Walter Sutton - Career

Career

In addition to his clinic duties at Roosevelt Hospital, Sutton was also able to work with the Surgical Research Laboratory at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. With that support, he was able to begin developing and improving a variety of medical and surgical practices including improving anesthetic techniques, and perfecting abdominal irrigation.

In 1909, Sutton returned to Kansas City, Kansas where his family had relocated and his father and brother were in law practice. Sutton was appointed assistant professor of surgery at the four-year old University of Kansas Medical School. The tenuous nature of the appointment at the young school led him to also maintain a private practice and serve on the staff of St. Margaret’s Hospital as well as the University’s Bell Memorial Hospital. For six years, Sutton performed a wide range of surgeries carefully documenting the procedures. He published several articles related to these cases going back to his internship at Roosevelt.

In 1911, he had accepted a commission as a First Lieutenant in the United States Army Medical reserve Corps. This eventually led to his taking a leave of absence from the University in February, 1915 to serve at the American Ambulance Hospital outside Paris. Sutton and others from his days at Columbia and Roosevelt arrived at College of Juilly on February 23 where hospital facilities had been set up only 40 miles from the front lines of World War I. Within 2 months, he was surgeon-in-chief handling administrative duties in addition to his surgical responsibilities. His inventive aptitude was perhaps never more valued as he developed fluoroscopic techniques to identify and localize shrapnel within the soldier’s bodies and then removed the foreign items with instruments of his own design. After his return, he documented these techniques in Binnie’s Manual of Operative Surgery. Sutton’s return sailing from France was on June 26, 1915 having stayed only four months, but have made a significant contribution to wartime medical treatment.

Dr. Sutton died rather unexpectedly at the age of 39 due to complications from acute appendicitis.