Historical Marker

Successful Surgery

The first successful amputation of a leg at the hip joint in US. Done here by Dr. Walter Brashear in 1806 without any precedent to guide him. The patient was a seventeen-year-old boy whose leg had been badly mangled. Dr. Brashear was born in 1776, came to Kentucky, 1784, and studied medicine under Dr. Frederick Ridgely of Lexington. He died in 1860.