In the history of medicine, Henry Jacob Bigelow is one of the names that keeps returning.
The record lists Henry Jacob Bigelow as American surgeon (1818–1890).
Henry Jacob Bigelow was born at Boston in 1818. His recorded nationality is United States. He trained at Harvard Medical School and Harvard College.
Anaesthesia, antisepsis and germ theory arrived within fifty years and made modern surgery possible for the first time.
His posts were held at Harvard Medical School.
The test of medical work is whether practice changed, not whether the argument was elegant.
That the work was done from United States matters: hospitals, training and research funding are unevenly distributed, and they decide which questions can be asked.
Henry Jacob Bigelow died in 1890, aged 72. What survives is the change in practice, which is how a medical life is actually measured.
Achievements
- Held posts at Harvard Medical School
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