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George Washington Crile

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"GEORGE WASHINGTON CRILE (1864-), American surgeon, was born at Chili, 0., Nov. 11 1864. After graduating from Ohio Northern University (1884), he studied medicine at Wooster University (M.D. 1887) and later at Vienna, London and Paris. He taught at Wooster from 1889 to 190o. He was professor of Clinical Medicine at Western Reserve University from 1900 to 1911, and was then made professor of Surgery. During the Spanish-American War he was made a member of the Medical Reserve Corps and served in Porto Rico (1898). He was made an hon. F.R.C.S. (London) in 1913. After America entered the World War he became major in the medical O.T.C., and professional director (1917-8). He served with the B.E.F. in France and was senior consultant in surgical research (1918-9). He was made lieutenant-colonel in June 1918 and colonel later in the year. He made important contributions to the study of blood pressure and of shock in operations. Realizing that any strong emotion, such as fear before operation, produced shock, he attempted to allay dread by psychic suggestion, also endeavouring to prevent the subjective shock which affects the patient, even when under general anaesthesia, by first anaesthetizing the operative region with cocaine for several days, if necessary, before operating. Thus nerve communication between the affected part and the brain was already obstructed when the general anaesthetic was administered (see Anoci-Association, 1914, with Dr. Wm. E. Lower). For his work in shockless surgery he received a gold medal from the National Institute of Social Sciences in 1914.

Among his works are: Surgical Shock (1897); On the Blood Pressure in Surgery (1903); Hemorrhage and Transfusion (1909); Surgical Anemia and Resuscitation (1914); The Origin and Nature of the Emotions (1915); Man an Adaptive Mechanism (1916); A Mechanistic View of War and Peace (1916) and The Fallacy of the German State Philosophy (1918).