Orificial surgery

Edwin Hartley Pratt (1849–1930), or E.H. Pratt, was a prominent American practitioner of homeopathic medicine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He originated the briefly popular practice of "orificial surgery", which sought to cure a variety of physical and psychological ills by surgical corrections to the various orifices of the body. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Orificial Surgery.

Pratt served for 20 years as attending surgeon for Cook County Hospital, and also founded his own institute, the Lincoln Park Sanitarium. His ideas were extremely popular for a time, but fell into general disrepute by the early 20th century.

Edwin Hartley Pratt was born on November 6, 1849, in Towanda, Pennsylvania. His parents were Betsey Belding Pratt and the homeopathic physician Leonard Pratt. In 1852, they moved to northwestern Illinois; in his boyhood, Pratt attended the district school in Rock Creek Township.

At the age of 15 in 1864, Pratt attended the nearby Mount Carroll Seminary (later known as Shimer College). He remained there only one year, but thirty years later wrote that "I was so impressed with the measures of instruction, and such a spirit of earnestness prevailed in the school, that the memory of that year's work has never been dimmed by the rushing and turbulent experiences of the years that have since gone by".

Pratt next enrolled in Wheaton College. At the time, the college was strongly identified with anti-Masonic beliefs, and forbade all students from joining secret societies. When his father joined the Independent Order of Good Templars in 1865, Pratt joined him as a member of the order; Soon thereafter, he was given the choice of expulsion or leaving the order, and chose expulsion. His father sued the school over the expulsion, but ultimately lost before the Illinois Supreme Court in Pratt v. Wheaton College, which established the principle of in loco parentis in Illinois common law.

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