Abel Lawrence Peirson

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Abel Lawrence Peirson (born November 25, 1794 in Biddeford , Maine , † May 6, 1853 in Norwalk , Connecticut ) was an American surgeon from Salem , Massachusetts . Considered the leading surgeon of his time in Essex County , Massachusetts, he performed the first (documented) operations under anesthesia with diethyl ether outside of Massachusetts General Hospital in 1846 .

Peirson received a first degree from Harvard College in 1812 and an MD there in 1816 as a medical degree. Among other things, he studied with James Jackson . Initially, Peirson worked in Vassalboro, Maine , but in 1818 moved to Salem, Massachusetts, not far from Boston . In 1829 Peirson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1832 he went to study in Paris, where he was one of the first Americans to learn Laënnec's method of auscultation . Peirson was among the editors of the short-lived (1832-1835) Boston Medical Magazine .

Peirson may have been present when diethyl ether was first used as an anesthetic on October 16, 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital. On November 14 and November 19, 1846, he himself carried out the removal of a lipoma and an arm amputation under ether anesthesia. In the days that followed, he performed other operations, including a leg amputation, with a dentist named Fisk performing the anesthesia. Reports of these operations were published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (which later became the New England Journal of Medicine ). In 1847 he used diethyl ether when giving birth . Peirson was an active member of the Massachusetts Medical Society .

On May 6, 1853, on his way back from an American Medical Association meeting , Abel Lawrence Peirson was killed in a railroad accident near Norwalk , Connecticut . He left behind his widow, Harriet Lawrence (his cousin), to whom he had been married since 1819, and five children.

Fonts (selection)

  • Some Account of the Measles Epidemic in Salem in 1821
  • The Boylston Prize Essay on Chin-cough in 1824
  • Operation for Hare-Lip , 1836
  • A Dissertation on Fractures , 1840

literature

  • Peirson, Abel Lawrence. In: Howard Atwood Kelly, Walter Lincoln Burrage: Dictionary of American Medical Biography: Lives of Eminent Physicians of the United States and Canada, from the Earliest Times. New York: Appleton, 1928
  • Leroy D. Vandam: Abel Lawrence Peirson: early proponent of etherization. In: Anesthesiology. Volume 72, Number 2, February 1990, pp. 375-378, PMID 2405745 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter P. (PDF; 649 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Accessed December 30, 2017 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Peirson, Abel Lawrence
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American surgeon
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1794
PLACE OF BIRTH Biddeford , Maine
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 1853
Place of death Norwalk , Connecticut