Frederic Atwood Besley
# Frederic Atwood Besley

Frederic Atwood Besley FACS (1868 – 1944) was an American military medical doctor and surgeon during the during the World War I. He founded the American College of Surgeons, Surgery Gynecology and Obstetrics and founding member of the American Board of Surgery.

## Background

Besley was born at Waukegan, Illinois, his parent are William Besley (father) and (mother) Sylvia Jocelyn.

He attended Chicago Manual Training School in 1880 and graduated from the Northwestern University Medical School in 1894 together with a colleague Franklin H. Martin.

## Medical career

Besley started with internship at Cook County Hospital and began his practice in Chicago with specializing in surgery. From 1900 to 1908 he began to work in the Postgraduate Medical School together in the Northwestern Medical School and in 1901 to 1902 he worked as a professor of surgery in the Women's Medical College of Northwestern University. He later became an instructor of surgery in 1904 at the Northwestern University and finally became an advanced professor of surgery, serving as an staff member and consult of various hospitals in Chicago.

## American College of Surgery and Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics

He worked with Franklin Martin together they founded and editors of the journal Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics in 1905. Besley was the founder of American Board of Surgery and American College of Surgeons serving various positions in the board and the college of surgery.

He also chaired the American College of Surgeons in 1937 to 1938 as well as Secretary of American Board of Surgery in 1938 and was a founding member of the Industrial Medicine and Traumatic Surgery of the committee of American College of Surgery.

## Army medical career

Besley served in the army as a medical reserves firstly commissioned as major in the US Armed forces during the World War I with the British and in the America were he works as a chief surgeon of Northwestern University Base Hospital in France, he was a member of the Executive Committee of the General Medical Board for President Wilson's Council of National Defense and had also held key positions in the Association of Military Surgeons and Surgical Societies in Army, he retired as a colonel.

## Personal life

He married Myria Busey in 1910 to his death 1944.

## Citations

* "U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current - Ancestry.co.uk". search.ancestry.co.uk. Retrieved 2020-09-20.
* Cutter, I. S. (1945). "Northwestern University medical school- Frederic A. Besley". Quarterly Bulletin of the Northwestern University Medical School. 19 (1): 70–72. PMC 3802565.
* Cutter, Irving S. (1945). "An appreciation of Frederic Atwood Besley April 19, 1868-August 16, 1944". Quarterly Bulletin of the Northwestern University Medical School. 19 (1): 70–72. PMC 3802565.
* "Frederic Atwood Besley". npg.si.edu. Retrieved 2020-09-20.
* "Obituaries". The Military Surgeon. 95 (4): 339–341. 1944-10-01. doi:10.1093/milmed/95.4.339. ISSN 0096-6827.
