Charles McBurney

Charles McBurney would not have been the great surgeon that he was had he not been a great physician. His knowledge was as profound as his hand was skillful, and his mind resolute when to apply, and when to refrain from, the more heroic means of restoring the human organism. The circumstances of his training also made for his subsequent eminence. He was a graduate of Harvard, and then of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. But he passed through an even greater schooling, which came from close association as a student with a grand medical and surgical personality, Dr. Willard Parker; and McBurney richly equipped himself from the knowledge and wisdom, and the buoyant and adequate humanity of that admirable man. Next he won his appointment as interne in Bellevue Hospital, and after his years of service there, he went abroad and attended surgical operations in Vienna, Berlin, London, and Paris. After his return, he became associated with Dr. George A. Peters, and thenceforth rapidly progressed in his profession. Demonstrator of anatomy, afterwards professor of surgery in the “P. & S.,” attending physician at St. Luke’s and Bellevue Hospitals, consulting surgeon at the Presbyterian, and then, as Dr. Henry Sand’s successor, he was placed in charge of the entire surgical service of the Roosevelt Hospital. Under his charge, the surgical repute of that institution culminated, while McBurney from his operations there and in his private practice attained recognition as the leader of surgery in this city. No man possessed more fully the confidence of his professional brethren as well as of the laity, and none was more worthy of it.

Henry Osborn Taylor
1914 Century Association Yearbook