Lewis Atterbury Stimson

Lewis Atterbury Stimson (August 24, 1844 – September 17, 1917) was an American surgeon who was the first to perform a public operation in the United States using Joseph Lister's antiseptic technique.

Early life

Stimson was born on August 24, 1844, in Paterson, New Jersey. His parents were Henry Clark Stimson (1813–1894) and Julia Maria (née Atterbury) Stimson (1819–1908). His siblings included Henry A. Stimson (1843–1936), Catherine Boudinot Stimson Weston (1846–1942), Mary Atterbury Stimson (1848–1928), John Ward Stimson (1850–1930), William Frank Stimson (1853–1872), Frederick Julian Stimson (1856–1926), and Julia Josephine Stimson (1861–1933), who was married to Dr. Henry Patterson Loomis. He was the uncle of Alfred Lee Loomis (1887–1975), the inventor of the LORAN Long Range Navigation System.

Stimson attended and graduated from Yale University in 1863, followed by medical school at Bellevue Medical College. In December 1883, Stimson operated on former president Ulysses S. Grant's leg.

In 1898, Stimson wrote the charter of Cornell's new medical school, the Cornell University Medical College. Stimson was also a professor of surgery at the Cornell Medical College. He made advances in techniques for abdominal surgery and is attributed with developing the Stimson maneuver for reducing a dislocated shoulder or hip, which he described in the article, "An Easy Method of Reducing Dislocations of the Shoulder and Hip", published in New York Medical Record in 1900.

He was a member of the American Surgical Society, New York Medical Society, the County Medical Society, the Medical-Surgery Society. He was also a member of the Century Club, New York Yacht Club, and the Loyal Legion.

In June 1905, Stimson was a dinner guest aboard the yacht, Hohenzollern, of Emperor Wilhelm II along with Robert Goelet.

In 1914, Stimson, a member of the New York Yacht Club, docked his yacht, Fleur de Lys, in Palermo, Italy.

Personal life

In 1866, Stimson was married to Candace Thurber Wheeler (1845–1876), the daughter of Thomas Mason Wheeler (1818-1895) and Candace Thurber Wheeler (1827–1923). They had met in Trenton, New Jersey. Wheeler was described as a "beautiful creature, endowed with all the graces and accomplishments — a rare musician and vocalist, and of a nature as lovely as her person." Secretary of State in Herbert Hoover's Administration as well as Secretary of War in the William Howard Taft Administration and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Administration. Candace C. Stimson (1869–1944), who helped administer the anti-tetanus serum around Europe during World War I with her father.

In a memorial written for Stimson after his death, Edward Lawrence Keyes (1843–1924) wrote about Stimson and his wife: