Weeks, John E.

John Elmer Weeks was born on August 9, 1853 in Painesville, Ohio. In 1881 he received a medical degree from the University of Michigan and completed an internship at the Alms House and Workhouse Hospital on Welfare Island, New York. He became a clinical assistant in 1882 and later became a resident physician in 1885 and an assistant surgeon in 1887 at the Opthalmic and Aural Institute under Dr. Herman Knapp. In 1884 he spent a year taking postgraduate studies at the University of Berlin. In 1886 he identified a bacteria, causative in acute epidemic conjunctivitis, named in his honor, Koch-Weeks bacillus.

After serving as chief of clinic at the Vanderbilt Clinic, College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1888, he maintained a position as surgeon with the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary until his retirement in 1920 at which time he became a consulting surgeon. He was one of the founders of the Board of Opthamology and authored numerous articles and two textbooks, Diseases of the Eyes Ears Nose and Throat: A Manuel for Students and Practitioners, 1892 and Diseases of the Eye, 1910.

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