Civil War surgeon among founders of med school

Jacob Conover Denise, M.D.

Jacob Conover Denise, M.D. (1828-1899), was a physician and surgeon who came to Omaha in 1868. He was born in Montgomery County, Ohio in 1828 and graduated from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1855. He began practicing in Dayton, Ohio, working there until the Civil War began in 1861.

He was appointed assistant surgeon of the 27th Ohio Volunteers, being promoted to surgeon of the same regiment in 1863. He was mustered out of military service in 1864, and returned to Ohio. He was appointed acting assistant surgeon of Tripler Hospital in Columbus. In 1865, he transferred to Dennison General Hospital, near Cincinnati. Later that year, he was appointed by the governor of Ohio as surgeon of the Ohio State Soldier’s Home in Columbus. He remained in that position until the home was closed in 1867.

Dr. Denise came to Omaha in 1868, where he continued to practice medicine. From 1880 until his death, he specialized in diseases of the eye and ear. In 1869, he was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant as agent of the U.S. land office in Grand Island, serving in that position until 1872. He was physician to the Nebraska Deaf and Dumb Institute from 1872 to 1874. He was City of Omaha and Douglas County Physician from 1868 until 1871. In 1884, he was appointed as U.S Army examining pension surgeon and secretary of the board of U.S. Examining Surgeons.

He was one of the original organizers of the Nebraska State Medical Society and its first corresponding secretary. He also was one of the organizers of the Nebraska School of Medicine and Surgery, and subsequently of the Omaha Medical College (forerunner of UNMC). There he was secretary of the board of trustees, as well as professor of physiology and clinical lecturer on diseases of the eye and ear. He later served as dean of the Omaha Medical College from 1885-1889, and again from 1893-1895.

Dr. Denise was the original editor of the first regularly published medical journal in Nebraska, the Omaha Clinic. The monthly journal, published from 1888 to 1896, noted that it was “devoted to medicine and the interests of the medical profession of the middle-west.” At the time of his death in 1899, the Western Medical Review (a journal published in Lincoln), noted that Denise was “one of the oldest and best known physicians of Omaha.”