Ohio County WV Archives Biographies.....Frissell, John March 8, 1810 - November 16, 1893
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Connie Burkett marionwvusgwarch@gmail.com April 24, 2010, 9:29 pm

Source: American Medical Biographies (1920)
Author: Howard A. Kelly and Walter L. Burrage

Page 415
Frissell, John (1810-1893)

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 became 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 Comments:
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



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