Francis Fontaine Maury was born near Danville, Kentucky, on August 9, 1840, to Matthew Fontaine Maury and Eliza Chipman. His father, an Episcopal minister, was born in Albemarle County, Virginia, and settled in Kentucky in the mid-1830s. Although the family owned at least $10,000 in property by 1860, they apparently owned no slaves. Francis grew up on the family farm, and he graduated from Centre College in Danville on June 28, 1860. That fall, he enrolled in the medical department at the University of Virginia, where he studied chemistry, surgery, anatomy, and botany. His mother, however, fell ill with consumption, and Francis withdrew from UVA on May 1, 1861. She died on February 26, 1862, after a “long and painful” struggle with the disease.

Maury enrolled at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in September 1861 and quickly earned a reputation as a gifted and promising student. Samuel D. Gross, one of the city’s most prominent surgeons, made Maury his personal assistant. In February 1862, while Maury was still in medical school, he became a resident physician in the Philadelphia Hospital. He graduated from Jefferson Medical College the following month on March 8, 1862. His colleagues believed he would attain a “very high position among American surgeons” and that no other doctor “had such bright prospects before him.”

On April 1, 1863, Maury was commissioned an acting assistant surgeon in the United States Army, assigned to duty at South Street General Hospital. South Street treated hundreds of Union soldiers who had lost their limbs in battle, and it quickly became known as the “stump hospital.” With Philadelphia so far from the war’s front lines, Maury’s cases were often extremely challenging. One patient, for example, lost his foot in the siege of Petersburg, Virginia, on July 20, 1864, and arrived at South Street six days later. By then, Maury reported, “the patient was fretful, irritable, and at times delirious” from typhoid fever. Maury treated the stump with a mixture of laudanum and lead-water and prescribed quinine, beef tea, and milk punch. Although the “stump and leg both improved,” however, the “typhoid fever did not yield to the treatment,” and the patient died on July 29.

During the war, one friend recalled, Maury “showed himself to be possessed of indomitable energy.” In addition to his work at South Street, he “engaged in private teaching” and served as chief of the surgical clinic at Jefferson Medical College. His contract with the Union army ended on April 15, 1865, and in the fall of 1866, he became a surgeon at the Philadelphia Hospital. Despite his young age, Maury “had the indorsement of the entire faculty of [Jefferson Medical College] and of many prominent citizens [in Philadelphia].” There, over the next twelve years, Maury solidified his reputation as “an accomplished surgeon and teacher.” Observers agreed that Maury had an “air of warmth and candor that made him a host of friends.” He was “faithful to his patients and was universally liked by them.” He visited his patients throughout the day and provided them with higher-quality food. He publicly reprimanded attendants for mistreating their poorer patients, insisting that hospital should treat all patients equally. A “sick person,” he observed, “deserves all the consideration and kindness that you can possibly give him, and if poor he needs it all the more.”

Maury also served as a lecturer on venereal and cutaneous diseases at the Jefferson Medical College, and he edited two volumes of the Photographic Review of Medicine and Surgery. He was elected to the Pathological Society of Philadelphia in 1865, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia in 1866, and the Academy of Natural Sciences in 1868. On June 25, 1869, he performed the first gastrostomy in America, inserting a feeding tube into the stomach of a starving syphilis patient. Although the woman died fourteen hours later, Maury passionately defended the procedure and insisted he would “have no hesitation in resorting to it [again].”

On March 17, 1868, Maury married Catherine Ingersoll, the granddaughter of Democratic Congressman Charles Jared Ingersoll. They had two sons together: Charles Ingersoll Maury, born January 13, 1869; and Francis Fontaine Maury, born August 25, 1870. In March 1879, while Maury was travelling through Texas, he learned that his wife had fallen gravely ill. He rushed back to Philadelphia and returned home on April 2, only to find that Catherine had passed away the previous day. During the funeral, Maury was “seized with a chill,” and he took to his bed “in a state of great prostration.” He travelled to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to restore his health, but his condition only deteriorated. He died of acute Bright’s disease on June 4, 1879.

Image: Francis Fontaine Maury (courtesy National Library of Medicine).