U.S. Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ -- USGenNet Inc. -- Please read the U.S. Data Repository Copyright Statement on the following page: --------------------------------------------------------------------- Frissell, John (1810-1893) --------------------------------------------------------------------- American Medical Biographies (1920) by Howard A. Kelly and Walter L. Burrage Page 415, John Frissell John Frissell was born in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, March 8, 1810, his father a farmer, Amasa Frissel, whose forebears were Scotch, his mother of English parentage, by name Wilcox. Their four sons were given a good education and John Frissell went from the old Hadley Academy to Williams College, where he graduated A. B. in 1831. He then studied medicine with Dr. Ebenezer Emmons, a physician in Williamstown. Young Frissell served as his assistant for two years in the laboratory and during the next three years attended lectures at Berkshire Medical Institution, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, graduating M. D. in 1834 and taking the degree of A. M. from Williams College the same year. During these years and the year following he was also prosector and demonstrator of anatomy under Professor Willard Parker (q. v.). In 1846 he went to Wheeling, West Virginia, and soon becaine the leading surgeon of the slate and of the adjacent parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio. He was the medical founder of the Wheeling Hospital in 1850 and served as superintendent of the Military Hospital at Wheeling during the Civil War, with the rank of assistant surgeon. His work during fifty-five years of practice covered the whole field of surgery. For ten years before Morton's discoveries regarding anesthesia Dr. Frissell did capital operations on patients who heroically suffered or were nauseated and relaxed by antimony and wine of tobacco, or stupefied by whiskey. He practised during the periods when bleeding was a universal remedy and when it had been entirely abandoned. He saw the rise and fall of many remedies, extolled as specifics, whose very names are now forgotten. He was always the thoughtful, careful, conservative surgeon, and the wise, cautious and observing practitioner. Dr. Frissell married, in 1850, Elizabeth Ann Thompson, daughter of Col. John Thompson, of Moundsville, Virginia. They had three sons: John Thompson, who died at twenty-six of typhoid fever; Charles M., who became a Wheeling practitioner, and a third son, Walker I. Dr. Frissell was one of the charter members and the first president of the West Virginia State Medical Society in 1867. He died at his home in Wheeling, West Virginia, at the advanced age of eighty-four. John L. Dickey. Prominent Men of West Virginia, Wheeling, 1890. Trans. Med. Soc. West Virginia, Wheeling, 1894. J. L. Dickey. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Additional Information --------------------------------------------------------------------- DEATH REGISTER, Ohio County WV, 1893, Page 5, Line 212 John Frissell died November 16th at age 87 Cause: Typhoid Fever DEATH REGISTER, Ohio County WV, 1909, Page 60 Elizeb. Frissell died 8/26/1909 at age 86y-1m Cause: Cholora Morbus Place: 54 - 14 St ---------------------------------------------------------------------