William Williams Keen

William Williams Keen Jr. (January 19, 1837 – June 7, 1932) was an American physician and the first brain surgeon in the United States.[1] He also worked with six American presidents and treated Franklin D. Roosevelt when his paralytic illness struck. .

For other people named William Keen, see William Keen (disambiguation).
William Williams Keen
Keen in December 1918
Born(1837-01-19)January 19, 1837
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
DiedJune 7, 1932(1932-06-07) (aged 95)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
ChildrenDora Keen
RelativesWalter Jackson Freeman II (grandson)
Walter Jackson Freeman III (great grandson)

Biography

Keen was born in Philadelphia on January 19, 1837, the son of William Williams Keen Sr. (1797–1882) and Susan Budd. He attended Saunder's Academy and Philadelphia's Central High School.[2] He studied at Brown University, where he graduated in 1859. He graduated in medicine from Jefferson Medical College in 1862.[3] During the Civil War,he served as a surgeon temporarily for the Fifth Massachusetts Regiment and then for the Union Army. While serving he developed a reputation for his work with the neurological patients due to disdain for those afflictions by other physicians[4].He also worked with S. Weir. Mitchell, and together they published Gunshot Wounds and Other Injuries of the Nerves and Reflex Paralysis [5]After the war, he spent two years studying in Paris and Berlin.[6]

Keen began to teach pathological anatomy and prepared the first ever surgical pathology course at Jefferson Medical College. Also establishing the first surgical research lab at the school[7] He was president of the Philadelphia School of Anatomy from 1875 to 1889 and eventually overtook it. He alsotaught at several schools including Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia [8] He became known in the medical community around the world for inventing several new procedures in brain surgery, including drainage of the cerebral ventricles and removals of brain tumors.[9] Despite its later success, the patient’s recovery was unstable. He ran a high fever for many days and did display paralysis in some areas. He also developed a large growth around the wound which Keen had to express multiple times. Eventually the patient recovered but had slight physical effects including a large concavity where the tumor had been. This operation allowed led to better understanding of the role of ventricles in the brain.[10] Keen’s surgical work was not limited to tumors. With the increased use of craniotomy, Keen was the first to perform a craniectomy in an attempt to cure or prevent symptoms of microcephalous (small head).[11] This technique faced harsh criticism and had relatively little success.

Keen co-edited An American Text-Book of Surgery for Practitioners with J. William White, the first American surgery text that went through four editions.[12]

Keen was the leader of a team of five that performed a secret surgical operation to remove a cancerous jaw tumor on Grover Cleveland in 1893 aboard Elias Cornelius Benedict's yacht Utowana. Keen and four assisting doctors made their way to the yacht by boat from separate points in New York with Cleveland and Bryant boarding in the evening for the night aboard before sailing the next morning. With calm weather the surgery was done shortly after noon as the ship transited Long Island Sound with the removal of the tumor and five teeth, as well as much of the upper left palate and jawbone. Keen had to do a follow up surgery to remove excess tissue and cauterize the wound [13]On the fifth of July Cleveland arrived at Gray Gables to recuperate and was fishing in Buzzards Bay by the end of July.[14]

Personal life

Keen was a theistic evolutionist. In 1922, he authored the book I Believe in God and in Evolution.[15] Keen was a staunch proponent of vivisection and authored articles attacking the arguments of anti-vivisectionists.[16] Some of his articles were republished in Animal Experimentation and Medical Progress, in 1914.[16][17]

Keen married in 1867 to Emma Corinna Borden. They had four children: Corinne, Florence, Dora, and Margaret. He died in Philadelphia on June 7, 1932, at the age of 95.[18][19] and is interred at The Woodlands Cemetery.[20] Keen's grandson, Walter Jackson Freeman II, became a doctor who specialized in lobotomies.

Honors and recognition

He received honorary degrees from Jefferson Medical College and Brown, Northwestern, Toronto, Edinburgh, Yale, St. Andrews, Greifswald, and Upsala unpresident of the American Surgical Association (1898), the American Medical Association (1900), the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons (1903), and the American Philosophical Society (after 1907).[21]

In 1914, at a meeting of the International Surgical Association, he was elected president for the meeting of 1917. After 1894, he was foreign corresponding member of the Société de Chirurgie de Paris, the Société Belge de Chirurgie, and the Clinical Society of London; honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, the German Society of Surgery, the Palermo Surgical Society, and the Berliner Medizinische Gesellschaft and associate fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[22]

Procedures and signs
  • Keen's operation, an omphalectomy
  • Keen's sign, increased diameter of the leg at the malleoli in Pott's fracture of the fibula.

Selected publications
"Gunshot Wounds, and Other Injuries of Nerves" by Mitchell, Morehouse and Keen, 1864
  • Clinical Charts of the Human Body (1870)
  • Early History of Practical Anatomy (1875)
  • Surgical Complications and Sequels of Typhoid Fever (1898)
  • Addresses and Other Papers (1905)
  • an edition of Heath's Practical Anatomy (1870)
  • the New American from the Eleventh English Edition of Gray's Anatomy (Sept 1887) [23]
  • the New American from the Thirteenth English Edition of Gray's Anatomy (Sept 1893) [23]
  • the American Text-Book of Surgery (1899, 1903)
  • Keen's System of Surgery (1905–13)
  • I Believe in God and in Evolution (1922)
  • Everlasting Life: A Creed and a Speculation (1924)[24]

History of the First Baptist Church, Philadelphia (1898), The Surgical Operations on President Cleveland in 1893 (1917) Medical Research and Human Welfare (1917) [25]

Vivisection

Keen authored numerous works defending vivisection:

Co-authored:

Edited:

  • Gray's Anatomy 1883,1887, and 1892 editions
  • Surgery, Its Principles and Practice (1906).
  • Practical Anatomy—Manual of Dissections (1870)
  • American Health Primers (1879)
  • An American Text Book of Surgery, 1905 to 1921]

[26]

References
  1. Helmy, Adel; Hutchinson, Peter; Kirollos, Ramez; Thomson, Simon. (2019). Oxford Textbook of Neurological Surgery. Oxford University Press. p. 6. ISBN 9780198746706
  2. "William Williams Keen American Brain Surgeon". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 24 October 2017.
  3. McCallum, Jack Edward (2008). Military Medicine: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc. p. 177. ISBN 978-1-85109-693-0. Retrieved 24 October 2017.
  4. Bingham, W. F. (1986). W. W. Keen and the dawn of American neurosurgery. Journal of Neurosurgery, 64(5), 705–712. https://doi.org/10.3171/jns.1986.64.5.0705
  5. Rovit, R. L., & Couldwell, W. T. (2002). A man for all seasons: W.W. Keen. Neurosurgery, 50(1), 181–190. https://doi.org/10.1097/00006123-200201000-00027
  6. Keen, William Williams (2016). Surgical Reminiscences of the Civil War. Big Byte Books. Retrieved 24 October 2017.
  7. Rovit, R. L., & Couldwell, W. T. (2002). A man for all seasons: W.W. Keen. Neurosurgery, 50(1), 181–190. https://doi.org/10.1097/00006123-200201000-00027
  8. Bingham, W. F. (1986). W. W. Keen and the dawn of American neurosurgery. Journal of Neurosurgery, 64(5), 705–712. https://doi.org/10.3171/jns.1986.64.5.0705
  9. Bogousslavsky, J; Tatu, L. (2016). War Neurology. Karger Publishers. p. 103. ISBN 9783318056068
  10. Bingham, W. F. (1986). W. W. Keen and the dawn of American neurosurgery. Journal of Neurosurgery, 64(5), 705–712. https://doi.org/10.3171/jns.1986.64.5.0705
  11. Bingham, W. F. (1986). W. W. Keen and the dawn of American neurosurgery. Journal of Neurosurgery, 64(5), 705–712. https://doi.org/10.3171/jns.1986.64.5.0705
  12. Aminoff, Michael J; Daroff, Robert B. (2014). Encyclopedia of the Neurological Sciences. Elsevier. p. 790. ISBN 9780123851581
  13. Bingham, W. F. (1986). W. W. Keen and the dawn of American neurosurgery. Journal of Neurosurgery, 64(5), 705–712. https://doi.org/10.3171/jns.1986.64.5.0705
  14. Algeo, Matthew. "A President, A Yacht, And A Secret Operation". BoatUS. No. October/November 2011. Retrieved 19 September 2018.
  15. "Brief Notices". The Quarterly Review of Biology. 2 (1): 127. 1927.
  16. Lee, Frederic S. (1915). "Reviewed Work: Animal Experimentation and Medical Progress by William Williams Keen". Science. 41 (1064): 760–762. doi:10.1126/science.41.1064.760-a. JSTOR 1641247.
  17. "Reviewed Work: Animal Experimentation and Medical Progress by W. Williams Keen, Royal Commission on Vivisection". The Harvard Theological Review. 9 (1): 129–133. 1916. JSTOR 1507478.
  18. "Dr. W.W. Keen Dies. Famous Surgeon. Assistant in Operation in 1893 on President Cleveland for Removal of Sarcoma. Had Served in Three Wars. Vigorous Exponent of Theory of Evolution and of Vivisection. Long Professor at Jefferson". New York Times. June 8, 1932. Retrieved 2013-12-16.
  19. "Dr. Keen, Famous Surgeon, Is Dead". Associated Press in the Milwaukee Sentinel. June 8, 1932. Retrieved 2010-07-31. Dr. William Williams Keen, who won world fame by his skill with the surgeon's knife, died at his home here Tuesday night from the ...
  20. "Dr William Williams Keen, Jr". www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 6 April 2019.
  21. New International Encyclopedia
  22. "Keen, William Williams". www.brown.edu. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  23. Carmine D. Clemente, ed. (1985). Gray's Anatomy (30th ed.). Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger. ISBN 0-8121-0644-X. pp.vi-ix
  24. Everlasting Life—A Creed and a Speculation. Can Med Assoc J. 1924 Dec; 14 (12): 1256.
  25. Bingham, W. F. (1986). W. W. Keen and the dawn of American neurosurgery. Journal of Neurosurgery, 64(5), 705–712. https://doi.org/10.3171/jns.1986.64.5.0705
  26. Freeman, N. (1933). William Williams Keen (1837-1932). Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 68(13), 639-642. Retrieved January 5, 2021, from http:// www.jstor.org/stable/20022994

[1] [2]

[3]

  1. Bingham, W. F. (1986). W. W. Keen and the dawn of American neurosurgery. Journal of Neurosurgery, 64(5), 705–712. https://doi.org/10.3171/jns.1986.64.5.0705
  2. Rovit, R. L., & Couldwell, W. T. (2002). A man for all seasons: W.W. Keen. Neurosurgery, 50(1), 181–190. https://doi.org/10.1097/00006123-200201000-00027
  3. Freeman, N. (1933). William Williams Keen (1837-1932). Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 68(13), 639-642. Retrieved January 5, 2021, from http:// www.jstor.org/stable/20022994
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