ABSTRACT
Several years ago, I had the opportunity to write an article in Span ish for a well-known Mexican journal, Cirujano General, about the extraordinary life and accomplishments of Samuel David Gross (1805-1884), the quintessential American pioneer who practiced surgery in most of the nineteenth century.1'23 In the research for this article, I realized again the exceptional character this unique surgeon had, whose incredible story needs to be shared in English. Samuel D. Gross did so much for American surgery that he is considered to be the greatest surgeon of his century. In fact, Isaac Minis Hays,1 a rec ognized American surgeon of the time, described Samuel D. Gross as “The Nestor of American Surgery”. In the 1884 memoir about Dr. Gross, Isaac Minis Hays summarized the contributions of two individuals in the science and art of surgery in this country.
