CARNOCHAN, John Murray, surgeon, b. in Savannah, Ga., 4 July 1817; d. in New York city, 28 Oct. 1887. He was taken to Scotland in early boyhood, and was graduated at the University of Edinburgh. Returning to New York, he entered the office of Dr. Valentine Mott as a student, where it became apparent that he was destined for eminency in his profession. A second visit to Europe was undertaken, and he attended the lectures of the leading surgeons at the great hospitals in London, Paris, and Edinburgh. In 1847 he began practice in New York city, and in a short time his rare delicacy of touch, steadiness of nerve, and his boldness as an operator, gave him a high reputation. In 1852 a case of exaggerated nutrition (elephantiasis arabrum) was presented to him, and, all milder remedies having failed, Dr. Carnochan severed and tied the femoral artery, effecting a cure by an entirely original operation. The same year he successfully removed a lower jaw entire with both condyles. In 1854 he exsected the whole ulna, and again the whole radius of a patient's forearm, the use of the limb being saved in both cases. In 1856 he performed an original operation that gave him a world-wide reputation. A case of chronic neuralgia was brought to him, and, after careful study of its features, he cut down and removed the entire trunk of the second branch of the fifth pair of cranial nerves. This nerve was cut from the infraorbital foramen to the foramen rotunda at the very base of the skull, and involved an operation through the malaria bone. He several times performed amputation at the hip-joint, once during the battle of Spottsylvania in 1864. For many years he served as professor of surgery at the New York medical college, as surgeon-in-chief to the State immigrant hospital, and in numerous other professional places involving great responsibility. He published numerous technical monographs, a "Treatise on Congenital Dislocations" (New York, 1850), and "Contributions to Operative Surgery," nine parts published (New York, 1877–'86).
—Appletons' Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. I, p. 529.