Da Costa.] "" [Dec. 19, 



branch. Nor was his association "witli it limited to tlie four years he taught 

 it from the professor's chair. His "Elements of Pathological Anatom}', " 

 issued in 1839 in two octavo volumes of more than five hundred pages 

 each, did more to attract attention to the subject than anything that had 

 ever been done in this country. The book, illustrated profusely with wood- 

 cuts and with several colored engravings, reached three editions. It is a 

 mine of learning, and its extended references make it valuable to this day. 

 Its merits have been fully recognized abroad ; and on no occasion more 

 flatteringly than when the great pathologist, Virchow, at a dinner given to 

 Dr. Gross at Berlin in 1833, complimented him publicly on being the 

 author, and, pointing to the volume which he laid upon the table, grace- 

 fully acknowledged the pleasure and instruction with which he had often 

 consulted it. As another acknowledgment of its merits, we find that soon 

 after the publication of the second edition the Imperial Royal Society of 

 Vienna made Dr. Gross an honorary member. 



Dr. Gross remained six years in Cincinnati, popular as a teacher, and 

 gradually acquiring a large general practice ; but with a stronger and 

 stronger predilection for surgery. It was this chiefly which led him to 

 accept the Professorship of Surgery in the University of Louisville ; and 

 with the removal to Louisville in 1840 Dr. Gross' national reputation may 

 be said to begin. Patients flocked in on him from all sides. He soon be- 

 came the leading surgeon of the Southwest, being often called away long 

 distances into the interior of Kentucky and adjacent States. He lived in 

 a large house in a very hospitable manner, and with a young family 

 around him the house was gay and pleasant, and a centre for men and 

 women of mark. 



But neither the claims of practice, nor the demands of social life, 

 quenched his thirst for work. He published, besides many papers in the 

 Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery, a most valuable monograph 

 on the "Nature and Treatment of Wounds of the Intestines," which con- 

 tained many original experiments and observations. He printed full 

 biographies of Daniel Drake and of Ephraim McDowell, — the surgeon 

 who had the boldness to be the first to perform ovariotomy, and througli 

 whose boldness, it has been computed, thousands of years have been 

 added to human life. He wrote a lengthy report on the " Results of Sur- 

 gical Operations in Malignant Disease ;" published a treatise on "Diseases 

 of the Urinary Organs," which soon became an acknowledged autliority, 

 and has passed through several editions ; wrote a work on " Foreign 

 Bodies in the Air Passages," from which all subsequent authors have 

 largely copied their facts, and of which the distinguished laryngologist, 

 Morrell Mackenzie, has declared that it is doubtful whether it ever will be 

 improved upon. Part of all the enormous labors necessary to complete 

 these and other literary undertakings was performed in New York, where 

 Dr. Gross passed the winter of 1850-51, occupying the Chair of Surgery 

 in the University of New York, which had been rendered vacant by the 

 retirement of the then most famous operative surgeon of this country, 

 Valentine Mott. 



