Howard Atwood Kelly

Howard Atwood Kelly (February 20, 1858 – January 12, 1943) was an American gynecologist. He obtained his B.A. degree and M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He, William Osler, William Halsted, and William Welch together are known as the "Big Four", the founding professors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He also developed several medical innovations, including the improved cystoscope, Kelly's clamp, Kelly's speculum, and Kelly's forceps. Because Kelly was a famous prohibitionist and Fundamentalist Christian, many of his contemporaries expressed skepticism towards his medical professionalism.

Early life and education Howard Kelly was born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1858; his parents were Henry Kuhl Kelly and Louisa Warner (Hard) Kelly. His family had a history in politics (Kelly's father's great grandfather, Michael Hillegas, was the first Treasurer of the United States), business, real estate and civil service. He was raised with strong religious influence from his parents, especially his mother. During the Civil War, Kelly and his mother lived in Chester while his father served in the war; Kelly spent his free time observing nature and studying the Bible with his mother. In the fall of 1867, Kelly entered the Faires Classical Institute. There, he developed an interest in languages, biology, natural science, and botany. In 1873 he started his undergraduate education at the University of Pennsylvania. During his college years, he was the president of the Franklin Scientific Society. At the age of 17, he became a member of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. He received his B.A. degree in 1877. Later, with money from a group of Philadelphia philanthropist women, he was able to open a formal clinic with an operating room in Norris Square, which later became the Kensington Hospital for Women, the sixth women's hospital in the United States. and performed the first successful C-section in Philadelphia. He gained a reputation as an innovator in surgical techniques during this time.

From 1886 to 1888, Kelly traveled to England, Scotland, and Germany to observe abdominal and pelvic surgeons at work. When he was in Leipzig in 1886, he was introduced to the palpation of female ureters by Max Saenger. and through his textbook, Operative Gynecology, established a systematic approach to gynecological medicine and surgery.

Kelly developed better methods for examining the bladder, improving on methods he learned from Pawlik.

He invented the "Kelly speculum" for rectal examinations, as well as "Kelly's small cylindrical specular", a set of devices for vaginal examinations, some of which were specially designed for virgins.

To promote safety during surgery, Kelly used nitrous oxide for anesthesia, absorbable sutures during operations, and electrical lights for better lighting during surgery.

During the late 1890s, Kelly became interested in gynecological cancers. To reduce bleeding for cervical and endometrial cancers, he ligated the internal iliac artery, a technique that would come to be used in postpartum hemorrhages. Newspaper articles published in 1914, detail Kelly's personal visit to zircon mines and prospects in Zirconia, North Carolina. Kelly purportedly "expressed himself as highly pleased with the prospects for radium and took with him a number of specimens of zircon for assaying purposes". Later on, he would also invite Hermann Becker and August Horm to join the illustration team.

By the time he reached the end of his career, Kelly had written over 550 articles and books that covered subjects such as appendectomy, the use of radium, electrosurgery, urogynecology, and ureteral catheterization. Additionally, he also had publications about medical history, religion, astronomy, geology, theology, herpetology, and botany. They spent their honeymoon in Paris, France. In Baltimore, they raised nine children together in a five-story, eight-bedroom home with a 100,000-volume library. Later on in his career, Kelly received the title of Honorary Curator by The Division of Reptiles and Amphibians at the University of Michigan.

He also studied mycology, including mushroom identification, mycophagy, and research on mycologists. He collected a variety of different fungi and kept a list of species and observations. In 1943, a U.S. Liberty ship was christened the Howard A. Kelly. Awarded Order of Leopold (Belgium), the Order of the Cross of Mercy, Serbia, and the Cross of Charity