author
Charles B. (Charles Bingham) Penrose
1862–1925
Best remembered for the Penrose drain, he was a Philadelphia surgeon whose work reached far beyond the operating room. His career also included teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, writing on women’s medical care, and pursuing zoology and conservation with the same practical curiosity.
1 Audiobook
A Text-book of Diseases of Women
by Charles B. (Charles Bingham) Penrose
About the author
Born in Philadelphia in 1862, Charles Bingham Penrose built a wide-ranging career as a gynecologist, surgeon, and medical teacher. He became especially known for the surgical drainage tube that bears his name, the Penrose drain, and he also served on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania.
Penrose wrote several editions of a textbook on medical and surgical conditions affecting women, which helped extend his influence beyond his own practice. Accounts of his life also describe him as a zoologist and conservationist, showing how comfortably he moved between medicine and the natural world.
He died in 1925, but his name has remained familiar in medical history because of the lasting usefulness of the technique associated with him. That mix of hands-on invention, teaching, and scientific curiosity gives his life story an appeal that reaches beyond medicine alone.