Isaac Hays

Isaac Hays (July 5, 1796 – April 12, 1879) was an American ophthalmologist, medical ethicist, and naturalist. A founding member of the American Medical Association, and the first president of the Philadelphia Ophthalmological Society, Hays published the first study of non-congenital colorblindness and the first case of astigmatism in America. He was editor or co-editor of The American Journal of the Medical Sciences for over 50 years.

Isaac Hays was born on July 5, 1796, the second child and eldest son of Samuel and Richea (Gratz) Hays, and a nephew of educator and philanthropist Rebecca Gratz. Hays's wealthy Philadelphia family was involved in the East India trade. After earning his bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1816, Hays briefly joined the family business, then opted to enter the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania. Nathaniel Chapman mentored Hays during his training, beginning a decades-long friendship and professional collaboration.

Hays practiced ophthalmology for three and a half decades. Soon after graduating from the Medical School in 1820, Hays was appointed to the staff of McClellan's Institution for Diseases of the Eye and Ear. He later moved to the Pennsylvania Infirmary for Diseases of the Eye and Ear, and upon its opening in 1834 joined the staff of the Wills Hospital for the Relief of the Indigent Blind and Lame. He remained at Wills until 1854, when he resigned due to "the pressure of literary work".

During his stint at the Pennsylvania Infirmary, Hays wrote medical articles and contributed a chapter to William Potts Dewees's textbook Practice of Medicine (1833). At Wills, Hays published the first study of noncongenital color blindness, reported the first case of astigmatism in America, and devised a needle-knife for cataract surgery.

Hubbell deemed Hays "fitted by Nature and by training for literary work" and Hays's output would seem to confirm that judgment. More significant than his articles on medical and scientific topics, however, was his work as an editor.

He spent fifty-two years as editor or co-editor of The American Journal of the Medical Sciences. He joined Nathaniel Chapman's staff in 1820 (then called the Philadelphia Journal of Medical and Physical Sciences), became the sole editor in 1841, and upon his retirement passed the editorial duties to his son, I. Minis Hays. Hays took particular care to include ophthalmology articles (the specialty did not have its own journal until 1862) and "Hays' journal" was very well regarded.

Hays edited American editions of various books, including Sir William Lawrence's A Treatise on Diseases of the Eye (1843) and T. Wharton Jones's Principles and Practice of Ophthalmic Medicine and Surgery (1849), and supplemented the original material with his own.

Hays was among those Philadelphians who stubbornly advocated for an incremental theory of evolution, describing fossil vertebrates in the 1830s and '40s as supporting the theory of natural selection that eventually was elaborated by Charles Darwin in Origin of Species (1859).