McGee, William John

“Jr.” [?]
Born near Farley, Iowa, April 17, 1853. Died Septemer 12, 1912.
See History of Arizona medicine; collections of Orville Harry Brown, M.D. [AHSL Special Collections WZ 70 AA7 H673].

J Am Med Assoc, Feb 1895; XXIV: 295 - 298: MISCELLANY. Washington Notes. Medical Society of the District. -- At the meeting of the Society held on the 6th inst. Prof. W. J. McGee read a paper entitled, "Primitive Trephining in Peru," and illustrated it by the Muniz collection of crania.
J Am Med Assoc, Jan 1897; XXVIII: 240: MISCELLANY. Washington. ... Anthropological Society's Officers. -- At the annual election of the Anthropological Society, recently held, the following officers were elected for the year ; President, Dr. Frank Baker ; vice presidents, Prof. W. J. McGee, Mr. George R. Stetson, Gen. George M. Sternberg and Dr. Cyrus Adler ; general secretary, Dr. J. H. McCormick.
J Am Med Assoc, Jul 1904; XLIII: 197: MEDICAL AND HYGIENIC EXHIBITS AT THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXPOSITION [at St. Louis]. I. AMERICAN EXHIBITS. GUY HINSDALE, A.M., M.D. ... ANTHROPOLOGIC EXHIBIT. ...The results of these studies in anthropology will be issued after the exhibition, in a special volume, under the direction of Mr. F. W. Lehman, the commissioner, and Professor W. J. McGee.
J Am Med Assoc, Mar 1906; XLVI: 824: Death from Thirst. -- Dr. W. J. McGee, director of the St. Louis Public Museum, formerly chief of anthropology of the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition, discussed this subject before the St. Louis Medical Society. He has recently made observations in the arid regions of Arizona, and he reported the case of a Mexican who was lost in the desert without drink for eight days. He traveled 108 miles in a stuporous condition and, half dead, finally stumbled into Dr. McGee's camp, where he was revived after great difficulty. Dr. McGee called attention to thirst as a disease, treating of physiologic thirst, thirst beyond physiologic limits,and thirst in extremis. The last might be called living death; death of the tissues takes place from below upward, owing to the impoverished state of the blood and to want of circulation. The victim's toes drop off and breaks in the skin do not bleed because of the nonfluid state of the blood.
W. J. McGee. St. Louis. Desert Thirst as a Disease. Interstate Medical Journal, St. Louis, Mo., March, 1906; 13:1-23: Desert Thirst as a Disease. JAMA “Current Medicine” abstract: Desert Thirst. -- McGee cites a most extraordinary case. A man named Pablo was lost in the desert just eight days (and nights), with one day's water; he rode in the saddle thirty-five miles and walked or crept between 100 and 150 miles. For nearly seven days, or fully 160 consecutive hours, he was wholly without water from sources exterior to his system, save the few drops extracted from the agave stipes and insects -- a desert record without parallel known to McGee; for half the victims of desert thirst die within 36 hours of deprivation, another quarter within 48 or 50 hours, and nearly all known to survivors, within from 70 to 80 hours (three days and nights), or hardly half of Pablo's stress. For some five days he consumed his urine; ordinarily, the reconversion of excreted liquids is hardly helpful if not wholly harmful, yet in Pablo's case it seems to have materially prolonged vitality. For nearly nine days his bowels were inactive, and for two days his kidneys failed to function. The eight-day siege lost him 35 or 40 pounds (or 25 per cent, of his weight), chiefly through evaporation from skin and membrane; he also suffered fully two-score cuts, scratches and bruises each of sufficient severity to give some shock to the system; and his mouth, esophagus and stomach Avere seriously deranged by his desperate efforts to relieve the thirst torture. The most striking feature of the case was the absence of wholly insane delirium; he was, indeed, affected by the revulsion against gold, as shown by the abandonment of his nuggets and the casting away of his money; he was possessed of hallucinations as to the wetness of sands, the moisture of articulates and shrubs, and the nearness of Tinajas Atlas; he was obsessed by the desire for vengeance against his comrade, who he thought had deserted him, the dream of easting himself in Tule Well, and the delusion of death -- yet he never lost his trail sense, and apparently squandered little vitality in those aimless movements that commonly hasten and harden the end of the thirst victim.