Ferdinand C. Valentine Medalists

Dr. Valentine received his medical education in the MacDowell Medical School in St. Louis (years afterwards called The Missouri Medical College), and was graduated in 1876. His first inclination was become a specialist in diseases of the eye, and his initial studies were with Professor Michel of St. Louis and later with Professor Herman Knapp of New York.

He later went to Central America, where he became the Surgeon General of the Army of Honduras. It was there he first developed his interest in the field of urology and genitourinary diseases. After nine years with the Army of Honduras, he returned to the US and after a few years of general practice, went to Europe to study the subject of genitourinary disease and urological surgery. Dr. Valentine was one of the early pioneers in defining the specialty of urology and establishing the role of the American Urological Association in medicine.

Dr. Valentine was elected a Fellow of The New York Academy of Medicine on January 2, 1896. He was a founder of the American Urological Association and its first secretary and third President. Dr. Valentine was also a member of many other medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, the Association Francaise d’Urologie, Societe Belge d’Urologie and Deutsche Gesselschaft fur Urologie.

He was Professor of Genitourinary Diseases at the New York School of Clinical Medicine and made many contributions to the medical literature. His clinical appointments included Consulting Genitourinary Surgeon to the Manhattan State Hospital, to the West Side German Dispensary and the Red Cross Hospital.

In the memoir of Dr. Ferdinand C. Valentine, reported in the Transactions of the American Urological Association, Vol. 3, 1909, it stated: “Dr. Valentine was a very talented man, and a linguist of several tongues. Personally, he was a man of charming temperament, a big heart, infinite human understanding and sympathy, a man of whom one may truly say that to him nothing human was foreign.” Dr. Valentine died on December 13, 1909, at his home in Belle Harbor, Long Island.