Biographical Sketch 
op 
John Erissell. /AD.. 
op- 
Wheeling. W. Va. 
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1890. John Frissell, M.D. Biographical Sketch 
OP 
John Erissell. /AD.. 
OP 
Wheeling, W. Va 
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* Prominent /v\en or West Virginia,” 
A Book Now in Press. 
WHEELING : 
Daily intelligencer Steam Book and Job Press. 
1890. Biographical Sketch. 
Dli. JOHN FRISSELL was born in Peru, Berkshire county, 
Mass, (the home of the Fields’, the Hopkins’ and the Bry- 
ant’s), March 8, 1810. lie was the son of Amasa Frissell, a 
farmer of Scotch descent; his mother was of English parentage, 
named Wilcox. They secured good education to their six 
children, four sons and two daughters. The eldest of the sons 
was a farmer, and the other three received collegiate educations, 
and represent the professions as follows : one as a lawyer and 
judge; another in medicine and the other in theology. The 
eldest of the two daughters was a missionary to the Choctaw 
Indians, located in Mayhcw, a small Indian village, and a mis- 
sionary station in the Northeastern part of the State of Miss- 
issippi ; the other daughter was married and lived in New York 
City. The subject of this sketch in his youth worked on the 
farm with his father, attending the common school in the winter, 
from whence he was advanced to the Academy in Old Iladley. 
He entered Williams’ College in the fall of 1827, and gradu- 
ated A.B. in 1831. lie commenced the study of medicine in the 
fall of 1831 with Dr. Ebenezer Emmons, of Williamstown, 
whose assistant he had been in the chemical laboratory of 
Williams’ College for two years. In the fall of 1832 he attended 
lectures at Berkshire Medical College in Pittsfield. 
At the invitation of Prof. Willard Parker he accompanied 
him to Woodstock, Vermont, in the spring of 1833, where he 
became demonstrator of Anatomy, lie filled the same position 
for Prof. Parker in the Berkshire Medical School the next fall; 
at that period it was the duty of the demonstrator to perform 
the dissections for the professor and afterwards to recapitulate 
to the class the Professor’s lecture, and to carefully superintend 
and instruct all those making dissections. Having continued 
demonstrator through the year 1834, and attended lectures, he 
graduated M.D. from the Berkshire College at the close of that 
term. In the fall of this year he received the degree of A.M. 
from Williams’ College. He remained in Pittsfield hearing 
recitations and instructing students in anatomy, materia medica, 4 
etc., during the spring and summer. In the fall and winter of 
1835 he demonstrated his fourth and last course of lectures. 
Dr. Frissell removed to Wheeling, Virginia, where he arrived 
on the 3d of June, 1836. At lirst practice came to him rather 
slowly, but he occupied his spare time profitably, in giving oc- 
casional lectures on temperance, phrenology, and physiology, in 
teaching botany, and lecturing on that subject in the schools of 
Wheeling, and rambling with classes over the hills and through 
the country seeking flowers and specimens with which to illus- 
trate his lectures. He also indulged his taste for the geological 
and mineralogical sciences, by studying the rocks and minerals 
to be found in the vicinity of Wheeling, with Drs. A. S. Todd, 
Townsend, and others interested in these subjects. He likewise 
filled the position of teacher and leader of the choir of the First 
Presbyterian Church for fifteen years or more. But in a few 
years all his time was required to perform the labor of his in- 
creasing professional engagements. 
He has been physician to the Convent of the Sisters of the 
Visitation, and the school for young ladies at Mount de Chantal, 
and to St. Vincent’s College. He was the first surgeon in West- 
ern Virginia to avail himself of chloroform in capital operations, 
and although using it in thousands of cases, no untoward acci- 
dent has ever occurred in his practice. He first used it in 
November, 1853, in an arm amputation. In a commercial and 
manufacturing city, such as Wheeling, laborers and mechanics 
are exposed to numerous accidents, so that the surgical practice 
is large compared with the ordinary sickness of the population. 
Dr. Frissell was therefore early called upon to take a prominent 
part in such operations, which his exact knowledge of anatomy 
enabled him to perform with skill and success, he early became 
known as one of the best surgeons and most eminent physicians 
in Western Virginia. In 1838 he performed his first operation 
for hare-lip and deformed upper jaw, and in the following year 
he operated on club-foot by division of tendons, and shortly after 
Dr. George McClellan, of Philadelphia, had performed his first 
operation for the same deformity, by the same method. In 1841 
he commenced operating for strabismus, and has since performed 
repeatedly nearly all the different operations on the eye, inclu- 
ding the extirpation of the organ, both by enucleation, or by 
removing with the eye a part of the tissues of the orbit. He 
performed in 1846 his first operation for stone in the bladder, 
and in 1856 his first successful operation for vesico vaginal 
fistula. He has operated with success for stapliyloraphy, and 5 
frequently for pariphymosis and phymosis, and phymosis with 
adherent prepuce; not to mention his numerous operations in 
plastic surgery, one of which he performed in 1871 in a case 
wherein the chin and sternum were held nearly in contact, ranks 
among the most extensive and successful of the class on record, 
lie is a member of the Ohio County Medical Society and of 
the State Medical Society of West Virginia, of which he was the 
first president, and of the American Medical Association, lie 
is an honorary member of the Medical Society of California, and 
was member of the International Medical Congress of 1876. 
Although not much addicted to writing, his cases and opera- 
tions have furnished abundant themes for valuable medical arti- 
cles, insomuch that his papers dealing with the fruits of his 
every-day practice are too numerous to he given here even by 
their titles: they may he read, however, in the transactions of 
the West Virginia State Medical Society. 
Soon after the beginning of the civil war he was appointed 
by Governor Pierpoint, Medical Superintendent of the military 
prisoners and sick soldiers of Wheeling, and was continued by 
the Surgeon-General of the United States at the same post as 
Assistant Surgeon to the close of the war. He also served as a 
member of the State Board of Examiners for Surgeons entering 
the Army during the war. For more than a third of a century 
he filled the position of surgeon to the marine patients at 
Wheeling. 
Dr. Frissell since he has been in Wheeling has been connected 
with three institutions, organized for the benefit of the sick and 
afflicted ; first, the Wheeling Dispensary, which was established 
about 184f>, was conducted during the year or two of its exist- 
ence, by four of the city physicians—Drs. Todd, Bates, Hildreth 
and Frissell. Their office and dispensary room was on the north- 
east corner of Twelfth and Chapline streets, where one of the four 
physicians would he present at a certain hour each day to prescribe 
for patients who mightcall for advice and medicine; second, the 
Infirmary was started by Drs. Frissell and Hullihen, in Novem- 
ber, 1845, for the purpose of accommodating private patients. 
The Infirmary was entirely under their control, as they alone 
were the only physicians who had the right to either send or 
attend patients there. The first patient of the Infirmary was a 
young man, a patient of Dr. FrisselFs, with fever, who was sent 
to Mrs. Barnes’, then living on the alley west of where the 
Linsly Institute now stands. She nursed and took care of that 
patient so much to the satisfaction of Drs. Frissell and Hullihen 6 
that they afterwards sent all proper patients to her ; in a short 
time she moved to the Updegraff* house near the creek on Mar- 
ket street, which would accommodate some ten or twelve 
patients, but the owners after a time wished to sell the prem- 
ises and she moved to the Thompson property on Sixteenth 
street. Bishop Whalen understanding that more room was 
needed for patients, had the Wheeling Hospital chartered in 
March, 1850, and opened it on a small scale in the Metcalf house 
on Fifteenth street, and placed it in charge of the Sisters of St. 
Joseph, with Drs. Frissell and Hullihen as surgeons, through 
whose permission only applicants were admitted. The Bishop, 
still anxious to increase the hospital facilities, purchased the 
Michael Sweeney house and lot in North Wheeling, added 
largely to both ends and raised the whole building one story, 
and fitted it with accommodations for one hundred and fifty 
patients when closely filled, which was amply sufficient for all 
applications at that time. The patients then presenting them- 
selves were sent to the new Wheeling Hospital, and the patients 
in the Infirmary and Metcalf house were transferred in a short 
time to the new hospital. The sick seamen were also taken in, 
where all were well attended and cared for by the Sisters. The 
Institution was under the charge of a Board of Directors, of which 
Bishop Whelan was the head, and everything moved on smoothly. 
The hospital accommodations were plain, and though at the pres- 
ent day would not be considered modern in its appointments, yet 
at that time the institution was considered the best in this region 
of country. It was with many regrets that Drs. Frissell and 
Hullihen gave up Mrs. Barnes, who had served them so faith- 
fully for ten years. Dr. Hullihen died on the 27th of March, 
1857. Bishop Whelan, with the approval of the Board of 
Directors, appointed Dr. Frissell surgeon and physician of the 
Wheeling Hospital and gave him the whole professional charge 
of the institution, and that appointment has never been changed. 
During the first two years of its existence, Drs. Frissell and 
Hullihen alone exercised the sole prerogative as to admission of 
patients, etc., but subsequently this privilege was extended to all 
other regular practicing physicians. 
From the commencement of the Infirmary in 1845, to the 
present time, about 45 years, Dr. Frissell has had the main 
charge of the hospital institutions of the City of Wheeling, and 
full charge since the death of Dr. Hullihen. Since the hospital 
has been completed it has fully supplied the wants of West 
Virginia, Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio, for regular 7 
hospital patients. Bishop Kain has made some valuable im- 
provements, but another building is desired, with sundry im- 
provements, to make it what it should be at the present time, 
as a great amount of sickness and accidents occur on account of 
the large number employed on bridges, tunnels and railroads, 
that are being constructed in and about the city at this time, 
and if all applicants were taken into a hospital who would like 
to be fed and taken care of, a building of almost any size might 
be kept well tilled. For some years Dr. Frissell has left most of 
the hospital work to his son, Dr. Charles M. Frissell. 
Dr. Frissell has operated many times by the lateral operation 
in Wheeling and surrounding country for stone in the bladder, 
and always with success, never having lost a patient, or had any 
bad results from inflammation or blood poison, using most of 
the time only the old antiseptics, pure water, perfect cleanliness, 
and good care. Of late years he has occasionally used the 
carbolic acid bi-chloride solutions in operations, but with no 
better success. The youngest of the patients operated on lor 
stone was two years of age, the oldest was 72 years, who now 
keeps in Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, a candy and toy shop and is as 
lively as a bee. Dr. Frissell has often operated in the same way 
in the city and through the country for strangulated hernia, 
and with the same results, except when there was mortitication 
of the bowels and the intestine could not be saved. 
Two tine-looking ladies called on Dr. Frissell at separate 
times and from different States for examination and advice. 
The ladies appeared to be in good health, and every way 
perfect except that they had no vulva, no vagina, no uterus, 
and no ovaries that could be discovered. The first lady was 
not married and took the doctor’s advice, which was to remain 
as the Lord had made her. The second lady, who was married, 
received the same advice, but in about two months she returned 
with her husband, determined to have some operation performed 
that would relieve her from her malformation, for she had be- 
come disgusted with her condition. She was sent to the hospital 
and soon Dr. Frissell, with two other physicians, called to ex- 
amine her and perform some operation, if thought best, to please 
the lady and her husband. It was decided to operate, and a 
very respectable vulva and vagina were formed. The vagina 
was formed by separating the thick layer of cellular tissue be- 
tween the rectum and the bladder. The lady bore the operation 
without chloroform and without a murmur. She was carefully 
attended at the hospital for over two weeks, and was furnished 8 
with two glass dilators of different sizes such as used by Sims 
and Thomas. She expressed herself as well satisfied with the 
operation and promised to return if everything did not prove 
satisfactory. Dr. Frissell has not seen her since or heard from 
her. 
Dr. Frissell has removed many uterine polypi and fibroids of 
various sizes and shapes, but three were remarkable in their 
character. One was about six inches in length and two inches 
in diameter or thickness, attached to mouth and neck of the 
uterus, and surrounding the mucous membrane of the vagina, 
filling the whole of the vagina and projecting a short distance 
at the vulva. The tumor was removed by three sections, at 
three different operations. The two other tumors were more 
like the head of a child and filled the whole vagina and lower 
part of the pelvis, and required to be pushed up for water or 
bowel discharges to pass. Large sections of the tumors were 
required to be cut out to diminish their size so they could be 
removed by the ligature or ecrasure. There was no return of 
the disease after those tumors were removed and their pedicils 
or attachments properly taken care of. Cancer is frequently a 
sequel of such diseases. Many persons prefer going to the larger 
cities for operations of this kind, being led thither by the glaring 
cure-all advertisements of some third-class physicians who are 
always on the lookout for such cases, when in the majority of 
instances they could be more successfully and comfortably 
treated at home. 
Notwithstanding the success he has achieved in the medical 
world, Dr. Frissell is of a very modest and retiring nature. He 
is naturally of a pleasant and jovial disposition, which, together 
with his well-earned reputation as the leading surgeon of the 
State, makes him greatly beloved by a large circle of friends and 
acquaintances. He was married on the third of December, 1850, 
to Elizabeth Ann, daughter of Col. John Thompson, of Mounds- 
ville, W. Ya. They have two sons living—the eldest a physician 
and surgeon, a graduate of the College of Physicians and Sur- 
geons, of New York City, occupies his father’s position, while 
the youngest is a scientist, and is the chief chemist in the 
Wheeling steel plant at Benwood.