Johnson, Guion Griffis, 1900- 1989. Ante-Bellum North Carolina: A Social History: Electronic Edition.


The general practitioner usually performed operations upon the head whenever such cases arose, for there were few specialists in this field of surgery in the State. One such specialist, however, was Dr. John Beckwith of Raleigh who treated diseases of the eye for a period of more than twenty years until his removal to Petersburg, Virginia, in the forties. In the issue of September 7, 1839, the Raleigh Register referred with pride to his operations for the relief of blindness, declaring that he had as few instances of failure as the more famed doctors at the North.