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George A. Hendon
George Albert Hendon, M. D., is one of the strong, forceful personalities in the world of medical science. The persistent effort of his life has been the mastery of difficulties. To him in youth and early manhood life revealed but a rugged exterior, and the unceasing battle which he waged with fate—or fortune as it may be called—molded the ambitious stripling into the heroic man, for a successful physician must have within him the stuff of which heroes are made. Dr. Hendon was born in Forest, Scott county, Mississippi, on June 1, 1871. He is the son of James A. Hendon, a native of Alabama, the son of James A. Hendon a native of North Carolina. From North Carolina the family moved into Alabama and thence into Mississippi. The mother of our subject was Cornelia Russell, who was born in Jackson, Mississippi, the daughter of George W. Russell, a native of Massachusetts, whose father, Elisha, was a Unitarian minister who was sent to Jackson to teach and promulgate the principles of the Unitarian religion, but he later became a Presbyterian convert. The father of Cornelia (Russell) Hendon, George W. Russell, was a physician and practiced in Jackson, Mississippi. The father of our subject is a planter, and both father and mother are living.
Dr. Hendon was reared on the farm in Mississippi and early in life became aware that "there is no royal road to learning". Facilities were lacking, the work on a farm is arduous and all the members of the family are called upon for assistance, often the distance to school is so far that the boy cannot be spared the amount of time necessary to attend, and as, in Dr. Hendon's case, his boyhood's literary education was limited to two months in the year for about three years. At this time he was fourteen years of age and a change was found necessary for him in order to have the advantages of education. He went to Goliad, Texas, where he attended the public school for two sessions of eight months each. At the end of this time his father's health failed to the extent that the son was recalled to the farm, where he stayed for five years, until he was twenty-one years old. In 1892 he came to Louisville and entered the Louisville Medical College, from where he was graduated March 2, 1894, with first honor in a class of two hundred students. At the end of the first session he returned to Mississippi, passed the State Board of Examiners and practiced in Forest during that summer, he being the only under-graduate who passed that examination. Returning to Louisville in September, he resumed his studies and graduated March 2. 1894. He went through school with one book, Gray's Anatomy. After graduating from the Medical College Dr. Hendon was intern for a year in the City Hospital. He left the City Hospital in April, 1895, and located himself on Highland avenue in the same month.
During his internship at the City Hospital he served as assistant professor of material medical and therapeutics at the Louisville Medical College. He was assistant professor of chemistry and professor of chemistry at the Hospital College of Medicine from January, 1896, to January, 1902. He was assistant to the professor of surgery from 1900 to 1905 and from 1905 he succeeded Dr. Matthews as professor of principles and practice of surgery, until the Hospital College of Medicine merged with the Louisville Medical College in 1908, when he held the same chair in the merged institution. When the combination of all the schools formed into the University of Louisville he was appointed to the chair of principles and practice of surgery and clinical surgery in the University of Louisville, in which place he still continues.
Dr. Hendon is on the staff of St. Anthony's Hospital and is visiting surgeon at the General City Hospital and the University Hospital. He is a member of the Jefferson County Medical Society, the Kentucky State Medical Society and the American Medical Association. He is also orator in surgery for the 1910 meeting of the Kentucky State Society. He is a member of the Masonic Order and belongs to Daylight Lodge, No. 760, F. & A. M., and to Highland Chapter, R. A. M. His religious tendency is shown by his membership with the Presbyterian church, and he is a member of the Commercial Club. His marriage with Jessie Peters, who was born in Franklin, Johnson county, Indiana, resulted in the birth of three children, as follows: George Albert. Jr., Nancy Lee and James Robert. Dr. Hendon makes surgery his specialty and keeps abreast of the most advanced thought on a subject whose information can scarcely be over-estimated—the preservation of the human body in its entirety or the removal of any part that must be removed for the preservation of life, with as little pain or inconvenience as possible to the sufferer. He is a man of strong purpose, with energy sufficient for any undertaking.
Source: "A History of Kentucky and Kentuckians: The Leaders and Representative Men in Commerce, Industry and Modern Activities" By E. Polk Johnson, Published by Lewis Pub. Co., 1912 - Submitted by Janice Rice
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