Call no. 10b/1                                                                                                          Acc. 51555
(Hirsch 2)                                                                                                                 03/25/1910


Betton, Samuel, 1786-1850.
   Abernethy’s lectures on surgery, 1823.
   1 v.


Biography

Samuel Betton, Jr. was born in 1786. He graduated from the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1808 and set up his home and private practice in Germantown, Pa. He married Mary Forrest, with whom he had a son, Thomas Forrest Betton. Father and son together amassed a sizable medical library, which was donated to the College of Physicians in 1857. Betton died in Germantown on June 9, 1850.

John Abernethy, surgeon, was born in London on Apr. 3, 1764, the son of a merchant of the same name. At 15 he began an apprenticeship to Sir Charles Blicke, a surgeon at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, where he stayed his entire career, rising to the positions of assistant-surgeon (1787-1815) and surgeon (1815-1827). Abernethy was a gifted orator, whose private and public lectures at the Hospital on anatomy, physiology and surgery, were extremely popular and well received. From 1814-1817 he also lectured on the teachings of John Hunter at the College of Surgeons. Though he is best remembered for his lectures, his Essay on the Constitutional Origin of Local Diseases greatly influenced surgical practice in England. Abernethy was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1796. He died on April 28, 1831 in Enfield.

Scope and Contents

One volume (ca. 200 pages) of notes on 29 lectures on surgery delivered by John Abernethy in 1823 in London, probably at the St. Bartholomew’s Hospital lecture hall.

Provenance

Inscribed Sam Betton’s Jan. 30, 1823. With bookplates of Thomas F. Betton, M.D. Donated to the College of Physicians by T.F. Betton in his father’s memory in 1857.




1823.
1 v.

06/30/2000
lg