William Williams Keen Jr. (January 19, 1837 – June 7, 1932) was an American physician and the first brain surgeon in the United States.[1] During his lifetime, Keen worked with six American presidents.[2]
Early life and education
Keen was born in Philadelphia on January 19, 1837, to William Williams Keen Sr. (1797–1882) and Susan Budd. He attended Saunders's Academy and Philadelphia's Central High School.[3] Keen graduated from Brown University, with an A.B. in 1859.[4] He then obtained a degree in medicine from Jefferson Medical College in 1862.[5]
During the American Civil War
Keen served as a surgeon for the Fifth Massachusetts Militia Regiment and then for the Union Army during the American Civil War. While serving, Keen built a reputation for his work with patients who had neurological wounds, mainly because most surgeons refrained from treating neurological wounds.[clarification needed][6] He also worked with S. Weir Mitchell to study nervous system injuries. Together, they published Gunshot Wounds and Other Injuries of the Nerves and Reflex Paralysis in 1864, which first described many unknown neurological conditions, such as causalgia, reflex sympathetic dystrophy, and secondary paralysis.[7] After the war concluded, Keen studied in Paris and Berlin for two years.[8]
Career
Keen began to teach pathological anatomy and prepared the first-ever surgical pathology course at Jefferson Medical College. [citation needed] He also established the school's first surgical research lab.[7] Keen was president of the Philadelphia School of Anatomy from 1875 to 1889.[9] He also taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania.[6] He was known in the international medical community for inventing brain surgery procedures, including drainage of the cerebral ventricles and removal of brain tumors. Keen also performed the first craniectomy for microcephalus;[6] however, this technique was met with harsh criticism and had relatively little success.[citation needed] In addition, Keen co-edited An American Text-Book of Surgery for Practitioners with J. William White, the first American surgery text published in four editions.[10]
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 Oneida. 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 before sailing the next morning. With calm weather and steady waters, the surgery was finished quickly as the ship transited from Long Island Sound during noontime. The procedure involved the removal of the tumor and five teeth, as well as much of the upper left palate and jawbone.[11]
Later, Keen performed a follow-up surgery to remove excess tissue and to cauterize the wound.[6] On July 5, Cleveland arrived at Gray Gables to recuperate and was fishing in Buzzards Bay by the end of the month.[12]
Personal life
Keen was a theistic evolutionist; he authored the book I Believe in God and in Evolution in 1922.[13] Keen was a staunch proponent of vivisection and wrote articles attacking the arguments of anti-vivisectionists,[14] some of which were republished in his 1914 book, Animal Experimentation and Medical Progress.[14][15]
In 1867, Keen married Emma Corinna Borden, from Fall River, Massachusetts, who died in 1886.[16] They had four children: Corinne, Florence, Dora, and Margaret.[citation needed] He died in Philadelphia on June 7, 1932, at the age of 95[16] and is buried at The Woodlands Cemetery.
^ abcdeBingham, W. F. (1986). W. W. Keen and the dawn of American neurosurgery. Journal of Neurosurgery, 64(5), 705–712. doi:10.3171/jns.1986.64.5.0705
^Freeman, N. (1933). William Williams Keen (1837–1932). Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 68(13), 639–42. Retrieved January 5, 2021, from JSTOR
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