Awards

School of Medicine Distinguished Alumni Award - 1983

Titled Professor - 1977 - 1980

Willis D. Gatch Professor of Surgery

About J. Stanley Battersby

A native of East Chicago, Indiana, J. Stanley Battersby, M.D. (1911-2004), completed undergraduate studies from 1929 to 1933 at DePauw University where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree. From 1934 to 1939, he attended Indiana University School of Medicine where he then received his medical doctorate. From 1939 to 1943, he trained in General Surgery under the direction of Willis D. Gatch, then second Chair of Surgery and third Dean of the Medical School and assisted Dr. Gatch in clinics and in performing shock research in the laboratory. He was named the first fellow in surgical pathology, a Research and Surgical Pathology Residency as part of the then-Department of Surgery’s Division of Surgical Pathology and Experimental Surgery.

Upon completion of his training, Dr. Battersby was appointed as the first full-time member of the Indiana University’s surgical faculty as an Associate in Surgery in July 1943, marking the beginning of his remarkable 37-year medical career distinguished by many “firsts.” In 1944, Dr. Gatch appointed him as medical supervisor of the occupational therapy department during the time the department’s director, Winifred Conrick Kahmann, served as superintendent of the newly-created occupational therapy department unit in the reconditioning division of the Army Surgeon General ‘s office. Dr. Battersby’s keen interest in thoracic surgery led him to perform the first successful repair of esophageal atresia in a new-born baby in the State of Indiana in 1946. Esophageal atresia is a rare birth defect that prevents a baby from passing food from the mouth to the stomach. The Indianapolis News ran a front-page medical story and photo on April 27, 1946, a “first” for Riley Hospital, calling the operation by Dr. Battersby “remarkable,” “a heroic feat in surgical technique,” and a “masterpiece of surgery.” This surgery led to 260 similar operations on this congenital condition.

In October 1950, Dr. Battersby participated in yet another “first.” He joined with Drs. Lyman Meiks, Byron Rust, and William Norman in Emerson Hall at the Indiana University Medical Center as panel members for a medical postgraduate course on “Problems Relating to Children Arising in the Practice of Medicine.” This was the first time in Indiana and possibly the first time anywhere where a medical postgraduate class was transmitted to listeners by telephone. The panel discussion was transmitted over a leased telephone wire and amplified for a larger audience of the Medical Staff Society of St. Elizabeth Hospital in Lafayette. This “experimental” presentation proved successful and was picked up as an education vehicle the next month. More than two hundred physicians from seventeen counties took advantage of the new telephone postgraduate service being offered jointly by the Indiana State Medical Association and the Indiana University School of Medicine during the first major test of the plan on Tuesday night, November 7. Eight additional counties took advantage of the program on December 5, and arrangements were made for more than 750 physicians to listen in.

Dr. Battersby also was one of the early pioneers in performing esophageal replacement procedures using a right colon interposition. Dr. Battersby and Dr. Harris B. Schumacker, third Chair of the Department of Surgery, were both lauded in 1951 by the Indianapolis Star for their efforts to develop an operation to save the lives of people whose gullets (esophagus) had been destroyed. In their first surgery where Battersby and Schumacker performed this operation, they provided a new esophagus for a baby who had swallowed lye. Dr. Battersby also was recognized as “an expert in the surgical management of pulmonary disorders and the treatment of mediastinal tumors and published important scientific articles on these subjects.”

Promoted to Assistant Professor of Surgery in 1947, he also was named director of Thoracic Surgery at Indiana University. An important member of the surgical teaching faculty, he was the go-to person when members of the staff or their families required an operative procedure. An Associate Professor of Surgery appointment came in 1954 and was followed by promotion to full Professor of Surgery in 1961. Numerous surgery residents who he mentored eventually held prominent positions as surgeons in practice in cities around the State or at other academic institutions. While his major focus was at Indiana University Hospital, Dr. Battersby also held staff appointments at the Indianapolis General Hospital (later Wishard Hospital, now Eskenazi Health) and Veteran’s Hospital and was a consultant surgeon at St. Vincent Hospital. He maintained a very active general and thoracic surgical practice.

Widely recognized locally, regionally, and nationally for his clinical and surgical skills, Dr. Battersby “was a gifted technical surgeon and espoused the concept that if you performed the operation the right way, the patient would do well and did not require special care in the intensive care unit.”* Dr. Jay Grosfeld, fifth Chair of the Department of Surgery, recalled that he “had a passion for his work and demanded excellence of himself and the residents in the operating theatre. Yet, he was a quiet, gentle, and unassuming man that was very thoughtful and kind to his patients.”

A Diplomate of the American Board of Surgery and Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, he was a member of the American Medical Association and was elected to membership of the American Surgical Association, Central Surgical Association, Western Surgical Association, International Surgical Society, Chest Club, American Association for Thoracic Surgery, and the Indiana State Medical Association.

Dr. Battersby was a valued colleague of three Department of Surgery Chairmen during his tenure at Indiana University: Drs. Willis D. Gatch, Harris B. Schumacker, and John E. Jesseph and served as interim-chair of the Department of Surgery at Indiana University from 1968 to 1971. Dr. Frederick J. Rescorla, Professor Emeritus of Surgery, recalled that: “In the early days of Riley Hospital, most of the surgery was performed by adult surgeons who came to Riley to care for the children. All of these surgeons had a special interest in children; however, the various fields had not yet developed into specialties for the care of children. At Riley Hospital for Children, Dr. J. Stanley Battersby was the main surgeon for children from 1943 until 1972.”

Dr. Battersby was honored with the appointment as the first Willis D. Gatch Professor of Surgery in 1977. Until retirement in 1980, he continued to practice and teach medical students and residents the art of surgery. The J. Stanley Battersby Professorship in Surgery was established in 1986 by friends, colleagues, and grateful patients as a tribute to his long-standing contributions to surgery and education at Indiana University.