Levi Jay Hammond, M.D.

Jay was his commonly used name, born on Kent Island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay just east of Annapolis, Maryland. The family moved to Dover and then to Wilmington, Delaware where his father pastored churches. By the time Jay finished high school in Wilmington he was a brother to seven younger siblings.

About the time of graduation, his father accepted a call to pastor a church in the mountains of western North Carolina. Jay followed the family and continued his education at Rutherford College where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. The school was connected with a hospital, and that exposure led to his interest in medicine. That led him to the University of Pennsylvania and graduating as an M.D. with honors in 1886.

The young doctor specialized in surgery, teaching at UPenn for 17 years with a focus on oral surgery. Like many young, community-minded doctors, he volunteered for several years with the Philadelphia Dispensary for the Medical Relief of the Poor. It was considered the nation’s first free clinic, opened in 1786.

As an innovator, Jay achieved recognition for devising a number of surgical instruments that were widely used. Most notable was a device that improved the operation of staphylorrhaphy, the procedure used to unite a cleft palate.

Love blossomed when he met and married Frances “Fannie” Purves Bernard in 1899. She was the daughter of a Civil War colonel who was a descendant of Baron Simon Bernard, an aide-de-camp to Napoleon Bonaparte.

She gave birth to two girls, Frances (1901-1992) and Levina (1907-1967). A son was born in 1904 but died before his first birthday. During these early childhood years, Jay managed his own private surgical hospital. 

In 1911 the Second Clinical Congress of Surgeons of North America was held in Philadelphia and in attendance were two famous names, Charles and William Mayo. During this conference, Dr. Hammond gave a live surgical demonstration and performed the world’s first human kidney transplantation. It created quite a stir and was picked up by newspapers across the country. 

However, Jay never wrote about that procedure in any medical journals. It was speculated that if he had done so, the obstacles of transplanting organs, including rejection, might have been overcome sooner. Presumably, that patient lived for a short time before the organ was rejected. The first successful kidney transplant didn’t occur until 1950, an indication of how much he was ahead of his time.

A prolific writer and frequent speaker at medical conventions, the “L. Jay Hammond” byline appeared on more than 60 published works on general, vascular, and neurosurgery. He was elected president of the Philadelphia County Medical Society in 1912, chairman of the surgical section of the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania in 1917, and president of the Medico-Legal Society in 1920. 

A milestone in his career was becoming chief surgeon and president of the surgical staff at Methodist-Episcopal Hospital, now known as Jefferson Methodist Hospital on South Broad Street. During the World War he provided surgical services at the Philadelphia Naval Yard. 

The Hammonds lived for 30 years at 1222 Spruce Street and could walk to the Church of the Covenant, 18th and Spruce Streets, where Jay was a trustee. (That impressive building has since been repurposed as a synagogue.) His other memberships were in the Union League, Alpha Kappa Kappa fraternity, the University Club, and the Pennsylvania Historical Society.

For all his accomplishments, he never attracted newspaper coverage like his wife and daughters. Fannie garnered regular attention as a noted soloist at various functions in the early 1900s. When each of the girls were “presented to society” they and the balls were well publicized. Announcements like this, as trivial as it seems, were subsequently followed by news of their engagement and marriage to men of good position.

In recognition of his lifetime of achievement,  he was given an honorary Doctor of Science degree in 1928 from Ursinus College in the Montgomery County town of Collegeville. A sudden stroke cut short his active life in 1930. In 1944 the college paid him tribute again, naming its Laboratory of Comparative Anatomy after him.

Just two months after Jay’s death, this ad for an auction at the Hammond house ran in all the papers. Was it because of the Depression and Fannie’s sudden loss of income? Things weren’t as bad as it would appear, since an item on the society page appeared in May, announcing that her oldest daughter and husband were sailing with her on a trip to Europe.

Jay was laid to rest beside his infant son in his wife’s family plot on Mausoleum Hill. His mother-in-law had just been buried there ten months earlier. His wife joined him in 1968, but their two daughters were buried elsewhere.