Ohio History Journal

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY OF THE PERIOD,

1835-1858*

 

SOME BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND RESEARCH AIDS TO

AMERICAN MEDICAL HISTORY

 

By PHILIP D. JORDAN, PH.D.

 

The history of medicine in the United States is a relatively

recent field of investigation.1 Historians and scientists too long

ignored the fertile field of the progress of medical and surgical

practice in this Nation.     If the scholar concerned himself at all

with the advance of medicine and its auxiliary disciplines, he

usually turned his attention to a study of technique as applied to

a specific disease, or to a definite, and sometimes baffling problem

in diagnosis. The nineteenth century, however, saw the historians

become interested in the history of medicine as an aid to an under-

standing of the social environment. At the same time many prac-

tising physicians became aware of the lure of this type of research

not only as an avocation, but also as a highly important contribu-

tion to scientific knowledge.

Both the professional historian and physician, in too many

instances, are unaware of the variety of bibliographical and re-

search aids serving as tools for the guidance of those interested

in preparing an academic monograph or a popular paper in the

general field of American medical history. In addition, many

scholars are unaware of the vast amount of source materials

available.

Aids to research in medical history may be divided into eight

 

* The eight papers under this heading were read before the third annual meeting

of the Committee on Archives and Medical History of the Ohio State Archaeological

and Historical Society, at the Ohio History Conference, 1941, in the Society's Library,

Ohio State Museum, Columbus, April 4, 1941, Jonathan Forman, M. D., chairman.

This is the second group of papers to appear covering this period, the first having

been issued in this periodical a year ago (XLIX, 315-397). See volume XLVIII (1939),

pages 181-256, for the first group of papers in this general series, covering Ohio

medical history for the period, 1788-1835.

1 I am indebted to the following for many suggestions and aids: Professor E. W.

King, Miami University Library; Professor C. R. Hall, Adelphi College, Garden City,

New York; and Miss Lillian Kessler, State director, Ohio Historical Records Survey,

Columbus.

(305)

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categories: (1) catalogues and indices; (2) printed histories; (3)

Federal bibliographical and imprint aids; (4) published docu-

mentary and manuscript materials; (5) newspapers and non-

scientific periodicals; (6) historical and scientific journals; (7)

private papers; and (8) biographical and historical dictionaries.

1. Catalogues and Indices. Four problems present themselves

to the researcher in quest of specific information:   What do I

want? How may I locate this material? Where is this material

deposited? How may I gain access to it? For those historians

engaged in writing medical history, there are available certain

catalogues and indices which may guide them to almost any book

printed in the United States from    1639 until the present.   A

working knowledge of these national bibliographies and specialized

lists will save many hours.

Joseph Sabin's Dictionary of Books,² a set of twenty-nine

volumes, covers the period from the discovery of America until

1892. Books printed about America, as well as in America, are

listed. Each entry includes author's full name, title, imprint, col-

lation, contents and bibliographical notes, references to reviews

and, when possible, library location.  Charles Evans' American

Bibliography3 is a chronological dictionary of all books, pamphlets

and other periodical publications printed in the United States from

the beginning of printing in the United States in 1639 down to and

including the year 1820. Each item listed contains the author's full

name, dates of birth and death, full title, imprint, paging, size and,

when possible, library location. Orville Augustus Roorbach's Bib-

liotheca Americana4 covers the years 1820 to 1861, and James

Kelly's American Catalogue,⁵ covering the period 1861-1871, is

especially useful for its list of Civil War pamphlets, sermons, ad-

dresses, and for its list of society publications. Publisher's Weekly

(New York), of course, began publication in 1872 and is con-

tinuing today. And Frederick Leypold's American Catalogue of

 

2 Joseph Sabin, Dictionary of Books Relating to America, from Its Discovery to

the Present Time. New York, Bibliographical Society of America, 1868-1936. 29v.

3 Charles Evans, American Bibliography. Chicago, Privately printed for the

author by the Columbia Press, 1903-34. 12v.

4 O. A. Roorbach, Bibliotheca Americana, 1820-1861. New York, Roorbach,

1852-61. 4v.

5 James Kelly, American Catalogue of Books Published in the United States

from January, 1861, to January, 1871. New York, Wiley, 1866-71. 2v.

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`

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                307

 

Books (New York, Publishers' Weekly, 1876-1910. 9v.) over-

laps for the period from 1876 to 191O. In these six sets, then, the

researcher is likely to locate any volume, pamphlet, sermon, or

society publication (with the exception of the fields covered by

the American Imprints Inventory) which is indicated for his field

of learning.

Special catalogues, devoted to medicine and its allied subjects,

although not numerous, nevertheless are significant and of great

service to the physician engaged in research. First among these

is the great Index-catalogue6 of the Surgeon-general's Office in

Washington. This collection of fifty-two huge volumes began

publication in 1880 and is still being issued at the rate of about

one volume per year. It is the key to one of the greatest collec-

tions of medical and scientific literature in the world. The cata-

logue includes both authors and subjects, the names being arranged

in dictionary order in a single alphabet. Under the subject head-

ings are included the titles of original articles in the medical

journals and transactions contained in the Library of the Surgeon-

general. The first volume, published in 1880, to indicate the mag-

nitude of the work, contains 9,090 author titles, representing 8,031

volumes and 6,398 pamphlets. It also includes 9,000 subject titles

of separate books and pamphlets and 34,604 titles of articles in

periodicals. When we consider that fifty-two volumes in this

series already have been published, we can see its great usefulness.

Not only is there here a wealth of material, competently arranged,

but also it is a work easy to manage. No researcher in medical

history can afford to neglect the treasures listed therein.

The Index Medicus, a classified index of the current medical

literature of the world, is another handy reference tool for the

researcher. The present index is the result of a merger of two

indices.  From  1903 to 1927 the Index Medicus was published

with the support of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. From

1916 to 1927, the American Medical Association published the

Quarterly Cumulative Index to Current Medical Literature. In

 

6 Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-general's Office, United States

Army. [1st series.] Washington, D. C., Government Printing Office, 1880-95. 16v;

2nd series. 1896-1915. 21v.; 3rd series. 1918-32. 10v.; 4th series. 1936-40. 5v. The

fourth series is still being published at the rate of one volume per year.

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308    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

1927, these two came together under the title of the present

Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus, now published by the Amer-

ican Medical Association. The sections devoted to the history of

medicine are especially strong and worthy of the attention of the

historian who wishes, for example, to determine which medical

journals in 1935 published articles dealing with the early days of

medicine in Indiana, or Pennsylvania, or Georgia, or Oregon.

For the physician interested in research in the history of

psychology and cognate subjects, such as the early treatment of

mental ills, there is in print thirty-nine volumes of the Psycho-

logical Index,⁷ covering the period 1894 to 1933. This reference

work includes original publications in all languages, both books

and periodical articles, together with translations and new editions

in English, French, German, and Italian. A classified subject list,

with an alphabetical author index, is useful. For books the index

gives author, title, place, publisher, and paging. For magazine

articles are given author, title, periodical, date, volume and in-

clusive paging. About three thousand titles each year were listed

and about 350 periodicals were indexed.

In this same connection should be mentioned James Mark

Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology,⁸ the only

encyclopedia of the subject in English. Although now out of

date, nevertheless it is still useful for many topics and is especially

handy for the historical researcher. The three volumes contain

concise, signed articles by specialists. Many special bibliographies

are listed. A special feature is the inclusion of French, German,

and Italian equivalents of English terms. The field of historical

investigation in psychology and the general diagnosis and treat-

ment of mental ills offers a rich source for the physician who

wishes to do some pioneering work.

No discussion of bibliographical aids to medical history would

be complete without mention of four of the great medical libraries

in the United States where scholars have easy access to a great

 

7 Psychological Index, 1894-1933, an Annual Bibliography of the Literature of

Psychology and Cognate Subjects. Princeton, Psychological Review Company, 1894-

1934. 39v.

8 J. M. Baldwin, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. New York, Mac-

millan, 1901-05.   3v. in  4.

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858             309

 

store of data. The Army Medical Library, founded by Surgeon-

general Joseph Lovell in 1836 and given impetus by Dr. John

Shaw Billings in 1865, now houses more than 394,000 volumes

and over 558,000 pamphlets. This national medical library makes

possible, by inter-library loan, the borrowing of material by the

physician and researcher. The Library of the New York Academy

of Medicine, organized in 1846 and 1847, probably contains the

second largest collection of items, many of which are of value to

the medical historian. Next comes the Library of the College of

Physicians of Philadelphia, established in 1788 and therefore the

oldest medical library in the United States. Here every effort is

made to aid the researcher. Special indices help in locating ma-

terials, and photostatic reproductions make working with rare

materials easy. The Library of the Medical Society of the County

of Kings and the Academy of Medicine of Brooklyn came to life

in 1844 and today is rich in historical and biographical medical ma-

terial. Finally, the Boston Medical Library, established in 1875,

and stimulated by the labors of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, is the

home, not only of a splendid general collection, but also of special

collections of great interest. Early manuscripts relating to Yiddish,

Hebrew, Latin, and Arabic medicine are most significant, as are

the materials relating to the medical activities of Dr. Holmes.

Truly, no historian of the history of medicine can afford to ignore

these four treasuries when searching for materials. Of further

aid to those who wish to find the name and location of libraries

with special collections pertaining to the history of medicine, as

well as to medicine in general, is Ernest Cushing Richardson's

An Index Directory to Special Collections in North American

Libraries.⁹ This volume is indexed by localities, so that if one

wished to know, for example, those libraries in Ohio especially

interested in medical literature, he need only to turn to the state

name and there rapidly find the needed data. The guide is also

indexed according to alphabetized subjects. Under the heading

"medicine" there are enumerated two and a quarter pages of

libraries especially devoted to this field.

9 E. C. Richardson, An Index Directory to Special Collections in North American

Libraries. Yardley, Pa., F. S. Cook, 1927.

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310    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Finally, the physician must not ignore the many catalogues

of booksellers who specialize in medical literature and history. In

such book catalogues are found many a rare item and much of

general interest.10

2. Printed Histories. Most physicians are acquainted with the

many histories of medicine available today, but it might be well

to mention again the outstanding contributions. Chief among the

histories containing vast quantities of source materials is The

Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion.11 This

enterprise was a pioneering feat in the United States. Only two

other great medical histories of military campaigns had previously

been published by any nation. One of these was the Medical and

Surgical History of the British Army (London, 1858), a publica-

tion setting forth medical practices of the British Army which

served in Turkey and Crimea during the war against Russia in

1854 to 1856. The other was the Medico-Chirugical Report by

Dr. J. C. Chenu which dealt with the Crimean campaign and which

was published by the French Government in 1865.

The thirteen-volume medical and surgical history of the Civil

War offers a wealth of unexplored materials.     In the first year of

the war, it became evident that the forms of return of sick and

wounded, then in use, were insufficient. Therefore, on May 21,

1861, the Surgeon-general took measures to secure more detailed

and exact reports. Such action was accomplished by a series of

general orders issued by the War Department and circular letters

sent from the Surgeon-general's Office. Surgeons in the field were

urged to report in detail. They were to give particular attention

to the following points:    The morale and sanitary conditions of

the troops; condition and amount of medical and hospital supplies,

tents, ambulances, etc.; the points at or near the field where the

 

10 Among the American dealers specializing or offering items in medical history

are: Goodspeed's Book Shop, Inc., 18 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.; Schuman's,

730 Fifth Avenue, New York City; Argosy Book Store, 114 East 59th Street, New

York City; Old Hickory Bookshop, 65 Fifth Ave., New York City; C. A. Stonehill, Inc.,

262 York Street, New Haven, Conn.; Login Bros., 1814 W. Harrison Street, Chicago;

Peabody Book Shop, Inc., 1828 East Monument Street, Baltimore, Md.; Ohio Book

Store, 544 Main Street, Cincinnati; Midland Rare Book Company, 20 North Foster

Street, Mansfield, Ohio. One of the better English dealers is Raphael King, Ltd., 28

Museum Street, London, W. C. 1, England.

11 J. K. Barnes, ed., The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Re-

bellion. Washington, D. C., Government Printing Office, 1870-88. 13v.

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                       311

 

wounded were treated; degree of exposure of wounded to wet,

cold, or heat; adequacy of supplies of water, food, stimulants;

mode of removal of wounded from field to field hospitals; to what

general hospitals the wounded were transferred, by what means,

and where; and the character and duration of the action and the

nature of wounds received. Upon the basis of these and similar

reports was compiled the great medical and surgical history of the

war. This medical history is not only valuable because of the

insight it gives to military surgery and medicine, but also because,

to some degree, the techniques and treatments used in the field

and in the hospitals mirrored well the civil practices engaged in

by military surgeons in private practice before they entered the

army as regular, or volunteer, surgeons. This series, then, may

well be considered one of the great sources for nineteenth century

medical practice in the United States.

Two supplementary volumes also are of much use. The Cata-

logue of the Surgical Section of the United States Army Medical

Museum12 and the Catalogue of the Medical Section of the United

States Army Medical Museum13 offer the medical historian a

wealth of clinical data in reference to diagnosis, to the treatment

of disease, and to pathological findings.14

In this connection must be mentioned also the Surgical Mem-

oirs of the Rebellion,15 issued by the United States Sanitary Com-

mission. The original papers of this commission now are housed

in the New York Public Library. They form an invaluable source

of information concerning nineteenth century medical practice.

Turning from the history of military medicine to histories of

medicine in general, we find three works bearing government im-

12 A. A. Woodhull, Catalogue of the Surgical Section of the United States Army

Medical Museum. Washington, D. C., Government Printing Office, 1866.

13 J. J. Woodward, Catalogue of the Medical Section of the United States Army

Medical Museum. Washington, D. C., Government Printing Office, 1867.

14 See p. 57 for typical example: ". . . portion of ileum, taken from its middle

with two thickened Peyer's patches, presenting a well-marked ulceration in each. This

specimen was taken from the body of Private M. K., I Company, 32d New York, age

24, Irish. Admitted August 10th, 1862. Diagnosis-typhoid fever. Died August 11th.

Autopsy findings: Body presented a vigorous appearance, with but slight emaciation;

right lung exhibited old pleuritic adhesions; liver cirrhosed, much enlarged of a yel-

lowish brown, and coarsely granular, the granules being about the size of peppercorn;

spleen enlarged, being nine by five and a half by two and a half inches, but of natural

color and consistence; mucous membrane of ileum reddened, and it's lower Peyer's

patches much thickened and ulcerated."

15 United States Sanitary Commission, Surgical Memoirs of the Rebellion. New

York, Hurd and Houghton, 1871.

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312     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

prints which are worth examination. Billings wrote a stimulating

short account of American inventions in the fields of medicine,

surgery, and practical sanitation.¹⁶ In 1874, J. M. Toner pub-

lished his contributions to the annals of medical progress,17 and,

three years later, appeared N. S. Davis' account of the history of

medical education and medical institutions in the United States

for the period 1776 to 1876.18

In 1876, E. H. Clarke and others published one of the general

accounts of medicine under the title A Century   of American

Medicine,19 and in 1889 there appeared one of the volumes upon

which the medical historian leans heavily, Outlines of the History

of Medicine and the Medical Profession.²⁰

Among the more recent -- and standardized volumes -- are

Fielding H. Garrison's excellent introduction21 and Francis R.

Packard's History of Medicine in the United States.²² Richard

H. Shryock's Development of Modern Medicine23 is well worth

space in any physician's library for its general background and

excellent delineation of the public health movement. And a mag-

nificent volume, appearing in English in America for the first time

this year is Arturo Castiglioni's A History of Medicine.24 This

Italian scholar, formerly of the University of Padua and now a

member of the faculty of Yale University, carries the narrative

from the origins of medicine among primitive peoples to the

twentieth century. The bibliography is excellent.

3. Federal Bibliographical and Imprint Aids. The Federal

 

16 J. S. Billings, "American Inventions and Discoveries in Medicine Surgery,

and Practical Sanitation," Smithsonian Institution, Annual Report, 1892. Washington,

D. C., Government Printing Office, 1893, p. 613-19. An address on the occasion of the

centennial celebration of the organization of the United States Patent Office, delivered

in Washington.

17 J. M. Toner, Contributions to the Annals of Medical Progress in the United

States, and Medical Education in the United States before and during the War of

Independence. Washington, D. C., United States Bureau of Education, 1874.

18 N. S. Davis, Contributions to the History of Medical Education and Medical

Institutions in the United States, 1776-1876. Washington, D. C., United States Bureau

of Education, 1877.

19 E. H. Clarke, et al., A Century of American Medicine. Philadelphia, Lea, 1876.

20 J. H. Bass, Outlines of the History of Medicine and the Medical Profession.

New York, Vail, 1889.

21 F. H. Garrison, Introduction to the History of Medicine. 4th ed. rev. and enl.

Philadelphia, Saunders, 1929.

22 F. R. Packard, History of Medicine in the United States. New York, P. B.

Hoeber, 1931. 2v.

23 R. H. Shyrock, The Development of Modern Medicine. Philadelphia, University

of Pennsylvania Press, 1936.

24 Arturo Castiglioni, A History of Medicine. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1941.

Translated from the Italian and edited by E. B. Krumbhaar.

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858              313

 

Government, during the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt,

has undertaken several projects calculated to be of aid to the

researcher. In addition, there has been general interest in the

preservation, cataloguing, and making available archival materials

for the use of future generations of scholars.

First among these is the National Archives, established by an

act of Congress and approved June 19, 1934. This act created a

public records office designed primarily to serve officials and the

American public by preserving the records of the Government of

the United States and making them available for use. The Na-

tional Archives is equipped to provide photostats, photographs, or

microfilm copies of documents to investigators as may be required.

In addition, scholars who wish to work in the National Archives

building in Washington are accorded every courtesy.

In the collections of the National Archives are housed ma-

terials of immense value to the medical historian. Most of this

information has not been tilled and offers a fertile field for the

physician who wishes to do some pioneering research. For ex-

ample, there are available for investigation the medical histories

of military posts, registers of physical examinations of recruits,

reports of sick and wounded, and other medical records of the

regular army prior to 1894, and of the volunteer armies from 1846

to 1912.25

In addition, there are the correspondence, reports, personnel

registers, circulars, and other records for the period 1818 to 1894,

including the records of the property division for the years 1873

to 1889. Here also are gathered the returns of the hospital corps

covering the period 1887 to 1917, of the enlisted force of the

medical department, 1917 to 1926, the registers of hospital stew-

ards, 1837 to 1887, and miscellaneous statistical and personnel

records for the years 1870 to 1903. A further source of infor-

mation is the collection of correspondence, contracts, shipping

orders, accounts, and other records pertaining to the procurement

 

25 U. S. National Archives, Fifth Annual Report of the Archivist of the United

States (Washington, D. C., 1939), 73.

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314    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

and distribution of medical and hospital supplies for the period

1822 to 1921.26

The medicine and surgery bureau of the Department of the

Navy is represented by about 600 volumes of original letters

received and copies of letters sent which appear to be routine for

the period covered. Some of this material contains considerable

information concerning diseases and their treatment. A chrono-

logical list of the volumes is available, and many of the volumes

are indexed.²⁷

A second Federal project is the Historical Records Survey,

an activity of the Women's and Professional Projects Division of

the Work Projects Administration. Under the auspices of the

Historical Records Survey was set up the American Imprints In-

ventory. This is a Nation-wide inventory of American printed

materials within certain specified date limits. These date limits

extended through 1820 for the states along the Atlantic Seaboard,

through 1840 for the states such as Ohio and Kentucky, through

1850 for the states such as Wisconsin and Missouri, through 1876

for the states along the Pacific Seaboard, and through 1890 for

certain states of the Rocky Mountain regions and the Western

Plains. Later, the date limits originally established were revised

upward to include all imprints to the year 1876, the year in which

Leypoldt's American Catalogue first appeared.²⁸

To date, about fifteen volumes listing imprints have been

published. An examination of these by the medical historian will

bring to light abundant materials. The admirable feature of these

check-lists is that they locate copies in libraries and even personal

collections. All are indexed. One or two examples will illustrate

the nature of the material of interest to the physician engaged in

medical research.

A casual examination of the imprint volumes devoted to Ken-

tucky and Alabama turns up such fascinating and important titles

as Jabez Wiggins Heustis' Medical Facts and Inquiries Respecting

26 U. S. National Archives, Guide to the Material in the National Archives

(Washington, D. C., 1940), 267.

27  U. S. National Archives, Third Annual Report of the Archivist of the United

States (Washington, D. C., 1938), 132.

28 American Imprints Inventory, Manual of Procedure (Chicago, 1939), 5.

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858              315

 

the Causes, Nature, Prevention and Cure of Fever, a little volume

published in 1825 which gives insight especially into the endemic

fevers of the summer and autumn seasons in the Southern States.

Copies are located in libraries from California to Washington,

D. C., including one copy at the Cleveland Medical Library.²⁹ The

Rules of Eitquette, Rate of Charges and Fee-Bill of the Mobile

Medical Profession, published in Mobile, Alabama, in 1838, offers

information of significance.³⁰ A copy may be found only in the

Surgeon-general's Office.

The Kentucky imprints list turns up such titles as Samuel K.

Jennings' A Plain, Elementary Explanation of the Nature and

Cure of Disease, published in Frankfort in 1816, and "predicated

upon facts and experiences presenting a view of that train of

thinking which led to the invention of the patent, portable warm

and hot bath."  Apparently, the only copy is in the library of a

private collector.31

The Ohio volume of this inventory is not as yet in print, but

the typescript indicates that one of the earliest Ohio medical im-

prints was published in Zanesville. It is hoped that this volume

will be ready by the summer of 1941. Despite this fact, however,

the physician should not ignore the wealth of materials in the other

volumes already published.

The work of the Ohio Historical Records Survey, a Work

Projects Administration project, should not be overlooked. Two

series, the inventories of the county archives of Ohio, and the

inventories of the municipal archives of Ohio, are priceless guides

to certain data in medical history.

Of particular interest, in the Inventory of the County Ar-

chives of Ohio, are the sections devoted to the office of coroner,

to the board of health, and to the county commissioners. The

journals of the county commissioners sometimes contain resolu-

tions pertaining to health, and in these are found also reports of

county hospitals, sanitariums, and old folks' homes.

 

29 American Imprints Inventory, Check List of Alabama Imprints (Birmingham,

1939), item 75.

30 Ibid., item  288.

31 American Imprints Inventory, Check List of Kentucky Imprints, 1811-1820

(Louisville, 1939), item 600.

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316    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Vital statistics may be found in the records of the probate

court on a voluntary basis for the period 1867 to 1908. For the

period from 1908 to 1920, vital statistics were kept in local munici-

palities, villages, and townships, but are not necessarily complete.

In 1920, a State law was enacted creating county boards of health,

one of whose duties was to keep a complete record of all vital

statistics.  Prior to 1908 vital statistics probably may be best

located in local church records and archives.

In the Inventory of Municipal Archives of Ohio, such as that

being compiled and published for Cleveland, may be found the

records of the departments of health and welfare. And here also

are included references to the annual reports of hospital commis-

sioners, of the police surgeon, and of the workhouse physician.

It must be emphasized that these inventories do not reprint

vital statistics or reports, but guide the researcher to these docu-

ments.³²

Another vital aid which began in 1934 as a Work Projects

Administration project is the Index to Early American Periodical

Literature for the period 1728 to 1870.33  In general, this project

indexes early American periodicals which do not appear in either

Poole's Index. . .1802-1881 (Boston, Houghton, 1891. 2v. Sup-

plements, Jan. 1882-Jan. 1907. 1887-1908. 5v.) or in Reader's

Guide to Periodical Literature, 1900-       (New   York, Wilson,

1905-). Now housed in the New York University Library at

Washington Square, this index contains 550,000 cards pertaining

to articles of a general nature alone. An examination of these

cards for medical materials should turn up information heretofore

unavailable for examination.

4. Published Documentary and Manuscript Materials. Two

great collections of official papers of the colonial period are the

American Archives34 and the Journals of the Continental Con-

gress.³⁵  Each of these is of service to the medical historian.

 

32 See for example, Ohio Historical Records Survey, Inventory of the County

Archives of Ohio. No. 24. Fayette County (Columbus, 1940), passim.

33 A full description of this project may be found in Index to Early American

Periodical Literature, 1728-1870 (New York, Pamphlet Distributing Company, 1941).

Reprinted from Pamphleteer Monthly (New York), I (Nov.-Dec., 1940) 7-8.

34 American Archives, 4th series. Washington, D. C., St. Clair and Force, 1837-46.

6v.; 5th series, 1848-53. 3v.

35 U. S. Continental Congress, Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789.

Washington, D. C., Government Printing Office, 1904-36. 33v.

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OHIO   MEDICAL     HISTORY, 1835-1858                    317

 

These may be supplemented by the American State Papers (Wash-

ington, D. C., Gales and Seaton, 1832-61. 38V.).

The American Archives offer a fruitful field for physicians

fascinated by the colonial period. In these old volumes may be

found data pertaining to vaccination and inoculation in the Conti-

nental Army;36 to the smallpox which perhaps threatened soldiers

more severely than       did  the enemy;37 to      the establishment and

maintenance of army hospitals;38 to  personal health     and   hy-

giene;39 to lists and requisitions for medical and surgical sup-

plies;40 to  the medical point of view of such men as George

Washington,41 Horatio Gates,⁴² and Dr. Benjamin Rush,⁴³ as well

as to lesser figures who need biographical investigation, such as Dr.

William   Burnett,⁴⁴ Dr. Frederick Ridgely,⁴⁵ Dr. Malachi Treat;46

and to rates of pay and discipline of the Continental Army

surgeon.⁴⁷

The Journals of the Continental Congress offer much the

same type of data as do the American Archives.               In a sense, the

one is a continuation of the other. Information is found con-

cerning the general health               of the army,⁴⁸ of the work          of the

military   apothecary,⁴⁹ sick           returns,⁵⁰   regimental and      naval sur-

geons,⁵¹ and the wages of nurses.⁵²

The annual reports of the Commissioner of Patents offer chal-

lenging and relatively unexplored evidence of the number and

types of "patent" medicines and surgical instruments registered.

Another useful source is Reuben Gold Thwaites' Early West-

 

36 American Archives, 4th series, III, 916. Application to the New York Congress

for permission to inoculate for smallpox refused.

37 Ibid. 5th series, I, 401. Connecticut troops deterred from entering Boston for

fear of smallpox.

38 Ibid., 4th series, VI, 1572. Report of the Committee on Hospitals.

39 Ibid., 4th series VI, 593. Reported state of the sick at Sorel.

40 Ibid., 5th series, I, 1266. Catalogue of medicines necessary for the Army. Ibid.,

4th series, IV, 153. Want of surgical instruments in the Army.

41 Ibid., 5th series, II, 497. Remarks of General George Washington on the

appointment of surgeons.

42 Ibid., 5th series, I, 397. General Horatio Gates cautions against desertions from

the general hospital.

43 Ibid., 4th series, V, 742. Dr. Benjamin Rush appointed joint director of the

hospital.

44 Ibid., 4th series, VI, 503. Complaints of inattention of Dr. William Burnett.

45 Ibid., 4th series, V, 952. Deposition of Dr. Frederick Ridgely.

46 Ibid., 4th series, V, 307. Doctor Malachi Treat's report on the hospital.

47 Ibid., 4th series, VI, 1531. More pay was allowed to surgeons in Virginia.

48 Journals of the Continental Congress, VII, 193.

49 Ibid., II, 210.

50 Ibid., VI, 965.

51 Ibid., VII, 197, 289; naval, VIII, 554.

52 Journals of the Continental Congress, VI, 858.

• 13
 

318    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

ern Travels,⁵³ a series of thirty-two volumes covering the period

from 1748 to 1848, which reprints travel accounts in the Middle

and Far West. In this set a page and a quarter of index is

devoted to frontier diseases alone, a quarter of a page is given

over to the topic "physicians," and other references may be found

under their specific headings, such as "medicinal plants." Alto-

gether this is one of the best sources for medical practice upon

the American frontier.    The Jesuit Relations,54 for those fasci-

nated by the travels and explorations of the Jesuit missionaries in

New France during the period from 161O to 1791, are abundant

in medical lore as pertaining especially to the Indians. The Jesuits,

such as Father Jean de Brebeuf, Father Ennemond Masse, and

Father Jerome Lalemant, noted the illnesses of the Iroquois and

Algonquians. The scholar may find abundant references to dis-

ease, epidemics, fevers, smallpox, scurvy, and remedies. It is to

be hoped that someone will do a study of health conditions and

medical practice for this early French colonization experiment in

the New World. Both the Early Western Travels and The Jesuit

Relations have comprehensive index volumes.

Still another mine of information which must be considered

with the two distinguished works previously mentioned is the

eight-volume set of the original journals of the Lewis and Clark

expedition from 1804 to 1806 into the Louisiana Purchase.⁵⁵

These day-by-day entries not only offer a glimpse of expeditionary

medicine and surgery in the early nineteenth century, but also

indicate a frontier pharmacopeia.    It is interesting to note that

Lewis and Clark carried with them two medical chests containing

a pharmacy of forty-eight items. All were purchased from the

supply house of Gillaspy and Strong. The total cost amounted

to $90.69. The list included such well-known drugs as calomel,

 

53 R. G. Thwaites, ed., Early Western Travels, 1748-1846, a Series of Annotated

Reprints of Some of the Best and Rarest Contemporary Volumes of Travel, Descrip-

tive of the Aborigines and Social and Economic Conditions in the Middle and Far

West, during the Period of Early American Settlement. Cleveland, A. H. Clark,

1904-07. 32v.

54 R. G. Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relatios and Allied Documents; Travel and

Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791; the Original French,

Latin, and Italian Texts, with English Translations and Notes. Cleveland, Burrows

Brothers, 1896-1901. 73v.

55 R. G. Thwaites, ed., Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804-

1806. New York, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1904. 8v.

• 14
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                     319

 

gum camphor, magnesia and laudanum, as well as pocket sets of

surgical and dental instruments.

The published collections of various historical societies fre-

quently include source materials of value to the medical historian.

One example may be cited. In 1926 and 1927, the New York

Historical Society issued two volumes of the papers of the Lloyd

Family of Lloyd's Neck, New York. These documents cover the

period from   1654 to 1826. In them one finds reference to medical

treatment for dropsy, rheumatism, and throat "distemper."       Bleed-

ing is mentioned, as are inoculation against smallpox and tooth

extraction.   A  standardized prescription of the period       1760 is

given in full.56 In another publication by the same society, the

following illuminating advertisement may be found:

Surgery.--To be Sold, Heister's Surgery, the whole illustrated with

thirty-eight Copper plates, exhibiting all the Operations, Instruments, Band-

ages, and Improvements, according to the modern and most approved

Practice; Sharpe's Surgery, Smellie's Midwifery, Capital Instruments, in

Cases, one lin'd with green Velvet, the other with Bays, the best were made

by Stanton, all new; likewise a large Medicinal Chest fitted with large and

small square Bottles, Wanting but Trifles to make it Compleat for

Sea. ...57

Information such as this is rich indeed for the researcher in

colonial medical history.

5.  Newspapers and Non-scientific Periodicals. If one wishes

to locate files of newspapers and periodicals, there are available

two accessible sources. Newspapers since 1820 have been recorded

in the Union List of Newspapers,58 edited by Winifred Gregory

under the auspices of the Bibliographical Society of America.

Miss Gregory has also edited a similar volume, with supplements,

for the use of those who wish to know in what libraries or depos-

itories may be found runs of American periodicals.⁵⁹ Both of

these aids are of use to the medical historian. If, however, one

 

56 Papers of the Lloyd Family of the Manor of Queens Village, Lloyd's Neck,

Long Island, New York, 1654-1826, New-York Historical Society, Collections, LIX-LX.

(New York, 1927), I-II passim.

57 The Arts and Crafts in New York, 1726-1776, New-York Historical Society,

Collections, LXIX (New York, 1938), 316-17.

58 Winifred Gregory, ed., American Newspapers, 1881-1936: a Union List of Files

Available in the United States and Canada. New York, H. W. Wilson, 1937.

59 Winifred Gregory, ed., Union List of Serials in Libraries of the United States

and Canada. New York, H. W. Wilson, 1927. Supplement, Jan. 1925-June 1931. 1931;

Supplement, July 1931-Dec. 1932. 1933. A second edition is in process of compilation.

• 15
 

320   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

wishes to gain ready access to the history of American magazines

there is in print and generally available a three-volume work by

Frank Luther Mott.⁶⁰ Professor Mott gives a brief description

of each periodical, together with a list of its editors and other

pertinent information. Here one may easily locate data concerning

such medical publications as the American Journal of Obstetrics

and Diseases of Women and Children (New York, 1868-1919), of

the Cincinnati Medical News (Cincinnati, 1872-91), or of the first

scientific journal in America, the quarterly Medical Repository

(New York), issued from 1797 to 1824.61

As the newspaper and the popular, or literary, magazine are

becoming more and more recognized as legitimate sources for medi-

cal history, it becomes increasingly important to search these

papers and journals for professional "cards," locations of physi-

cians' homes and offices, and even obituaries of those whose

biographies are being prepared. In the newspapers and journals

are found abundant references useful for a study of proprietary

and secret medicines, cosmetics, apparatus for invalids, and food

preparations.  Here also, from  time to time, may be located

satirical verse bearing upon drugs, doctors, and disease. For

example, the "Ode to the Fever and Ague" was published in the

New York Mirror for April 4, 1835, and eleven verses devoted

to calomel were published in the Athenian at Athens, Alabama, in

March, 1820. Later this poem was set to music and achieved

wide fame at concerts sung by the Hutchinson Family, of New

Hampshire. The last verse is worth hearing:

"And when I have to decline my breath,

Pray let me die a natural death,

And wish you all a long farewell,

Without a dose of calomel."

Periodicals, such as Century (New York, 1870-1930), Har-

per's (New York, 1850-), and others, frequently devoted space

to certain aspects of nineteenth-century American medicine. It is

well, therefore, to be able to locate quickly runs and files of this

type of material.

 

60 F. L. Mott, A History of American Magazines. Cambridge. Mass., Harvard

University Press, 1938. 3v.

61 For sketch of this interesting medical periodical, see ibid., I, 215.

• 16
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                 321

 

6. Historical and Scientific Journals. No literature is more

valuable to the scientific investigator than the many historical and

scientific journals. In the general field of Americana four period-

icals may be found useful for medical history: the American His-

torical Review (New York, 1895-), the Mississippi Valley His-

torical Review (Cedar Rapids, Ia., 1914-), the Journal of South-

ern History (Baton Rouge, 1935-), and the Journal of the

American Military Institute (New York, 1937-). It was in the

first of these that Shryock, of the University of Pennsylvania,

published his pioneering article indicating the relationship between

medical sources and social history.⁶²   Medical historians owe a

debt of gratitude to Professor R. Carlyle Buley, of the University

of Indiana, for his able delineation of medical practices in the

Northwest Territory prior to 1840. Buley's article appeared in

the Mississippi Valley Historical Review.⁶³    Two scholars from

below the Mason and Dixon line contributed a study to the

Journal of Southern History on the work of southern women

among the sick and wounded of the Confederate armies.⁶⁴ Pro-

fessor Robert Courtney Hall, of Adelphi College, has published a

distinguished interpretation of the relations between the medical

department and Confederate war operations in the Journal of the

American Military History Foundation.⁶⁵    These examples, chosen

almost at random, indicate the significance of publications such as

those indicated above.

A second group of historical journals is that published by

state historical societies, such as the excellently edited Ohio State

Archaeological and Historical Quarterly (Columbus, 1887-).

Minnesota History (St. Paul, 1915-), the Indiana Magazine of

History (Indianapolis, 1905-), and the Michigan History Maga-

zine (Lansing, 1917-), to mention but three, should be known

to the student of medical history. Dr. Earl E. Kleinschmidt, of

Loyola University, recently has published an excellent article de-

 

62 R. H. Shryock, "Medical Sources and the Social Historian," American His-

torical Review, XLI (1936), 458.

63 R. C. Buley, "Pioneer Health and Medical Practices in the Old Northwest

prior to 1840," Misssisippi Valley Historical Review, XX (1934), 497.

64 F. B. Simkins and J. W. Patton, "The Work of Southern Women among the

Sick and Wounded of the Confederate Armies," Journal of Southern History, I

(1935), 475.

65 C. R. Hall, "The Influence of the Medical Department upon Confederate War

Operations," American Military History Foundation, Journal (Now the American

Military Institute, Journal), I (1937), 46.

• 17
 

322    OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

scribing prevailing diseases and hygienic conditions in early

Michigan.⁶⁶

The various state and county medical periodicals such as the

Ohio State   Medical Journal (Columbus, 1905-) with   its

monthly "Historian's Notebook," so ably kept by Dr. David A.

Tucker, Jr., offers evidence which cannot be ignored. Minnesota

Medicine (St. Paul, 1917), for example, sometimes carries ar-

ticles of interest, such as "The Background for Medical History

for Northwestern Minnesota and the Lake Superior Region."⁶⁷

And certainly a recent article entitled "Plantation Medicine" in

the Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia (Atlanta,

1911-) is grist for the mill.68  The New England Journal of

Medicine (Boston, 1828-), to mention another, is alert to the

importance of medical history,⁶⁹ as are Colorado Medicine (Den-

ver, 1903-) and the Journal of Medicine published in Cincinnati

(1921-). One must also mention the Journal of the Iowa State

Medical Society (Des Moines, 1911-), the Medical Arts and

Indianapolis Medical Journal (Indianapolis, 1898-), and the

Wisconsin Medical Journal (Milwaukee, 1903-). Here may

be mentioned a stimulating article concerning the pioneer physician

in northern Wisconsin.⁷⁰   Medical Times (New York, 1873-)

is consistently interested in cultural and historic medicine. One

must not forget the Journal of the American Medical Association

(Chicago, 1883- ) which sometimes is of use to the historian.

Two outstanding publications devoted exclusively to the his-

tory of medicine are the Annals of Medical History (New York,

1917-), edited by Dr. Francis R. Packard, and the Bulletin of

the Institute of the History of Medicine of Johns Hopkins Uni-

versity (Baltimore, 1933-). One must not forget two special-

ized journals, the Military Surgeon (Washington, D. C., 1891-)

and the United States Naval Medical Bulletin (Washington, D. C.,

 

66 E. E. Kleinschmidt, "Pioneer Health: Prevailing Diseases and Hygienic Condi-

tions in Early Michigan," Michigan History Magazine, XXV (1941), 57.

67 R. Borden, "The Background for Medical History for Northwestern Minnesota

and the Lake Superior Region," Minnesota Medicine, XXI (1938), 121.

68 V. H. Bassett, "Plantation Medicine," Medical Association of Georgia, Journal,

XXIX (1941), 112.

69 L. Alien, "Early History of Vermont," New England Journal of Medicine,

CCIX (1933), 792.

70 F. G. Johnson, "Experiences of a Pioneer Physician in Northern Wisconsin,"

Wisconsin Medical Journal, XXXIX (1939), 576, 682.

• 18
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          323

1907-  ). The latter probably is more valuable for the period

1915-1920.  By this is meant that more articles pertaining to

medical history appeared during those years than afterwards.

7. Private Papers. It is unnecessary to emphasize the sig-

nificance of documents and papers pertaining to research in the

medical sciences. Frequently, such materials are privately owned

or are held by individuals who consider them a priceless family

heritage. Yet it is not impossible to secure the use of family

documents if assurance can be given that they contain informa-

tion of a contributive value and, secondly, that they will be han-

dled carefully and will be returned in good order. The historian

should always be sure that he has permission to use private col-

lections and should give the owner due acknowledgment unless

other arrangements have been made.

The letters and correspondence of scientific men are especially

valuable, as are the personal and professional diaries of physicians.

Clinical notes, laboratory reports, and manuscript notebooks re-

cording the results of experimentation are especially desirable.

Account books and office journals frequently reveal valuable in-

formation.  For example: the office accounts of Dr. Samuel

Thompson of Brookhaven, Long Island, for the period 1785 to

1800 offer an intimate account of a country doctor's daily calls

and office practice. County archives are full of itemized last wills

and testaments which indicate something of a physician's estate.

The will of Dr. Thompson lists, item by item, his household

effects, his land and agricultural implements, and his professional

equipment.

Lecture notes kept by medical students are another source of

worthy history. For example, Dr. Peter S. Townsend attended

the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the University of the

State of New York during the years 1813 to 1817. While a

medical student, Townsend was fortunate enough to attend the

lectures on medical practice delivered by Dr. David Hosack.

Townsend's lecture notes, in three closely written volumes, have

been undisturbed until recently, but they afford the researcher a

hundred hints upon Hosack, upon medical education, upon materia

medica, and upon the evolution of scientific techniques.

• 19
 

324    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

It is hoped that the medical historian will search for and use

as much documentary material as possible, for here frequently is

unearthed information available nowhere else.

8. Biographical and Historical Dictionaries. Frequently, the

medical historian has need to find rapidly some biographical char-

acter in whom he is interested. Perhaps the information desired

is only a date of birth or death. Sometimes a full sketch is nec-

essary. For purposes such as these there are three standard sets

dealing with American personalities.

The most comprehensive American work probably is the

National Cyclopaedia of American Biography.⁷¹    Here may be

located scores of individuals who do not appear in the early Ap-

pleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography.⁷² This second work,

published towards the close of the past century and on the eve of

the twentieth century, contains fairly long articles, few bibliog-

raphies, many portraits, and many facsimiles of autographs. One

peculiarity in the set's arrangement must be mentioned. Under

each family name, arrangement of individuals is by seniority in

the family. And one caution must be made. This work is not

always accurate and, in some cases, there appear the biographies

of individuals who, as far as the historian is able to ascertain,

never lived at all.

The third general biographical dictionary, less than a decade

old, is the great Dictionary of American Biography.⁷³    These

twenty volumes include noteworthy persons of all periods who

lived in the territory now known as the United States, excluding

British officers serving in America after the colonies declared their

independence. Biographical sketches are signed and each sketch

carries a bibliography which guides the researcher to other ma-

terials bearing upon the same character.

Biographies of medical men in particular begin earlier than

the nineteenth century, but the first attempt of note was pub-

lished in 1828 when James Thacher's American Medical Biog-

 

71 National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. New York, White, 1892-1938. 26v.

72 Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography. New York, Appleton, 1887-

1900. 7v.

73 Dictionary of American Biography. New York, Scribner's Sons, 1928-1937. 20v.

and index volume.

• 20
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                 325

 

raphy74 was printed in Boston. Other similar volumes appeared

from time to time, but it was not until 1845 that there became

available a biographical volume of use today. This was S. W.

Williams' American Medical Biography.⁷⁵   An outstanding and

exceedingly informative volume, appearing on the eve of the Civil

War, was S. D. Gross's Lives of Eminent American Physicians

and Surgeons of the Nineteenth Century.⁷⁶ Many physicians have

used this work to advantage in their biographical or genealogical

research. Finally, Howard A. Kelly and W. L. Burrage issued

a collection of medical biographies in 1920 under the title Ameri-

can Medical Biographies.⁷⁷   There are other works of this type,

of course, but those indicated here seem to be among the most

outstanding and the most reliable of this type of research materials.

Perhaps it would be well to mention one dictionary of Ameri-

can history whose use is indicated for those who wish to check

significant national events in an easily available and entirely reliable

set. For this purpose is recommended the Dictionary of American

History,78 published in 1940.

The history of medicine in this Nation is not yet written--it

cannot be written until we have scores of biographies of medical

men from colonial times to the present; until we have numerous

monographs describing the development of diagnostic technique

and treatment; until we have numerous studies showing the evo-

lution of instruments of precision and laboratory methods; until

we chart the rise of asylums, hospitals, and sanitariums; until we

develop the narrative of medical literature; until we narrate the

story of allied areas of scientific knowledge, such as pharmacology

and bacteriology; until, in short, men, like yourselves and your

colleagues, using bibliographical aids such as those here mentioned,

laboriously investigate and write. The historian and physician

need to join forces to do this task well.

 

74 James Thacher, American Medical Biography. Boston, Richardson and Lord,

1828. 2v. in 1.

75 S. W. Williams, American Medical Biography. Greenfield, Mass., Merriam,

1845.

76 S. D. Gross, Lives of Eminent American Physicians and Surgeons of the Nine-

teenth Century. Philadelphia, Lindsay and Blakiston, 1861.

77 H. A. Kelly and W. L. Burrage, Dictionary of American Medical Biography;

Lives of Eminent Physicians of the United States and Canada from the Earliest Times.

New York, Appleton, 1928. Published in 1920 under title: American Medical Biog-

raphies.

78 J. T. Adams, ed., Dictionary of American History. New York, Scribner's

Sons, 1940. 5v. and index volume.

• 21
 

JARED POTTER KIRTLAND, M.D., "THE SAGE OF

ROCKPORT," NOVEMBER 10, 1793--DECEMBER

18, 1877

 

By GEORGE M. CURTIS, M. D.

 

A portly old gentleman with a robust, commanding physique

was Dr. Jared Potter Kirtland of the eighteen seventies. So

massive was his rotund frame that, to the unutterable delight of

wide-eyed visiting youngsters, he would sit and read in those pre-

Edisonian days, with a candle propped upon his powerful chest.

His home at East Rockport, Ohio, was surrounded by exotic

shrubs and flowers, and known the country over for its unexcelled

beauty. In fact, Kirtland's surroundings were quite consistent

with his belief that esthetic influences are indispensable to man.

He held that the beauty of the home surely affects the character

of those within. His own life of continued cheerfulness, of genu-

ine affection for his fellow-beings, and of a deep appreciation for

the lore of nature bore testimony to the fundamental character

of his tenets.

Indeed, he carried this principle even further in his more

generalized concept that environment and the man interact, the

one upon the other. Thus, he comments in an article concerning

the State Fair of 1859 by contrasting the "intelligent" crowd at

the fair with the "scum" gathering to view a man walk a rope

extended over the falls at Rochester and again with the "ruffian

element" witnessing "the barbarian act of hanging" at Colum-

bus, Ohio.

Kirtland, too, powerful of mind and body though he was,

could not escape his environment, nor his heredity. His father,

Turhand Kirtland, continuing on westward from Connecticut, be-

came prominent, chiefly as one of the leading agents and surveyors

of the Connecticut Land Company, which laid out many of the

towns of the Western Reserve.

Most influential, however, in Kirtland's upbringing was his

(326)

• 22
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          327

 

grandfather, Dr. Jared Potter, a distinguished physician of Wall-

ingford, Connecticut. In 1803 Turhand Kirtland "went west"

taking his wife and three younger children with him to the State

of Ohio, then in its infancy. Ten-year-old Jared Potter Kirt-

land was left in Connecticut with his grandfather in order that

he might enjoy the advantages of the schools of that eastern

fringe of educational opportunity. He could not have been en-

trusted to the care of a more capable person than Dr. Potter. And

herein lies the real secret of the pioneer naturalist, for grand-

father Potter's philosophical ideals and the cultural background

he provided formed a sturdy groundwork for the growing youth,

and foreshadowed the achievements of the mature man.

Young Kirtland was a bright and eager student. He seldom

engaged in games with other children, but for recreation sought

out nature. His grandfather carefully guided him toward amuse-

ments of a fruitful character. Dr. Potter inculcated in the boy a

love for natural history, and taught him the habits of accurate

observation and conscientious recording.

The growing lad became familiar with every bird and animal

which frequented his youthful haunts. Together with Potter's

other adopted grandchildren, he cultivated a garden in which grew

many popular species of flowers of that period. At the age of

twelve, Kirtland was already familiar with budding and grafting.

Together with gardens and farming lands, Dr. Potter had

extensive orchards of white mulberry trees, grown for the culti-

vation of silk worms. Young Kirtland was later able to demon-

strate by breeding experiments on the silk worms that the isolated

female would lay eggs which would hatch the same as when she

was domiciled with the male. This preceded by nearly fifty years

Siebold's work on parthenogenesis.

In the spring of 1810,  Kirtland, then an observant young man

of seventeen, was requested by his father, who thought he was

afflicted with a fatal malady, to come with due haste to Ohio. In

May of that year he set forth with Joshua Stow of Middleton,

Connecticut. The many natural subjects and historical sites on

• 23
 

328   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

the way were a source of constant interest to Kirtland, during the

entire duration of this lengthy journey.

The General Assembly, then in session at Hartford, was con-

sidering the Gargantuan debts to the State incurred by many of

its prominent citizens in the purchase of the western New Con-

necticut. Shysters were prevailing upon the legislature promptly

to foreclose the mortgages, an act which would have spread havoc

throughout the state.  However, they were defeated in their

attempts.

At Buffalo Kirtland dissected many species of fish. The

fishermen at first scoffed at this "Yankee greenhorn" who never

before had seen a whitefish. Nevertheless, they were soon con

vinced that even such a youth could teach them new things about

various fishes.

Kirtland, imbued with the progressive concepts of his grand-

father, was sadly disillusioned when he met the Indians. For, at

times he saw the red man, degraded by the chemical weapon of

the white civilization, engaged in bacchanalian orgies, or slumber-

ing in a drunken stupor under the trees.

Desolation greeted the travelers in Pennsylvania. Clearings

and farm-houses were abandoned. Discouraged and disconsolate

farmers and their families drearily trudged onward, compelled to

leave their homes because of defective or disputed titles to the land.

On June 11,  1810, Kirtland arrived in Youngstown, then a

"sparsely settled village of one street, the houses mostly log struc-

tures, a few humble frame buildings excepted." After a dinner

at the home of Dr. Dutton, one of Jared Potter's students, Kirt-

land and the doctor mounted their horses and rode on southward

to Poland.

Poland was a thriving village in 1810. Kirtland found his

father at home and in good health. The tidings which had neces-

sitated the lengthy journey proved false. The quacks of that day

had conjured a malignant cancer from "a trivial scrofulous tumor."

And with proper medical aid, Turhand Kirtland soon recovered.

The prominent citizens of Poland prevailed upon the welcome

newcomer to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of the school-

• 24
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          329

 

master. Kirtland accepted the post, in order to defray the ex-

penses of his journey, and taught school there until late in Sep-

tember. The children, who had previously learned little of dis-

cipline, soon learned to respect and obey him.

Kirtland had lived in Poland about a year when he learned

that his grandfather had died suddenly and had bequeathed to

him his valuable medical library and certain stipends, with the

request that Kirtland should at once study medicine and spend at

least one year at the medical school at Edinburgh, in Scotland.

Returning to Wallingford, Kirtland began the study of medi-

cine under the skillful direction of Dr. John Andrew, a former

pupil of his grandfather. Among the diseases common at that

time were "sthenic croup" among children and "bilious colic," then

an every-day disease. Andrew's large practice was a great ad-

vantage to Kirtland, who accompanied him on his calls.

With Lyman Foot, then an assistant to the well-known

chemist, Professor Silliman of Yale, Kirtland set up a laboratory

and commenced the study of chemistry. Silliman encouraged the

inquisitive youths in every way, and even authorized them to bor-

row from him whatever equipment and books they needed.

In June, 1812, during the early phase of that world war,

Kirtland changed preceptors. His new teacher, Dr. Sylvester

Wells of Hartford, was one of the first to recognize the necessity

of both supporting and counteracting remedies, a doctrine which

Kirtland later advanced and then elaborated after some years

before the Ohio Medical Convention.

In 1813 Kirtland was well prepared to enter the medical

college at Edinburgh. But the war with Great Britain was still

in progress, and transportation across the seas consequently peril-

ous. As a result Kirtland became one of the first matriculants

at the new Yale Medical School. Here he received private in-

struction from Professor Eli Ives in botany and from Silliman in

mineralogy and geology.

For his second course of lectures he transferred to the Uni-

versity of Pennsylvania, then the outstanding medical school of

the East. At Philadelphia he was aided in his investigation of

• 25
 

330   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

horticulture by the personal influence of Benjamin S. Barton,

eminent professor of botany. Under Barton he wrote a thesis

concerning "Our Indigenous Vegetable Materia Medica."

Kirtland returned to the Yale Medical College for the session

of 1814-1815. During that year he received the special attention

of Dr. Nathan Smith, the famous medical educator. In March,

1815, at the age of twenty-one, he passed his examination before

the Censors at Yale, and received his medical degree.

In May, 1815, Kirtland married Caroline Atwater and settled

in Wallingford. In a short time he became the leading physician

of that vicinity. His father soon prevailed upon him, however,

to return to Ohio and bring his family. Early in 1818 Kirtland

sold his residence, and completed arrangements to return to his

father at Poland. He later returned to Wallingford for his fam-

ily, only to discover that the people had appointed him judge of

the probate court. He accepted that trust, and the following

winter resided in Durham, Connecticut, a town with no attending

physician. As a result he again developed a large practice although

bee culture as well as horticulture again maintained his deepening

interest in nature.

In 1820 an "epidemic of fever" broke out in Durham and its

vicinity. This spread during the ensuing three years, affecting

most of the families in a given neighborhood and then passing on

to another locality. Kirtland's rides were extensive, his labors

constant. In the fall of 1822 the younger of his two daughters

died suddenly, a victim of the prevailing epidemic. In September

of 1823 his wife, Caroline, died from the same disease. Utterly

despondent over this double tragedy, Kirtland sadly departed

for the West.

He had firmly resolved to follow his aged father in the man-

agement of his extensive mercantile business. Nevertheless, as

physicians were scarce in the Western Reserve and fevers common,

Kirtland was compelled to administer to the sick. In the 1830's

he became known as the best and most learned physician in north-

ern Ohio. Likewise he sustained a favorable reputation as a

surgeon, but he soon declined to attend surgical cases, because of

• 26
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858           331

 

the risk practitioners then ran of suits for malpractice. This

decision was reached after the famous trial of Dr. Hawley, at

which Kirtland was called in to testify. Dr. Hawley had been

charged with malpractice. The defense proved to the satisfaction

of the judge and the physicians present that the treatment had

been well performed. The jury, however, to the amazement of all

attending, brought in a verdict of four thousand dollars damage

for the plaintiff.

In 1828 Kirtland was elected the representative of Trumbull

County to the Ohio legislature. In this capacity he advocated a

new penitentiary system, in which convict labor would replace

solitary confinement. His bill for the new penitentiary system

endangered the flourishing commerce then carried on through the

medium of corrupt guards, whereby articles manufactured within

the penitentiary or stolen were exchanged for tobacco and whiskey.

Despite strenuous opposition, Kirtland's bill was passed. Kirt-

land was thereafter christened "The Father of the New Peni-

tentiary."

During the last of his three successive terms in the legislature,

Kirtland championed and secured the charter upon which was

built the Ohio and Pennsylvania Canal. He lived to see this put

into operation, and, following the development of railroads, to

pass on into history.

In 1829 Kirtland began collecting and dissecting the land and

fresh-water mollusks of Ohio. From a study of hundreds of

shells of the genus Unio he concluded that these fresh-water

bivalves have distinct sexes. Since conchologists had held that the

Unionidae  were hermaphroditic, this discovery created much dis-

cussion throughout the scientific world.

When the first Geological Survey of Ohio was organized in

1827, Dr. Kirtland was put in charge of the zoology of the State.

The survey was not completed when the State legislature, facing

a depleted treasury, withdrew all financial support. Kirtland

suspended his own pay and personally recompensed his assistants.

In his report of 1838 he wrote: "It will afford me the greatest

pleasure to communicate much important matter connected with

• 27
 

332   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

my pursuits to my successor, should the survey be hereafter con-

tinued. I am in possession of many interesting facts and speci-

mens which would essentially aid him, all of which will be at his

service."

His report includes a list of 585 Ohio vertebrates. It em-

braces a nearly complete catalog of the fishes, birds, reptiles, in-

sects and mollusks of Ohio, with notes upon the various species.

On September 28, 1837, Kirtland wrote Dr. Samuel P. Hil-

dreth of Marietta, Ohio: "You will probably be somewhat sur-

prised to learn that I have received a notice of an appointment to

the Professorship of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the

Ohio Medical College at Cincinnati--and that I have accepted of

the trust. . . ."

The Ohio Medical College, then the leading medical school in

the West, had been buffeted by the stormy waves of dissension

ever since its inception. The appointment of Drs. M. B. Wright

and J. P. Kirtland brought a new stability to the faculty.

Through the influence of Dr. John Delamater, Kirtland was

induced to accept an appointment to the chair of the theory and

practice of physical diagnosis in the Willoughby Medical College

in 1841. In 1843 a decision was reached to move the college to

a larger city. Cleveland was the choice of the majority. Since,

however, Dr. Lyne Starling, who owned the controlling interest,

preferred Columbus, the Starling Medical College of Columbus

was founded. Not satisfied with this outcome, prominent citizens

of Cleveland contributed land and finances for the establishment

of a medical school in their city.

In 1846 Kirtland became vice-president of the Ohio State

Medical Society, then meeting for the first time, and in 1847 he

was elected president. In his presidential address concerning the

"Influence of the Diathesis or Epidemic Constitution over the

Character of Disease," he proposed that the course of disease is

governed in its variability at different periods by fairly uniform

and definite laws.

Hygiene was Kirtland's favorite medical theme. In 1851 he

made a report on this subject to the Ohio Medical Convention. At

• 28
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                 333

 

the same meeting he declared that he was convinced that typhoid

fever is carried by drinking water. This was many years before

the corroborating bacteriology.   At the time he presented this

paper, he was actively engaged on a committee to provide a purer

water supply for Cleveland.

The Cleveland Medical Gazette (Cleveland, 1885-1901) of

1890 states with respect to Kirtland's medical prowess:

It is to be regretted, perhaps, that such powers as his had not centered

on medical subjects alone. It is certain that very important results could

have been achieved. There is evidence everywhere in the lectures which

have been preserved that he was not only thoroughly posted on the theory

and practice of medicine, as the science and art stood in his day, but was

on many points far in advance of his day and generation. As an instance

of the latter fact, we will cite that in the note-book of a student who

attended lectures in the winter of 1856-57, we find that Prof. Kirtland

thought and taught that phthisis is contagious.

Kirtland was strongly opposed to homeopathy. He main-

tained that it acts only through the imagination, diverting the

attention of patients and furnishing a cloak for dishonest prac-

titioners.

In 1850 Kirtland established the Family Visitor (Cleveland;

Hudson, O., 1850-53), of which he remained one of the three

editor-proprietors during its life of three years.  His object by

this means was ". . . to furnish the people of Northern Ohio

with a kind of reading better than the light and fictitious matter

that is now deluging this section of the country."

In the Family Visitor Kirtland published his work on the

Fishes of Ohio, with drawings. His contributions comprised de-

scriptions of his trips and of the cities he visited, notes of history,

observations on plants and animals and other miscellaneous sub-

jects. In one article in which he deals with the maternal instinct

among fishes, he points out that if bait is offered to the female*

fish guarding her spawn, she soon falls victim to her appetite.

Profound changes were taking place in the Western Reserve,

as industrialism swept aside the forests and depleted the wild life,

bringing among the fruits of civilization the opportunity of edu-

 

* It is now known that among fresh-water fishes parental care is given by the

male!

• 29
 

334    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

cation. Kirtland wrote frequently of these developments. On

January 3, 1850, he noted:

Fifty-three years have nearly elapsed since the first surveys and set-

tlements were made on the Connecticut Western Reserve. Within that

period of time a perfect revolution has been effected in its condition. Its

forests have been displaced by farms, villages and cities; canals, railroads

and other important thoroughfares are extending in every direction; tele-

graphs are furnishing increased facilities for communication; commerce has

spread over the Lake and the whole face of Nature has been changed.

In March of that year he forecast the future of Youngstown

steel:

As we approached Youngstown, evidences of increased activity among

the population apprised us that we were in the coal and iron region. The

products of this coal basin will be of more value and importance to the

United States than the gold mines of California.

The soil of the village of Youngstown is sandy and warm. The

locality is well adapted for manufacturing establishments which must be

erected somewhere in this section of the country.

In 1851 the Ohio Farmer was founded in Cleveland. Kirt-

land became one of its leading contributors. Since reading was

popular in the rural communities scattered far and wide through-

out the entire State, the Ohio Farmer had a wide circulation from

its inception. Kirtland's influence among the laity thus grew and

even assumed wider proportion. The articles contributed to the

Ohio Farmer covered various and sundry subjects of a nature and

scope similar to those characterizing his literary efforts for the

Family Visitor.

In the summer of 1853 Kirtland, together with Prof. S. F.

Baird and Dr. P. R. Hoy, made an extended survey of the natural

history of northern Ohio, Michigan, lower Canada, Illinois and

Wisconsin. While on these trips he wrote letters to the Ohio

Farmer describing the fauna, flora and soil of the country.     In

1858 he visited the southeastern shores of Lake Michigan.

Ornithology first engaged Kirtland's attention in 1810, and

continued to do so throughout his life.    In his report prepared

for the Geological Survey of 1837-1838 appeared the first list of

birds known to occur in Ohio. This included 222 Ohio birds, of

which more than two-thirds were new records.

• 30
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858             335

 

The eagle appears to have claimed much of his attention, per-

haps more than that given to any other bird. In a large oak tree

in front of his home an eagle and its mate nested in peace for

many years, blissfully unaware of their friendly neighbor so often

spying at them through his window pane.

The rarest of the North American warblers bears Kirtland's

name. The Kirtland warbler was first shot down in 1851 on the

grounds of Kirtland's home by his son-in-law, Charles Pease. It

was subsequently described by Prof. S. F. Baird of the Smith-

sonian Institution. Baird dedicated it to Kirtland "a gentleman

to whom, more than anyone living, we are indebted for a knowl-

edge of the Natural History of the Mississippi Valley."

Kirtland not only loved the earth's many creatures, but also

venerated the changing green world wherein they lived. His ex-

periments in horticulture, according to his contemporaries, showed

him to be far in advance of the general knowledge. His reputa-

tion in this field even became international. His greatest success

in fruit-growing was the cultivation of new and superior varieties

of cherries. Because of this he became known as the "Cherry

King."

Kirtland was a forceful man and possessed deep convictions.

In medicine as in politics, he strongly denounced any quackery. In

June, 1850, while in Columbus for the medical convention, he

wrote ironically of the new Constitution of the State of Ohio,

then being drawn up by the legislature. He was wary of poli-

ticians, and contemptuous of demagoguery:

At Columbus our statesmen and politicians were collected for the pur-

pose of forming a new constitution. From indications we predict that the

result of their labors will not be as well adapted to the condition of the

present population as has been the instrument that is daily receiving their

cuffs and kicks, nor will it be their rule and guide through as long a term

of years.

In June of 1848 Kirtland returned to Columbus to attend the

Free-Soil Convention. Like his grandfather, Jared Potter of Con-

necticut, he was an avowed enemy of slavery and a champion of

equal rights. On December 3, 1859, the day on which John

Brown was executed in Virginia, all Cleveland came out in mourn-

• 31
 

336   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

ing. From the liberty pole at Kirtland's residence in East Rock-

port floated an American flag bordered with black, and hung at

half-mast. It bore the following inscription: "When our citizens

are hanged for attempting to carry out the principles of the Decla-

ration of Independence, and the freedom of speech at the Capitol

of the Republic is suppressed, it is meet that people should

mourn."

During the Civil War, Kirtland, then 69 years old, volun-

teered his services to Governor David Todd, in the capacity of

examining physician. He later donated his pay for these services

to disabled veterans.

In 1869 when seventy-seven years old he sailed to Florida,

where he engaged in investigations of natural and local history.

On this trip his long-held desire to experience a storm at sea was

gratified. A tempestuous gale arose and lasted without inter-

mission for four days, after which he pronounced it "sublime,

beautiful and terrific!"

While in the South he examined the graves of Confederate

soldiers. He could not understand where all the sinners were

buried, for from the inscriptions on the stones it was evident that

the graves held only the remains of most perfect citizens and

patriots.

Interested in the living plants and animals of his time, as well

as in development and change, Kirtland was also concerned with

the general and local history of humankind. As an active anti-

quarian he contributed many articles and material objects to the

Western Reserve Historical Society, of which he was a life-long

member. His correspondence as well as his contributions to

periodicals are often enlivened with passages concerning the early

settlements and pioneer days.

At home he was known as the "Sage of Rockport," the idol

of his community. In 1861 Williams College of Massachusetts

conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws. In 1864 he

was elected a member of the American Academy of Sciences; in

1875 at the age of 82, he became a member of the American

Philosophical Society, the highest recognition then accorded to a

scientist in the New World.

• 32
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                  337

 

Kirtland died on December 18, 1877, at East Rockport.

[The lithograph of Allen Smith's painting of Kirtland, from

the Cardinal (Sewickley, Pa., 1923-) of July, 1936, was shown

at this point. It was completed in 1848, when Kirtland was 55

years old. It now hangs in the Medical Building of the Western

Reserve University.]

And so we leave one of the great pioneers of the Western

Reserve. He inspires us in that "those who seek shall find." We,

too, would have loved him. Like his storm at sea he was "sub-

lime, beautiful and" we may even surmise, to the quacks and

quackery, "terrific." We are thankful for our heritage.*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* We wish to thank the Western Reserve University, the Western Reserve

Historical Society, the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society Library, the

Marietta College Library, Dr. Jonathan Forman, Dr. Robert G. Paterson and others

for the loan of manuscripts, letters and other data.

• 33
 

THE INTRODUCTION OF ANESTHESIA INTO OHIO

 

By HOWARD DITTRICK, M.D.

 

Since the practical application of anesthesia for the relief of

dental and surgical pain originated in the United States, it is not

strange that early Ohio practitioners followed closely along the

trails blazed by colleagues in the Eastern States and in foreign

centers of science.

Even the name anesthesia was coined by our own Dr. Oliver

Wendell Holmes directly following William Thomas Green Mor-

ton's historic demonstration in the Massachusetts General Hos-

pital on October 16, 1846. He grasped the significance of anes-

thesia, saying that it would be on the lips of every person of all

races who in time to come would dwell on this planet.

Previous experiment abroad had covered a considerable

period of time without practical application of the resulting knowl-

edge. Joseph Priestley, discoverer of oxygen, prepared the first

anesthetic to be later generally accepted. In 1776, he prepared

nitrous oxide, but his laboratory accomplishment remained merely

another experiment. In America, Horace Wells's demonstration

in 1844 failed through use of faulty apparatus.

Shortly before this, in 1842, ether had been used by Dr. Craw-

ford Long as a surgical anesthetic, but his experimental work was

not publicized until three years after Morton's successful dem-

onstration in Boston.

Upon the heels of the American introduction, Sir James

Simpson of Edinburgh did pioneer work in persuading the public

to accept the benefits of anesthesia, and experimented with a

variety of agents. His struggle against the prejudice of both

physicians and patients, who objected on religious grounds to any

mitigation of the pain of childbirth, needs no rehearsal. Not quite

so well known is the story that Sir Walter Scott devised an

escutcheon for Simpson which was designed around a new born

babe, and had for a motto "Does your mother know you're out?"

(338)

• 34
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                339

 

Returning to the use of anesthesia in early Ohio, reports in

our State medical journals of the period show that physicians were

following with hopeful caution the experiments and practices of the

rest of the United States and also those of Europe as they ap-

peared in digest form in our publications. That the adoption of

anesthesia was quick and wide-spread is evidenced by an editorial

in the Western Lancet (later Lancet-Clinic. Cincinnati, 1842-

1916. Vol. VI, 1847, p.53) stating that "the inhalation of sul-

phuric ether for the purpose of securing its letheon effects during

surgical operations, has rapidly extended throughout Europe and

America. . . . It is employed at this time not only in every city

and village in the United States, but it has likewise been intro-

duced into the principal cities of Europe." All this took place

within the year after the Morton demonstration, and the use far

and wide is the more remarkable because of the slow rate of all

communication at that time.

But Ohio, like the other states, really began its experiments

with anesthesia by means of the amusing sessions of "laughing

gas" inhalation in public exhibitions. The Warren (Ohio) Western

Reserve Chronicle of August 10, 1821 (see History of Trumbull

and Mahoning Counties. Cleveland, 1882. Vol. I, p.618) notes

the characteristic early use of gas in Warren, Ohio, in what later

came to be known as "ether frolics."

Dr. Brooks proposes to administer 10 to 15 doses of the protoxide of

azote, or the exhilarating gas, in the Warren Hotel on Tuesday next at

3:00 o'clock p. m. The sensations produced by this gas are highly pleas-

urable and resemble those in some degree attendant on the pleasant period

of intoxication. Great exhilaration, an irresistible propensity to laugh, dance

and sing, a rapid flow of vivid ideas, an unusual fitness for muscular

exertion, are the ordinary feelings it produces. These pleasant sensations

are not succeeded by any debilitating effects upon the system. A more full

account of this gas will be given on the evening of the exhibition. Tickets

of admission may be had at the printing office.

It will be recalled that, in 1844, in Hartford, Conn., C. Q.

Colton in a lecture on popular science apparently hypnotized cer-

tain members of his audience by means of gesticulations. Mean-

while an associate engulfed the candidate in nitrous oxide to make

Colton's hypnotism effectual. Horace Wells, one of the audience,

• 35
 

340   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

saw one of these individuals fall, hit his head and exhibit no sen-

sation of pain. During this demonstration he envisioned painless

dentistry and had a tooth of his own extracted next day under

"laughing gas." And in Ohio, in 1846, we find Horace Ackley

experimenting in Cleveland with operation under "magnetic

sleep." In the class notes of Abner Webb, student at Western

Reserve Medical College (MS. in Museum of Allen Memorial

Library, Cleveland), the following incident is reported:

On Nov. 25, 1844, Prof. Ackley in removing a tumor of an encysted

form, the result of a cancerous sore on the labium, which formed on the

under side of the inferior maxillary bone. This was cut out by dissecting

up the skin upon each side of the tumor and separating the skin from the

same; and by cutting down on each side of the tumor, and when he came

in contact with an artery, tied the same, and so went on till all the tumor

was dissected out. This was performed while the man was in a magnetic

sleep, so supposed.

Some incredulity must have been shown, for we read later in

the same notes--"On December 5, 1844, in Dr. Ackley's lecture, a

letter was read by Mr. Shreeve in respect of he being magnetized,

stating that it was true in his operation."

Was this an early use of the electro-magnetic current? The

only reference that we have found in local journals was this notice

three years later in Western Lancet, Vol. VI, 1847, p.258: It is

an abstract from the Dublin Medical Press (Dublin, 1839-59), and

it reads, "Our inventive neighbors, the French, have contrived a

new plan of procuring insensibility. M. Ducross . . . has commu-

nicated the results of his experiments in several letters to the

Academy of Sciences. The agent employed is the electro-magnetic

current. Individuals who have been subjected to the current have

been quite insensible to pricking or pinching at all parts of the

body, and teeth have been extracted without their knowledge."

Or was it a sort of hypnotism? That came out later in for-

eign literature and was noted in the Ohio Medical and Surgical

Journal (Columbus, 1848-78), Vol. XII, March, 1860, p.300, as

a late use of a principle written about (ca. 1842) by a Scotch sur-

geon named James Braid, whose book on the subject was entitled

Neurypnology; or, The Rationale of Nervous Sleep, Considered

in Relation to Animal Magnetism (London, 1843).

• 36
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858            341

 

There is no evidence, so far as the author knows, that Ackley

or any other Ohio surgeon used magnetic sleep later as a con-

sequence of this experiment.

According to the History of Trumbull and Mahoning Coun-

ties (Vol. 1, p.290) Dr. Daniel B. Woods (b. 1816, graduated in

1840 from   Ohio Medical College, Cincinnati) who practised in

Warren from 1840,

was one of the first doctors in the West to use ether in surgical operations.

He used chloroform before it was manufactured for commerce or sold any-

where in the country. This was about ten years after its discovery by

Leibig in Germany. From the formula by Prof. Simpson of Edinburgh,

Dr. Woods, assisted by Daniel Jagger, a druggist in Warren, the first

chloroform used--at least in Northern Ohio--was made and administered

to a patient in October 1846.*  The experiment was repeated the spring

following. A few years later this valuable anesthetic came into general use

in this country.

By 1847, the wide-spread use of sulphuric ether made possible

a lengthy analysis of its benefits and its detriments as they had

been reported in the literature both here and abroad.       In the

Western Lancet (Vol. VI, p.53ff.) after enumerating its exten-

sive surgical use with satisfactory results, and noting that "crimi-

nals are now pleading for the somnific influence of ether to alle-

viate the terrors and pain of the guillotine and the halter," the

editor adds a detailed statement of caution in its use.    "In the

meantime the more cautious and prudent have looked with some

degree of apprehension to the results, but thus far no serious

accident has been reported; and when we contemplate the thou-

sands of instances in which the agent has been employed, and that,

too, in many cases by dentists and others who can claim but a very

limited acquaintance with physiological and pathological laws, it

must be confessed that the results are truly astonishing." Ad-

vising caution in its use, admitting some disasters may occur,

some secondary results become manifest, the editor yet believes

it should be used in surgery in spite of the few     fatalities that

may accrue.    He poses the question "whether the immediate

effects and the secondary consequences of the inhalation of ether

 

* The statement of the date involved is inaccurate. County histories are often

open to criticism regarding scientific data.

• 37
 

342    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

may not be more prejudicial than the effects of pain during a

surgical operation.

The editor continues:

There is this difference in the two cases, the effects of pain are me-

chanical, and are confined to a depressing influence on the nervous system--

a shock; while in the other case, the ether produces a morbid or poisonous

influence, and probably more or less chemical action. And in tracing out the

same question, the idea very naturally occurs, whether the simple depression

of the nervous function consequent upon the pain of a surgical operation,

could be more directly and certainly remedied than the effects of a poison.

The one requires . . . nothing more than stimulants to sustain the system;

while the poisonous and chemical effects of the other would require we

know not what, and would probably receive nothing. It should be borne

in mind, that the object in employing ether is not merely to avoid the

temporary pain incident to a severe surgical operation; but it is rather to

obviate the secondary results--the shock which follows extensive and painful

operations. If, therefore, it should finally be ascertained that recoveries

were more tedious, or less certain, when ether had been inhaled, its continued

use would not be justified upon the less important consideration of allay-

ing pain.

The whole subject, it appears to us, is open for investigation; and

until something more definite is known, the questions to which we have

referred must remain, at least, as plausible objections.

The editorial concludes that only statistical observations by

those in extensive surgical practice will establish the truth con-

cerning the further use of anesthesia, whether it does in fact re-

lieve suffering humanity or contribute to augment mortality.

In the review section of the Western Lancet (Vol. VI, p.181)

some discussion found place concerning a pamphlet by Edward

Warren(₃d ed. Boston, 1847), entitled Some Account of the

Letheon; or, Who Is the Discoverer? It is worth noting that

this pamphlet including and discussing the Morton work on an-

esthesia only the previous year, was in its revised and enlarged

third edition a year later. Public interest must have been acute.

The editorial is here quoted.

Very extensive experience has now been obtained of the action of this

new agent; and its influence in the prevention of pain, when properly admin-

istered, is fully established. The failures which at first occurred in its

application seem to have been caused by the use of impure, unwashed ether,

or of an imperfect inhalating apparatus.

• 38
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                  343

 

It is asserted, in the present pamphlet, that "Dr. Morton himself, and

by his immediate agents has administered the ether to more than ten thou-

sand patients without a solitary accident." On the contrary, if we are to

believe the journals, other experimenters have not been so fortunate; and

among the great number of cases in which this agent has been used suc-

cessfully, for the prevention of pain in surgical operations, some have been

reported in which the patient never rallied again, but sunk, apparently under

the too powerful influence of ether, superadded to the shock of the opera-

tion. These unfortunate cases, however, have been remarkably few, in

comparison with the immense number of experiments which have been

made with it in all parts of the civilized world, by persons who had to feel

their way in its application, with inhalers of all descriptions, ether of

various degrees of purity, and on subjects of almost every idiosyncrasy.

They are, however, sufficiently numerous to inculcate great care in the use

of ether and to forbid its employment in every instance where the pro-

duction of insensibility to pain is not of paramount importance.

It is evident, therefore, that while it may be a great boon to suffering

humanity in proper hands, common prudence requires that its use should be

restricted to those who are competent to watch its effects and employ it

with all the possible precautions to prevent injury and death. . . .

Another fact, of interest to those who may wish to employ ether in-

halations, is that the various forms of inhaling apparatus, at first supposed

to be essential to the experiment, are now superseded by the simple sponge

soaked with ether held just above the nostrils of the patient. It is stated

in Mr. Warren's pamphlet, "that no sort of 'apparatus' whatever has been

used in Dr. Morton's office for the last three months, he having adopted

the use of the sponge altogether."

Foremost among Ohio surgeons who reported work with an-

esthesia was Dr. R. D. Mussey, professor of surgery in the Ohio

Medical College in Cincinnati. In a report upon ether and chloro-

form  in the Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal (Vol. I, Sept.,

1848, p.86) his findings reflect the degree of incredulity with

which announcement of the wonderful effects of inhalation of

ether was received.     He stated, "Its employment was entered

upon with hesitation, and prosecuted with vigilance and care ....

It was only by cautiously feeling our way that some of us have

been established in the belief of its utility." "I have employed

etherization in the amputation of all the members belonging to

the human body, in operations for phimosis, in various applica-

tions of the actual cautery, in the excision of tumors, in lithotomy,

and in the reduction of dislocations."

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344   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

"In the great majority of the cases the sensibility was dimin-

ished; and in many of them it was suspended. And in a small

proportion of them, the sensibility, if not exalted, was evidently

not less than natural, while the patients were rendered less con-

trollable than ordinary, by the influence of ether. In most in-

stances no unpleasant effects followed the etherization. This could

not be said of two amputations of the thigh." These operations

he reported in detail. Evidently the patients were insensible to

pain during operation and for a subsequent half hour, after which

pain in the stump was acute from twenty-four to thirty-six hours.

In two cases of lithotomy pain was little diminished. In a case

of dislocated hip, ether inhalation resulted in sound sleep, and

relaxation was complete after a few minutes.

Reporting on chloroform, Mussey said he had used it in 38

surgical operations without any unpleasant sequel in a single

instance. He enumerated operations for removal of tumors, in

hydrocele, stricture of the rectum, fistula in ano, fistula in perineo,

strangulated hernia, in application of the actual cautery to cancer,

the same to vesicovaginal fistula, in castration and operations for

phimosis, in amputations of the larger limbs, the fingers and toes,

removing the toe nail, in plastic operations, and in lithotomy.

"In some of the fore-mentioned operations the pain is horribly

severe without some influence to diminish or suspend the sensi-

bility." Summing up his experience Mussey reported, "On the

whole I regard the inhalation of chloroform for surgical opera-

tions, administered with due precaution, as essentially safe; and

I look upon it as a boon of inestimable value, presented by chem-

istry to our profession under the guidance of a kind Providence."

The Editor's Table and Miscellany in the Ohio Medical and

Surgical Journal, Vol. I, Nov. 1848, p.201, sounds a warning

against the indiscriminate use of anesthetic agents, saying the

foreign journals especially were giving prominence to various

experiments with and accidents from chloroform and other an-

esthetic agents.

There is a reaction going on against the use of these agents which,

we are confident, will be productive of good. It cannot be that articles so

powerful can be used on every trivial occasion, and without discrimination,

• 40
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                   345

 

without occasionally producing the most disastrous results. . . . We have

been, for some time, among those who believe that neither ether nor chloro-

form should be used, unless in cases involving an operation or condition

which may endanger life, and then with great caution. This, we opine, will

ere long be the almost universal belief and practice of the profession. It

may be that we are too fearful; we hope we are. If used only in the

limited number of cases included in the above restriction, their discovery

must still be regarded as one of the greatest and happiest events of modern

times.

The editor then noted experiments abroad by Simpson, Nunnely

and Dr. Neil Arnott to induce local anesthesia by local application

of chloroform or frigorific mixture of ice and salt, and added,

"We shall endeavor to keep up with the progress of medical

opinion on this subject."

In neighboring Kentucky, whence came the inspiration of

many doctors in southern Ohio, the Western Journal of Medicine

and Surgery (Louisville, Ky., 1840-55. Vol. XVIII, no. 5, Nov.,

1848) reported upon the introductory lecture to the medical class

of Louisville by Prof. L. P. Yandell, M. D., professor of chemistry

and pharmacy. It sums up the quick acceptance and wide-spread

adoption of the Boston demonstration by Morton.

In a few weeks after it was published in Boston, the letheon was tried

in London, Paris and Edinburgh, and the results of the practice by the

surgeons and physicians of those cities we had here in Louisville long before

the winter has passed away--results that read more like tales of fiction

than sober scientific realities. Patients have limbs amputated, and dislocated

limbs reduced; tumors, teeth, and the sensitive eye are exsected; the hot

iron is applied to the tender skin; in a word, all the procedures of surgery

which have been most dreaded by men, are now executed upon their persons

while they are asleep and lapped in pleasant dreams!

But this agent, wonderful as were the effects produced by it, was not

wholly unobjectionable. The sulphuric ether is unpleasant to inhale, and

leaves a persistent odor offensive to many; a long time is occasionally nec-

essary to bring the subject under its influence, and in some, its inhalation is

followed by headache. On account of these disagreeable qualities, it ap-

peared to practitioners desirable to find, if possible, some better anesthetic;

and since the last Introductory [lecture] was delivered in this room, Prof.

Simpson of Edinburgh has announced the discovery of a substitute more

pleasant, more efficient and only not quite so free from danger.

The discovery of anesthetics constitutes an era in our profession, for

their application, far from being limited to surgery, has already been ex-

• 41
 

346    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

tended to all the healing arts, and we can only now regard them as just

fairly introduced. They have been applied with singular industry, and our

experience respecting them, considering that they have been in use less

than two years, is very great; but no one can esteem the practice as other-

wise than in its, infancy, and it would be idle to predict what it will grow to.

Chloroform, the substitute introduced by Prof. Simpson is a more

potent article, although a great majority of persons may inspire it long

enough to become intoxicated, without any unpleasant consequences. Of the

tens of thousands who have breathed it, only one, here and there, is reported

to have suffered from the practice. The wonder is, that an agent which

kills frogs, fish, newts, snails, and other small animals with the rapidity of

the hydrocyanic acid, should have been used indiscriminately by such num-

bers with impunity--not that a patient now, and another again, should have

died under its influence. It is a thing to excite our admiration, that a

vapor so deadly may be inhaled with safety by all but one in a million--

that, while anyone would be killed by it if it were pushed far enough, per-

haps every one may take it with safety to a limited, and for all practical

purposes, a sufficient extent.

A neighbor city, Cincinnati, early in the history of chloroform, fur-

nished an illustration of its fatal power. A woman, (Mrs. Simmons) died

last winter at a dentist's office under its influence. Other fatal cases are

already on record; but in the history of almost every case there is evidence

that the agent was improperly applied. Mrs. Simmons breathed the vapor

from an instrument which did not admit of a due admixture of atmospheric

air; she breathed it in a sitting posture, and made from twelve to fifteen

inspirations. Under the circumstances, this brought on syncope, which ended

in death. These cases will impress a salutary caution upon our profession,

all too prone, perhaps, to be led away by novelties; but experience has fully

demonstrated the fact that patients may be kept for a long time without

injury under the requisite influence of this powerful anesthetic, and that

they may employ it to an extent short of inducing insensibility, and short

of danger, but still with the effect of blunting sensibility to pain [analgesia].

Yandell suggests that chloroform might be employed as a

local anesthetic and also to relieve cramps in malignant cholera.

"May it not be administered," he says, "in such a way as to allay

the spasms, while other remedies are directed to the relief of the

disease, and at least prove, if nothing more, a euthanasial means

in cases where nothing avails to cure?"

Yandell reported a year later in the same journal (Western

Journal of Medicine and Surgery. Vol. XIX, no. 1, Jan., 1849,

p.33) "Up to the first of April, 1848, sixteen operations had been

performed on patients who had inhaled ether or chloroform with-

out a single fatality."

• 42
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858            347

 

Dr. E. C. Bidwell of Keene, Ohio, reported in detail his ex-

perience with the use of chloroform in labor in September, 1849

(Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal. Vol. II, 1850, p.203). At

a stage when instrumental aid was indicated, and no forceps were

available, he administered "the unusual quantity, near half an

ounce" of chloroform, with inhalation at intervals to keep up

anesthesia. After one and a half hours a large living child was

delivered, and the patient was found to have been suffering from

hour-glass contraction of the uterus. A previous child of the

patient could not be delivered following twenty-four hours of

labor, and had been subjected to cephalotomy. He concluded: "The

action of chloroform in this case, gives it, and me, a new value

in obstetrical practice, raises it in my estimation to a higher rank

than that of a mere assuager of pain, to that of an actual pro-

moter of the process. I know of no other means, at the same

time so pleasant and harmless, from which to expect, in the acci-

dent in question, such prompt and efficient assistance."

In the Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal (Vol. II, Sept.,

1849, p.77) an editorial review of Simpson's book, Anesthesia; or,

the Employment of Chloroform and Ether in Surgery, Midwifery,

etc. (Philadelphia, 1849), treated with amazed scorn the author's

use of twenty pages of the text to refute religious objections ad-

vanced against the employment of any means for the relief or

abrogation of the pains and perils of childbirth. The editor re-

gretted inclusion of these chapters and adds, "If anesthesia prove

so great a blessing to the human family as he predicts, we appre-

hend Dr. Simpson himself may see the day when his arguments

for the overthrow of his religious (?) antagonists will be looked

on as literary curiosities, equally ridiculous and out of place with

the religious objections themselves urged with so much vehemence

against employment of vaccination."

L. M. Whiting, M. D., of Canton, Ohio, in the Ohio Medical

and Surgical Journal (Vol. I, March, 1849) reported the use of

chloroform anesthesia as a last resort to control a case of delirium

tremens, not controlled by fifty grains of opium and a large quan-

tity of strong camphor, julep and Hoffman's anodyne in the pre-

ceding eight hours. During the next nine or ten hours the patient

• 43
 

348   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

had been given digitalis, antimony tartrate and morphine sulphate,

with no improvement. "One or two inhalations of chloroform

from a well charged sponge elicited only a few hearty curses and

resulted in increased excitement, but presently he sank into a

sound sleep lasting four hours, from which he awoke rational."

The patient alternated between sleeping, awakening and eating for

forty-eight hours, after which he went about his business com-

plaining only of a heavy feeling about the head. Whiting asserted

he would not permit another case of the kind to proceed to such

extremity without a trial of this powerful agent.

Mussey reported (Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal. Vol.

II, March, 1851, p.353) refracture of a young woman's leg under

chloroform. "Miss K., having been placed under the influence of

chloroform, was wholly unconscious of pain during the operation,

and occupied herself all the while in singing sacred songs and

holding celestrial conversation . . . finding herself coming to earth

again (while bandage and splint were being applied) she en-

treated most earnestly for more chloroform, to prolong ecstatic

illusion." Incidentally there was an excellent result following this

operation.

Mussey's experience is further noted in a discussion of an-

esthesia appearing in the Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal

(Vol. IV, July, 1852, p.481). The discussion took place in a

Philadelphia meeting.  Dr. Bell said that Mussey, his former

colleague in the Ohio Medical College and Commercial Hospital

of Cincinnati, "uniformly made use of a mixture of ether and

chloroform for the subjects on whom he operated, and without,

it is believed, in any case sinister results."

Again, in an editorial reviewing Mussey's introductory lecture

(Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal. Vol. IV, July, 1852, p.534)

he was quoted as having called the anesthetic agent "a priceless

boon, recently handed down to us by a kind Providence to dis-

arm surgery of its terrors. . . . In my practice," he continues,

"ether and chloroform have been used without injury in over six

hundred operations." On the preceding page of the same volume

is expressed the belief that, "in dislocations, anesthetic agents will

probably take the place of copious bleedings, nauseating doses, and

the extreme warm bath."

• 44
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858            349

 

On June 14, 1852, Dr. Alexander Dunlap, of Ripley, Ohio,

assisted in an operation to remove a multilocular cyst (Western

Journal of Medicine and Surgery. Vol. XXVIII, no. 3, Sept.,

1853, p.¹⁸⁶). The patient was subjected to the influence of chloro-

form, not sufficient to induce profound sleep, but to annul pain.

You will note that there is nothing new about analgesia except the

name. The pulse in this patient did not vary ten to the minute

from the commencement of the operation till six hours after it

was completed. "The patient had a quick recovery without a

single unpleasant symptom. The operation required twenty-four

minutes. Six weeks afterward the young lady who had been for

twelve years burdened with the tumor was riding about returning

calls."

In the July issue of the same journal a short editorial, on

chloroform and Queen Victoria, states that the Lancet denied that

chloroform was used to assuage the pain of childbirth. "On in-

quiry we were not at all surprised to learn that on her late con-

finement the Queen was not rendered insensible by chloroform or

any other anesthetic agent." Their information had been erro-

neous, needless to say. But the editor marveled at its successful

use in obstetrics. "Why, in all the multiplied instances of its

administration to parturient females, in natural as well as in diffi-

cult labor, not one casualty has occurred, while so many patients

have died in the dentist's chair or on the surgeon's table, may be

impossible to explain, but it is certainly a curious and interesting

fact."

Dr. M. B. Wright, professor of obstetrics and of diseases

of women and children in the Medical College of Ohio, analyzed

briefly the advantages of letheon and chloroform in obstetrical

practice (Western Lancet. Vol. VIII, 1855, p.84). He referred

to the argument publicly expressed that if mothers suffered no

pain they would have no strong affection for the child, a sub-

version of the curse, "In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children."

He reported several cases and his use of long forceps, as well as

use of letheon. "The child belched letheon," but he praised its

advantages nevertheless.

Following an announcement of the use of a new anesthetic

• 45
 

350    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

agent, vapor of amylene, by John Snow (Ohio Medical and Surgi-

cal Journal. Vol. IX, March, 1857, p.332), editorial comment is

made to this effect:

In regard to all our anesthetic agents, as a journalist, we have said

but little calculated to encourage general use. That they have a place in

practice there is no question. This, however, involves such a nice, such a

thorough investigation of all the circumstances, peculiarities, etc., connected

with the case in which their powers are about to be invoked, that we think

them safe in the hands of but very few. Better suffer a little pain, than

not to be perfectly satisfied that there is no possible thing or circumstance

present which might not only render the agent injurious, but convert it

into a cause of fatality.

When the Committee on Surgery reported to the Ohio State

Medical Society at its session at Sandusky in June, 1857, through

its chairman, John Dawson, M. D. (Ohio Medical and Surgical

Journal. Vol. IX, March, 1857, p.126), a comprehensive analysis

was made of the current opinions of surgeons on anesthesia.

The use of anesthetics in surgery, although instituted for a different

purpose at first, has lately been suggested as having an influence over oper-

ation mortality. Simpson has put himself to the trouble to collect statistics

on amputations of the thigh, with and without the use of anesthetics. He

comes to the conclusion that the use of such agents in this operation, saves

about eleven per cent. We have no comments to make on this conclusion.

It comes from an ardent and able advocate of anesthetics whose limit to

their application is almost undefined. Preserving a patient from pain while

an operation is going on, may rob the procedure of some of its dangers, as

well as of its terrors. The pain occasioned by operations exhausts in

several ways; and simply the removal of this, saying nothing about the

increased facilities afforded to the surgeon by the passive state of the

patient, may increase the chances of recovery.

Since the period under discussion, 1835-1858, anesthesia has

gone a long way in adaptation of new anesthetic agents to pur-

pose desired and to conditions to be combated. We have not yet

attained, nevertheless, the goal set forth in the vision in Revela-

tions, "there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying--

neither shall there be any more pain."

• 46
 

DEVELOPMENT OF NURSING IN OHIO

 

By ANNE L. AUSTIN, R.N.

 

The Period of Unorganized Development: Early Backgrounds

The early backgrounds of nursing history in Ohio are in the

realm of the unknown. If one is to judge how nursing was done

from the time of the Indian tribes to that of the first records

one must assume that the history followed a similar development

here as elsewhere.

It is known that the Eries, the Shawnees, the Wyandots and

the Delawares were the chief tribes in Ohio. These groups were

augmented by detached bands of Indians--the Ottawas, the Iro-

quois, the Tuscarawas, and the Senecas. A study of tribal prac-

tices with reference to the care of the sick reveals that there were

three ways in which the care was probably given. One was the

care of the aged and children, the convalescent, and the mildly

and seriously ill between visits of the medicine man. Another prob-

ably was the care of the wounded by the fighting men in the

wars with hostile tribes.  A third was the practice of the priest-

medicine man who, in connection with his religious duties, cared

for cases of illness. It seems certain that women were rarely

admitted to the religious ceremonies of the tribe, and therefore

in this instance, the care of the sick was in the hands of men.

In the family, however, the women usually carried out the pro-

cedure.

In the early history of these tribes the medicine man ap-

parently gave all the medical treatment. As time went on, how-

ever, his duties became more complex and there was a division

of labor, the medicine man himself retaining the priestly and

strictly medical duties, while assigning the actual care of the sick

person to a sub-caste of workers or assistants. This may have

been the beginning of the nursing care, as distinguished from the

medical care of the sick.

Following the coming of the white settlers, a form of nursing

(351)

• 47
 

352    OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

developed which may be called "neighborhood nursing."  The

settlers met many problems on their journeys to the Northwest

Territory, and the women helped each other in the care of their

families.  When they found their homes in Ohio, this type of

service continued. Some of the women gained considerable skill

in caring for minor as well as more serious illnesses, and for

women in childbirth, and were called in when there was an emer-

gency.

The conditions usually occurring were the agues,¹ cholera,²

the dysenteries, yellow fever and typhoid fever.³ The water was

impure, there was much exposure and the food was often in-

adequate. The flat lands were the breeding places of mosquitoes,

medicines were scarce and doctors few, and there was much for

the women to do.

 

The Period of Organized Development: The First Hospitals

This period of unorganized development seems to have lasted

at least until the building of the first hospitals and probably for

some time after.

As far as can be determined, the first hospital to be estab-

lished in Ohio was founded in 18154 in a house in Cincinnati.

This later became the Commercial Hospital and Lunatic Asylum

of Ohio and was chartered by the legislature on January 22, 1821.⁵

It is now the Cincinnati General Hospital. The nurses seem to

have been a type of servant nurse, women who possessed some

practical ability in the care of the sick.⁶

In other hospitals which were later established the nursing

was done in much the same manner. One of the earliest of these

was the Marine Hospital of Cleveland, established in 1852.7 Here

care was given to the sailors from boats on the Great Lakes. An-

other was Saint John's Hospital for the Infirm, now the Good

 

1 Samuel Orth, A History of Cleveland (Chicago and Cleveland, 1910), I, 177.

2 E. W. Mitchell, "Yellow Fever in Cincinnati," Ohio State Medical Journal

(Columbus, 1905- ), Feb., 1937, 184.

3 Paul M. Davis and Philip D. Jordan, "The Health of Frontier Ohio," ibid.,

Dec., 1940, 1311.

4 Dudley W. Palmer, "The Cincinnati General Hospital," ibid., April, 1939, 407.

5 The Cincinnati General Hospital, A Short History (n. d., mimeographed).

6 Minnie A. Bohlman, answer to questionnaire dated March 5, 1941.

7 Elroy McHerdree Avery, Cleveland and Its Environs (Chicago and New York,

1918), I, 546.

• 48
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                  353

 

Samaritan Hospital of Cincinnati, built in the same year. The

Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati did the nursing here.⁸ The Jewish

Hospital of Cincinnati was founded in 1854, and has a similar

nursing history.9

During the Civil War several hospitals were founded for the

care of veterans. The nurses were women who found it neces-

sary to earn their living, or were members of Protestant or Cath-

olic religious orders. At St. Vincent Charity Hospital in Cleveland,

for example, the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine were the

nurses.10 In Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, the Protestant

deaconesses did the nursing. In many of these early hospitals the

families and friends of the patients were called into service as

nurses as well as those who were convalescing from an illness.

At other times, girls from the local community were admitted

for a course in "practical nursing" and at the end of two or three

years were given a certificate. Among those carrying out this

procedure were the Women's and Children's Hospital of Toledo

where a fifteen months' course in maternity nursing was given,11

the Hospital of Our Lady Help of Christians of Cincinnati giv-

ing a two years' course to young women,12 the Wilson Street, later

Lakeside Hospital, Cleveland, where a course was given by the

Matron, Eliza Mitchell, and where at one period, a certificate was

given,13 and the Youngstown Hospital Association, where work

for two years was rewarded by a certificate.¹⁴

The Civil War gave impetus to nursing along other lines.

Many women of real ability came to the fore and did admirable

work. An Ohio woman, Sister Anthony O'Connell, a member of

the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati nursed the northern soldiers,

and so much beloved was she and so effective her work that she

was known as "The Angel of the Battlefield." Others of the

same order gave splendid service at this time.

 

8 Sister De Chantal, answer to questionnaire dated March 24, 1941.

9 Mary H. Cutler, answer to questionnaire dated March 17, 1941.

10 Sister M. Carmella, answer to questionnaire dated Jan. 31, 1941.

11 Lenore B. Young, answer to questionnaire dated Feb. 26, 1941.

12 Sister Amabilis, answer to questionnaire dated Feb. 6, 1941.

13 Margene O. Faddis, Nursing and Nursing Education in a Changing Urban

Community (Cleveland, 1936), 30.

14 Youngstown Hospital School of Nursing, answer to questionnaire dated Feb.

14, 1941.

• 49
 

354   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Organized Community Nursing: Nursing under Private Auspices

The first organized nursing in the homes of the community

was undoubtedly done by women who themselves, with missionary

zeal, visited the sick in their immediate communities, and who

later employed nurses to work with them. Perhaps there were

such groups caring for the sick in Ohio, but if so, history seems

thus far to be silent about them. The first recorded report of a

public health nurse, or district nurse as she was then called, of

whom the writer has been able to secure information was the

nurse sent out in 1881 by the Maternity Society of the Protestant

Episcopal Church of Cincinnati. The plan provided the "services

of a physician and a nurse to give aid and comfort to destitute

women in child-bed, regardless of creed."15 Aid was limited to

those needing it, and consisted of giving nursing care and furnish-

ing needed supplies for the mother and the baby.

The first known visiting nurse association in Ohio was estab-

lished in Columbus in 1898. It was called the Instructive District

Nursing Association,16 and its purpose was "to give nursing care

to the sick in their homes and to teach health."17 The nursing

staff was small.

Other early visiting nurse associations were the Toledo Dis-

trict Nursing Association established in 190018 by the King's

Daughters, and the Visiting Nurse Association of Cleveland estab-

lished in 1902 by a group of interested women known as "The

Baker's Dozen." This group began its work with "a staff of

four nurses, one superintendent, and three assistants in the dis-

tricts."¹⁹ The work consisted of care of the sick in their homes

and neighborhood classes in simple home care. This eventually

branched out into many community activities in which the serv-

ices of nurses were needed, namely tuberculosis nursing, school

nursing, control of communicable diseases, infant welfare, and

health education.

From these small but significant beginnings, this type of serv-

 

15 Yssabelle Waters, Visiting Nursing in the United States (New York, 1919),

239-40.

16 Ibid., 246.

17 Jane L. Tuttle, answer to questionnaire dated March 21, 1941.

18 Waters, Visiting Nursing, 242.

19 Ibid., 248.

• 50
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858               355

 

ice has grown slowly until at present there are twelve visiting

nurse associations in Ohio, with two hundred and thirty-five

nurses on their staffs giving nursing care to patients in their

homes, as well as approximately forty-five nurses employed by

the Metropolitan and John Hancock Life Insurance companies to

give nursing care to their policy holders, fifteen Red Cross nurses,

and approximately fifty other nurses employed by private agencies

to nurse the sick in their homes in various cities and counties of

Ohio.   This briefly is the history of nursing under private

auspices.

Nursing under Public Auspices

The early years saw the growth of public consciousness in

Ohio in relation to the care of the sick and the preservation of

health. Probably the first nurses to go into Ohio homes under

public auspices were two nurses sent out by the Tuberculosis Dis-

pensary of the Department of Health of Cincinnati in 1907.20

Cleveland followed in 1910 by establishing a Bureau of Tuber-

culosis, whereby the city took over the entire problem and con-

tinued the work started by Elizabeth Upjohn, a nurse on the staff

of the Cleveland Visiting Association, and by a dispensary func-

tioning under the auspices of this group and those of the Medical

College of Western Reserve University.²¹

In 1908, the Board of Health of Cleveland established a nurs-

ing service in which were employed two nurses to assist the physi-

cians in the school dispensaries and to visit in the homes to aid

in carrying out the physicians' instructions. Two others helped

to control communicable diseases in the city.²² In 1909, the Tuber-

culosis Dispensary of the Department of Health of Cincinnati

established a nursing service to care for tuberculous patients. The

nurses taught the patients and supervised home conditions.²³

In 1913 the State Department of Health secured legislation

providing for a Bureau of Public Health Nursing in the Division

 

20 Ibid., 240.

21 Annie M. Brainard, The Evolution of Public Health Nursing (Philadelphia,

1922), 279-80.

22 Irene M. Bower, Public Health Nursing in Cleveland, 1895-1928 (Cleveland,

1930), 40.

23 Jane L. Tuttle, "The History of Public Health Nursing in Ohio," Ohio Nurses

Review (Columbus, 1925- ), July, 1929, 12.

• 51
 

356   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

of Public Health Education. Ohio was the first state to create

such a bureau. This bureau served to stimulate interest through-

out the State in public health nursing activities, and to assist local

communities to plan programs which would meet their needs. The

Bureau of Public Health Nursing became a Division of the State

Department of Health in 1923.24

From these early beginnings the work of nurses in official

agencies has grown until in 1941 there are in Ohio, six nurses in

the Nursing Division of the State Department of Health, ten

nurses in the State Department of Welfare, two nurses in the

Division of Public Assistance, and five nurses in the State Com-

mission for the Blind. There are approximately 218 County

Health Board nurses, one county Board of Education nurse, 110

city Board of Health nurses, and ten city Board of Education

nurses in Ohio today.²⁵

Other Efforts

Other early efforts to utilize the services of nurses in the

homes were made by the Christ Hospital of Cincinnati, in 1890,

the Deaconess Home of Cleveland in 1895, the Dayton Flower and

Fruit Mission in 1903, the Union Bethel Settlement of Cincinnati

and the Baldwin Memorial Kindergarten of Youngstown in 1904,

the Children's Aid Society of Canton in 1905, the Columbus

Society for the Prevention and Cure of Tuberculosis and Infant

Welfare Clinics of Cleveland in 1906, the Thalian Tuberculosis

Dispensary of Toledo in 1907, and the University Settlement

Association of Cincinnati in 1909. Nurses were employed by the

National Cash Register Company of Dayton as early as 19O1, to

give first aid to employees and by the Cleveland Hardware Com-

pany in 1907.26 The Babies' Dispensary and the Children's Fresh

Air Camp of Cleveland had nurses on their staffs to visit patients

in their homes as far back as 1906. The latter work was under

the direction of Dr. H. L. Gerstenberger and Harriet L. Leete.²⁷

Nursing under the auspices of the Red Cross was ac-

 

24 Ibid.

25 Ohio Department of Health, Roster of Public Health Nurses in Ohio (1941,

mimeographed).

26 Waters, Visiting Nursing, 244.

27 Brainard, Public Health Nursing, 286.

• 52
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858              357

 

complished early in cooperation with the Ohio State Nurses Asso-

ciation. This group, organized in 1904, made itself responsible

for the enrollment of Red Cross nurses in 1907, cooperating with

the Ohio Red Cross Local Committees.²⁸ Nurses were called

into service in many ways, but chiefly in such emergencies as the

Ohio Flood in 1913. During the first forty-eight hours follow-

ing the flood, which occurred on March 25, seventy-seven nurses

were assigned to duty by the Cincinnati Local Committee. Nurses

also came from Cleveland and Akron and other cities, and were

assigned to "nursing relief work in several cities along the Ohio

River."²⁹ The work consisted of caring for the sick, inspecting

plumbing, and superintending all sorts of activities. It was through

the prompt action of Annie Laws, and the cooperation of Mary

Greenwood, Mary Gladwin, Jane Tuttle, Abbie Roberts and other

nurses from Ohio and other states that the relief work was car-

ried to a successful conclusion.

 

The Growth of Education of Nurses

The Civil War demonstrated the fact that there was need

for nurses with preparation for their work. The first school of

nursing in the country, founded as a result of this, was the Belle-

vue School of Nursing in New York. This school was followed

in rapid succession by other schools in various states.

The question of first efforts in any field is always an inter-

esting one. From the standpoint of developments in the field of

nursing it is of great interest to realize that there were groups of

people in the State who early realized the importance of establish-

ing schools where young women could be educated for the care

of the sick. As nearly as can be determined this occurred first

with the establishment of the School of Nursing at the Cleveland

Homeopathic, now the Huron Road Hospital, in 1884.³⁰

Thus far it has been impossible to determine the aims of this

school.  The aims of another of the early schools of nursing

established in Ohio, the Lakeside School, are here given:

28 Lavinia L. Dock and others, History of American Red Cross Nursing (New

York, 1922), 86.

29 Ibid., 133.

30 Cora M. Templeton, "Pioneer Hospital Nursing," Academy of Medicine of

Cleveland, Bulletin (Cleveland, 1920-), Oct., 1932, 90.

• 53
 

358    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

First--That patients entering the hospital for medical treatment should

be provided with nursing of the highest order.

Second--That young women wishing to enter the nursing profession

should be given every opportunity successfully to fit themselves for their

chosen work.

Third--That the demand for graduate nurses of high standing to care

for the sick of the city and surrounding country should be satisfactorily

supplied.31

To carry out these aims, instruction was given in the class-

room and in the wards of the hospital. Classes were few and

practice was realistic. In addition to the students, there was a

graduate nurse staff which augmented their work on the wards.

These graduates, though few, were of great assistance not only

in caring for the patients but also in making it possible to carry

out an educational program.

Other schools of nursing were soon established. In the same

decade came schools at the Christ Hospital and the Cincinnati

General Hospital in Cincinnati, other hospital schools following

later. At present there are sixty-seven accredited schools in the

State, with a total enrollment in 1939-40, of four thousand five

hundred students.

The university education of the nurse began in Ohio in 1916

when the School of Nursing and Health of Cincinnati was made

a part of the University of Cincinnati. This step was taken in

recognition of the need for more adequate professional education

of nurses. The school began offering courses for graduate nurses

in 1938.32

An event of importance in better education of nurses in Ohio

was the establishment of the Department of Nursing Education

of Flora Stone Mather College of Western Reserve University,

cooperating with Lakeside Hospital of Cleveland in 1921. This

provided a five-year program in nursing as well as courses for

graduate nurses. It made possible a broadening of the education

of the students.  It provided the resources of a university for

nursing education and made possible a better faculty, a better-

 

31 Lakeside Hospital, Thirty-second Annual Report, 1892, quoted in Faddis, Nursing

and Nursing Education, 38.

32 Cincinnati University, Bulletin, April 15, 1940, 13.

• 54
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858             359

 

prepared student body, and a better program for the education of

the nurse for a constantly widening field of service. This school

became one of the graduate professional schools of the university

in 1934.33 In this period the School of Nursing at Ohio State

University was established, but was discontinued in 1939. In 1926

the School of Nursing of the Good Samaritan Hospital of Cin-

cinnati became affiliated with the College of Mt. St. Joseph on

the Ohio.

The modern school of nursing gives a program which is de-

signed to prepare the nurse for the therapeutic care of the sick,

as well as for health conservation, the nursing of the mind as

well as the body, for health education and health service to

families and communities, as well as to individuals.

In connection with hospital nursing and nursing education,

the history of student uniforms and school emblems is an inter-

esting study. One finds that student uniforms were usually the

traditional blue, with an occasional school favoring pink. There

was always a white cap, apron, and cuffs. Today one occasionally

finds a white student uniform but one regrets the passing of the

blue-clad nurse with her starched apron, desirable as it may be to

have a more practical uniform. The school emblem has a fas-

cinating variety of shapes. It is interesting to see how often the

religious impulse, ever present in nursing, is expressed in the use

of the cross on the school pin. Ohio schools have followed this

tradition.

The Growth of Associations

Growth of professionalism in nursing is indicated by the

establishment of professional organizations. In Ohio this began

with alumnae associations, small, local organizations established to

promote the interests of individual schools. The first alumnae

association to be organized in Ohio, as far as can be determined,

was founded in 1893 at the Jewish Hospital School of Nursing

of Cincinnati. Other schools have since formed alumnae associa-

tions.

The next step was the founding of the Ohio State Associa-

tion of Graduate Nurses, now the Ohio State Nurses Associa-

 

33 Western Reserve University, Bulletin, May 15, 1940, 26.

• 55
 

360   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

tion. This occurred in 1904 and its purpose was to secure legis-

lation which would advance the care of the sick and improve

conditions in nursing. Twenty-seven Ohio nurses were charter

members and Mary Hamer Greenwood of Cincinnati was the first

president. The organization became a member of the American

Nurses Association in 1906.³⁴ The State association established

headquarters in Columbus in 1917. Anna Gladwin was the first

full-time general secretary, and organized the State Nurses Asso-

ciation into districts. At present the association has sixteen dis-

tricts. Nine of these conduct Nursing Bureaus to supply gradu-

ate professional nurses to the community. The present member-

ship is approximately eleven thousand.

Among the activities of this association have been the crea-

tion of the Florence Nightingale Scholarship Loan Fund to im-

prove the quality of education of nurses, and the Ohio Emergency

Fund, established in 1923, to assist sick and disabled nurses.35

In 1912 the Ohio Public Health Nursing Organization was

formed. This functioned for about two years and then became

the Section on Public Health Nursing of the Ohio State Nurses

Association.36

The Ohio State League of Nursing Education was founded

in 1915. It was designed to further the interests of the educa-

tion of nurses in the State. It functioned as a separate group

until 1923, when it became the Section on Education of the State

association. In 1938 a State league was again formed. The pres-

ent membership is about four hundred. This organization func-

tions locally in three parts of the State--Cleveland, Cincinnati, and

Columbus. The Ohio State League of Nursing Education is a

part of the National League of Nursing Education.

The relation of Ohio nurses to the early history of the Organ-

ization for Public Health Nursing is one of the interesting chap-

ters of Ohio nursing history. In the early days of the Cleveland

Visiting Nurse Association the Advisory Board recognized the

need for a symbol of the work of the visiting nurse. In 1909 a

34 "Thirty-five Years of Nursing Progress in Ohio, 1904-1938." Ohio Nurses

Review, April, 1938, 73.

35 Ibid., 73-4.

36 Ibid., 72.

• 56
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858             361

 

design interpreting the spirit of the visiting nurse was made, a

figure of a woman planting a tree, with the inscription "when the

desire cometh it is the tree of life." In the corner is a small

lamp representing the spirit of Florence Nightingale.³⁷ When the

National Organization for Public Health Nursing was founded

in 1912, the Cleveland group presented its emblem to the new

association, and it is now used as the symbol of that organization.

 

The Rise of Legislative Regulation in Ohio

Professional development in nursing in Ohio has been marked

by successful passage of a law controlling the education and

practice of nursing. The chief purpose of the formation of the

Ohio State Nurses Association in 1904 was the passage of such

a law. Work on this was begun at that time and several attempts

were made from that time until 1915, when the matter was brought

to a satisfactory conclusion by the passage of a nurse practice act.

This act provided for a Nurse Examining Committee in the Ohio

State Medical Board, and controlled the curricula of the schools

of the State, as well as the practice of graduate nurses. It pro-

vided that at least 331 hours of instruction should be given.³⁸

This act has since been amended twice--in 191₉ and in 1923.

Anza Johnson of Springfield was the first chief examiner. The

present curriculum required is 825 hours of class work and ex-

perience in the four so-called basic services: medicine, surgery,

pediatrics, and obstetrics.

 

The Establishment of a Nursing Literature in Ohio

The growth of professional literature in Ohio has kept pace

with that of the country as a whole. One phase of this has been

the establishment of nursing magazines. The earliest one in the

State was the Visiting Nurse Quarterly of Cleveland, first pub-

lished in 1909. This was designed for local circulation but soon

became well known outside Cleveland. There was no publica-

tion of national scope in this field and the circulation of this

magazine began to extend widely. Later the Visiting Nurse

37 Bower, Public Health Nursing, 37-8.

38 Clara F. Brouse, letter dated Dec. 5, 1940.

• 57
 

362   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Quarterly became a national publication. When the National Or-

ganization for Public Health Nursing was organized in 1912, it

took over the journal,³9 now known as Public Health Nursing

(New York).

The Quarterly Bulletin (Columbus, 1925- ) of the Ohio

State Nurses Association was published for the first time in

1925. One number only was issued in 1926. The name was

changed later to the Ohio Nurses Review. Publication continues

to be quarterly.

Since the early period Ohio nurses have written many articles

on nursing for professional magazines, notably the American

Journal of Nursing (Rochester, N. Y., 1900- ), Public Health

Nursing (New York, 1913- ), the Ohio Nurses Review (Colum-

bus, 1925- ), the Trained Nurse and Hospital Review    (New

York, 1888- ), and the Bulletin of the Academy of Medicine

of Cleveland (Cleveland, 1920- ). Mary Roberts, a graduate of

Jewish Hospital School of Nursing, Cincinnati, has for many years

been the editor of the American Journal of Nursing, the official

organ of the American Nurses Association.

The literary contributions of Mrs. O. P. Coe, a graduate of

the School of Nursing and Health of the University of Cincin-

nati in 1902 have appeared in many anthologies. Mrs. Coe is the

author of Loom of Life, and is a member of the Empire Poetry

League of London.⁴⁰ Gladys Sellew, another graduate of this

school, is the author of several books on the nursing care of

children. Katharine Volk, a graduate of Lakeside Hospital School

of Nursing, Cleveland, has written a book on her war experiences,

called Buddies in Budapest. These and other books represent the

development of this phase of Ohio nursing.

 

The Ohio Nurse and War Nursing

The participation of Ohio nurses in wars in which our coun-

try has been involved forms another interesting chapter of nurs-

ing history. At the time of the Civil War, there were no "trained"

nurses. Many Ohio women volunteered their services, however,

39 Bower, Public Health Nursing, 40.

40 Bohlman, answer to questionnaire dated March 5, 1941.

• 58
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858            363

 

and cared for the sick and wounded. Notable among these women

were the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati.⁴¹

When the Spanish-American War occurred graduate nurses

were available. Several Ohio nurses volunteered to aid the Gov-

ernment in caring for the victims of the war in the southern

part of our country and in Cuba. A large number of them were

graduates of the School of Nursing and Health at the University

of Cincinnati.⁴²

When the World War in 1914 necessitated a call for nurses,

many from all parts of the United States answered. Among them

were several from Ohio. When late in 1914, Dr. George W. Crile

planned a ward and operating room for the American Ambulance

Hospital in Paris, in the name of Lakeside Hospital of Cleveland,

many nurses responded to his request for volunteers.

Later Dr. Crile made plans for the establishment of a base

hospital composed of personnel who had had similar education in

nursing and who knew each other well. The Lakeside Base

Hospital Unit was the outcome. This became United States Base

Hospital No. 4. It was the first Base Hospital Unit to be sent

overseas and was made up of twenty-six officers, fifty nurses and

other personnel for various duties. The necessary funds for

equipping the hospital were raised by the Cuyahoga Chapter of

the American Red Cross. On May 6, 1917, the Base Hospital

with Miss Grace Allison, a graduate of the Lakeside School of

Nursing, Cleveland, as chief nurse, left for overseas. The group

was assigned for duty to No. 9 General Hospital, British Expedi-

tionary Forces, in Rouen. In the fall seventeen more nurses came

from Ohio to augment the staff. The active service of this Unit

came to an end on January 23, 1919.43

Many other Ohio nurses served in the Army and the Navy

in this country and in France during the war. Grace Phelps, a

graduate of the University of Cincinnati School of Nursing and

Health, was chief nurse of Base Hospital No. 46. Many Youngs-

town Hospital Association nurses were members of Base Hospital

No. 31.

 

41 See p. 353.

42 Bohlman, answer to questionnaire dated March 5, 1941.

43 Faddis, Nursing and Nursing Education, 94-103.

• 59
 

364   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Another phase of war nursing was the establishment of the

Vassar Training Camp. This was planned to help meet the need

for nurses arising out of the first world war, and was a coopera-

tive project of Vassar College, the Committee on Nursing of the

Council of National Defense, the American Red Cross, and the

National League of Nursing Education.⁴⁴ The course was planned

to attract college women to the field of nursing. Fifty-three Ohio

women were among its students.⁴⁵ They were given a preliminary

course including the biological and physical sciences, the social

sciences, and nursing. Many of the group went into Ohio schools

of nursing, the Lakeside School of Nursing and the University of

Cincinnati School of Nursing and Health, to finish their nursing

course, and are now in responsible nursing positions in Ohio and

other states.

The Ohio Nurse and the Community

The study of the development of nursing in Ohio, thus re-

veals many changing relationships. One of the most interesting

is that of the nurse to other professional groups, doctors, social

workers, and dietitians, to mention the most important. Research

shows that the early nurse was chiefly responsible for the thera-

peutic care of the sick, as the assistant of the physician. As the

field of health developed and social life broadened, the nurse con-

tinued to serve as a community worker, skilled in the care of the

ill person. In addition she has developed other important func-

tions, such as the prevention of disease and the preservation of

health. The Ohio nurse is represented not only in many local

efforts along these lines, but also in State, national, and interna-

tional relations. Ohio nurses are participating in the work of the

American Nurses Association, an organization concerned with bet-

ter community nursing for the public, and the problems of the

professional nurse, the National League of Nursing Education,

engaged in educational work in both the basic and the advanced

professional fields, the National Organization for Public Health

Nursing, enlisted in the improvement of nursing in the homes of

the community, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Nursing,

 

44 Ibid., 109-11.

45 American Journal of Nursing  (Rochester, N. Y., 1900-  ), Sept., 1918, 1155.

• 60
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858            365

 

interested in promoting the affiliation of schools of nursing with

colleges and universities to the end that the public may be better

served, and the International Council of Nurses, an organization

devoted to the promotion of better nursing in all countries. They

are also engaged in the work of other organizations such as the

American Public Health Association and the American Hospital

Association of which the Ohio Hospital Association is a part. At

present many are serving with the Army and Navy in the programs

for national defense. Several have gone to other countries as

missionary nurses. Here they have cared for native patients and

have established schools of nursing for native women.

Inquiry into the history of nursing in the State opens many

interesting possibilities for a more exhaustive study and provides

a motive for further research in this field. It is the hope of the

writer that the search may yield still further data which will add

to an historical nursing literature in Ohio.

• 61
 

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE OHIO STATE MEDICAL

SOCIETY AND ITS RELATION TO THE

OHIO MEDICAL CONVENTION

 

By DONALD D. SHIRA, M.D.

 

The endeavor, during the period of 1811-1833, to establish a

satisfactory method of medical licensure under the aegis of the

law, and which turned out to be such a dismal failure, has been

recounted in various articles published in the "Historian's Note-

book" of the Ohio State Medical Journal and in the QUARTERLY

of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society. To

marshal the facts concerning that phase would, therefore, be but

unnecessary reiteration. However, it should be borne in mind that

in 1833 the disgusted legislators, with the consent of the thoroughly

disillusioned medical profession, repealed all laws pertaining to

the practice of medicine. After much trial and error all persons

concerned had become convinced of the futility, at that time, of

attempting to regulate medical practice by law. So, the medical

profession was "put upon its own," faced with the not too promis-

ing outlook of trying to lift itself by its own boot straps. A state

of near-chaos existed in the ranks and the problem of bringing

about some semblance of order and professional self-respect was

indeed tremendous. There were, of course, some qualified practi-

tioners in the State, but they were in the minority, whereas, the

number of incompetents and out-and-out quacks was legion.

To a certain extent this situation was a natural result of the

times. The population of Ohio was rapidly increasing but the

number of capable physicians and the facilities for adequate medi-

cal training had not kept pace with the astonishing growth of the

commonwealth. Such could hardly have been expected, espe-

cially when one pauses to reflect that the opportunities for even

a rudimentary education were sadly lacking. There were but

two medical colleges west of the Alleghenies--the Medical De-

partment of Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky

(366)

• 62
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                   367

 

(founded by Dr. Benjamin W. Dudley in 1817),1 and the Medi-

cal College of Ohio (founded by Dr. Daniel Drake in 1819).2

Other medical colleges which started during, or near, this period

were: Willoughby Medical College, the Medical Department of

the University of Lake Erie (founded in 1834);3 the Medical

Department of Cincinnati College (founded by Dr. Daniel Drake

in 1835);4 the Cleveland Medical College, the Medical Department

of Western Reserve College, at Hudson (founded in 1843);5

Starling Medical College, Columbus (founded in 1847);6 the Cin-

cinnati College of Medicine and Surgery (founded by Dr. Alva H.

Baker in 1851);7 and the Miami Medical College of Cincinnati

(founded in 1852).8

The direct result of this confused state of affairs was that

there were three distinct classes of practicing physicians--those

who had received a degree from a medical college, those who had

attended lectures at some medical college but who had not gone

on to graduation, and those trained entirely under the preceptor

system, and who "were very decidedly more than those who at-

tended one course of lectures."

"The number who had attended one session of lectures was

greater than those who held medical degrees, but up to 1835 the

number who had never attended any medical school much ex-

ceeded the total of both of these groups. The proportion who

had not attended at all gradually diminished, but there was not

an equalization until after the Civil War."9

With this information at hand one does not have to stretch

the imagination very far to realize what a conglomeration of

physicians, would-be physicians, medical neophytes, impostors and

quacks plagued the lusty infant State of Ohio.

 

1 Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-general's Office (Washington,

D. C., 1880-), Ser. 1, XIV, 720.

2 Ibid., XIII, 775; Ohio Laws, Statutes, etc., Acts, XVII, 37.

3 Ibid., XVI, 472.

4 Otto Juettner, Daniel Drake and His Followers (Cincinnati, 1909), 182; Index.

Catalogue, Ser. 1, III, 192.

5 Ohio Medical Directory, 1890-91 (Cincinnati, 1890), 65; Index-Catalogue, Ser. 1,

III, 221.

6 Ohio Medical Directory, 1890-91, 65; Index-Catalogue, Ser. 1, XIII, 568.

7 Juettner, Drake, 289-98; Index-Catalogue, Ser. 1, III, 192.

8 Ibid., IX, 243; Ohio Medical Directory, 1890-91, 65; Juettner, Drake, 320.

9 Frederick C. Waite, "The Professional Education of Pioneer Ohio Physicians,"

Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly (Columbus), XLVIII (1939), 196.

• 63
 

368    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

After the repeal of the medical laws in 1833 a brief quiescent

period ensued, during which there was no collective action by

medical men. Then some of the more progressive and alert mem-

bers of the profession began to bestir themselves. The outcome

was a circular issued in June, 1834, by Dr. William M. Awl, of

Columbus, addressed to "all Scientific Practitioners of Medicine

and Surgery in the State of Ohio." The circular read:

The undersigned, uniting in sentiment and feeling with that portion of

the Profession who view, with pain, the great depression of character--

want of harmony and concentration of useful action, which unhappily pre-

vail in the Medical Science--acknowledging, also, a proper responsibility

for the advancement of correct principles, the promotion of public benevo-

lence, and the common welfare of society--are induced most respectfully to

recommend and consent to support a call for the assemblage of a General

Medical Convention, to be holden in the city of Columbus, on Monday, the

5th of January, A. D. 1835.

The grand design is to organize for practical utility, the whole scien-

tific medical power of the State. All regular scientific Practitioners of

Medicine and Surgery, either of city, village or county, who are disposed

to advance the honor and dignity of the Profession;--every one who has a

heart in the cause of science, and is ready to unite with the great and

good of the age, in elevating the moral and scientific character and talent

of the great and extending West, is cordially invited, and expected to come

and record his name in this Convention.

The regulation of professional etiquette--The construction of inde-

pendent Medical Societies--The support of a periodical Journal of Practical

Medicine--The erection and location of public Asylums, for the reception

of Lunatics and the instruction of the Blind--The promotion of the Tem-

perance cause--The regulation of Vaccination--The convenient supply of

the Leech:--

And many other subjects will, perhaps, claim the attention of the Con-

vention. But the whole proceeding should be an independent and voluntary

offering for the common good, all are expected to be unpledged, and none

should come entirely unprepared.¹⁰

Although written in the rather grandiose style characteristic

of the era, this was a clear, clarion call to the medical profession

to translate its ideals into realities by disseminating knowledge,

by manifesting an active interest in the public welfare, and by

instituting a self-imposed system of rules and regulations designed

10 Medical Convention of Ohio, Proceedings, 1835, 3-4.

• 64
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858               369

 

to elevate the standards of medical practice.   It was the true

genesis of voluntary medical organization in Ohio, which has

persisted to this day.

The convention was attended by 72 persons who hailed from

nearly every settled section of the State. After organizing and

electing Peter Allen, of Trumbull County, as president, the very

first order of business was an attempt to purge the newly-formed

organization of undesirables. A committee of three was appointed

"to inquire into the rights of individuals to membership in this

Convention." The committee reported back as follows:

Your committee, appointed to inquire into the rights of individuals to

membership, in this Convention, Report--That the obligations the Conven-

tion owe to the profession, require it of them that in order that an individual

shall be entitled to a seat in this body, he shall have been a regular student

of medicine, under the direction of a respectable and qualified physician, and

that all disciples of "Botanic" or "Thompsonian" systems of practice, be

excluded from all participation in the deliberations of this Convention.11

The report was accepted by the convention.

The "Thompsonians" (Thomsonians), contemptuously re-

ferred to as "steam doctors" or "steamers," were riding high on

the tide of popularity at the time. They were a thorn in the

side of the regular medical profession and consequently were

immediately ostracized. It is interesting to note, except for the

specific reference to "Thompsonians," how naively ambiguous was

the phraseology of the remainder of the resolution.    Not even

the remotest attempt was made to define "a regular student of

medicine" or "a respectable and qualified physician." Had that

been done with any degree of conscientiousness it is probable that

a great many of those in attendance would automatically have

been disqualified.  It was an infant organization--it must be

nursed along. Adoption of too rigid restrictions as to qualifica-

tions for membership might have imperiled its very existence.

That the medical profession was acutely aware of the weak-

nesses inherent in attempts at self-regulation was attested by the

following resolutions introduced at the convention ten years later

(1845) by Dr. Alva H. Baker.

 

11 Ibid., 5-6.

• 65
 

370    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Mr. President: As the Profession of Medicine is the most responsible

profession on earth, so should it be the most Learned, Honorable, Elevated

and Dignified. Admitting such to be the fact, then, as its guardians it

becomes our duty to adopt such measures, as are best calculated to advance

and promote the same. THEREFORE BE IT

RESOLVED, that a thorough English education, good moral char-

acter, and well regulated habits, are essential pre-requisites to the study of

medicine.

RESOLVED, That the practice of encouraging young men to study

Medicine, who have not the ability, and are not determined to pursue it

regularly, is highly reprehensible, and should be totally discountenanced.

RESOLVED, That less than three years regular study, with some

respectable physician, and two full courses of Lectures, should disqualify

a candidate for Graduation.

RESOLVED, That the cheapening of a Medical education is calcu-

lated to lower the character of the profession, and is decidedly injurious

to the public at large.

RESOLVED, That each member of the State Medical Convention, is

hereby positively forbid consulting with an Empiric or in any wise giving

countenance to his practice, under penalty of total suspension of all privi-

leges in this association.

RESOLVED, That any Physician who may pursue a course contrary

to established ethics is a fit subject for contempt, and should be avoided by

every honorable and high minded Medical man.

RESOLVED, That, county or district Medical Associations tend to

elevate the standard of Medicine, and harmonize the profession.  That

thereby community is benefited, and Quacks discomfitted.^l2

These resolutions, in the main quite meritorious, were "laid

upon the table." Why? Probably because the convention itself

was a heterogeneous group of competents and incompetents, and,

to avoid treading upon the toes of too many of the "faculty,"

laying them "upon the table" was the easiest solution. Perhaps

one may be justified in surmising that, had the resolutions been

adopted, quite as many confreres as quacks would have been "dis-

comfitted."

Although the members of the convention refused to adopt

those resolutions providing for at least a partial policing of their

ranks they were, on the other hand, unwilling to agree to a motion

by Dr. J. B. Thompson to memorialize "the Legislature upon the

 

12 Ibid., 1845, 10-11.

• 66
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                371

 

subject of a Medical Law."13 Instead the following preamble

and resolutions, offered by Dr. James F. Hibbard, were adopted.

WHEREAS, It is the opinion of this Convention, that a legal organi-

zation of a State Medical Society should not be asked for at this time, and

this Convention being a whole within itself, without connexion with any

preceding Convention, and without succession it cannot keep a record, and

can have no archives, and consequently, much of the statistical and other

good that it might and ought to do, is never accomplished:

AND WHEREAS, It is the opinion of this Convention, that the pro-

fession should do all that lies within its power to elevate itself, and benefit

the public, and that this is to be done only by individual and associate effort:

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED, That Drs. Hills, R. Thompson,

Davis, Butterfield and Baker, be a committee to draft a Constitution and

By-Laws for the organization of a State Medical Society, and that they be

requested to report at the earliest practicable moment during this session.

"The committee appointed upon the subject of a State Medi-

cal Society made a report, which was finally recommitted to the

same committee, to report anew on the first day of next Conven-

tion" which was to be held "in Columbus on the 2nd Tuesday of

May, 1846, at 10 o'clock, A. M."14

As it so happened, that was the last opportunity for the

Medical Convention of Ohio to form itself, as a whole, into a

State medical society. In retrospect one may be safe in assuming

that to some of the "intelligentsia" in the convention a certain

number of members were persona non grata. As a consequence

on May 14, during the 1846 session of the convention, a select

group of twenty-five "medical gentlemen assembled, and organized

a meeting, by the selection of G. W. Boerstler, Chairman, and

Jas. F. Hibbard, Secretary."

"The chairman stated the object of the meeting, whereupon

a constitution was reported and adopted, as the temporary basis

of the Ohio State Medical Society."15

Meetings of the Medical Convention of Ohio were held as

follows:

 

 

 

13 Ibid., 13.

14 Ibid.

15 Ohio State Medical Society, Transactions, 1846, 1.

• 67