Dr. Arthur Spohn: Surgeon, Inventor, and Texas Medical Pioneer by Jane Clements Monday, Frances Brannen Vick, Charles W. Monday Jr. (review)

The authors of Dr. Arthur Spohn: Surgeon, Inventor, and Texas Medical Pioneer write that they have a “passion for finding stories of important people that have been overlooked in history” (p. ix). Their subject, Dr. Arthur Spohn, was certainly a figure of at least regional significance. As a physician he worked on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border during a career that spanned from the 1860s to his death in 1913. The authors emphasize his marriage into an elite family, his concern for sanitation, his medical inventions, and his successful surgeries. Spohn’s legacy endures today in the CHRISTUS Spohn Health System, a network of hospitals and health centers in southern Texas.

The book focuses not just on Spohn but also on his extended family. The authors trace his family history to his Canadian Loyalist ancestors, and they provide biographical detail on his parents, siblings, teachers, and friends. Particular attention is paid to his relationships with the powerful Texas families headed by Richard King and Mifflin Kenedy. At its strongest, the book provides a portrait of the growth and influence of these interlinked powerful families and a glimpse of daily life and high society among the Texas elite.

The authors’ biographical research is impressive, and they have an eye for a good story. One chapter, for example, describes Spohn accompanying a frightened patient to France for rabies shots. Others describe some of Spohn’s colorful relatives, including one man who shot a saloon singer and another who was executed for treason in Mexico by the French Imperial Army.

If the book’s strength is in storytelling and in providing rich biographical detail, its weakness lies in failing to contextualize the history of medicine. The authors argue that Spohn was at the forefront of medical expertise and well ahead of his time, particularly with regard to cleanliness and sterile operating conditions. They describe other doctors as “the old guard, who continued to practice and defend the ways of the past,” and suggest that “tradition and experience militated against real changes in medical practice” (pp. 2, 144). At the same time, however, they praise Spohn’s medical teachers as experts in their fields and suggest that Spohn’s medical ideas and inventions were appreciated by his fellow physicians. In an appendix, the authors include a selection of medical journal articles written by Spohn, including his descriptions of a new type of splint, a new type of tourniquet, and a successful case of skin grafting. The picture that emerges is unclear. Was Spohn truly a medical pioneer, or was he one of many doctors in his generation who had adopted the hygienic ideas of physicians such as Joseph Lister and Ignaz Semmelweis? Perhaps further examination of the medical journals that published his articles would have allowed for a more complete picture of medical practice in the American West.