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John Benjamin Murphy was an American physician and abdominal surgeon noted for advocating early surgical intervention in appendicitis appendectomy, and several eponyms: Murphy drip, Murphy’s button, Murphy’s punch, Murphy’s test, and Murphy-Lane bone skid. He is best remembered for the eponymous clinical sign that is used in evaluating patients with acute cholecystitis. His career spanned general surgery, orthopedics, neurosurgery, and cardiothoracic surgery, which helped him to gain international prominence in the surgical profession. Mayo Clinic co-founder, William James Mayo, described him as "the surgical genius of our generation". Over the course of his career he was renowned as a surgeon, a clinician, a teacher, an innovator, and an author. In addition to general surgical operations, such as appendectomy,cholecystostomy,bowel resection for intestinal obstruction, and mastectomy, he performed and described innovative procedures in neurosurgery, orthopedics, gynecology, urology, plastic surgery, thoracic surgery, and vascular surgery. He also ventured into techniques such as neurorrhaphy, arthroplasty, prostatectomy, nephrectomy, hysterectomy, bone grafting, and thoracoplasty.