in Paris he studied at the Sorbonne and visited the clinic of Louis August Desmarres....
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Lomb, Henry
See Bausch, John Jacob
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Stein, Jules Caesar (1896-1981), entertainment executive and physician
Sylvester A. Marino
Stein, Jules Caesar (26 April 1896–29 April 1981), entertainment executive and physician, was born in South Bend, Indiana, the son of Louis M. Stein and Rosa Cohen. His extraordinary achievements began in the classroom. A student at West Virginia University while still in his early teens, he graduated from the University of Chicago at the age of nineteen. His medical degree was earned at Rush Medical College, Chicago, in 1921. He acquired a specialty in ophthalmology at the Eye Clinic of the University of Vienna and first practiced this as chief resident in ophthalmology at Cook County Hospital in Chicago and subsequently in an affiliation with Dr. Harry Gradle, also of Chicago. His depth of knowledge is revealed in “Telescopic Spectacles and Magnifiers as Aids to Poor Vision” (1924), which quickly became the definitive manual in this specialty....
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Williams, Henry Willard (1821-1895), ophthalmologist
Daniel Myron Albert
Williams, Henry Willard (11 December 1821–13 June 1895), ophthalmologist, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Willard Williams and Elizabeth Osgood. He attended the Boston Latin School and, after his parents’ deaths, the Salem Latin School. Ill health forced him to suspend his education, and at age seventeen he began training as a merchant in the counting room at the Central Wharf in Boston. Williams was active in the antislavery movement and became the secretary and publishing agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. At the age of twenty-four he entered Harvard Medical School, and after two years there, he traveled to Europe to complete his medical education. His interest in diseases of the eye began in Paris, where he studied in the clinics of Sichel and Desmarres; he continued this pursuit in Vienna with Jaeger and Rosas, and finally in London with Dalrymple, Lawrence, Dixon, Critchett, and Bowman. Williams received his M.D. from Harvard in 1849. Williams married Elizabeth Dewe of London in 1848; they had two children. After her death he married Elizabeth Adeline Low in 1860, and they had seven children....
