Mercy Hospital collection of J. B. Murphy materials

John Benjamin Murphy (1857-1916) was a Chicago physician and surgeon who made a name for himself as a pioneer and innovator in many types of surgery, particularly of the abdomen. Born in Appleton, Wisconsin, he received his MD from Chicago’s Rush Medical College in 1879. He taught surgery at Rush Medical College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Chicago before joining the faculty of Northwestern University Medical School as Professor of Surgery in 1901. After a stint as Chair of Surgery at Rush Medical College from 1905 to 1908, he returned to Northwestern and served as Chair of Surgery from 1908 until his death in 1916 at age 58.

Murphy also served as surgeon-in-chief at Chicago's Mercy Hospital for 21 years. His “wet clinics” at Mercy, where he lectured to an audience of physicians while performing an operation, were internationally renowned and were published as the journal Surgical Clinics of John B. Murphy at Mercy Hospital. Murphy was involved in several significant moments in American history. In 1886 he tended to people hurt during the Haymarket affair, when a bomb went off during a labor demonstration, and in 1912 he cared for Theodore Roosevelt at Mercy Hospital after Roosevelt was shot in an attempted assassination.

Murphy's skill as a surgeon also led to the development of a number of tools and techniques bearing his name, including the Murphy button for intestinal anastomosis, and Murphy’s sign and Murphy’s percussion test for diagnosis of gallbladder inflammation.

Mercy Hospital, established in 1852, was the first chartered hospital in Chicago. In 1859, it became the first Catholic hospital to affiliate itself with a medical school—the medical department of Lind University, a precursor to Chicago Medical College and Northwestern University Medical School. Mercy Hospital continued its affiliation with Northwestern as a site of clinical teaching until 1920. The hospital was acquired by Insight Chicago, a clinical technology company, in June 2021 and has since been renamed Insight Hospital & Medical Center.