Henry James Byron McKellops
Henry James Byron McKellops was born near Syracuse, New York on August 31, 1825, and moved with his family to St. Louis in 1840. After studying at the University of Missouri at Columbia from 1842 to 44, McKellops returned to St. Louis for a course in bookkeeping at the Jones Commercial College. Jonathan Jones, the proprietor of the school, helped him to get a job in the office of the City Register. There McKellops made a number of friends, many of whom later became his patients. Among those friends was Dr. Charles A. Pope, the dean of the St. Louis Medical College, who influenced McKellops to study medicine. Though he attended lectures at the St. Louis Medical College over the next eight years, he never received a medical degree. Instead McKellops was persuaded by his brother-in-law to study dentistry.
McKellops’ natural ingenuity and love for mechanical arts fit well with the practice of dentistry. He soon became an expert operator with gold as a filling material for teeth. When “adhesive gold” was introduced McKellops quickly became an expert in its use. In 1855 the Ohio College of Dentistry conferred the degree of D.D.S. on him in recognition of his skill and services to the dental profession. To remain current with advances in the field of dentistry, McKellops had a standing order with his dental dealer to send him every new dental invention that appeared on the market. He was a subscriber to every available dental periodical and to new dental books. At the time of his death, McKellops owned what was believed to be the most extensive private dental library in the world.
McKellops was an ardent supporter of organized dentistry. He helped organize both the Western Dental Association and the St. Louis Dental Society in 1856 and served as the president of the latter in 1879. He was the first president of the Missouri State Dental Association, which he helped found in October 1865. He was active in the Mississippi Valley Association of Dental Surgeons, and an honorary member of the Kansas, Iowa, and Illinois State Dental Societies. In 1878 McKellops served as president of the American Dental Association and in 1884 as the president of the Southern Dental Association.
McKellops went to Europe in 1863 where he lectured before various dental societies (introducing the use of the mallet in dentistry in both London and Paris) and practiced dentistry in Paris. After the end of the Civil war, McKellops returned to St. Louis where he practiced dentistry until his death in April 1901.
Upon McKellops’s death, brewery millionaire Adolphus Busch bought the McKellops dental library collection and donated it to Washington University. It was moved to the School of Dentistry in 1912, where it formed the core of the school’s fledgling library. Upon the close of the Washington University School of Dental Medicine in 1991, the library was transferred to the Washington University School of Medicine’s Bernard Becker Medical Library.