Philip Syng Physick

[1] Edmund was a businessman and receiver general of Pennsylvania who was a close friend of the Penn family and Keeper of the Great Seal.

He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1785, then began the study of medicine under Adam Kuhn, and continued it in London under John Hunter, learning anatomy through cadaver dissections, becoming, on January 1, 1790, house surgeon of St. George's hospital.

One of the foremost surgeons of the time, Physick was among the few doctors who remained in the city to care for the sick during Philadelphia's decimating Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793.

[6] Physick pioneered the use of the stomach pump, used autopsy as a regular means of observation and discovery, excelled in cataract surgery, and was responsible for the design of a number of surgical instruments, such as the needle forceps, the guillotine/snare for performing tonsillectomies, and improved splints and traction devices for treatment of dislocations; he also innovated many operative techniques.

[7][8] Physick was the first in Western medicine to introduce cataract extraction by aspiration of lens material by applying suction to a tube in 1815.