Memphis Medical Monthly

[FORMERLY MISSISSIPPI VALLEY MEDICAL MONTHLY.]

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F. L. SIM, M.D., EDITOR,
Memphis, Tennessee.

APRIL PHOTOGRAVURE.-Dr. G. B. Thornton of Memphis, one of the ablest and most widely known physicians and surgeons in Tennessee, is a Virginian by birth, though his whole life, since 1847, has been identified with the city of Memphis, his longest periods of absence therefrom being during his academic and collegiate years, and the four years of military service he gave to the cause of the Confederacy.

He received a liberal literary education, and medicine being chosen as a life profession, he commenced its study in the office of Dr. H. R. Roberts, Professor of Surgery in the Memphis Medical College, from which institution Dr. Thornton graduated in March, 1858. He next graduated from the Medical Department of the University of New York in March, 1860, and commenced the practice of medicine in Memphis in the spring of the same year.

On the breaking out of the war in 1861 he identified himself with the Confederate cause, and in July or August of that year passed a satisfactory examination before the State Board of Medical Examiners at Nashville and was commissioned assistant surgeon for the Tennessee State troops by Gov. Isham G. Harris, and assigned to duty with the artillery arm of the service, stationed above Memphis, on the Mississippi river. In November, 1861, he was present at the battle of Belmont, Missouri. In March, 1862, he was with his command at the engagements at Island No. 10, and New Madrid, Mo. In May, 1862, he was commissioned surgeon by the war department at Richmond, and was made surgeon of division on the VOL. XII- 12

staff of Major-Gen. J. P. McCown, who commanded a division of Gen. Earl Van Dorn's corps, then at Corinth, Miss. This was rapid promotion for so young a man, but subsequent events proved that Surgeon Thornton well merited such distinguished recognition. He was on Gen. McCown's staff at the battles of Perryville, October 8, 1862, and Murfreesboro, December 31, 1862, and January 1, 1863.

In the summer of 1863 he was assigned to duty as chief surgeon of division on the staff of Major-Gen. A. P'. Stewart at Chattanooga; was with this division at the battle of Chickamauga, September 19 and 20, 1863, and at Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge in November, 1863; was with this division at Dalton, Georgia, in the winter of 1863-4, and in all the engagements of the Army of Tennessee throughout the bloody summer of 1864.

He was on the staff of Major-Gen. H. D. Clayton of Alabama as chief surgeon of division, at the battle of Franklin, and in front of Nashville in the fall of 1864. At the reorganization of the army in North Carolina, in the spring of 1865, he was assigned to duty on the staff of Major-Gen. E. C. Walthall of Mississippi, with whom his military career terminated. He was with the Army of Tennessee from its organization in Tennessee in 1861 to its capitulation in North Carolina in 1865; with the exception of Shiloh was present at every great battle it fought; was with his command on all its marches and campaigns; was present at its organization and its dissolution-in other words, saw its Alpha and its Omega.

It is but just to note that Dr. Thornton was the youngest division surgeon in the Confederate army. Being fond of operative surgery, and having acquired a good theoretical knowledge of its principles prior to the war, his position afforded him the amplest opportunity for practicing the art in his field hospitals. This large and valuable experience rendered him au fait subsequently, when in charge of the City Hospital at Memphis, or as occasion offered in private practice. The knowledge gathered and the experience acquired in these four years of active military life were likewise beneficial to him in the administration of the civil offices he held.

He returned to Memphis in August, 1865, and resumed practice. In September, 1866, he was elected assistant physician for the City Hospital of Memphis, then under the charge of Dr. J. M. Keller, now of Hot Springs, Arkansas, the office of assistant resident physician being made necessary to meet the demands caused by an epidemic of cholera which occurred in Memphis that year. He resigned this position in 1867, and was elected physician in charge October, 1868, by the city council, which position he held until February, 1879, when he resigned. This was a general hospital for the treatment of all kinds of medical and surgical cases. The official reports show an average of about two thousand patients treated annually. During Dr. Thornton's administration Memphis was visited by four epidemics of infectious diseases: one of smallpox, in the winter of 1872-3; a limited epidemic of cholera in the spring of 1873; an epidemic of yellow fever in the latter part of the summer and early fall of 1873, and the great epidemic of yellow fever in 1878, commencing in August and ending in November, in which Memphis lost not less than three thousand of its population by death.

Dr. Thornton's professional experience during the years of his official connection with this institution was certainly varied and extensive, and his abilities as a professional man and administrative officer are fully attested by his being retained. for nearly eleven consecutive years, through all the changes incident to municipal government, and that, too, when its local political affairs were very unstable. In February, 1879, he resigned his office as physician in the City Hospital, his health being much impaired by his duties during the last named epidemic, with the determination to devote himself exclusively to private practice.

Under the newly organized city government he was offered and accepted the position of President of the City Board of Health. The sanitary condition of the city at this time was dreadful. The following extract from the first annual report of the Board of Health, published in 1880, for the year 1879, but partially expresses its condition: "On the subsidence of the epidemic of 1878 the city seemed literally paralyzed, besides being in a worse sanitary condition in every

respect than ever before; and the winter passed without an effort being made worthy of mention toward general sanitary work. Consequently, on the organization of this Board of Health in February, 1879, the task of perfecting a system of sanitation to an extent at all commensurate with the necessities of the occasion, with the facilities at its command, were more than could reasonably be expected of the new board," etc. In July of 1879 yellow fever again appeared and lasted until frost-late in October. This office Dr. Thornton held

up to the year 1888. The same earnestness of purpose and fidelity to duty has characterized him in this as in the preceding office. Within the period of five years, from being one of the most unsanitary places in the country, Memphis is now one of the most cleanly, and is fully abreast with the most advanced in all things pertaining to public hygiene. As president of the Board of Health, he has enjoyed the full support of the city government and the confidence of the people.

Aside from his official life, Dr. Thornton has devoted his time to private practice, and taken active part in the medical organizations of the day. He was a member of the Memphis Medical Society during its existence before and after the war; is a member of the Shelby County Medical Society from its organization; one year was its vice-president; is a member of the Medical Society of the State of Tennessee, since May, 1878, and was made vice president from West Tennessee in April, 1879, and was its president in 1881-82; is a member of the American Medical Association since 1877; a member of the American Public Health Association since 1879; was a member of the advisory council of this association in 1883–84; of its executive committee for 1884-85, and one of its vicepresidents for 1885-86. In the fall of 1879 he was appointed a member of the Tennessee State Board of Health, by Gov. A. S. Marks, to fill a vacancy occasioned by the resignation of Dr. R. B. Maury, and on the expiration of his term was re-commissioned by Gov. W. B. Bate, April 4, 1883.

Dr. Thornton is the author of several essays which have attracted favorable comment from the medical and sanitary journals, and were received with great favor by those interested in these subjects-one on yellow fever, its pathology and

treatment, with clinical notes on one hundred and forty cases treated in City Hospital in 1878, which he read before the State Medical Society at its annual meeting in Nashville, April, 1879, and which was published in the transactions of that year; one on "open treatment for amputations, pyemia and septicemia," with notes on a number of cases illustrating this method, treated in the same hospital, read before the society at Knoxville, and published in its transactions for 1880; an address as president of the society, delivered at the annual meeting in Memphis, May, 1882, and published in transactions of that year; an essay on the yellow fever epidemic of 1879, as it occurred in Memphis that year, and read before the Public Health Association at its seventh annual meeting in Nashville, November, 1879, and published in vol. 5 of "Reports and Papers" of that society; one on "Memphis Sanitation. and Quarantine, 1879 and 1880," read before the same body at its meeting in New Orleans, December, 1880, and published in vol. 6; one on "Negro Mortality of Memphis," read before the same society at Indianapolis, October, 1882, and published in vol. 8; also five annual reports to the Legislative Council of the city of Memphis, as president of the Board of Health; a report to the State Board of Health on the epidemics in Tennessee in 1881 and 1882. He has also contributed several other papers to medical journals on professional subjects.

Dr. Thornton married Miss Louisa Hullum, of Memphis, in December, 1869, a lady of culture and refinement; a true type of a Southern gentlewoman, and a member of the Protestant Episcopal church. She died in June, 1875, leaving him two young children-a daughter, Anna May Thornton, and a son, Gustavus B. Thornton, jr. Dr. Thornton was married the second time April 4th, 1887. His present consort was Mrs. G. A. Henry, nee Miss Ella W. Winston, one of the most intellectual and amiable of the women of the South.

In politics Dr. Thornton has been a Democrat all his life, as were his ancestors before him, since the organization of the party. He was never a member of any church; has been a Master Mason about twenty years.