James Ewing Mears
American surgeon (1838–1919)
James Ewing Mears, also J. Ewing Mears M.D., LL.D. (October 17, 1838 – May 28, 1919) was a surgeon and author. He was a pioneer in jaw and mouth surgeries. He was the first to propose the use of Gasserian ganglionectomy for the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia. He was the first surgeon in the United States to successfully perform a subcutaneous osteotomy for the relief of old dislocations. He was the first to open the peritoneal cavity to drain pus. He was professor of anatomy and clinical surgery at the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery and demonstrator of surgery at Jefferson Medical College. He was a charter member of the American Surgical Association and became its president in 1894.
Biography
He was born on October 17, 1838, in Indianapolis, Indiana, to George Washington Mears and Caroline Sydney Ewing. He attended Trinity College, Hartford and in 1863 he entered Jefferson Medical School. In 1878 he authored a textbook on emergency surgery including amputations.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Ewing Mears” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.