AUGUSTE RHU, M.D. While Ohio has many eminent surgeons, perhaps none has a longer record of notable work in that field than Auguste Rhu of Marion, where he has practiced forty years. His attainments brought him an early election as a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.

He was born in Seneca County, Ohio, April 5, 1849, and was liberally educated, attending high school at Dayton, Notre Dame University at South Bend, Indiana, and at Marion he studied medicine under Dr. Robert L. Sweney, whose daughter he married. He graduated in 1885 from Western Reserve University, Medical department, Cleveland, Ohio, and his individual success has brought him association with many world famous men in his profession. He was elected a member of the American College of Surgeons in 1913. Doctor Rhu has been engaged in practice at Marion, since February, 1885, and he handled the surgical cases of several of the large industrial corporations in that city.

Doctor Rhu, in his early practice filled the chair of professor of Surgical Pathology in Ohio Medical University at Columbus, at one time was president of the state Pension Board, is a member of the American Association of Railway Surgeons, was three different times elected president of the Marion County Medical Society, was assistant secretary in 1892-93 of the Ohio State Medical Society. Through his reports and addresses Doctor Rhu has contributed the benefits of his wide and unusually successful experience as a surgeon to the world at large, and the profession knows him chiefly through his individual writing and reports of his work. He has the distinction of performing the first successful laparotomy in Marion County in 1888, and in a period of forty years he performed 3,000 abdominal operations, the death rate less than one per cent, and a large number of cranial operations with recovery. Soon after America entered the World war he was made a member of the Federal District Draft Board, No. 3, and was accepted as a surgeon in the Medical Reserve Corps. He is a member of the Electro-Therapeutic Society. Doctor Rhu has always found his chief recreation in music, of which he is passionately fond. He is a York and Scottish Rite, Thirty-second Degree, Mason, a member of the Kiwanis Club, a past exalted ruler of his lodge of Elks, and has served as president of the Marion Carnegie Public Library.

Doctor Auguste Rhu married, July 7, 1875, Miss Helen S. Sweney, who was born in Marion County in 1853, and died March 29, 1908.

Doctor Robert L. Sweney, her father, deserves a place among Ohio's distinguished men of medicine and surgery during the last century. He was born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, May 18, 1822, but was reared in Crawford County, Ohio, completed his course in the Cleveland Medical College in 1849, and in 1851 located at Marion. He was called the founder of the Marion County Medical Society, which was organized in 1877, and of which he was president seven years. He was commissioned surgeon of the Forty-third Ohio Infantry during the Civil war, and at the close of the war was made military examining surgeon for Marion County with the rank of major. His professional claim rested upon his achievement as a surgeon and gynecologist. One publication gives him the credit of being the first Ohio surgeon to successfully reduce a retroverted uterus. He died in Marion January 12, 1902. His wife was Elizabeth C. Concklin, oldest daughter of Col. W.W. Concklin. She was the first girl from Marion County to receive a collegiate education, being a graduate of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Ladies' Seminary.

Dr. H.S. Rhu, son of Dr. Auguste Rhu and grandson of Dr. Robert L. Sweney, was born at Marion, November 17, 1876, and for a number of years has been associated with his father in handling an extensive surgical practice. He was educated in the Marion public schools, in Kenyon Military Academy, Western Reserve Academy,and graduated in medicine from Western Reserve University in June, 1899. For a number of years his experience was largely in the field of tuberculosis. For two years he was an interne in the Lakeside Hospital at Cleveland, and for several years was in the West and Southwest, being a member of the staff of the Texas Sanatorium, a resident physician of the Tuberculosis Hospital at Llano, Texas, resident physician in the Cragmore Sanitarium at Colorado Springs, and medical director of Dr. Boyd Corncik at San Angelo, Texas. During the World war he served as first lieutenant at Camp Jackson, Columbia, South Carolina. He was a member of the elected secretary of the Marion County Medical Society, and had formerly served as its president, and is a member of the Ohio State and American Medical associations, the Society for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis. He is a Knights Templar Mason and a Presbyterian.

Dr. H.S. Rhu married in June, 1913, Miss Lucy A. White, daughter of J. Herbert White, a wholesale and retail book and stationery dealer in Buffalo, New York. The children born to their marriage are: H. Switzer, born August 6, 1914, Roger Williams, born June 17, 1916, and Helen Louise, born July 28, 1920.


File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Gina Reasoner
GReasoner@prodigy.net
December 21, 1999

History of Ohio
The American Historical Society, Inc., 1925
Volume V, page 344-345