My Genealogy Hound

HUGHES, JOSEPH C., M. D., was born in Washington Co., Penn., April 1, 1821; the Doctor is a graduate of Jefferson College, Cannonsburg, Penn., and received from that institution the degree of A. M.; read medicine with J. F. Perkins, M. D., of Baltimore, Md.; graduated in medicine from the University of Maryland in 1845; in the spring of 1845, after graduating, he located at Mt. Vernon, Knox Co., Iowa; remained there five years, engaged in the practice of his profession; during this period, he devoted much of his time to the study of anatomy and surgery, and the preparation of anatomical and surgical appliances; in the fall of 1850, he accepted an invitation to the demonstratorship of anatomy in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, at Keokuk, Iowa, then the medical department of the Iowa State University; in the winter of 1851, he was elected to fill the chair of anatomy, which he occupied two years; in 1852, he was elected Dean of the Faculty, and in the spring of 1853, he was elected to the chair of surgery, which position, with that of Dean of the Institute, he has held ever since; to Dr. Hughes belongs the honor of having built up one of the most flourishing institutions in the West; the College building, with its valuable museum and appliances for teaching, is owned by him; he has operated by the bilateral method for stone in the bladder fifty-three times, with but five deaths; in one case he performed the operation successfully four times, the only case of the kind on record; the Doctor was a Delegate to the Medical Congress which met in Philadelphia in 1876; Hughes’ Medical and Surgical Infirmary and Eye and Ear Institute, connected with the College, is an enterprise of his own, and under his exclusive control. Gov. Kirkwood appointed him Surgeon General of the State at the outbreak of the rebellion, which position he held until the close of the war; he was also President of the Board of Medical Examiners during the war; he organized and had professional charge of the army hospitals at Keokuk for several months; these hospitals were among the largest in the West, having as many as 2,000 patients within the wards at one time. In 1866, the Doctor was elected one of the Vice Presidents of the American Medical Association, also a Delegate of the Association as its representative to the British Association for the Promotion of Science, the Provincial Medical Association of Great Britain, the American Medical Society of Paris, and such other Scientific bodies in Europe as may affiliate with said Association, and, accompanied by his wife, daughter and eldest son, spent the summer of that year in an extended trip on the continent of Europe; he has been twice President of the Iowa State Medical Society. He married at Mt. Vernon, Ohio, in 1848, Miss Amanda T. McGugin, only child of D. L. McGugin, M. D., a physician of Mt. Vernon, who was a Surgeon in the Mexican war, also Surgeon in the late rebellion, and for fifteen years a professor in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Keokuk; he died in 1865, aged 58 years. Dr. Hughes is one of the leading surgeon of the West, and enjoys as large and lucrative practice; he has a family of four children, three sons and one daughter. His eldest son, Joseph C., Jr., fills the chair of anatomy in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, at Keokuk; after his election to that professorship in the spring of 1876, he revisited Europe and attended the University at Edinburgh, Scotland, better qualifying himself for the important position to which he had been elected.