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Frank L. Meleney

Born  1889
Died  1963

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American surgeon, 1889-1963.

Biography of Frank L. Meleney

F. L. Meleney attended Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. Following graduation in 1916 he served with the U.S. army corps in World War I, and subsequently spent four years in Peking with the Rockefeller Foundation as a surgeon.

In 1925 he rejoined the Columbia University as an associate in surgery, becoming professor of clinical surgery in 1950. Meleney was particularly interested in research into bacteria and introduced the use of bacitracin following work with miss Balbina A. Johnson.

Writing in the very first volume of Postgraduate Medicine early in 1947, Frank L. Meleney sounded a prophetic warning concerning the use of antibiotics:

    We have to get experience all over again on the behavior of infection under treatment with these new drugs. There is a temptation to use them promiscuously, and yet certainly if we are to improve our results we must use them with discrimination.
In 1955 Meleney retired to Miami and died there of a coronary occlusion in 1963.

Bibliography

  • Balbina A. Johnson, H. Anker, F. L. Meleney:
    Bacitracin: a new antibiotic produced by a member of the B. subtilis group.
    Science, Washington, 1945, 102: 376-377.
  • F. L. Meleney:
    Treatment of surgical infections by chemical and antibiotic agents.
    Postgraduate Medicine, Minneapolis, 1947, 1(2): 87–96.

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