John H. Girdner papers

John Harvey Girdner (1856-1933) was born in Tennessee to Dr. William G. Girdner and his wife Mary Ann. He graduated from Tusculum College in Tennessee in 1876 and continued his education at New York University Medical School, graduating with the highest honors in 1879. In 1886, he married Adela Overton Pratt in Manhattan. He became a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine in 1887.

Girdner helped treat President James Garfield when he was shot in 1881. Later he invented the "Girdner telephonic bullet probe," a device widely used to remove bullets before x-rays. He was also a pioneer in skin grafting and performed the first successful transfer of skin from a dead body to a living person. He was a founder of the Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital of New York City. He taught classes and wrote articles for medical journals.

One of his most well known books is Newyorkitis, a satirical study of a number of physical symptoms prevalent in the inhabitants of New York: "haste, rudeness, restlessness, arrogance, contemptuousness, excitability, anxiety, pursuit of novelty and of grandeur, pretensions of omniscience, and therefore prescience, which of course undermines any pleasure taken in novelty."

According to his obituary in the Brooklyn Eagle, Girdner died of arteriosclerosis in 1933 while visiting his daughter, Mrs. Kimball C. Atwood Jr., in Islip, New York. He was buried in Kenisco Cemetery in Valhalla, New York, and he was survived by his wife, son, and two daughters.