Biographical Sketch of G. Betton MASSEY, M.D.; Philadelphia Co., PA Contributed to the PAGenWeb Archives by Diana Smith [christillavalley@comcast.net] Copyright. All Rights Reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/pafiles.htm ********************************************************* "Philadelphia, A History of the City and its People; A Record of 225 Years" Publisher: S. H. Clark; Philadelphia; 1912. Vol. 3, page 490 Author, Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer G. BETTON MASSEY, M.D. One of the most important developments in medical science during recent years is that of electro-therapeutics, an innovation in the methods of practice which practically marks an era in the history of the healing art. Among the most ardent disciples and advocates of the use of electricity in the treatment of nervous diseases, abnormal growth and the diseases of women in Dr. George Betton Massey, who is not only well known in private practice in Philadelphia and as a surgeon to the American Oncologic Hospital but also throughout the United States where progressive members of the medical profession are found. Dr. Massey was born near the village of Massey, Kent county, Maryland, November 15, 1856. For nearly two hundred years his ancestors were prominent in that section of the state and his father was descended from an early Maryland settler who arrived in America in 1714. The early education of Dr. Massey was acquired largely under the guidance of his mother, a member of the well known Betton family of Florida. His love of scientific subjects was early developed and foreshadowed the trend of his life work. At the close of the Civil war, with its resultant changes in social and business conditions throughout the south, Dr. Massey sought out an occupation and further opportunities for self- education in the country schools of Anne Arundel county, Maryland, entering upon the profession of teaching there when but sixteen years of age. In the autumn of 1873 he went to the home of his maternal uncle, the late George W. Betton, and entered upon a year of preliminary medical studies, having determined to follow the profession of medicine as a life work. During the winters of 1874 and 1875 he was a student in the Medical College of South Carolina, where he won the prize for proficiency in chemistry. The final year of his medical course was passed in the University of Pennsylvania, from which he was graduated in 1876. He then became assistant to Dr. Betton, his former preceptor, but when opportunity offered he accepted a position as assistant physician in the State Hospital for the Insane at Danville, Pennsylvania. There he remained until 1879, when he resigned to enter upon the private practice of medicine. During the early years of his practice in Philadelphia, Dr. Massey was for a time assistant in the gynecological clinic of Professor William Goodell at the University of Pennsylvania and was also assistant physician in the Orthopedic Hospital & Infirmary for Nervous Diseases, where he had the opportunity to observe the work and methods of such world-famed neurologists as Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, Wharton Sinkler and Morris J. Lewis. In 1880 the position of electro- therapeutist was created by the board and Dr. Massey was appointed to the position, which he filled until 1887. In this department, where he had unrivalled opportunities for the study of electricity as a curative agent of nervous diseases, he made his greatest progress and obtained a reputation which placed him in the advance guard of those engaged in latter day scientific research. He was the assistant of Dr. Mitchell in electrical treatment and as electricity had been recognized for years as the most effective remedy for nervous diseases, Dr. Massey devoted himself at first exclusively to its development in this field. When the news was received from Paris about 1885 that electricity was successfully employed in reducing fibroid tumors of the uterus to an innocuous condition, Dr. Massey began experimenting in that direction. He resigned his position at the infirmary in 1887 to accept the position of physician in the department of diseases of the mind and nervous system at Howard Hospital, which, however, did not furnish the requisite material for the development of his experiments with electricity. Through the scientific zeal of Dr. T. Hewson Bradford, however, Dr. Massey was enabled to practice in connection with the out-patient department of the Pennsylvania Hospital and there prosecuted his studies with great effect. One of the most important published volumes relative to electricity in the treatment of affections peculiar to women, "Electricity in the Diseases of Women," was issued by Dr. Massey in 1889, embodying the data which he gathered in this hospital and it was the first complete treatise on the subject ever published. Further editions of this work have been published from time to time together with additions, under the title of "Conservative Gynecology and Electro- Therapeutics," the sixth edition appearing in 1909. In 1885 Dr. Massey was transferred to the position of attending gynecologist to the Howard Hospital but resigned the appointment after ten years' service. In 1904, realizing the need of a special hospital for cancer, Dr. Massey issued a call for a meeting of others interested in this subject, the result thereof being the founding of the American Oncologic Hospital, in which he has since served as a member of the board of trustees and on the medical staff. He is also a member of the editorial staff of the "Journal of Advanced Therapeutics." It is possible that Dr. Massey's most enduring reputation, however, will rest upon his latest contribution to human knowledge, which is the discovery that mercury and zinc in ionic form may be disseminated through a cancerous growth by electricity. As this substance or rather its nascent oxychlorides is a most powerful antiseptic and kills all growth, it is made evident for the first time that cancers are of microbic origin. Dr. Massey's long and earnest devotion to his specialty of electricity as applied to the healing of disease and his advocacy of its merits throughout the United States and especially before the Pan-American Medical Congress, have given him national prominence and stamped him as a leader in the field of research and scientific investigation. His reputation as one of the pioneers and authorities in this branch of science has furthermore been maintained by a series of papers and treatises which have been widely circulated in the medical profession. In 1890 he took the initiative in the formation of the American Electro-Therapeutic Association, of which he became president in 1891 and which he still serves as a member of the executive council. In 1885 Dr. Massey was married to Miss Harriet L. Stairs of Philadelphia and they have two sons and a daughter. Constantly overburdened by the demands of his profession, he has little leisure for social life outside of his own home and it is therefore well that he has an absorbing interest in and zeal for the advancement of his profession. He today occupies a leading position in the medical world. He was a delegate to the Third International Congress on Physiotherapy at Paris in 1910 and is chairman of the American committee of this congress.