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JOHN W. RILEY, M.D.
Vol. 3, p. 1333-1334

An exemplar of the best in the unwritten ethical code of his
profession, Doctor RILEY is engaged in active general practice in
Oklahoma City, but his special skill and resourcefulness as a surgeon
has caused him to devote his attention largely and with most
effective concentration to that important department of professional
service in which he has to his credit many most delicate operations
in both major and minor surgery. In this domain he has gained
prestige as one of the leading surgeons of Oklahoma, and he is known
as a man of fine intellectual and professional attainments and as a
genial, loyal and progressive citizen fully worthy of the high esteem
in which he is held in the city and state of his adoption.

After five years of most valuable clinical experience in the leading
hospitals of the City of Buffalo, New York, Doctor Riley came to
Oklahoma City in 1906, and in the capital city he has been unsparing
of his time, ability and energy in the work of his exacting
profession. Within his period of service as commissioner of health of
Oklahoma City, in 1910-12, the community was visited by a most severe
and formidable epidemic of smallpox of the malignant type, and it was
largely due to his prompt and effective handling of affairs that the
scourge did not work greater havoc. The city had no vaccination laws
and no smallpox hospital. Doctor Riley met the situation b providing
an isolation camp of tents which were distributed over five acres of
ground, and in which proper facilities were provided for the
treatment and care of victims of the dread disease. He attempted also
to obtain from the state government an ordinance providing for
general vaccination, but those opposed to vaccination organized and
formulated plans to prevent the vaccination of pupils in the public
schools, but fortunately their end was not achieved until after the
commissioner of health and his assistants had vaccinated about 15,000
persons, of whom 6,000 were school children. To his wisdom and
energetic action was it due that thereafter not a single student in
the schools was afflicted with smallpox during the epidemic. At the
tent colony Doctor Riley supervised the treatment of 480 cases, with
a loss of only forty-five. This record alone should have prevented
the final decision of the Oklahoma courts in favor of anti-
vaccination, such a policy being at distinct variance with the
opinions of leaders of the medical profession throughout the
civilized world.

Doctor Riley was born at Mexico, Oswego County, New York, on the
21st of June, 1877, and is a son of Terrence and Margaret (DRISCOLL)
Riley, the former of whom was born in Ireland and the later in
Onondaga County, New York, a member of a prominent and influential
family of that section of the Empire State. Terrence Riley became a
successful farmer in Oswego County, New York, and the gained
inviolable place in the respect and esteem of those with whom he came
in contact in the varied relations of life.

After duly availing himself of the advantages of the public schools
of Mexico, New York, Doctor Riley was for two years, 1897-9, a
student in the medical department of Syracuse University, and he then
entered the medical department of Buffalo University, in which
excellent institution he was graduated in 1901, with the degree of
Doctor of Medicine. From 1899 to 1901 he had further fortified
himself by serving a s interne in the Fitch Accident Hospital, in the
City of Buffalo, and after his graduation he was appointed house
surgeon in the Emergency Hospital of that city. This latter position
he retained until 1902, when he was appointed assistant attending
surgeon in the Buffalo Hospital maintained under the auspices and
charge of the Sisters of Charity, and with this institution he
continued to be identified until the time of his removal to Oklahoma,
in 1906. From the year of his graduation until he came to Oklahoma he
served also as assistant surgeon of the eye, ear, nose and throat
department of the Charity Hospital of Buffalo.

During the entire period of his residence in Oklahoma City, Doctor
Riley has specialized in surgery, and he is attending surgeon at the
University Hospital and St. Anthony's Hospital. The doctor served
with marked fidelity and efficiency as health commissioner of
Oklahoma City from 1909 to 1912, and within his regime in this office
he effected the erection and equipment of the city detention hospital
and the general municipal hospital which is now known as the Post
Graduate Hospital. For some time he was lecturer on surgical anatomy
in the Epworth Medical School, now defunct, and since 1910 he has
been the valued and popular incumbent of the chair of genito-urinary
surgery in the medical department of the University of Oklahoma. He
has thus been prominent not only in the general and educational work
of his profession but has also kept himself insistently in line with
the advances made in medical and surgical science, through recourse
to the best in standard and periodical literature pertaining thereto
and through taking two post-graduate courses at the fine hospital
connected with johns Hopkins University, in the City of Baltimore,
Maryland, in 1913 and 1914. In 1914-15 Doctor Riley held the office
of president of the Oklahoma State Medical Society and president of
the Oklahoma County Medical Society, 1914-15; he is a charter member
of the Oklahoma City Academy of Medicine and a member of the American
Medical Association. His political allegiance is given to the
democratic party, his religious faith is that of the Catholic Church,
and he is affiliated with Oklahoma City Council, No. 1038, Knights of
Columbus, of which he is past grand knight.

On the 26th of April, 1902, was solemnized the marriage of Doctor
Riley to Miss Cassie M. SHELDON, daughter of Howard and Ada (WHITE)
Sheldon, of Scio, New York, where Mr. Sheldon, now deceased, was a
representative merchant and stock-grower and where he served also as
postmaster. Doctor and Mrs. Riley have no children.

Typed for OKGenWeb by: Dorothy Marie Tenaza, January 9, 1999.