Roberts Bartholow or Robert Bartholow (November 28, 1831 – May 10, 1904) was an American physician and a professor at several American medical colleges. He is best known for his experiments involving a 30-year-old patient named Mary Rafferty. Rafferty was admitted to Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1874 with a 2-inch-diameter (51 mm) hole in her skull caused by a cancerous ulcer. Bartholow experimented with applying current to Rafferty's exposed dura using needle electrodes. His report detailed the first observations of how electrical stimulation of the brain affects motor functions of the body, but many ethical concerns were raised about the way in which he carried out his experiments. Rafferty went into a coma for three days and then died the day after coming out of the coma from a massive seizure. Education and career Roberts Bartholow was born in New Windsor, Maryland. He attended Calvert College in his hometown, and graduated in 1848 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He earned his degree in medicine from the University of Maryland, Baltimore in 1852. After graduating, he worked in Baltimore's clinics and hospitals before enlisting in the army in 1857. During the Civil War, Bartholow was sent to Fort Union in New Mexico, and a series of other Union military posts in the West from 1861 to 1864. During this time, he worked as assistant surgeon and headed several military hospitals. He also published several papers including A Manual of Instructions for Enlisting and Discharging Soldiers, which was adopted at military recruiting stations to identify disqualifying diseases in recruits. He married Maria Walker in 1862 and before the war's end, he left the army and moved with his family to Cincinnati, Ohio. After his work in the army, Bartholow worked at the Medical College of Ohio where he performed research and was able to publish On Spermatorrhoea in 1866 which detailed complications with the male reproductive system. He also published The Principles and Practice of Disinfection in 1867 and two years later published A Manual of Hypodermic Medication. The latter work was fundamental in guiding physicians through the process of administering medications via syringe. While in Cincinnati, Bartholow worked as a physician in several hospitals with rivaling medical systems. Bartholow worked with practitioners of allopathic, homeopathic, and eclectic medicine, and he used ideas from each in his research. He worked at Good Samaritan Hospital starting in 1866. He