Halsted, William Stewart [key], 1852–1922, American surgeon, b. New York City, M.D. College of Physicians and Surgeons, 1877. He practiced in New York and in 1886 became the first professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins, where he was associated with Sir William Osler, W. H. Welch, and H. A. Kelly in developing the medical school and hospital. His surgical contributions include an operative technique based on minimum injury of tissues, anesthesia by the injection of cocaine into the nerves, a method of operating for cancer of the breast and for hernia, experimental work on the thyroid, and the introduction of the use of rubber gloves.
See his Surgical Papers (2 vol., 1924); biographies by A. J. Beckhard and W. D. Crane (1960) and G. Imber (2011); H. Markel, An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine (2011).
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