William Heath Byford

Byford was born on March 20, 1817, in Eaton to Henry T. Byford, a mechanic, and Hannah Swain; he was the eldest of three children.[1][2] His ancestors originated in Suffolk in England.[3]

Shortly after his birth, Byford's family moved to New Albany in southwestern Indiana. His father died nine years later, which left Byford having to work multiple jobs to provide for the family. Eventually they moved to his maternal grandfather's farm in Crawford County.[4][5] To further support his family, Byford apprenticed with a tailor in Palestine, Illinois,[4][6] whom he called "a kind-hearted Christian gentleman by the name of Davis". After two years Byford left the shop and finished his apprenticeship at Vincennes, where he would serve for four more years.[3]

While apprenticed, Byford would borrow books and devote his spare time to study in fields such as chemistry, physiology, and natural history, and learned Latin, Greek and French.[4][5] After his apprenticeship, in 1837, Byford would be taken into the office of Dr. Joseph Maddox, whom after eighteen months, impressed by his progress, suggested him to appear before the state's three-man examining board.[3] After his qualifications were approved by the board, he chose the town of Owensville and started his practice on August 8, 1838.[7][4]

After two years of his practices in Owensville, Byford would move to Mount Vernon where he would associate with Dr. Hezekiah Holland, and marry his daughter Mary Anne Holland on October 3, 1940.[8] Byford would continue to acquire experience, and attended lectures at the Medical College of Ohio where he graduated as Doctor of Medicine in 1845.[4]

In October, 1850, Byford was invited to take the chair of Anatomy at the Evansville Medical College, and moved there.[9] After two years, he was moved to the chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine, in which he remained until the college went defunct in 1854.[4] Byford became a member of the American Medical Association in 1854, and was made a special committee on Scrofula. On the subject of Scrofula, Byford would prepare an elaborate and valuable report, in which he talked about the importance of physical and mental exercise,[4] which gained him wide-spread attention and added to his growing reputation, which led to him being made vice-president of the association in May, 1857.[9]

In autumn of that year, Byford would be discovered by the Rush Medical College due to his publications, and get asked to join their faculty as professor of obstetrics and diseases of women and children, succeeding the former professor John Evans, who would later become governor of Colorado due to his shift to politics.[9][4]

Byford would first show his interest in physical examination, when he published a paper called "Advantages of the Prone Position in Examining the Foetal Circulation as a Diagnostic Sign of Pregnancy" in 1858. A year later, Byford resigned from Rush after they refused to improve their curriculum.[4] He would then, in the same year, along with his colleagues Hosmer Johnson, Nathan Smith Davis, Ralph Isham, Edmund Andrews and David Rutter,[10] found the Chicago Medical College where he would receive the chair of obstetrics.[11]

Byford played a substantial role in the founding of the Chicago Hospital for Women and Children, in 1865, alongside Mary Harris Thompson, whom he would provide financial, professional, and psychological support. Due to his contributions, the hospital was popularly known as the "Dr. Byford's Hospital" until it was renamed to the "Mary Thompson Hospital" upon the sudden death of Thompson in 1895.[4][12]

Five years later, when Thompson was feeling the need for further medical education, she applied to Rush but was rejected due to her sex. Following this, Byford urged the Chicago Medical College to admit her along with three other women, leading Thompson to receive her second Doctor of Medicine degree in 1970.[4] The same year, Byford would financially aid Thompson to establish the Woman's Medical College of Chicago and became president of the Faculty, as well as the Board of Trustees, and held both positions until his death.[13][14] Byford would also, alongside others, found the American Gynecological Society in 1876, of which he would be elected vice-president and president in 1881.[13][15] When Rush created a chair of Gynecology specifically for Byford in 1879, he would return to the college and hold the position until his death.[4]

Three days before his death he performed a laparotomy, and on May 21, 1890, Byford succumbed to angina pectoris.[16]

Nathan Smith Davis, a friend of Byford, said in his eulogy:

The late William Heath Byford of Chicago is the best example of a literally self-educated man, who attained a deservedly high reputation as a medical practitioner, teacher and writer, as well as a man of honor, integrity and of humanity, with whom I have been acquainted. He spent nearly all the years usually allotted to school education in diligent labor to aid in supporting a widowed mother and family. From his ninth to his twenty-first year of age he was thus employed. Yet through it all he managed to obtain the necessary books, and perseveringly devoted his evenings, odd hours, and rainy days to their study. Thereby he came to legal age with a better practical education, including both Greek and Latin, than is possessed by many of the graduates of our High Schools. Then he studied medicine, and entering upon practice he advanced step by step until he reached an honorable position among the most highly honored of his profession. He was a persevering supporter of whatever tended to the elevation of medical education and the practical usefulness of the profession. The prominent traits of his character were simplicity and kindness, clearness of perception and practical application, with an unyielding perseverance in the pursuit of whatever he deemed attainable and right.[17]

• Ridenbaugh, Mary Young (1897). Biography of Ephraim McDowell, M.D., "the father of ovariotomy". New York: McDowell Pub. Co. pp. 8–14. ISBN 978-1-28961-582-6.
• Sperry, F. M (1904). A group of distinguished physicians and surgeons of Chicago; a collection of biographical sketches of many of the eminent representatives, past and present, of the medical profession of Chicago. Chicago: J.H. Beers & co. pp. 10–14. ISBN 978-1-36319-725-5.
• Lucas, Carter (1922). History of medicine and surgery and physicians and surgeons of Chicago. Chicago: Biographical Publishing Corporation. pp. 50–53. ISBN 978-1-23653-114-8.
• Mergler, Marie J. (1896). Woman's Medical School, Northwestern University : (Woman's Medical College of Chicago) : the institution and its founders, class histories, 1870-1896. Chicago: H. G. Cutler. pp. 54–61. ISBN 978-0-34433-814-4.