Evan O'Neill Kane (April 6, 1861 – April 1, 1932) was an American physician and surgeon from the 1880s to the early 1930s who served as chief of surgery at Kane Summit Hospital in Kane, Pennsylvania. He was a significant contributor in his day to railway surgery; that is, the medical and managerial practices directed toward occupational health and accident-related trauma surgery for railroad workers. Kane was also a well published contributor of innovations in surgical procedures and equipment, including asbestos bandages, mica windows for brain surgery, and multiple site hypodermoclysis.
Kane was convinced that particular surgeries need not involve general anesthesia. He is most well known, both in his own time and today, for demonstrating this by performing self-surgery in 1921 to remove his own appendix under local anesthetic. In 1932 at age 70, he very publicly again performed self-surgery to repair a hernia. Some of Kane’s practices were idiosyncratic. For instance, he left a small inked, coded signature beside the incisions of some of his surgical patients. He also proposed tattooing mothers and newborn babies with matching marks to avoid accidental mix ups.
Kane was a member of a notable Pennsylvania family that included several physicians (including his mother) that had earlier given its name to both their community and his primary hospital of practice; their family home, Anoatok, is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Kane was also in the public eye in 1931 when he testified at the sensational trial of his son, Elisha Kent Kane III, a college professor, who was acquitted of murder in Elizabeth City County, Virginia after the drowning death of his wife during their trip to a Back River Light beach.
Family and home
Kane's father was the American Civil War Major General Thomas L. Kane, who was also the founder of the town Kane, Pennsylvania and a prominent abolitionist. Thomas L. Kane also played a role in preventing war with the Mormons through his friendship with Brigham Young. Kane's mother, Elizabeth Denniston Wood Kane, was a practicing physician (until 1909) as was his brother, William (also called Thomas L. Kane Jr., b. 1863), and his sister, Harriet Amelia (1855–1896). Kane also had an elder brother, Elisha Kent Kane (b. 1856), an engineering graduate from Princeton.
Kane married his first wife Blanche Rupert on May 28, 1893, but she died less than a year later, two weeks after giving birth to their son Elisha Kent Kane (b. March 18, 1894).
He then married Lila Rupert on June 1, 1897. He had a further six children with Lila:
William Wood Kane (b. May 7, 1898) Blanche Rupert Kane (b. August 9, 1899) Bernard Evan Kane (b. February 18, 1902) Thomas Leiper Kane (b. August 3, 1903) Twins Robert Livingston Kane and Schuyler Kane (b. August 29, 1904).
Kane's son, Elisha Kent Kane, was head of the Romance language department at the University of Tennessee. Elisha was charged with murdering his wife, Jenny G. Kane (1898–1931) by drowning, at a beach on Chesapeake Bay. The trial was a sensation at the time: crowds of people gathered outside the courthouse, unable to find room inside. Evan Kane was instrumental in obtaining his son's acquittal by presenting medical evidence at his trial. He established that Jenny had a heart condition that contributed to her drowning. Elisha resigned his position with the university after his trial. A book by Ann Davis, a local historian, gives a fictionalized account of these events.
Kane's son Thomas Leiper Kane was the father of Evan O'Neill Kane (physicist), who was prominent in the development of the band theory of semiconductors, which are now the basic building blocks of modern electronics.
The arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane is related (he is Evan Kane's uncle), but is a different person from both Evan Kane's son and his brother of the same name.
Kane lived in the family home Anoatok, which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Anoatok was built by Kane's mother to house herself, Evan O'Neill Kane and another son, Thomas L. Kane, and their families after the original family home burned down in 1896. The architect was Walter Cope who had married into the Kane family – to a cousin of Major General Kane. The name Anoatok, an Eskimo word, honours Elisha Kent Kane the arctic explorer. Elizabeth died in 1909 and Thomas moved his family out in 1910 into a new home also designed by Walter Cope, leaving Evan O'Neill Kane and his family as the sole occupants. Anoatok remained Kane's home and office until his death.
Kane died of pneumonia at the age of 70 in 1932, shortly after the trial of his son and just a few months after his major hernia operation.