Weller Van Hook

Dr. Weller Van Hook was a prominent and innovative surgeon in Chicago, and served for five years as the President (General Secretary) of the American Theosophical Society.

Early years

The Van Hook family descended from a Burgomeister General of Holland. His descendants emigrated to New Amsterdam (now New York City), and later settled in Indiana. Weller Van Hook was born on May 14, 1862 in Greensville, Indiana, where his father was a physician. In 1881 he began a course of study at the University of Michigan, and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in 1884. After a year at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago, he graduated in 1885. From July 1885 through December 1886 he interned at the Cook County Hospital. When a peaceful labor demonstration turned into the Haymarket riot of May 4, 1886, Dr. Van Hook admitted a policeman, Mathias J. Degan, to the hospital. The doctor helped to perform the post-mortem examination that provided important evidence used in prosecuting eight anarchists.

Medical career

Dr. Van Hook established a practice on the west side of Chicago from 1887 until 1894. In 1892, he became a professor in the principles of surgery at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and also taught at a hospital. In 1894, he gave up his practice and spent some months engaged in postgraduate study of surgery in Vienna, Berlin, London, and Paris. On his return, Dr. Van Hook campaigned to modernize the practice of medicine, and was quoted as writing:

The grey heads cling to the denial of bacterial significance of disease as, when a boy, I heard them doing in Central Music Hall at the Meetings of the American Medical Association. Even then, after the pathogenic powers of the pus microbes were known, many great surgeons still adhered to the primitive Listerian antiseptic methods.

Dr. Van Hook could be intolerant of his colleagues in their rejection of modern methods, but his warm attitude toward patients is evident in another quotation:

The beginning of anesthesia constitutes a period of anxiety for both patient and surgeon. TOo often, the anesthetist fails to treat his patient as a fellow mortal and starts to anesthetize himwithout formality. Twenty seconds may be spent in saying to the patient, 'Mr. Jones, I am Dr. Smith and your surgeon Dr. So and So wishes me to administer your anesthetic.' A pleasnt word or two about any promising feature of the outlook from the patient's poitn of view will give the aptient confidence in the man who is to have his life in charge for a while and will often have the effect of distinctly quieting the nervous sytem. Boisterous and confused conversation and activity, are most undesirable about a patient who is going to sleep.

Northwestern Medical School lists Dr. Van Hook as Professor of Surgery 1896-1908, and chairman of the Department of Surgery 1899-1908.

When he joined the medical faculty in 1896, the school had been making admission requirements more rigorous, but soon that academic objective came into conflict with the administration's desire to increase matriculation, which exceeded 600 in 1902-1903, compared to 321 in 1895-1896. Bayard Holmes wrote: "Van Hook went to Northwestern [in 1896] where his enthusiasm was slowly drowned out by the economic and pedantic exploitation of the splendid foundation laid so patiently and devotedly by [early founders],"

Family life

On June 16th, 1892, Dr. Van Hook married another physician, Anna C. Whaley of St. Louis. She was a student of his friend and colleague Dr. James B. Herrick..