Ohio History Journal

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858

FURTHER ASPECTS

 

CONTRIBUTION OF OHIO PHYSICIANS TO THE

MEXICAN WAR

 

By LEON GOLDMAN, M.D.

 

One of the wars least interesting to, and least popular with,

the people of the United States was, of course, the Mexican War

of 1846. Yet this war should be of some interest to the physician,

for it was at this time that, in spite of great difficulties, definite

advances were made by medical officers in the army. Their con-

duct in the field went far to remove the prejudices which they

hitherto had to contend with in the army.

That tough Surgeon-General, Thomas Lawson, and 132 med-

ical men cared for some 100,454 soldiers. There was the usual

serious lack of equipment, the usual failure of preparation and

the inadequacy of transportation.  Consequently, deaths from

sickness were listed as 10,986, more than twice the total of battle

casualties, dead and wounded.

In spite of the country's disinterest, volunteers unencumbered

by supplies or unaided by transportation poured in on General

Zachary Taylor. There were 48 medical officers of the volun-

teers. Ohio first, generously gave three, then increased to five,

the number of volunteer regiments. There were 10 Ohio volun-

teer surgeons and assistant surgeons to serve as medical officers

for these regiments. There were many independent companies of

Ohio volunteers which had, apparently, none of their own medical

officers.

Organized medicine in Ohio reflected the popular disinterest

of the country at large in the Mexican War. In the Proceedings

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260    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

of the Ohio State Medical Society of that period there was

scarcely any mention of that war. In fact, the address of one of

the founders of the Ohio State Medical Society, Dr. Robert

Thompson, before the Ohio State Medical Society on May 18,

1848, made no mention at all of the Mexican War. The grand

speech of this literary figure included references all the way from

Bacon to the American Revolution, yes, he mentioned even the

chariots of Aminadab.

In the Proceedings of the Ohio Medical Convention at Co-

lumbus in May, 1847, however, there is a brief note to the effect,

"On motion of Dr. Sachse that while we regret the absence of

our friend and fellow citizen, Dr. William Trevitt, now in service

of his country with the United States Army in Mexico, our kind

recollections accompany him, and that our wishes for a speedy

and honorable peace and his safe return to the bosom of his family

and large circle of friends and acquaintances, are hereby expressed

by the Medical Convention of Ohio; of which he has long been

an honorable member."

In the journals consulted no mention is made of the other

nine volunteers who were probably not as prominent politically

as Dr. Trevitt. The following is the list of surgeons and assist-

ant surgeons obtained from the Official Roster:

1st Regiment

E. K. Chamberlain--Surgeon--entered service June 22, 1846

A. E. Heighway--Assistant Surgeon--entered service June 22, 1846

2nd Regiment

Wm. T. Trevitt--Surgeon--appointed July 7, 1846

Robert McNeill--Assistant Surgeon--appointed July 7, 1846

B. F. Mullen--Acting Assistant Surgeon--appointed November 25, 1846

3rd Regiment

Benjamin Stone--Surgeon--appointed July 7, 1846

Patrick H. Mulraney--Assistant Surgeon--appointed July 7, 1846

4th Regiment

Oliver M. Langdon--Surgeon--appointed May 29, 1847

Robert McNeill--Assistant Surgeon--later promoted to surgeon

Henry E. Foote--Assistant Surgeon--appointed ............

5th Regiment

Robert McNeill--Surgeon--appointed ......................

George McDonald--Assisant Surgeon--appointed September 14, 1847

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58            261

The Ohio Volunteer regiments for the most part were organ-

ized at Camp Washington in the Millcreek Valley, on both sides

of Colerain Pike, and just outside of Cincinnati. The regiments

saw active duty. Specific mention is made of battles of Monterey,

Cervalo, Camargo and Atlexco. The same proportions of battle

casualties to disease casualties is maintained with the Ohio groups.

Here, for instance, are some figures of the Second Regiment--24

killed--₄2 died of disease; for the Third Regiment--₅ of battle--

71 of disease. The chief diseases were malaria, dysentery, yellow

fever and heat stroke.

Of this group of volunteer physicians the only one mentioned

in the actual doings of organized medicine in Ohio are Dr. William

J. Trevitt and Dr. E. K. Chamberlain. Dr. Trevitt of Franklin

County was elected to membership in 1846. He served as dele-

gate to the National Medical Association in Cincinnati at the

Convention of 1850. He was also physician to the Penitentiary.

He was secretary of the Ohio State Medical Society in 1851. In

1847, Dr. E. K. Chamberlain was elected to membership. He

was also listed as a member of the Committee on Ethics at the

Convention in Cleveland in 1852. The names of the other volun-

teers do not appear in the membership lists available for that

period.

In discussing General Lanis' Brigade in Central Mexico, Dr.

Albert G. Brackett of an Indiana regiment spoke of severe gastro-

intestinal reactions among a group of soldiers on a trip for Vera

Cruz, in September, 1847. He believed these reactions resulted

from castor bean poisoning and commented that, "such sickness

as prevailed in our camp that night would have broken the heart

of a homeopathic physician. It makes me sick at the stomach to

think about it." He added that, "Drs. Langdon, Brower, and

Foote rendered them every assistance."

One must assume that this is just about what the group of

Ohio physician volunteers did, namely, the routine medical care

of their regiments, with the inadequate and miserable equipment.

These unsung and for the most part unremembered medical pio-

neers helped to bring about the glory of the army surgeon. The

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262   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

surgeon after this war was to be considered as an officer and a

gentleman. There were no Lawsons, Porters, Horwitz's or De-

Leons among the Ohio Volunteers but they must have been a

goodly crew since many of the Ohio Volunteers remained to be

mustered out with the regiments.

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SAMUEL ROBINSON: CHAMPION OF THE

THOMSONIAN SYSTEM

 

By PHILIP D. JORDAN, PH.D.

 

Thomsonian medicine, as a system of medical botany, cre-

ated a decided stir both among physicians and the laity during

the nineteenth century when so many curious panaceas were being

sponsored by scientific groups and by social organizations. The

Thomsonian school was represented in Ohio, not only by scores

of physicians, but also by medical journals dedicated to the dictum

that the "flora of our country will yet so enlarge and establish

her dominion as to supercede the necessity of all other remedies."

There is small need to describe in general or in detail the influence

of "Dr." Samuel Thomson upon the history of medicine in Ohio.

That has been done elsewhere.

From time to time, however, the medical historian interested in

the annals of Thomsonianism in the Buckeye State finds supple-

mentary evidence that, if properly interpreted, sheds additional

light upon a particularly colorful chapter in the history of science.

The following discussion presents another fragment which may fit

into the smaller picture of the Thomsonian system in Ohio as well

as into the larger frame of reference of the narrative of medicine

in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century.

In June, 1829, two "steam doctors" of Cincinnati, named

Willis and Wilson, inserted advertisements in Queen City news-

papers announcing that a Samuel Robinson had been engaged to

deliver a series of lectures upon the rapidly-growing Thomsonian

system of botanic medicine.¹ As both Willis and Wilson had been

advertising botanic medicines imported from the East for sale and

had been dispensing this herbal pharmacopoeia both in wholesale

and in retail lots to the profession as well as to the layman, it

1 Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, June 11, 1829.

(263)

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264   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

may be legitimately inferred that the booking of Robinson was

calculated to serve a double purpose. First, to stimulate interest

in Thomsonianism and second, by this interest, to increase the sale

of botanic supplies. Such procedure, of course, was not uncom-

mon in the day when medical schools competed fiercely for candi-

dates, when body-snatching was the rule rather than the exception,

and when a dozen or more scientific and medical philosophies

were challenging the authenticity of one another.

Robinson's first lecture was scheduled for Saturday, June 27,

1829, at candlelight in Talbert's schoolroom. Admission was not

exorbitant, but was high enough for the times. A single lecture

cost the earnest seeker after health via the Thomsonian method

the sum of 25¢; gentlemen and ladies were charged $1.50 for

the entire course of fifteen talks, and practitioners were forced to

pay $3.00.2 Talbert's school was just one of about fifty private

institutions located in Cincinnati during the late twenties and

stood on Fifth Street between Vine and Race streets.³ Although

the school was mentioned briefly in a description of Cincinnati,

there was no mention that it was used at times for private lectures.⁴

Apparently, however, Robinson, backed by the two steam

doctors, delivered his lectures according to schedule, and pre-

sumably the early residents of Cincinnati came to hear him, al-

though there seems to be no testimony to indicate the number who

actually attended either single lectures or the entire course. Neither

is there evidence to show how local physicians of other schools

of thought responded to this series of addresses. It might be

relatively safe to assume that some residents turned out either

from curiosity or from illness to hear Robinson, and that a few

physicians might also have been present. Such conclusions, how-

ever, are mere conjecture.

There is no doubt that illness ravaged the Queen City popu-

lation and that then, as now, the laity hurried from one school

of medicine to another in the hope of securing relief from either

real or imaginary pain. Daniel Drake pointed out in an early

 

2 Cincinnati Emporium, June 22, 1829.

3 Charles T. Greve, Centennial History of Cincinnati (Chicago, 1904), 1, 545.

4 B. Drake and E. D. Mansfield, Cincinnati in 1826 (Cincinnati. 1827), 43.

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58                   265

 

work the diseases to which the Miami Valley resident fell prey.

Although Drake expressed the belief that the Miami country was

generally healthy, he also said that Cincinnati and environs offered

a variety of typical frontier diseases, including "pulmonary con-

sumption," cholera, croup, and bilious and typhus fevers.⁵ He also

described the typical training of a back-country physician during

the early years of the century.⁶ A case, for these reasons, could be

made to support the hypothesis that probably the prevalent interest

in health among the people of a frontier community and the

curiosity of at least some physicians resulted in a fair attendance

at Robinson's series of addresses.

There is, however, another bit of evidence that seems to sup-

port the hypothesis that not only were the residents of Cincinnati

and surrounding country more than mildly interested in Robinson's

remarks, but that pioneers throughout a rather large area of Ohio

exhibited some curiosity.

On September 17, 1829, Horton Howard, a Columbus printer

and publisher, attested that he had just published Robinson's lec-

tures as delivered in Cincinnati. The volume, an octavo running

to 199 pages, was entitled A Course of Fifteen Lectures, on Med-

ical Botany.⁷ It seems impossible to determine today either how

many copies of this work were printed or how well it was re-

ceived by the practitioner and the public. That it must have

attracted more than ordinary attention is evidenced by the fact

that at least six editions were published.⁸ It is entirely possible

that when all the volumes in the long-delayed Ohio Imprints

Inventory are published, other copies--and perhaps editions--will

be located in the State and elsewhere. It is worthy of note, how-

ever, that Sabin in his monumental directory does not list the

volume.⁹ Even if other copies should be located, Robinson's

series of lectures still would be considered a rarity.

 

5 Daniel Drake, Natural and Statistical View, or Picture of Cincinnati and the

Miami Country (Cincinnati, 1815), 179-86.

6 Daniel Drake, Discourses (Cincinnati, 1852), 52-6.

7 A Course of Fifteen Lectures, on Medical Botany, Denominated Thomson's New

Theory of Medical Practice; in Which the Various Theories that Have Preceded it

Are Reviewed and Compared; Delivered in Cincinnati, Ohio [nine lines of verse],

Columbus: Printed and Published by Horton Howard. 1829. Covington Collection

(Miami University Library, Oxford, Ohio).

8 Surgeon-General's Office, Index-Catalogue of the Library (Washington, 1891),

XII, 265; ibid. (Washington, 1909), 2 Ser., XIV, 660.

9 Joseph Sabin, Dictionary of Books Relating to America (New York, 1868-1936).

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266   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

After the first edition of 1828, a second was published in Bos-

ton by J. Howe in 1830. In the same year still another edition

was brought out in Columbus. Five years later, J. Pike and

Company of Columbus printed another of 205 pages and, at the

same time, a 216-page variant was produced in Boston by J. Q.

Adams. In 1834, that is between the time that Howe in Boston

printed an edition and that Pike and Adams brought out their

editions dated 1835, Howe in Boston published still another

variant edition. To sum up: the original edition was printed in

Columbus in 1829; this was followed by Columbus and Boston

editions in 1830 which, in turn, were followed by another Boston

edition in 1834; in 1835, still another edition was printed in Co-

lumbus and another in Boston. As far as can now be determined

Robinson produced only one other work devoted to medicine. In

1832 he wrote and had published in Cincinnati a thirteen-page

pamphlet entitled A Lecture Introductory to a Course on the

Science of Life.

The fact that Robinson delivered his talks in June in Cincin-

nati and published them in September in Columbus, leads to some

interesting speculations, particularly as few biographical details

now are available. Who was Samuel Robinson? Was he a physi-

cian in the sense that he had been tutored in the time-honored

manner or had attended a medical college of his day? Where was

the place of his birth and when was he born? Was he one of

the steady stream of emigrants who trekked into the Northwest

Territory during the early years of the nineteenth century? Or,

was he a native Buckeye who had been impressed by the new

system of botanic healing? Perhaps he was only a traveling lec-

turer who earned his living, as did so many glib talkers of his

day, by snaring the gullible public with honeyed words? Did he

settle in Ohio, or did he follow the frontier as it pressed west-

ward into the trans-Mississippi region? Was he the author of

other medical volumes? Why did he speak in Cincinnati and

publish in Columbus? When and where did he die?

The majority of these questions can not now be answered

with assurance, but the Cincinnati directories offer a few tangible

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58             267

clues. In 1828 and in 1831, a Samuel Robinson was listed, al-

though he was not characterized as a physician. In 1829, a

Samuel Robinson, described as a "lecturer" on historical subjects,

was boarding at D. Davenport's. In 1831, a Samuel Robinson,

"lecturer on philosophy and history," was boarding at W. Porter's.

In 1834, an unidentified Samuel was listed. Before and after

these dates there are no possible entries.¹⁰ Until more intensive

research is completed there seems little hope of knowing more.

Fortunately, however, the lectures themselves shed some light

upon the author. Robinson, in his preface to the reader, said that

a "combination of causes" induced him to examine the system of

medical botany and to deliver his series of lectures. He described

himself as "but a pioneer in a path unknown" whose only purpose

was to aid in relieving the maladies of the human race by direct-

ing the sick to a "mode of practice safe and salutary, at once

within the reach of their attainments and pecuniary resources."11

In addition, Robinson consistently speaks of physicians as if he

were not one of them.12 Indeed, Robinson does not describe him-

self upon the title page of his volume as a physician as he most

assuredly would have done had he the slightest claim to the title.

Then again, he apparently thought it desirable or perhaps neces-

sary to append a sort of bibliography to his book wherein he listed

some seventy-six authors, ranging from the Greeks to the mod-

erns, whom he had consulted in the preparation of his lectures.13

It seems a safe assumption that the average frontier physician

would have been unfamiliar with many of these citations. The

evidence that Robinson was more learned than the average physi-

cian is indicated again in the text. His lectures abound with his-

torical, philosophical and classical allusions and seem devoid of the

scientific language and medical vocabulary of even the average

doctor of his day. Robinson spoke glibly enough of mercury,

arsenic, corrosive sublimate, white vitrol, antimony, tartar emetic,

iron and opium, but a careful examination of the text lends cre-

dence to the belief that he spoke of them as a foreigner rather

10 Eleanor S. Wilby to Edgar W. King, Cincinnati, March 16, 1942.

11 Samuel Robinson, A Course of Fifteen Lectures, iii.

12 Ibid., iv.

13 Ibid., [200].

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268  OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

than as a scientist who had actually used an elementary materia

medica.14 One can almost observe him hard at work paraphrasing

and rearranging the words of the authorities whom he laboriously

consulted. Then again, his knowledge of even the rudimentary

anatomy of his day aids to build the case against his being a

practitioner. There is still further evidence. Although Robinson,

from time to time, quotes case histories, he never speaks of a case

that he treated and only once does he mention a case that came

under his own observation.15  This exception occurs when Robin-

son is speaking of surgery and says he saw a patient perish be-

cause the operator was inattentive, lacked a firm hand, "a fixed

eye and a determined soul."¹⁶ As it was not uncommon for a

layman to be present or even in attendance in the crude surgical

theater of the frontier home during early days, it is entirely

conceivable that Robinson did witness such an event, but even

here it is clearly understood that he was not the operator, and it

seems doubtful that his presence was any more than as an in-

terested witness. The preponderance of evidence, then, seems to

indicate that Robinson was not a medical man.

If Robinson was not a physician, what was he? There is no

doubt that he was highly educated, extremely well read and that

he possessed a literary style which, although florid, was equal, if

not superior, to that of the common man. His book abounds with

literary, philosophical and metaphysical allusions. At times, his

prose is tinctured with religion, but there is little internal evidence

to indicate that he was a clergyman. No evidence at present

exists to show that he knew anything about the law except in an

academic sense and he does not write as a schoolmaster although,

at times, his language is obtuse enough to be that of a professor.

It is obvious that he was not engaged in trade and commerce.

The process of elimination, then, seems to leave only one field of

activity.

Robinson probably was the historical and philosophical lec-

turer who was boarding in Cincinnati in 1829 and 1831. As the

 

14 Ibid., 116.

15 Ibid., 118-9.

16 Ibid., 66.

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58            269

 

directories prior to 1828 list no Samuel Robinson, it seems safe

to assume that he arrived in the Queen City about 1827 or early

in 1828. Again, it seems fairly safe to assume that he came from

the East and that he had been well-trained in the standard classical

curriculum of his day. As the Cincinnati directory did not list

Robinson in 1839, it seems a logical inference that the lecturer

left Cincinnati sometime after he delivered his series of lectures

in June, 1829, and moved to Columbus where he had his book

published in September. He may have remained in Columbus

for several months and might even have gone elsewhere, but it

appears that he was again in Cincinnati in 1831, and perhaps in

1832. What happened to him after that must be the subject

of further research.

Robinson's lectures added nothing really new to a knowledge

of what constituted the Thomsonian system of botanic medicine.

When summing up the three important results of what Robinson

believed to be the essence of the Thomsonian system, he said

briefly that "it removes obstructions, restores the appetite, and

invigorates the powers of life."17 He continued to describe the

effects of botanic medication upon the patient as like a sound and

refreshing sleep after which the sick man "rises restored and

strengthened, like a giant refreshed by wine!"

That Robinson's lectures met opposition in some quarters,

probably among physicians alien to the Thomsonian school, can

not be doubted. The author himself hints broadly at criticism

when he writes: "We are sometimes forced into opposition with

our best friends; it is extremely painful. I was often, since the

commencement of these Lectures, on the very point of abandoning

them forever, and wished I had never begun the subject; but as

I progressed, and witnessed the salutary results of this new prac-

tice, I did verily believe that I was serving God and my country,

in striving to diffuse a knowledge of its doctrines."18

It is entirely possible, although perhaps not probable, that

Queen City opposition to Robinson's championing of the Thom-

sonian system prompted him to forsake Cincinnati and travel to

 

17 Ibid., 193.

18 Ibid.

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270   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Columbus until he thought it safe once again to return and to

resume his occupation as an historical and philosophical lecturer.

Up to this time, however, there is no evidence that Samuel Robin-

son ever again spoke or wrote upon medical practice nor, it seems,

ever again took up cudgels for botanic medicine. His course of

lectures, however, offer an interesting and valuable, although

minor, insight into the chapter of Thomsonianism in Ohio.

• 12
 

THE EARLY USE OF THE MICROSCOPE IN OHIO

 

By RUSSELL L. HADEN, M.D.

 

The compound microscope invented in 1590 made possible

the observation of a new world of minute things. The practical

application of this instrument, however, developed very slowly.

No field of science, for instance, has profited more from the rev-

elations of the microscope than medicine.  Bacteria, protozoa

and many animal parasites were observed by the early micro-

scopists, yet the microscope was not used generally in medicine or

even for the instruction of medical students until after a lapse

of nearly three hundred years.

While Galileo as early as 1610 observed with a microscope

the finer structures of certain insects, the serious early use of the

microscope in science began in 1665 with Robert Hooke's Micro-

graphia and was continued by Marcello Malpighi, Jan Swammer-

dam, Nehemiah Grew and Anton Van Leeuwenhoek. The class-

ical period of the microscope ended with Leeuwenhoek's death

in 1723. Many of the workers of this period were only random

observers. A few such as Swammerdam and Malpighi really

advanced knowledge.

Relatively few books on the microscope were written during

the eighteenth century, and very few improvements were made in

the mechanics of the microscope. The compound microscope re-

mained much as Hooke left it. Among the more important books

were Henry Baker's The Microscope Made Easy (1742) and Em-

ployment for the Microscope (1753), George Adams' Micro-

graphia Illustrata (1746) and Benjamin Martin's Micrographia

Nova (1742). These writers described the microscopes then in

use and certain observations made with them, but no serious at-

tempt was made to study nature systematically. Microscopy as

such may be said to have been in a state of stagnation. Often the

microscope was only a plaything or an object of amusement.

(271)

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272   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Further advances in the nineteenth century followed several

important developments. One of the most important was the

manufacture of the achromatic lens in 1827 by Amici. Hereto-

fore chromatic aberration had interfered greatly with the study

of the finer structures of magnified objects. In 1838-1839 the cell

theory of Schwann and Schleiden appeared, which revolutioned

previous ideas concerning the structure of living tissues. This

was followed by the cellular pathology of Virchow in 1858.

Coincident with such developments a number of excellent works

on the microscope appeared which aroused a new interest in the

microscope and gave a great impetus to its application in science

and in education. Among the important books of this period were

Sir David Brewster's Treatise on the Microscope (1837), John

Queckett's Practical Treatise on the Microscope (1848), Peter

Harting's Das Microscop (1848-1850), and Jabez Hogge's Micro-

scope (1854) which went through many editions. At the same

time such books as Lionel Beale's Microscope and Its Application

to Clinical Medicine (1854) appeared, emphasizing the application

of the microscope to definite fields.

Little is known about the early use of the microscope in

America. Cotton Mather in 16891 in a Thanksgiving sermon

stated: "By the assistance of microscopes have I seen animals of

which many hundreds would not equal a grain of sand." He

never traveled far from Boston, so there may have been micro-

scopes there at that time. Mather again in his Christian Philos-

oper (1721) in discussing insects says: "How minute but how

astonishingly curious must be the joints, the muscles, the tendons,

and the nerves necessary to perform the motions of these mar-

velous creatures. These things concur even in the smallest ani-

malcules and such as cannot be seen without our microscopes."2

Mather was a Fellow of the Royal Society of England.

Probably the first microscope known to be in this country

was at Harvard College. Thomas Hollis to whom Cotton Mather

dedicated his Christian Philosopher sent from London in 1732 a

 

1 This sermon is in the rare book room at the Widener Library, Harvard Univer-

sity, from which the writer obtained a photostatic copy.

2 Cotton Mather, The Christian Philosopher: A Collection of the Best Discoveries

in Nature with Religious Improvements (London, 1721), 150.

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OHIO MEDICAL hISTORY, 1835-58                273

 

Wilson simple microscope for the use of the college.³ Hollis says:

"I hope Mr. Professor Greenwood will make good use of each for

ye promoting useful knowledge and ye advancement of natural

and revealed religion."  Edward Bromfield of the Harvard class

of 1742 had several microscopes and made numerous observations

with them before his early death in 1746. His work is mentioned

most enthusiastically by his pastor, the Rev. Thomas Prince, in

writing about him after his death.⁴

One of the earliest records in America concerning the pur-

chase of a microscope by a school is a bill of sale for a solar

microscope5 bought by Transylvania University in 18₀₅. This

microscope and bill of sale are still preserved at Lexington in the

Transylvania collection. There is also an upright Cuff micro-

scope of about the same date which was evidently purchased

about the same time. Among the books bought for Transylva-

nia's medical library, and still there, were Baker's Employment

for the Microscope and The Microscope Made Easy.

The earliest record the writer could find of a microscope in

Ohio is recounted by Dr. Frederick C. Waite in a paper concern-

ing an old microscope now belonging to Western Reserve Uni-

versity.6  This microscope was bought in 1838 by Dr. John Dele-

mater in Geneva, New York, from Charles A. Spencer, who only

three months before had begun to manufacture microscopes.

Delemater moved to Willoughby, Ohio, in 1839 to teach in the

medical department of Lake Erie University and in 1843 went to

Cleveland to found with Dr. Erastus Cushing the school which

was to become the medical department of Western Reserve Uni-

versity. Waite thinks that no single teacher of his time had so

wide an influence on medical education as Delemater with the

possible exception of Daniel Drake, yet there is no record of his

use of the microscope. This instrument was used in 1870 by Dr.

Isaac Himes in teaching pathology. This microscope purchased

 

3 Frederick T. Lewis, "The Hollises and Harvard," Harvard Graduate Magazine

(Cambridge), XLII (December, 1933), 107.

⁴ American Magazine (Boston), November 30, 1746.

5 A copy of the hill of sale was kindly furnished the writer by Mrs. Charles F

Norton, the librarian  of Transylvania College.

6 Frederick C. Waite, The Personal Tale of a Microscope: A Whimsy Based

Throughout on Recorded Evidence, Unpublished. Dr. Waite has kindly allowed the

writer to quote from this paper.

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274  OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

by Delemater for $25 was the thirty-seventh made by Spencer.

Spencer's thirty-second microscope is now in the United States

National Museum labeled as the oldest known American made

microscope.

About the middle of the eighteenth century interest in the

microscope became more evident especially in relation to medi-

cine. It was natural that the use of the microscope should be

confined largely to medicine at this period, since the major part

of teaching in science was then in medical schools. The use of

the microscope in Ohio colleges came somewhat later. Dr. Ed-

win G. Conklin--for so long the professor of biology at Prince-

ton--in his early history of biology⁷ at Ohio Wesleyan during

his student days, 1880-1885, states that only one microscope was

available. This was a Zentmayer made in 1876. At Wittenberg

College H. R. Geiger, the professor of natural sciences, had a

single microscope made after 1876. This microscope is still pre-

served at the college.⁸ The situation in other Ohio colleges was

much the same, so it is evident that little application was made of

the microscope for teaching college students before 1885.

There are a few striking examples of the intelligent early

use of the microscope in Ohio by non-medical men. Edward

Morley, the distinguished physicist who became professor of

natural history and chemistry at Western Reserve College at

Hudson, Ohio, in 1868, was a Fellow of the Royal Microscopic

Society. One of his first scientific papers on measurements of

Moller's Diatomaceen-Probe-Platten was published in the Jour-

nal of the Royal Microscopic Society in 1876.⁹ A second paper

concerning measurements of rulings on glass appeared in 1877.10

Morley's microscope is now   preserved in the department of

chemistry at Adelbert College. Jacob Cox, Jr., was using a

microscope about 1870 in Cincinnati as an amateur student of

science, later becoming a distinguished microscopist.

The use of the microscope in medicine is earlier, however.

 

7 E. G. Conklin. "Early Stages of the Department of Biology" Ohio Wesleyan

Magazine (Delaware), IX (March, 1932), 117.

8 Personal communication from Dean C. G. Shatzer.

9 E. W. Morley, Monthly Microscopical Journal (London), XV (1876), 223-7.

10 Ibid., XVII  (1877), 137-43.

• 16
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58              275

 

than in the colleges. The writer has reviewed the transactions

of the Ohio State Medical Association, founded in 1846, and the

early Ohio medical journals with reference to the microscope.

In the Western Lancet and Hospital Reporter11 for Novem-

ber, 1849, R. D. Mussey, the professor of surgery in the Medical

College of Ohio, speaks of examining with a microscope the con-

densation of vapors emanated from the lungs of a patient suffer-

ing from cholera and of finding a multitude of animalcules which

moved in all directions. He also observed a long slender ani-

malcule in the rice water discharges. An editorial in the same

journal for February, 1854,12 says: "The distinguished Mr.

Goadby of London, who for many years has devoted himself to

microscopical investigation is now in this city (Cincinnati). He

is prepared with instruments and specimens sufficient to give full

instruction in the minute tissues of both the vegetable and animal

kingdoms. Some of his specimens are rare and beautiful."

In the Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal for November,

1851,13 this sentiment is expressed: "The medical profession is

awakening to the importance of this subject (microscopy) and

we trust the day is not far distant when microscopy will be taught

as a prominent department in every medical college and the

microscope shall be considered necessary to complete the arma-

mentarium of every physician and surgeon." In the same journal

in 185914 in discussing microscopy the statement is made: "This

young science is receiving a very respectable share of attention

in our city (Columbus)."

The first reference15 to the microscope in the Transactions

of the Ohio State Medical Association was during the eleventh

annual meeting in Columbus in 1856 where it is noted that Dr.

J. G. F. Holston made some interesting remarks on the micro-

scope and its uses. Holston and two others were appointed a

committee to report at the next meeting of the society on the re-

lationship of the microscope to pathology.

11 R. D. Mussey, Western Lancet and Hospital Reporter (Cincinnati), TX (Novem-

ber, 1849), 293.

12 Editorial, Western Lancet and Hospital Reporter (Cincinnati), XV (February,

1854), 117.

13 Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal (Columbus), IV (1851), 161.

14 Ibid., XI (1859), 65.

15 Transactions of the Ohio State Medical Association (Columbus), 1856.

• 17
 

276  OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Among the papers presented at the meeting of the associa-

tion in Columbus in 1857 was one by Holston entitled "Report

of a case in which a pumpkin seed formed the nucleus for a

vesical calculus in the male subject; with an appendix on micro-

scopes and microscopy."  In this paper Holston discussed the

possible value of the microscope to pathology.   Mentioning

Spencer and other workers, he said America produced the best

microscopes in the world. He recommended for cheapness and

goodness a microscope supplied by McAllister and Brother of

Philadelphia for $32. This was a vertical Oberhauser micro-

scope made in Paris. Two microscopes were exhibited, but no

statement was made about the type. At another meeting in 1857,

Holston presented an additional report saying he had sent 100

questionnaires to individual members of the medical profession

of Ohio about the microscope and had received only one reply

couched in two or three lines. At the same meeting Dr. Gundry,

chairman of a committee on the relationship of the microscope to

pathology, made a report which was not published. At the meet-

ing in 1864 a committee composed of Gundry, Holston and Mus-

sey was appointed to report on the microscope with its applica-

tion to practical medicine. No published report was made before

the committee was discontinued in 1868. The committee on the

microscope was one of the many appointed to report on widely

different subjects such as monomania, castration, uterine catarrh,

hernia cerebri, gastric irritation and excision of the clitoris.

During this period the microscope seemed to be an object of

curiosity rather than a scientific tool.

Starling Loving¹⁶ in his history of Starling Medical College

states that the school in 1848 possessed one microscope "already

well advanced in years." He also says: "At the opening of the

session of 1855-1856, Dr. Richard Gundry, an English physician,

who had been induced by Professor Moore to come to Columbus

and engage in general practice was requested to give the students

lessons in microscopy, a department of learning which was then

beginning to be appreciated but which was not taught systemati-

16 The writer is indebted to Dr. B. K. Wiseman of the Ohio State Medical School

for these references.

• 18
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58             277

 

cally in any school of the country and in but few elsewhere. The

doctor's lessons excited much interest and enthusiasm not only

among the medical students but among many laymen interested in

scientific studies and Columbus soon became famous for the num-

ber and excellence of instruments and cultural aims of the gentle-

men who owned and used them."

The microscope was being similarly introduced in other

cities and in other schools. O. W. Holmes was using a micro-

scope for demonstration at Harvard in 1850, but microscopes

were not used by medical students there until 1880.17  At the

University of Pennsylvania Medical School the first use of micro-

scopes by students was in the session of 1874-1875, although

Leidy, the professor of anatomy must have made use of the

microscope in studying trichinae in 1845.18 Victor C. Vaughan

at the University of Michigan in 1876 had only two microscopes

for his classes. In the same year he bought six more at the

Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia.19 The Medical Col-

lege of Ohio in the annual circular for 1871 mentioned microscopy

among other courses.²⁰ The Miami Medical College in Cincinnati

stated in the announcement for 1875-1876 that a large addition

had been made to the building explicitly for the prosecution of

the study of practical chemistry, toxicology and microscopy.

Again in 1876 the statement is made that each student is practi-

cally trained in the use of the microscope.²⁰ The annual circular

of the Cleveland Medical College for 1878 in mentioning physi-

ology and histology states: "In this branch full and practical in-

struction will be given in the use of the microscope." Probably

a single instrument was available.

While some general interest in the microscope developed

about 1850 in this country, it is evident that the use of the micro-

scope was limited to a rare instrument in the hands of a professor

who occasionally may have employed the microscope for student

demonstrations or to an exceptional practicing physician who for

some reason was ahead of his time and fellow doctors in owning

17 Personal communication from Dr. S. B. Wolbach.

18 Personal communication from Dr. E. B. Krumbhaar.

19 Quoted from the Drs. Mayo, University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis, 1941.

20 The writer is indebted to Dr. David Tucker of Cincinnati for these references.

• 19
 

278   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

and using a microscope. Beginning about 1875 microscopes be-

gan to get into the hands of students in the more progressive col-

leges and medical schools. They were not generally used, however,

until about 1890. The discovery of the tubercule bacillus in 1882

and rapid advances in bacteriology, histology and tissue pathology

evidently stimulated the general use of microscopes. In West-

ern Reserve University the first microscopes for student use were

bought in 1888. Dr. George Crile told the writer that the Wooster

Medical College from which he graduated in 1887 had at that

time no microscope.

The increase in interest in microscopy rapidly became general

in the eighties. Many laymen took up microscopy as an avoca-

tion. Most cities had a microscopic society. In Columbus there

was a microscopic section of the Tyndall Association. Rev. T. F.

Stidham, the secretary of this organization in Columbus, was one

of the founders of the American Microscopic Society in 1878.

Numerous Ohio names were among the early members of the

national society, and at the fourth annual meeting of the American

Microscopic Society held in Columbus in 1881, several papers

were presented by Ohio members. The eighth annual meeting

was held in Cleveland in 1885. The Cleveland Microscopic So-

ciety entertained the visiting members at a soiree at which the

exhibits ranged from the "Lord's Prayer Viewed Through a

Pinhole" to eggs of the bedbug and the bacilli of tuberculosis.

Forty-four of the 97 exhibits were by physicians, one of whom,

Dr. John Sawyer, is still living in Cleveland. Jacob Cox, Jr., of

Cincinnati, previously mentioned, was elected a member of the

American Microscopic Society in 1882 and was president in 1884.

Among the old microscopes in the collection of the Medical

Library Association of Cleveland are those of numerous early

Cleveland physicians. These include the instruments of Gustav

Weber (1828-1912), Christian Sihler (1848-1920), Henry Brain-

ard (1845-1930), and W. T. Corlett (1854-    ). Dr. Corlett

purchased his microscope in 1881. The others mentioned were

used still earlier. It seems remarkable to an observer today that

microscopes were so long in coming into general use.

• 20
 

THE FORMATION OF THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL

IN CINCINNATI

 

By RALPH TAYLOR, M.D.

 

It is now more than a century since the first Eclectic College

was organized in Ohio and the century mark for the Eclectic

Medical Institute will soon be reached. It is difficult to visualize

the social, domestic and commercial life of the country when

these schools were founded. The writer doubts if one can thor-

oughly visualize Ohio without a single college of any appreciable

size, instead of one in almost every town of consequence, as now.

In those early days a very large per cent (sometimes esti-

mated as high as 90%) of the medical profession held no medical

degree. Then education consisted of "Reading medicine" under

a preceptor, and quite often doctors were launched on their pro-

fessional career after a few months of such training. Even

among the teachers in medical college were found men with no

other degree than an M. D.

Because of dissatisfaction and disappointment with the

crudity of some of such practitioners, others were seeking a

gentler and more scientific method of handling the sick. Thus

arose the so-called reform schools of which there were several in

the beginning.

The pharmacy of a century ago was also very crude and

some of the concoctions were repulsive and nauseous; they might

well have been prepared to exorcise devils. If for no other rea-

son than their insistence upon and their assistance in developing

potent and palatable medicines the smaller schools should feel

their existence as being justified.

No discussion of reform medicine in Ohio and especially of

the Eclectic Medical College of Cincinnati, can well be separated

from the name of one man. Dr. T. Vaughn Morrow, who came

(279)

• 21
 

280   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

to this State and was actively connected with the Eclectic School,

when this was a department of Worthington College, realized the

impossibility of a continuance of any medical teaching in this

location after the enforced demise of his department, and soon

moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. There, in conjuction with Lorenzo

E. Jones, A. H. Baldridge and James Kilbourne, Jr., he opened

the Reformed Medical School of Cincinnati. This institution had

no charter, hence no legal standing.

Opening with a single student, it grew rapidly. Two terms

of lectures were conducted each year and the Western Medical

Reformer was published again. In 1845, with a class of thirty

students, inspiration was given to seek a charter. Much opposi-

tion was encountered in the General Assembly, through whom

they must obtain this charter.

In the discussion of this bill an extraordinary compliment was

paid the medical profession by one Dr. O'Ferrall, chairman

of the Committee on Medical Colleges and Medical Societies, who

stated in his discussion that "Medical Science does not need, nor

is it susceptible of further improvement or reform." The bill

was passed, however, and a charter issued to the Eclectic Medical

Institute of Cincinnati.

Colonel James Kilbourne, having been very active in assist-

ing in the work before the Legislature, was duly presented at his

home town of Worthington with a silver pitcher, ornamented and

properly inscribed.  Thus was the Eclectic Medical Institute

launched upon its course. Three terms of lectures were given

each year and diplomas awarded at the end of any term.

In this year there was added to the aforementioned faculty

Dr. Wooster Beach, who is known as the father of Eclecticism,

as professor of Clinical Surgery and Medicine, and Dr. Joseph

Rhodes Buchanan as professor of Physiology, Institutes of

Medicine and Medical Jurisprudence. Soon the name "Eclectic"

replaced the term "Reformed Medicine"; other Eclectic colleges

began to appear. The Scientific and Eclectic Medical Institute

of Virginia was chartered in 1847. Also active antagonism was

started against all reform and Eclectic physicians by the domi-

• 22
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58                281

 

nant school of medicine. This was probably the provoking cause

for a circular address to the medical profession of the United

States, in which the Eclectic Medical Institute embodied the fol-

lowing:

The leading doctrines of the Eclectic Medical profession, to sus-

tain which this Institute has been established is: That the investiga-

tion and the practice of medicine should be entirely free and un-

trammeled; that no Central Body, no Association, combination or

conspiracy, should have the power to prescribe a certain standard of

faith or Medical Creed which shall be received and forced upon

every member of the profession by threat of professional disgrace and

ruin. We recognize every enlightened, educated and honest physician

as standing upon the same platform of professional respectability and

enjoying the same rights no matter what doctrines he may advocate

in medicine or what system of practice he may deem it his duty to

adopt.

The fees for the first course in the Institute were five dollars

for each professor. In January of 1846 a clinic was established

and the fees for the spring and summer course were fixed at

thirty dollars, plus three dollars for matriculation. Ministers and

theological students were admitted to lectures upon payment of

the matriculation fee, possibly upon the theory that they should

know more about the abode of the soul.

By the fall of 1846 a new college building was completed,

built at a cost of $12,000 and capable of caring for four hundred

students, which was quite an achievement for that early date.

The annual report for 1847 records eighty-one students for the

winter session, forty-six for the spring session and thirty-one

graduates.  On May 25, 1848, an assembly of physicians from

over the United States convened at the Eclectic Medical Institute

and the National Eclectic Medical Association was formed with

Dr. T. V. Morrow as president.      This was thought to be an

agent both to cement the Eclectics of the country together and to

aid in maintaining interest in the college.

In 1849 a resolution to establish a chair of Homeopathy

was passed and in the fall of that year Dr. Storm  Rosa, of

Painesville, Ohio, assumed this position. The arrangement proved

unsatisfactory and was discontinued the following year.  Six

• 23
 

282   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

graduates, however, were given diplomas both as Eclectic and

Homeopathic physicians; thus placing the credit for the first

Homeopathic graduate in Ohio with the Institute.

On July 16, 1850, Thomas Vaughn Morrow died and the

Institute was bereaved of its most inspiring apostle of Eclecti-

cism. His death was followed by a period of confusion and dis-

sension within the faculty itself. Drs. L. E. Jones and B. L. Hill

and Mrs. T. V. Morrow, who were involved financially in the

Institute, made overtures to Dr. Robert S. Newton of the Mem-

phis Medical Institute, inviting him to take part in the manage-

ment of the Eclectic Medical Institute. After a short correspond-

ence Dr. Newton came to Cincinnati for a conference and as a

final result the entire faculty of the Memphis Institute resigned

and five of its members came to Cincinnati. They were Drs.

Robert S. Newton, W. Byrd Powell, Zoheth Freeman, Milton

Sanders and John King. Drs. King and Powell refused for

personal reasons to accept appointments. Under a later reor-

ganization, however, both accepted chairs and were very active

and valuable adjuncts to the school. The faculty at this time

(1851-1852) consisted of J. R. Buchanan (Dean), J. G. Jones,

M.D., R. S. Newton, M. D., B. L. Hill, M. D., Z. Freeman,

M. D., L. E. Jones, M. D., J. Milton Sanders, M. D., A. M., L. L.

D., and Orin E. Newton, M. D.

A three weeks gratuitous course of lectures was given in the

fall. Tickets for a full course of lectures (until graduation)

were one hundred dollars in advance or a well indorsed note for

one hundred and twenty-five dollars. For a single course of lec-

tures the fee was sixty dollars in advance or an acceptable note

for seventy dollars. The matriculation fee was five dollars and

the graduation fee fifteen dollars. A demonstrator's ticket cost

five dollars.

Changes in the faculty were now quite frequent due to

resignations. Dr. Hill resigned and accepted the chair of surgery

in the Cleveland Homoeopathic College; Dr. King now accepted

an appointment and succeeded Dr. Hill. Dr. I. G. Jones, because

• 24
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58            283

 

of failing health, stepped out; Dr. Beach was dropped by the new

organization and the faculty of 1852 consisted of four members:

Drs. L. E. Jones, R. S. Newton, John King and J. R. Buchanan.

At this juncture Dr. Buchanan conceived the idea of and plan for

free medical education, theorizing that the aggregate income

would be greater and the sale of books increased and incomes

from private lectures abundant. Objections to this scheme brought

about the resignation of Professors Z. Freeman and J. Milton

Sanders.

So-called free education was put into operation by the

abolishing of all fees, except ten dollars for matriculation, five

dollars for dissection and a graduation fee of twenty dollars.

New Eclectic books began to appear. King and Newton's United

States Eclectic Dispensatory was now completed and used as text

book. Jealousies and personal animosities which began at this

time caused a very stormy condition at the school for several

years. One member was expelled from the faculty upon accusa-

tion of another. This accusation was later refuted. Several op-

position schools sprang up in Louisville and one in Cincinnati.

While annoying, these schools did not materially injure the In-

stitute. The faculty of the Institute in 1853 was composed of

eight very good men. The fees remained low but the student

body was of a fair number. Up to 1855 there had been 2,145

matriculants and 593 graduates, and this indicates at least a

thriving condition for the ten years of its exixstence.

The next two years were the stormiest of all the career of

the school. Owing to chicanery and jealousies, two sets of trustees

were elected in 1856. This resulted in a pitched battle for pos-

session of the college building, which was followed by a suit at

law for a decision as to ownership. The defeated party proceeded

to open a new school and graduated a class of twenty-nine, and

in the fall of 1856 filed Articles of Association with the Hamil-

ton County Auditor for the purpose of creating the Eclectic Col-

lege of Medicine. This college, with a faculty of able men, con-

tinued until 1859.

Owing to decreased income from a lessened student body,

• 25
 

284   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

the necessity of uniting the two schools was forced upon them

and in December, 1859, this union was accomplished with the

following faculty: H. D. Garrison, M. D., chemistry, pharmacy

and toxicology; J. F. Judge, M. D., with the same subjects;

L. E. Jones, materia medica, therapeutics and medical botany;

Charles F. Hart, M. D., physiology and medical jurisprudence;

Zoheth Freeman, M. D., surgery and surgical practice; J. M.

Scudder, M. D., theory and practice of medicine and pathology;

R. S. Newton, M. D., clinical medicine and surgery; Edwin

Freeman, M. D., general, special and pathological anatomy; John

King, M. D., obstetrics and diseases of women and children;

A. J. Howe, M. D., demonstrative anatomy and surgery; W.

Sherwood, M. D., emeritus professor of practice and pathology.

The fees were not materially changed, the total for one term

being fifty-five dollars. At this time Dr. Kost's Materia Medica

was introduced as a text book. The following year these eclectic

books were introduced: Materia Medica, by Jones, Scudder,

et al.; Theory and Practice, by Newton Powell, et al.; and Ob-

stetrics, by King, Scudder and Beach. The fees per term now

aggregated eighty-five dollars.

In the winter of 1861 the Eclectic Dispensary of Cincinnati

was opened and patients received daily at 2:30 P. M., thus giving

students some practical instructions. The following year (1852)

the financial state of the college was marasmic and its demise

seriously threatened. At this juncture Dr. J. M. Scudder stepped

in and apparently gained a controlling interest. Having a keen

business and administrative mind, he soon had the college on its

feet and going in a prosperous manner. In fact, from this time

until his death he was such a dominant figure that the Institute

became known as "Scudder's School." It soon had the largest

enrollment of any medical college in the city and up to 1862 had

graduated 1,002 doctors.

At this time classes in all medical schools were small, prob-

ably because of young men being drafted for the war and of the

unsettled conditions because of this war. In 1863 but thirteen

were granted diplomas in the winter and nine in May. No public

• 26
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58          285

 

commencement was held but the degrees quietly conferred in the

college building. The classes gradually increased, as did the text

books by eclectic authors. In 1867 Dr. Scudder's "Principles of

Medicine" and Dr. King's "Chronic Diseases" were published.

Dr. Scudder began writing in the Eclectic Medical Journal

about "Specific Remedies" and "Specific Medication." In 1870

this series of papers was published in book form under the title

of "Specific Medication and Specific Medicines." This book had

a very marked influence on the teaching of therapy in the college,

as well as encouraging the manufacture of a standard line of

botanical medicines.

In November, 1869, fire partially destroyed the college build-

ing and arrangements were immediately made for new quarters

and classes continued uninterruptedly. Repairs were soon made

and classes resumed in the old building, as it has since been

known, until the fall of 1871, when a new building was dedicated.

This building was modern, for its time, and sufficiently com-

modious to care for the student body from that time forward.

At the dedication there was an assemblage of eclectic physicians

from over most of the United States and ceremonies held during

the greater part of the day, October 5, 1871.

There was now estimated to be over five thousand eclectic

physicians in the United States.  From  this time forward the

college ran an almost uninterrupted course, with Drs. Scudder,

King and Howe a strong trio and guides for its course. They

must have been highly esteemed by the students, as attested to by

the number of their sons bearing the given name of Scudder,

Howe or King, or some combination of these names.

The faculty of 1871 was composed of these three men and

L. E. Jones, the two Freemans and J. F. Judge. Changes from

this time were fewer. L. E. Jones was retired because of age;

Dr. J. F. Locke took the chair of Medica Materia and Thera-

peutics in the term of 1873-1874. In July, 1874, John Allard

Jaencon, M. D., of Newport, Kentucky, was appointed to the

chair of Chemistry and Physiology; he was a very able scholar

and teacher. That same year Dr. Scudder published his work of

• 27
 

286   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Specific Diagnosis. No particular changes were made either in

policy or teaching force until 1877, when, yielding to popular

prejudice, the school discontinued admitting women students.

Prior to this time about one hundred women had been graduated.

A separate department, however, was made for women and a class

of eight attended the winter session and six the spring session.

At this time they were still having three sessions a year.

In the session of 1878-1879 Professor Jaencon taught physi-

ology only and John Uri Lloyd took over the chemistry. Prior

to this time he (Lloyd) had been very highly esteemed by the

trio, King, Scudder and Howe, and through their influence allied

himself with the Eclectic Cause and the manufacture of medicines

according to their liking. Even though he had no academic

training he became one of the best known and respected chemists

and pharmacists in the United States and his renown no doubt

was a great asset to the school.

In 1879 the year's work was changed to two sessions, com-

mencing in September and ending in May. Diplomas were given

only in May and the recipients were required to have had training

in a physician's office. There was an effort made to improve the

quality of teaching and extend the time of attendance. The term

was lengthened to twenty weeks instead of sixteen and the work

intensified. Thirty-six lectures were given each week with an

additional twelve hours per week in the hospital. Dissections

were held at night.

For the following nine years no changes were made in the

personnel of the teaching staff; but during this time considerable

activity was shown in revisions and new publications of Eclectic

literature. In 1880 Dr. Jaencon began the publication of his

Anatomical Atlas, which was a classic. Lloyd's Chemistry of

Medicine appeared in 1881. Jones and Scudder's Materia Medica

and Therapeutics was revised and came out bearing only Scudder's

name. The Institute was in its most prosperous period at this

time and of the six medical schools in Cincinnati, the Eclectic

Medical Institute led in revenues to the city.

Age now began to tell on the leaders. In 1887 Dr. Scudder

• 28
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58            287

 

was forced to relinquish a part of his work to Dr. R. L. Thomas,

who eventually succeeded him in his entire work. Professor Ed-

win Freeman was forced to retire because of ill health and was

succeeded by Dr. W. E. Bloyer of Catawba, Ohio.

In 1890 a laboratory of chemistry and a physiological and

histological laboratory were added to the college. Dr. Lyman

Watkins was put in charge of the latter; he remained with the

college during the remainder of his life and filled other chairs

with credit. Professor King at this time also was forced to re-

lease part of his work to Dr. Robert C. Wintermuth of Delaware,

Ohio; during the year 1891-1892 all of his work was taken over

by Dr. Wintermuth.

In 1891 the Eclectic Medical Institute received a silver medal

and diploma appropriately worded from the Exposition Univer-

selle of France. This was conferred for a collection of catalogues

of graduates. A bound volume of Eclectic Medical Journals for

1888 and eighteen text 'books written by members of the faculty.

The display was deposited in the Bibliotheque Medicale at the

conclusion of the exposition.

January 16, 1892, saw the active duty of the trio, Scudder,

King and Howe, terminated by the death of Andrew Jackson

Howe. In 1893 Professor King passed away and 1894 saw the

demise of John M. Scudder. Among the alumni were capable

men to step into the breach and the college went smoothly on.

Dr. Locke was elected dean; a number of younger men were

added to the staff and additional courses inaugurated; Dr. Wil-

liam Byrd Scudder was given the chair of Ophthalmology and

Otolaryngology; Dr. William Mundy of Forest, Ohio, was ap-

pointed professor of Physical Diagnosis, Hygiene and Clinical

Diseases of Children. Dr. Bishop McMillan was elected profes-

sor of Nervous Diseases. A free dispensary and clinic was opened

and adequately manned.

The Institute was now leading all the Eclectic colleges in

matriculants and graduates. In May, 1895, the school year was

established as one session of eight months and matriculants after

• 29
 

288   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

September 16, 1895, were required to attend three years of lec-

tures, including in addition four years of reading medicine.

Now the following men were added to the teaching staff: Dr.

L. E. Russell of Springfield, Ohio, to teach Surgery and Oper-

ative Gynecology; and John R. Spencer of Cincinnati, to instruct

in Electro Therapeutics.

From this time forward the Institute progressed as any other

reputable medical school. The various branches of medicine and

surgery were taught in a thoroughly modern manner. The stu-

dents were admitted to clinics and lectures in the Cincinnati Gen-

eral Hospital on a par with those from other medical schools.

New members of the teaching force were drawn from the

Alumni of the Institute. The required attendance was increased

to four years. Seton Hospital, a modern, fully equipped hospital,

was made accessible to the students in 1901. Lloyds Library was

also made available. But after a few years the requirements of

modern teaching became so great that a privately conducted

school could not carry on and, with no outside help available, it

was deemed best to close the institution. After a shut down of

two years it was reopened with a younger and more enthusiastic

faculty, but this venture was only short lived, and while the char-

ter still existed until March 17, 1942, there had been no activity

in the old Institute for some time.

• 30
 

CHOLERA IN CINCINNATI

 

By E. W. MITCHELL, M.D.

 

A worldwide epidemic of cholera, beginning in far-off India

in 1826, reached Russia in 1829, England in 1831 and was brought

to this country in 1832 by immigrants landing in Quebec.

Dr. Daniel Drake, with characteristic foresight, published

early in 1832 a paper on cholera, its causes, symptomology and

its treatment. The first case in Cincinnati was that of a passen-

ger on a steamboat from Portsmouth. He had left Kingston,

Canada, nine days before. The epidemic spread in the city very

rapidly and caused great consternation. Dr. Drake estimated

that 4% of the population was destroyed in the three years--

1832, 1833 and 1834. The number of deaths in the first year

was 571; the total for three years was 831.* In his paper on the

disease, he held the view that the disease was not contagious. He

reviewed the various causes of the disease, mentioning among

others, the "animalicular," saying about it, "I think it explains

more of the facts than any other of the hypotheses." It may be

recalled that in his great work he suggests the same cause for

malaria. There followed an animated discussion as to its being

contagious. Dr. Drake contended it was not.

When it became a problem to care for the numerous orphans

left by the epidemic, benevolent ladies of the city founded the

Cincinnati Orphan Asylum with funds contributed by the Ma-

sonic Lodge and other societies. The city gave a building on the

ground which is now Lincoln Park. The asylum was later re-

moved to Mount Auburn.

A second epidemic began in 1848. The epidemic of 1832

was described by several papers in the Western Journal of the

Medical and Physical Sciences. The best description of the sec-

 

* The population of the city at that time was 30,000.

(289)

• 31
 

290   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

ond epidemic is found in two papers. One was a report read by

Dr. George Mendenhall at the annual meeting of the American

Medical Association in Charleston, S. C., in May, 1851, and later

published in their Transactions.

The other paper by Dr. Thomas Carroll was published in the

Western Lancet beginning with the June number of 1854. He

writes, "As early as December 25, 1848, patients laboring under

cholera arrived at our landing from the South and were hurried

through our midst to our Commercial Hospital. The decks of

many steamboats on the Mississippi became charnel houses at an

early period. From December 25 to January 10, fourteen cases

came from the river, there were seven or eight from the city.

There were few deaths up to May 10 when Judge John Brough,

a prominent citizen, died of the disease. This producing general

alarm and consternation. Between this date and June 15, sev-

enty-five people died." Death seemed to stare everyone in the

face. In one family, out of eight attacked, six died within ten

or twelve days. In a comparatively small house there were four-

teen deaths. In a small district in the region of Clarke and

Rittenhouse Street, sixty-nine of a population of three hundred

died. The crest of the wave was reached in July, there being on

the fourth, one hundred and thirty deaths. On the fifth, seven

more were added to this list. From May 1 to August 30 there

were four thousand one hundred and fourteen deaths from cho-

lera. The total deaths from all diseases for this period being six

thousand four hundred and fifty-nine, according to Mendenhall.

The population of the city was estimated at this time to be about

one hundred thousand.

It is not strange that there should have been a great deal of

confusion and dissatisfaction with the Board of Health and con-

troversy about method of treatment. There was quite a war

between the so-called "Regulars" and "Irregulars," pamphlets

being published by each side as well as numerous newspaper ar-

ticles. Dr. Carroll wrote about this period, "Often the alarm of

the moment was the occasion of patients being thrown in the

hands of quacks."

• 32
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58           291

 

Drs. Pulte and Ehrman, leading homeopathic practitioners,

published claims for the homeopathic treatment of one thousand

one hundred and sixteen patients (sixty to seventy of whom were

in deep collapse when coming under treatment) with only thirty-

five deaths. Dr. Latta, editor of the Methodist Expositor, after

having carried on the dispute for some time in his journal, issued

a bulletin claiming to show gross misinterpretation of the above

report. On the twenty-fourth of May, the old board of health

was displaced by a new one composed of one lawyer, one editor,

one dealer in spirits and one mechanic. The treatment employed

at the cholera hospital is described by Dr. Mendenhall as follows:

"Calomel in 1/₂-dram doses with three drams of camphor every

half-hour; after second half-hour, camphor given with brandy,

the calomel given three to five time only; cataplasm of mustard

applied over the abdomen as long as the patient could endure it,

with emplastrum cantharides as a substitute; cramps relieved by

friction with flannel wrung out of oil of turpentine; warmth re-

stored to extremities by putting lumps of lime in a stone pot,

water poured over the lime and the pot placed between the pa-

tient's feet which were enveloped in a blanket. In the most se-

vere cases in addition to the calomel, unguentun hydrargyri was

applied externally. Opium was given guardedly. This does not

differ greatly from the treatment of 1832, although bleeding is

less frequently mentioned. Dr. Drake's dose of calomel was 20

to 60 grains and was "Always required." The homeopaths gave

camphor in small doses frequently repeated. The Eclectic Medi-

cal Journal (February, 1849) advised opium, cordial stimulants,

perspiration induced by external heat, mild warm diluent drinks

given freely.

The epidemic in 1866 was milder in degree and less exten-

sive in this country than the two preceding epidemics. It also

came from the South and in the Lancet and Observer, September,

1866, Dr. Carroll described the disease as it occurred in Cincin-

nati. The invasion began about the last of July and reached its

height in August. There being on the fifth ninety deaths, the

greatest number for any one day. In the treatment one finds that

• 33
 

292   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

calomel was still given but instead of half-dram doses, one or

perhaps five grains was the dosage. Dr. Carroll's treatment of

the epidemic was as follows: In the first stage calomel--five

grains, opium--I grain at bedtime, followed the next morning by

castor oil or rhubarb. After the bowels had moved bluepill--five

grains at bedtime every night or every other night with one-fourth

grain of opium. After the irritation of the stomach and bowels

subsided the patient was put upon the Compound Tincture of

Bark and Brandy t. i. d. When the patient was first seen in the

second stage, five grains of calomel with 1/2 grain of opium every

ten minutes until twenty and two grains respectively had been

taken. With each dose a teaspoonful of brandy was to be given.

Other practitioners gave small doses of calomel frequently re-

peated and various combinations of capsicum, piperine, bismuth

and tannin. Most physicians used opium, though some objected

to it. On August 16, Mercy Hospital was opened for the care of

cholera patients and closed September 1. Dr. David Judkins was

chairman of the committee in charge. Dr. George Courtright

served as attending physician. Fifty patients were treated in this

hospital with twenty-five deaths. Professor Roberts Bartholow

published an interesting paper in the Lancet and Observer (1866,

p. 652) entitled "Observations Pathological and Experimental,

in Cholera." He reported a number of experiments on dogs with

rather indefinite results. The laboratory era had begun. As

routine treatment Dr. Bartholow advised a prescription as fol-

lows: Dilute sulphuric acid two drams, Tincture of Opii Camph.

six drams, Aquae Camphorae one ounce--a teaspoonful every

fifteen minutes to one hour.

The number of deaths during this epidemic was 2,028. A

smaller number relative to the population than in the preceding

epidemic. The disease last visited Cincinnati in 1873. The epi-

demic was less extensive and less fatal than any of the preceding.

The number of deaths reported in the United States was 7,336.

In Ohio 740 deaths, in Cincinnati 207. The epidemic was most

severe in the Mississippi Valley. In 1874 Dr. J. J. Quinn, health

officer, published a report of 82 pages with maps and charts (pre-

• 34
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58           293

viously read to the Academy of Medicine). At the first session

of the forty-third Congress a resolution was passed and approved

by the President on March 25, 1874, "Whereas an epidemic of

cholera had prevailed during 1873 in various parts of the United

States causing deplorable mortality it was ordered that a medical

officer of the army in connection with the supervising surgeon of

the Marine Hospital service, should ascertain the facts and make

a detailed report on or before Jan. 1, 1875." This work was

carried on under Asst. Surgeon Ely McClellan and Dr. John M.

Woodworth, supervising surgeon of the Marine Hospital service.

The exhaustive report covered 1000 pages. Dr. John S. Billings

contributed a full bibliography of cholera up to that date. Dr.

William Clendenin, late health officer of Cincinnati, contributed a

report on the epidemic in Cincinnati. This report with recom-

mendation had so great an influence in improving sanitary and

quarantine administration that the disease has never gained a

foothold in this country since 1873. During this time and includ-

ing 1873, much was written about meterologic and geologic con-

ditions, overcrowding, bad food and various other causes. In

1850 many observers drew attention to water as a means of con-

veying the disease. By 1873 contamination of the water supplies

was generally recognized as a source of infection and the belief in

its bacterial origin common among advanced thinkers. Koch's

announcement of the discovery of the causative organism came

in 1884.

• 35
 

DENTAL EDUCATION IN OHIO

1838-1858

 

By EDWARD C. MILLS, D.D.S.

 

With the unprecedented tide of immigration to Ohio during

the early decades of the nineteenth century came the physician as

a necessary adjunct to the widely scattered communities for the

preservation of health and the consequent prosperity of those

sturdy pioneers. His praises have been largely unsung because,

in addition to his administrations to the medical needs of the

community, his attention was necessarily also given to dental ail-

ments, and in the absence of a representative of the ministry, he

offered moral and spiritual consolation in times of distress.

Later came the dentist, whose practice was of an itinerate

nature, due to a scattered population, and continued as such until

the growth of towns justified a permanent location. Many of

these dentists had been medically trained, and--fortunately for

dentistry--had adopted dentistry as a calling in preference to

medicine.

There was no school for dental instruction throughout the

whole world and anyone desirous of becoming a dentist was

usually superficially taught by some practitioner whose own abil-

ity, as a general rule, was of questionable quality. Nor was this

knowledge to be gratuitous; such secrets as the practitioners pos-

sessed were safeguarded, and to those who sought advice, these

were only imparted for a consideration. This preceptor-student

relationship was popular, previous to the establishment of the

dental school, and, even after such an institution was legally

chartered, it was recognized to the extent that one or two years

under a preceptor of established ability was accepted as an equiv-

alent to one year of college instruction. It is a matter of record

that some dentists of recognized ability did not take so kindly to

(294)

• 36
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58            295

 

the advent of the dental college since they were satisfied with a

preceptor's fee and the work the student was obliged to do for

them during his pupilage. The spirit of secretiveness in dental

principles and practice continued as late as the advent of the first

dental journal in 1839. When the American Journal of Dental

Science was in embryo, no less a personage than Dr. Horace H.

Hayden of Baltimore found fault with the enterprise, alleging

that he "had labored too hard and too long in the acquisition of

professional knowledge to sow it broadcast through the land by

means of a magazine."

The spirit of selfishness was doomed by the events that were

to follow in the advent of the dental journal, the organization of

dental societies and the college--which followed each other in

rapid succession (1839-1840).

The first semblance of a school where instruction was given

in dentistry, was at Bainbridge, Ohio. Dr. John Harris, formerly

of Madison (now Madisonville), Ohio, a practitioner of medicine

until 1820, and of medicine and dentistry from 1820 until as late

as 1830, here conducted a school of medical instruction between

1825 and 1830.1

In this primitive school the necessity for a medico-dental

education, and how it could be secured, was discussed by John

Harris and two of his pupils, his brother, Chapin A. Harris, and

James Taylor. The idea at first was to have a dental department

as an adjunct to a medical college, but this did not meet with full

favor. Chapin A. Harris, founder of the Baltimore College, how-

ever attempted the plan, but without success; he did organize the

school in 1840--the first dental college in the world--as a separate

institution. In this connection, attention should be called to an

unauthoritative and misleading statement in a recent catalogue

of the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, to-wit: "In 1831

Dr. Chapin A. Harris came to Baltimore to study under Hayden.

Dr. Harris was a man of unusual ability, and possessed special

qualifications . . . etc." The author of this statement no doubt

knew that Dr. Harris located in Baltimore in 1835, and also where

1 Journal of the American Dental Association (Chicago), XIX (1932), 363-89;

Dental Items of Interest (New York), LXIII (1941), 517-36.

• 37
 

296    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Dr. Harris had received his early dental instruction; also that he

had practiced dentistry at Bloomfield, Ohio, and Fredericksburg,

Virginia, before going to Baltimore. Taking the above state-

ment at face value, Harris surely proved an exceedingly apt

student--indeed a peer to his so-called teacher, because in 1839--

four years after locating in Baltimore--he published The Dental

Art, which, by 1898, had passed through thirteen editions as

Principles and Practice of Dental Surgery; he was also founder

and editor of the American Journal of Dental Science, in 1839 and

author of the first Dental Dictionary, in 1849

To James Taylor fell the distinction of founding the second

dental college at Cincinnati in 1845, and his efforts to have it as a

separate department in a medical college (The Ohio Medical Col-

lege), was fortunately a failure, as will be shown below. Within

the past two years, an attempt has been made to deprive Dr. Tay-

lor of this honor, but the evidence here presented was published

during the lifetime of some of the people mentioned, and there

is no evidence of any dissension of opinion among his contempor-

aries.

In an article lauding the work and qualifications of B. P.

Aydelotte, M. D., D. D., one of the founders and the first president

of the Ohio College of Dental Surgery, which was published in

the Dental Register (Cincinnati, Ohio, January, 1870, pages 9-12,

edited by Drs. J. Taft and James Watt), reference is made to the

difficulty of establishing the institution referred to above:

No funds, no buildings, no apparatus, and with but few competent

teachers. However, through patience, labor, and anxiety, which en-

dured year after year, success crowned their perseverance. . . . the

happy result was mainly owing, under divine blessing, to the faith-

ful cooperation of two of the original professors--Dr. James Taylor

and Dr. Melancthon Rogers, especially to the strong common sense,

the forbearance, and the practical wisdom of the former. Dr. Taylor

has clung to the institution with a hopeful spirit, and unflagging energy

in every trial until now it has hosts of friends and a position among

the best medical schools in the country.

Our readers, we doubt not, will peruse with pleasure, the following

very brief sketch of facts by Prof. James Taylor, and equally con-

fident are we that they will regard the want of success which Dr.

• 38
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58                   297

 

Taylor and his associates met with, on their application to the Faculty

of the Ohio Medical College, as a most happy, providential dis-

appointment. A mere professorship appended to the faculty of an-

other college, would have been of little benefit and must have been

short lived.  While thankful then to these early friends of Dental

Science, and the Dental Profession, both they and we have ample

reason to be satisfied with the result.

A quotation from Dr. James Taylor explains:

After one or two interviews with some two or three members of

the Faculty of the Medical College of Ohio, with reference to a Chair

of Practical Dentistry attached to their school, and which was thought

impracticable, I first called on Dr. Rogers and opened up the subject to

him, after which we called on Dr. Cook, and we then secured the

charter,--Dr. Rogers and Dr. Cook both going to Columbus for that

purpose. These are the more secret facts of our early organization.

and I have never until now felt disposed to publish them, feeling that

it was unnecessary.

Dr. Archibald Berry, a member of the first class to graduate

from the Ohio College of Dental Surgery, published in the Dental

Register, XXXVI (1882), 186, the following under the caption

of "Founding of the Ohio College of Dental Surgery":

About four years ago (1878) the writer interviewed Dr. Rogers on

the origin of the Ohio College of Dental Surgery. He said: "Drs.

Taylor and Cook came to my office and spoke to me on the subject of

getting up a dental college. We talked the matter over, prepared a

charter, and Dr. Cook went to Columbus and got a Bill of Incorpora-

tion through the lower house. When it was time for it to come before

the Senate approached, I went to Columbus to attend to it, and met

Dr. Allen² who was there two days before me. The other dentists of

the city (Cincinnati) had not been consulted in regard to the college,

and they sent Dr. Allen to work against it. Their chief objection was

that the charter did not provide for a board of trustees and the college

was to be controlled by the professors. Dr. Allen and I called on the

chairman of the Senate Committee having charge of the Bill, and he

said, "Gentlemen, agree between yourselves concerning the charter,

and let me know."

Dr. Allen is a gentleman, and we had no difficulty in arranging

the matter. We altered the charter to have a board of trustees and I

had the nominating of the first member of it who would be the presi-

dent, and named Dr. Aydelotte, a friend of mine.

2 John Allen (1810-1902) was also a student of Dr. John Harris at Bainbridge. He

located in Cincinnati where he remained until 1854, when he moved to New York

City. He was a pioneer in Porcelain Dental Art.

• 39
 

298   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

We called again on the chairman, who said to us: "Gentlemen,

you may go home; I will see that the Bill passes." It was passed with-

out any objection. (Laws of Ohio, 43rd General Assembly, Vol.

43, 1844-45).

A building, previously occupied for educational purposes on

College St., was rented and the college opened in the autumn

of 1845.

It is important that some concept be had of the conditions

in Ohio previous to the organization of the Ohio College of Dental

Surgery. The practice of medicine prior to 1811, was unre-

stricted, when the Legislature established districts in each of

which was a Board of Examiners for the purpose of examining

candidates for the practice of "physic, midwifery and surgery."

The first medical school was founded in 1819 as the Medical

College of Ohio, in Cincinnati; this institution in 1833 merged

with the Miami Medical College, becoming the Medical Depart-

ment of the University of Cincinnati. Reference has been made

to this school in regard to founding the Ohio College of Dental

Surgery.

It may be of interest to present at this time the individuals

responsible for the organization and founding of this--the Second

Dental College in the world. James Taylor (1809-1881), Bain-

bridge, received his dental education while a student of Dr. John

Harris in his School of Medical Instruction at Bainbridge, Ohio,

and practiced medicine and dentistry there. He matriculated at

the Transylvania College of Lexington, Kentucky, in the session

of 1830-1831, giving as his preceptor, Dr. John Harris. Dr. Tay-

lor attended one year--but in 1846 an honorary M. D. degree was

conferred upon him. For several years Dr. Taylor was an itiner-

ant between the North and South, and in 1834 devoted himself

wholly to dentistry, later locating permanently in Cincinnati. Pre-

vious to the founding of the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery

by Dr. Chapin A. Harris in 1840 (who had also been a student

under his brother, Dr. John Harris of Bainbridge), Chapin Harris

requested the assistance of Dr. Taylor as a teacher in the proposed

college; this Taylor refused, as he had determined to reside

permanently in Cincinnati, and at that time was considering es-

• 40
 

OHIO    MEDICAL     HISTORY, 1835-58                      299

 

tablishing a dental college in that city. Dr. James Taylor later

became one of the organizers of the Mississippi Valley Dental

Association of Dental Surgeons, editor of the Dental Register,

and a contributor to dental literature.

Melancthon Rogers located in Cincinnati in the practice of

medicine, but fortunately some cases of dental origin turned his

attention to dentistry. He, also, was one of the organizers of the

Mississippi Valley Dental Association of Dental Surgeons. Dr.

Rogers was the first president of the Cincinnati Dental Society

in 1844. He was born in Long Island, New York, August 1,

1796, and died at Covington, Kentucky, June 25, 1880.3

Jesse W. Cook was another charter member of the Missis-

sippi Valley Association of Dental Surgeons, and was its first

president in 1844.

The Act previously referred to, is given below in its entirety:

SECOND DENTAL COLLEGE IN THE WORLD

The Ohio College of Dental Surgery was the second dental college

and was the result of the efforts of Dr. James Taylor. It was chartered

under the Laws of Ohio, Forty-third General Assembly, Volume 43, for

1844-45.

AN ACT

To authorize the establishment of a College of Dental Surgery.

Section 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Ohio, That

B. P. Aydelotte, Robert Buchanon, Dr. Israel M. Dodge^. William Johnson, J. P.

Cornell and Calvin Fletcher, of Cincinnati, Dr. S. P. Hildreth, of Marietta, Dr.

G. S. P. Hempstead, of Portsmouth, and Dr. Samuel Martin, of Xenia, and their

successors, are hereby constituted and appointed a board of trustees, with power to

establish a College of Dental Surgery, in the city of Cincinnati; and said board is

hereby declared to be a body corporate and politic, with perpetual succession, and shall

be known by the name and style of the Trustees of the Ohio College of Dental

Surgery, and the said board shall have power to acquire, hold and convey property

for the endowment of said college; to sue and be sued, contract and be contracted

with, plead and be impleaded, defend and be defended, answer and be answered unto,

in all courts and places, and in all matters and causes whatsoever; provided that no

part of the estate, either real or personal, which said corporation may, at any time,

acquire, shall be employed in the business of banking or for any other purpose than

that designated by this act; and provided, also, that the revenues arising from the

property which said incorporation shall be permitted to hold, for the purpose above

specified, shall not exceed the sum of five thousand dollars per annum.

Sec. 2. That the said incorporation may have a common seal, which may be

altered, broken, or renewed, at pleasure.

Sec. 3. That the officers of said incorporation shall be a president, vice-president,

register and treasurer, who shall be elected annually, by said board of trustees at such

time and in such manner as the said board may direct, and shall hold their offices

until their successors are chosen.

Sec. 4. That the trustees of the aforesaid incorporation shall have full power to

create and establish such professorships as they may deem necessary for said College,

and that they may at any time, appoint or dismiss all such professors or lecturers as

they may think proper, also to make and ordain such by-laws, rules and regulations as

3 Obituary in Dental Cosmos (Philadelphia), XXII (1880), 439.

• 41
 

300     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

they may deem necessary for the government and well being of said College; provided

that such by-laws rules and regulations are not in consistant with the constitution and

laws of this state and of the United States; and provided, also, that no branches of

medical science shall be taught except those necessary to dental surgery [.]

Sec. 5. That all vacancies which may occur from death, resignation, or otherwise,

in the board of trustees of the aforesaid incorporation, shall be filled by the remaining

members of said board.

Sec. 6. That the said board of trustees shall have power and are hereby author-

ized to confer the degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery, and grant diplomas for the

same, under the seal of the incorporation; provided that no diploma thus granted shall

confer any privilege farther than the practice of dental surgery.

Sec. 7. That the said corporation shall be subject to all the regulations and lia-

bilities of an act instituting proceedings against corporations not possessing banking

powers, and to provide for the regulation of corporations generally, passed March

seventh, one thousand eight hundred and forty-two.

Sec. 8. This act shall take effect from and after its passage.

JOHN M. GALLAGHER, Speaker of the House of Representatives.

DAVID CHAMBERS, Speaker of the Senate.

Upon the death of J. P. Cornell (born, Jefferson Co., O., Jan.

12, 1812; died, Cinn., O., Jan. 14, 1849) the vacancy on the Board

of Trustees was filled by the appointment of Dr. Edward Taylor,

brother of Dr. James Taylor.

The Trustees mentioned in this Act met early in the spring

of 1845 and organized the second dental college. Rev. B. P.

Aydelotte, M. D., D. D. (born, Phila., Pa., Jan. 7, 1795; died,

Cinn., O., Sept. 10, 1880), was made president, Israel M. Dodge,

M. D. (born, Waterford, Conn., Oct. 6, 1807; died, Cinn., O.,

March 1, 1872), was chosen as secretary, with the departments

and professors, as follows:

Jesse W. Cook, M. D., D. D. S. Professor of Anatomy and

Physiology.

James Taylor, D. D. S. Professor of Practical Dentistry

and Pharmacy (Including the Operative and Mechanical Depts.).

Melancthon Rogers, M. D., D. D. S.  Professor of Dental

Pathology and Therapeutics.

Jesse P. Judkins, M. D. (born, O., June 1, 1815; died, Cinn.,

O., Dec. 6, 1867. A prominent anatomist and physician of Cin-

cinnati), Demonstrator of Anatomy.

The location of the college was in a building on College

Street, between Sixth and Seventh Streets, built by one John B.

Talbot, an educator, which to some extent met the needs of the

college at that time.

Dr. Jesse W. Cook, who had been elected Dean, issued the

first "Annual Announcement" or catalog, as follows:

• 42
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58                   301

 

Ohio College of Dental Surgery, in Cincinnati, First Session, 1845-1846.

A liberal charter has been granted by the legislature of this state, to

establish a college in Cincinnati, with the above title.

The government of the institution is placed in the hands of the follow-

ing board of trustees:

B. P. Aydelott, D.D., President.

Israel M. Dodge, M.D., Secretary.

Robert Buchanan.

Calvin Fletcher.

William Johnson.

J. P. Cornell of Cincinnati.

G. S. B. Hempstead, M.D., of Portsmouth.

Samuel Martin, M.D., of Xenia.

James P. Hildreth, M.D., of Marietta.

Faculty.

JESSE W. COOK, M.D., D.D.S.,

Professor of Dental Anatomy and Physiology.

MELANCTHON ROGERS, M.D., D.D.S.,

Professor of Dental Pathology and Therapeutics.

DR. JAMES TAYLOR, D.D.S.,

Professor of Practical Dentistry and Pharmacy.

Arrangements are in progress for the chemical chair, which will secure

a thorough course in that department.

The first session of lectures in the institution will commence on the

first Monday of November, and continue four months.

Terms of Admission.

The matriculating ticket will be $5.00. The ticket of each professor

for the session will be $25.00. Dissecting ticket (optional) $10.00.

Diploma fee, $25.00. The fees for a full course will be $100.00 (ex-

clusive of the diploma fee) to be paid in advance.

Graduation.

Candidates for graduation will be required to have attended two full

courses of lectures, the last of which shall have been in this institution.

A full course of lectures in the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery,

or a full course in a regular medical college, will be acknowledged as an

equivalent to a course in this institution. The candidate must be twenty-

one years of age, of good moral character, and have studied the profession

two years with a reputable practictioner in dentistry.

A regular student of medicine, who has studied one year or more, and

has taken a full course of lectures in a regular medical college, may be a

candidate, after studying dentistry one year with a reportable practitioner,

and taking one full course of lectures in this institution.

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302    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

A reputable practitioner in dentistry who has been four years or more

in practice, shall be entitled to an examination for a degree after attending

one full course in this college.

Each candidate will be required to present and defend before the

faculty, a written thesis on some subject relating to dental science, and be

subject to a critical examination upon the theory and practice of dentistry.

 

Anatomy and Physiology.

General and descriptive anatomy will be taught, in all its relations to

dental surgery, by demonstrations on the subject, drawings and preparations.

Physiological remarks will be made in connection with anatomical

demonstrations, so as to give to the latter additional weight and interest.

Anatomy, thus united with physiology, is here, as in medicine, the only

groundwork of a correct dental education.

We are thus enabled to understand something of the translation of

disease from one organ to another; to trace the effects of obstructed den-

tition to every sensible fibre and to understand, also, the reason why artificial

operations in mechanical dentistry so frequently fail.

That the dental student may have every opportunity of acquiring a

thorough knowledge of anatomy, arrangements have been made with J. P.

Judkins, M. D., as demonstrator in the dissecting-room (which office he

has held for the last six years in the Ohio Medical College.)

Independent of his regular anatomical demonstrations for this institu-

tion, Dr. Judkins we understand, will deliver a private course of lectures on

descriptive and surgical anatomy, to which the students of this college,

who take the demonstrator's ticket, will be admitted without additional

charge.

Dental Pathology and Therapeutics.

It will be the province of this chair,

1st. To present a course of instruction upon the elementary principles

of surgery with such reference to general medicine as will enable the stu-

dent to investigate the phenomena of diseases and appreciate their in-

fluences, directly and indirectly, upon the diseases of the mouth and teeth.

To attend profitably this part of the course, it is essential that the

student shall have carefully read some of the standard elementary works

upon general surgery and practical medicine; as most of the works on

dentistry pre-suppose the student to have a knowledge of the general prin-

ciples of medical science.

2nd. To give a systematic course upon the diseases of the mouth and

teeth, and the parts most intimately connected with them, embracing a

critical investigation into their causes, as well as the nature and application

of the modes of cure. For this part of the course the student should have

previously studied our best standard works on dental surgery.

• 44
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58                   303

 

Practical Dentistry.

Every effort will be made to advance the student in this department of

dental science. All the various operations will be performed before the

class, and each student required to go through with all the manipulations

of mechanical, as well as operative dentistry. Arrangements are being

made which will give superior advantages for the acquisition of this part

of the profession.

Practical knowledge, so important to the dentist, should, in all cases,

be obtained before assuming the responsible duties of a practitioner. In

dental offices, but limited opportunity for acquiring such knowledge is gen-

erally afforded. To meet this difficulty and present to the dental student an

opportunity for a thorough medico-dental education, is the great object in

the establishment of our institution. It is therefore intended that each stu-

dent who pursues a regular course in the Ohio College of Dental Surgery,

shall be enabled on leaving, to manufacture the teeth he requires for use,

(particularly block teeth) and also have some experience in the practical

part of his profession.

Pharmacy

When we take into consideration the fact, that disease of the dental

organs is generally induced by some chemical agent, the study of dental

pharmacy assumes a magnitude but little appreciated in general practice.

Such a course of lectures will be delivered on this subject as will enable the

student to avoid the use of all improper and pernicious articles, in the

various pharmaceutic preparations necessary to be used in practice; and,

at the same time, direct the attention to such remedies as will remove, as

far as possible, the proximate cause of disease.

The faculty of the Ohio College of Dental Surgery, in issuing this,

their first announcement, do it with feelings of deep responsibility.

The establishment of a new institution for the diffusion of scientific

knowledge even under the most favorable auspices, is an undertaking of no

small magnitude.

Every year makes it more and more, apparent that some standard of

dental attainment should be adopted--an intelligent public now require this.

They feel that the continued impositions practised by the ignorant pretender

need a remedy. The time has past, and we hope forever, when a little

mechanical tack shall be considered sufficient to guide the dentist in his

operations. There is no branch of operative surgery which demands more

general knowledge. The student should continually bear in mind that his

services will be required on a part of the general organization, the least de-

rangement of which exerts an injurious effect on the whole of the system.

Daily observation verifies the fact that those who have most thoroughly

studied dentistry, as a science, and have devoted most time and labor in

preparing for its practice, never fail to be sustained by an enlightened

public.

• 45
 

304    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

The monumental city in the east, and the queen city in the west, now

claim the only dental colleges in the world--both are regularly chartered in-

stitutions, possessing full power to give instruction, confer degrees, etc.

Their object is to secure the elevation of the dental profession and the re-

lief of human suffering. It is with pleasure we can point to the east, and say,

"The dawn of a better day" has opened upon us. We respectfully ask the

profession of the west and a liberal public, if this light shall not be re-

flected ?

The intelligent of the dental, as well as of the medical profession, have

been looking forward to the establishment of such an institution in the

west, as one which the rapidly increasing population of this valley urgently

demands. Every year adds more and more to the number engaged in prac-

tice, and each year, as the science keeps on in improvement,--its im-

portance is raised in the estimation of the public; soon thousands instead

of hundreds will be required in this department:--need we ask those who

really feel an interest in its advancement, shall they be such as a confiding

public may look to with safety for relief?

JESSE W. COOK, Dean.

For the session of 1845-1846 the total number of students

was twenty-one, of whom eleven were from Ohio, five from Ken-

tucky, two from Indiana, one from New York, one from Missis-

sippi and one from Arkansas. The number of graduates were

six: Archibald Berry, C. P. Van Houton, B. A. Satterthwait, Wil-

liam B. Ross, John Jones and David P. Hunt.

 

SECTORI SALUTEM

IN DOMINO

Nos. Collegii Chirurgiae Dentium Ohiensis Curatores Professoresque,

hoc scripto testari volumus BARCLAY A. SATTERTHWAIT, postquam se suosque

progressus in Chirurgia Dentium probasset, e nobis titulum  gradumque

Chirurgiae Dentium Doctoris consecutum esse, et ei fruenda concessa emnia

privilegia honores immunitates atqua jura quae hic aut usquam ad hunc

gradum concedi solent.

Cujus rei quo major esset fides Nos. Sigillo communi appenso, chiro-

grapha apposuimus in Urbe Cincinnatis die vicesimo septimo Mensis

Februarie Anno Salutis humanae MDCCCXLVI atque Republicae Septuagesimo.

B. P. Aydelotte, D.D., Curatorum Praeres.

I. M. Dodge, M.D., Curatorum Scriba.

Jesse W. Cook. M.D., D.D.S., Anaty. and Phys. Profr.

Dr. James Taylor, D.D.S., Pract. Dentistry and Pharmacy Profr.

Melancthon Rogers, M.D., D.D.S., Dental Pathology and Therapeutics Profr.

Each graduate was presented with a copy of the Holy Bible,

a custom which prevailed for many years.

• 46
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58                    305

 

The building occupied by the college was leased for a term

of ten years, with the privilege of purchasing it during that period.

Through the efforts of Dr. James Taylor, plans were made to pur-

chase the building through issuing shares of stock to members

of the profession, and such others who were friendly to the pro-

ject. With the November session in 1851, the building was owned

by the profession with some encumbrance.  On February  19,

1852, the stockholders held their first annual meeting and the Ohio

Dental College Association was organized and for its government

adopted the following Constitution:

PREAMBLE

The stockholders and alumni of the Ohio College of Dental Surgery,

believing that the interests of dental science require a more thorough course

of dental instruction than has heretofore usually been afforded and that this

can be best accomplished by institutions devoted expressly to this object, and

that associations entered into with the proper spirit must afford increased

facilities for our mutual improvement, and for the promotion of dental

science, and that to further the views of those who have already engaged in

the enterprise of permanently founding the Ohio College of Dental Sur-

gery; therefore, for the promotion of these objects, and all such others as

may conduce to the advance of our science, we adopt the following:

Constitution

Article I. This society shall be called the Ohio Dental College Asso-

ciation.

Article II. The officers of this association shall consist of a presi-

dent, two vice presidents, a secretary, a treasurer, and an examining com-

mittee of five; three from the dental and two from the medical profession,

who shall be chosen by ballot at each Annual meeting of the Association

and who shall perform such duties as usually pertain to their respective of-

fices.

Article III. The members of the association shall consist of two

classes:  1. The holders of stock in the Ohio Dental College; 2. All

graduates of the institution may become members on receiving a vote of

two-thirds of the members present signing the constitution and obliging

themselves to pay annually into the treasury a sum equal to the interest on

one share of stock.

Article IV. Any member may be expelled by a vote of two-thirds

of the members present, for immoral or unprofessional conduct.

Section 1. No expelled member shall have any of his annual con-

tributions refunded but if he is a stockholder he may sell his stock,

always giving the association the first privilege as purchaser.

• 47
 

306    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Section 2. Stock may be sold or transferred but the purchaser

shall not be entitled to membership except by a vote of two-thirds of

the members present at any annual meeting.

Section 3. The purchase of a share of stock shall not entitle the

holder to membership unless he shall receive a vote of two-thirds of

the members present.

Article V. The meetings of the Association shall be held annually in

the Ohio Dental College in Cincinnati, at 10:00 o'clock A. M. of the day pre-

ceding the annual commencement, and the president may call a meeting

when requested by five members, and in all meetings it shall require thirteen

to form a quorum.

Article VI. In all matters relating to the property held by the associa-

tion, each stockholder shall have as many votes as he may have shares of

stock, and in case of unavoidable absence, he may vote by proxy.

Article VII. The constitution may be altered or amended by a vote

of two-thirds present at any annual meeting, except such change as would

affect the shares of stock: which amendment must be proposed at one

annual meeting, and acted on at the next.

Eighteen members were present and signed the constitution;

eleven were represented by proxy. The election of officers re-

sulted as follows: President, James Taylor; First Vice-Presi-

dent, W. M. Wright; Second Vice-President, Thomas Wood;

Secretary, Charles Bonsall; Treasurer, Edward Taylor. This as-

sociation, thus organized, assumed control of the affairs of the col-

lege both educational and financial. Members of the Faculty and

the Board of Trustees being selected by it.

Prior to 1852, an organization to become a corporate body,

required a special Act of the Legislature. From that period until

1879, the body could incorporate by filing in its home county; and

since the latter date, it is a matter within the province of the office

of the Secretary of State.

In this connection, it may be of interest that about the time

of the organization of the Ohio Dental Association the Legislature

passed an Act to enable the trustees of colleges, academies, uni-

versities and other institutions for the purpose of promoting

education to become bodies corporate.

Passed April 9, 1852, 50, Ohio Laws, 128, Section 8, provides

for old institutions to come under the provisions of this Act, by

complying with the requsitions therein contained:

• 48
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58                 307

 

When any number of persons have procured funds for establishing and

sustaining an academy, such persons may adopt a corporate name, and

enter the same in the recorder's office of the proper county, and proceed

to the election of such officers or teachers as may be necessary.

Section 9 of the above Act: Any company formed in pursuance with

this Act may increase its capital stock in the following manner:

The Directors shall make out and sign a certificate in which shall be

set forth the amount to which said capital stock is to be increased and the

object: which certificate shall be deposited in the office of the recorder of

the proper county, and by him recorded in the same manner as the articles

of association and corporate names are by this Act required to be recorded.

By the privilege of purchase, provided for in the lease, the

original building was acquired for the sum of approximately

$5,200 and the session of 1851-1852 was held in the now owned

property. Plans and cost of improving the newly acquired build-

ing, were presented by a committee previously appointed, but a

desire to postpone action for another year, was evident. The com-

mittee was authorized, however, to make minor changes--cost not

to exceed the amount of money in the treasury.

During the session of 1853-1854, the original building not

meeting the requirements of the college, it was decided to erect a

new building on the site of the old. At the meeting of February

20, 1854, in order to raise more funds, the trustees were author-

ized to increase the number of shares of stock from 38 to 50. By

a resolution, they were also authorized to execute a mortgage on

the new college. The building committee consisted of Drs. James

Taylor, Bonsall and Berry, and were authorized to proceed with

the building, the cost not to exceed $5,000.

At a meeting of February 19, 1855, the building committee,

reported that the plans and proposals presented at the last meeting

were postponed for a few weeks, to ascertain the additional cost

of a stone front as had been suggested. By that time, as material

and labor had advanced in price, the proposals before them, were

withdrawn. With the new plan and specifications, new bids were

asked. The lowest and most reliable was selected, and a contract

made for the present building. This contract amounted to $5,400,

and someone to superintend the erection was to be paid $100.

Expenses in connection with a dissecting room and vault amounted

• 49
 

308   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

to $145.75. The committee advised that they had means to meet

their engagements up to April I, when the amount for $3,000 due

Messrs. Taylor and Talbot would have to be paid; also $1,723.83

of borrowed money. They had an arrangement made for $4,000

promised at that time on a mortgage of five years at 10% plus

taxes.

Although forming the organization into a corporate body

seemed to place it in an auspicious condition, its voyage was not

to be over placid waters, as breakers were to appear which had

to be overcome, especially in the financing of the new building.

The committee which was appointed, reported at a meeting

on February 18, 1856, that they had been unable to secure a mort-

gage loan of $4,000 at 10%, and this forced them to pay a heavier

rate of interest on the $3,000 due Messrs. Taylor & Talbot. This

report showed an indebtedness of the above amount with interest

of $334.94; $1,723.83 was borrowed with interest of $310.27,

making a total of $5,369.04. Deducting receipts, rents, etc. of

$1,088.46, left a balance of $4,280.58 due April 1, 1857.

The report for February, 1857, showed, in addition to the

$4,280.58--interest, fees for certificates of stock, etc. of $653.20--

or a total of $4,973.78. Two mortgages had been negotiated, one

for $3,000 for five years, interest payable annually at a rate of

1O%; another for $1,000 on the same basis and rate. These mort-

gages, plus receipts for rent, stock, etc. amounted to $4,774.40.

Deducting this amount from the indebtedness, showed a balance to

be met of $199.38.

Dr. Taylor, in presenting this report, stated that "the associ-

ation can point with pride to this edifice as a part of its own work,

and may, with just feelings of pride, say that no other Dental

Society can show such evidence of zeal in laying broad the foun-

dations of Dental Science." He also called attention to the fact

that in 1852, it was resolved that the stockholders allow all moneys

accruing from interest on stock, admission of members and other

sources, to be appropriated for the next three years for repairs

and improvements on the college building; in 1853, that time as

above resolved, was extended to six years; in February, 1861, they

• 50
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58           309

again relinquished interest on their stock for a period of three

years. The stock bore interest at 6%, which the faculty paid as

rent, and which was appropriated to liquidate the debt incurred in

the erection of the building. It was urged that graduates of the

school join the association as they were required to pay--as dues

--6% of what constituted a share of stock.

During the period covered by this paper the chairs were

filled chronologically as follows:

Deans--

1845 Jesse W. Cook, M. D., D. D. S.

Feb., 1846 Melancthon Rogers, M. D., D. D. S.

Feb., 1847 James Taylor, M. D., D. D. S. Dr. Taylor held

over without reelection until Feb., 1855 when he was re-

elected; at the close of the 1855-1856 session he declined

reelection and in Feb., 1856 George Watt, M. D., D. D. S.,

was elected.

Feb., 1858 Jonathan Taft, M. D., D. D. S., was elected; he

was succeeded by James Taylor, and he in turn by Jonathan

Taft who continued as dean until 1878 when he was suc-

ceeded by Henry A. Smith, A. M., D. D. S., who continued

as dean until death in 1913.

Dental Anatomy and Physiology

1845 Jesse W. Cook, resigned October 1847; 1847 J. F. Por-

ter, M. D., resigned Feb., 1848; 1848 Prof. John T. Shot-

well, resigned Feb., 1850; 1850 Thomas Wood, M. D., re-

signed Feb., 1855; 1855 C. B. Chapman, who was suc-

ceeded by Charles Kearns, M. D.

Dental Pathology and Therapeutics

1845 Melanchthon Rogers, resigned Feb., 1848; 1848 George

Mendenhall, M. D., resigned 1853; 1853 J. B. Smith, M. D.,

who was succeeded by George Watt, M. D.

Practical Dentistry and Pharmacy

1845 James Taylor, M. D.

In 1851 this chair became that of Principles and Practice

of Dental Surgery, and in 1855 changed to Institutes of

• 51
 

310   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Dental Science and assigned to James Taylor who had been

incumbent of this department since 1845.

Demonstrator of Anatomy

1845 Jesse P. Judkins, M. D., resigned October, 1847

Chemistry

1846 Elijah Slack, M. D., said to be the first lecturer on this

science for dental students; 1848 Charles H. Raymond, re-

signed Dec., 1850; 1851 G. L. Van Emen, D. D. S., lecturer

on Dental Chemistry.

1853 George Watt, lecturer on Chemistry

1854 George Kellogg, M. D.

In 1855 a chair of Chemistry and Metallurgy was created.

1855 George Watt, who was succeeded by H. A. Smith, D.

D. S.

Demonstrator of Mechanical Dentistry

1847 William M. Hunter; 1848 A. M. Leslie, D. D. S.

In 1850 Chair of Mechanical Dentistry created, filled by

A. M. Leslie who resigned in 1850 and James Taylor filled

until end of session.

Demonstrator of Mechanical Dentistry and Assistant Surgeon

in the Infirmary

1850 William H. King, D. D. S.

1851 John Allen, D. D. S.; 1853 H. R. Smith, who resigned

in 1857, succeeded by Joseph Richardson, M. D., D. D. S.,

who in turn was succeeded by C. M. Wright, D. D. S.

Demonstrator of Operative and Mechanical Dentistry

1851 G. L. Van Emen, D. D. S., resigned in 1853 and duties

assumed by H. R. Smith, D. D. S.

1853 Chair of Operative and Mechanical Dentistry divided

into two departments

(1) Chair of Operative Dentistry.

1853 John Allen, resigned Feb., 1854, succeeded by

Jonathan Taft, who occupied the position until 1878.

(2) Chair of Mechanical Dentistry

1853 H. R. Smith, D. D. S.

• 52
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58           311

1855 H. A. Smith of Oxford, was appointed Demon-

strator of Operative and Mechanical Dentistry. Con-

tinued as Demonstrator through 1858-1859.

In 1850 the following Resolution was adopted by the Faculty:

That a committee of two from the medical and three from the

dental profession be selected annually to examine in connection

with the faculty, the candidates for graduation. This was dis-

continued in 1860 as it was found that some candidates had re-

ceived degrees who would have been rejected if examined by the

faculty only.

The session of 1858-1859 opened with a prelimary course

on October 18, and the regular session on the first Monday of

November.

During the winter of 1861-1862, no session of the College

was held. The graduates, 1845-1858, numbered ninety-nine (99);

nine dentists had received honorary degrees.

It is interesting to note that the personnel of the Board of

Trustees named in the original charter continued almost the same

until 1865, when an act to regulate colleges of dental surgery was

passed by the Ohio Legislature. This permitted the stockholders

to elect a new board of trustees, all dentists, as follows:

G. W. Keely, Pres.; B. D. Wheeler, Sec'y.; A. Berry;

A. S. Talbert; W. W. Allport; H. J. McKellops; W. H.

Morgan; W. G. Redman; M. DeCamp.

At the close of the period covered in this resume, the sphere

of influence of this school was evident wherever dentistry was

practiced in the Mississippi Valley, and even beyond its borders.

The precepts established were an impetus to higher ideals and

stressed the importance and necessity for a knowledge of the basic

sciences upon which all branches of health service are founded.

Faith, hope and patience persisted in the hearts of these pio-

neers in dental education. Individual interests and personal am-

bitions did not enter into the scheme of their activities, the fruits

of which were enriched during the decades that followed, and

which became the cherished heritage of the dental profession

• 53
 

312    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

STOCKHOLDERS OF THE OHIO COLLEGE OF DENTAL SURGERY AS OF

FEBRUARY 16, 1861, WITH THE NUMBER OF SHARES

POSSESSED BY EACH.

Bonsall, Charles, Cincinnati..... 1                                      Goddard, W. H., Louisville, Ky. 1

Brown, J. M., Cincinnati........ 1                                           Griffith, Samuel, Louisville, Ky. 1

Chapman, C. B., Cincinnati ...... 1                                       Hermon, E. A., Nashville, Tenn. 1

Mendenhall, George, Cincinnati. 1                                  Jones, White & McCurdy, Phil-

Richardson, Joseph, Cincinnati.. 1                                   adelphia. Pa. ................ 2

Smith, H. A., Cincinnati....... 1                                            Keely, G. W., Oxford, Ohio ....  1

Smith, H. R., Cincinnati........ 1                                            Kells, C. E., New Orleans, La... 1

Smith, J. B., Cincinnati........ 2                                              King, James S., Pittsburgh, Pa.. 1

Taft, J., Cincinnati ............. 3                                                 Knapp, James, New Orleans, La. 1

Taylor, James, Cincinnati....... 10                                        Lewis, J. M., Marion, Ill ...... 1

Toland, John T., Cincinnati..... 1                                        McKellops, H. J. B., St. Louis,

Wardle, Samuel, Cincinnati..... 1                                        Mo     ........................ 1

Wood, Thomas, Cincinnati ...... 2                                       Manlove, M. N., Logansport, Ind. 1

Martin, J. B., Franklin, Ind..... 1

Allen, John, New York City.... 3                                        Minor, G. B., Milwaukee, Wisc. 1

Allport, W. W., Chicago, Ill.....1                                        Peebles, H. E., St. Louis, Mo... 1

Baxter, J. W., Warsaw, Ky..... 1                                           Perkins, D. W., Milwaukee, Wis. 1

Berry, A., Raymond, Miss ...... 1                                         Reeve, A. J., Mt. Vernon, Ohio.. 1

Branch, I. B., Galena, Ill....... 1                                             Spalding, C. W., St. Louis, Mo. 2

Bray, E., Evansville, Ind........ 1                                          Talbert, A. S., Lexington, Ky... 1

Chandler, W. S., Port Gibson,                                            Taylor, Edgar, Palmyra, Mo..... 1

Miss. ......................   1                      Taylor, Edward, Cleveland, Ohio  1

Collins, Eli, Connorsville, Ind... 1                                   Ulrey, J. P., Rising Sun, Ind.... 1

DeCamp, M., Mansfield, Ohio... 1                                      Van Emon, G. L., Tennessee.... 2

Dougherty D., Danville, Ky..... 1              Ward, B. B., Mobile, Alabama.. 1

Dunlevy, J. B., Pittsburgh, Pa... 1                                      Watt, George, Xenia, Ohio ...... 1

Fredericks, G. J., New Orleans,                                          Webster, W. R., Richmond, Ind. 1

La. .........................  1                                                           Wright, W. M., Pittsburgh, Pa. 1

Total number of shares....... 69

• 54
 

DR. JOHN MILTON BIGELOW, 1804-1878

AN EARLY OHIO PHYSICIAN--BOTANIST

 

By A. E. WALLER*

 

Meeting the name Bigelow in botanical publication the reader

is sometimes confused. The name of John M. Bigelow, the sub-

ject of this paper is close to John Bigelow a journalist and news-

paper correspondent of New York City of the same period and

also to a Dr. Henry Jacob Bigelow interested in anesthetics of

whom this paper will make no further mention, as well as to Dr.

Jacob Bigelow of Massachusetts.

Dr. Jacob Bigelow1 requires a brief notice here since he is

more frequently mistaken for John M. Dr. Jacob Bigelow in

₁81₄ published a list of the plants growing in the vicinity of Bos-

ton under the title Florula Bostonensis. It became a popular

work for all those persons wanting a small guide book to the

plants of the area and it passed through three editions. It fol-

lowed the Linnean Sexual System for naming plants. The 1824

edition is sometimes offered for sale as a literary curiosity, having

the reputation of being the last work published in the United

States which followed the Linnean system. Dr. Jacob Bigelow

also authored the American Medical Botany, a recognized fore-

runner of the modern American pharmacopoeia establishing the

standard practice for the current Food and Drug Acts. Three

volumes of this work were published between 1818 and 1820. As

a result of this great editorial labor Dr. Jacob Bigelow was the

correspondent of a number of scientific men in European coun-

tries. The Swiss botanist, De Candolle, honored and commemor-

ated his name by applying it to a newly discovered golden rod.

Dr. Asa Gray of Harvard described several American species in

 

* Papers from the Department of Botany, Ohio State University, No. 449.

1 Howard Kelly, Some American Medical Botanists (Troy, New York, 1914).

(313)

• 55
 

314   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

this genus, Bigelovia. Dr. Jacob Bigelow's name is to that ex-

tent perpetuated for the botanists. By the rules of priority fol-

lowed in naming plants, the creation of this genus automatically

prevented John M. Bigelow having any of the genera he discov-

ered named in his honor. There are a number of species, new to

science when he collected them, carrying his name.

Even the most virtuous, however, are not above folly. It

does not harm the memory of Dr. Jacob Bigelow now to record

that once he was a member of a committee of Boston citizens who

solemnly listened to statements of eight persons who swore they

had seen a sea serpent off the Massachusetts coast. In all serious-

ness the committee prepared a pamphlet from these hearings and

sent it off to the distinguished explorer and sea captain, Sir Joseph

Banks, in 1817. Astonished but canny, Sir Joseph replied, as

might the scientist of today under similar circumstances, that

"future observation will no doubt clear up" the remarks noted

in the pamphlet.

This connection with the Atlantic seaboard and Europe will

or should be sufficient to clear up the confusion between Jacob

Bigelow and John M. Bigelow. For John M. spent all but a few

years of his life in Ohio and Michigan, and his botanical collec-

tions cover the southwest and include Texas, New Mexico, Ari-

zona and California, as well as his early work in central Ohio.

Dr. John M. Bigelow's birth reputedly occurred in Peru, Ben-

nington County, Vermont, June 23, 1804.2 In 1815 his father

moved to Licking County, Ohio, near or in Granville, where he

had his boyhood schooling. This was meager and the family was

poor. Young John was a voracious reader and spent time poring

over any books he could obtain. Legend also drapes him with the

familiar garments of a boyish school teacher by which means he

earned enough money to attend and receive a diploma March 8,

1832, from the Medical College of Ohio at Cincinnati.

In November, 1832, he married Maria L. Meiers, daughter

of H. Meiers, Esq., of Lancaster, Ohio. At the Medical College

 

2 W. B. Atkinson, Physicians and Surgeons of U. S. (Philadelphia, 1878).

• 56
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58            315

 

of Ohio, Dr. John Leonard Riddell3 was professor of botany and

adjunct professor of chemistry between 1830 and 1836. It may

well have been this mentor's enthusiasm that was communicated

to John M. Bigelow and inspired in him a love of plants that was

to remain with him throughout his life. Dr. Riddell's Synopsis

of the Flora of the Western States published in 1835, together

with a supplementary Ohio list is the first catalog of Ohio plants

published by a resident botanist. There is, however, no written

testimony to prove this interesting teacher-pupil relation.

The first public record of Bigelow's medical practice is from

the Lancaster, Ohio, Gazette and Enquirer of January 2, 1834.

It reads, "Dr. J. M. Bigelow has removed his office to his dwelling

on Columbus Street, a few doors south of General Sanderson's

residence." A small but thoughtful notice establishing a young

medical practitioner in a distinguished neighborhood. He was

about 30 years old, and was beginning to take his place in the com-

munity. Similar notices of changes of address, probably because

of the increases in the size of his family or because he was seeking

a more convenient office and of medical partnerships formed and

dissolved are to be found in the Lancaster newspapers between

1834 and 1860. It is thus known that he was associated in a

partnership with Dr. Robert McNeil in 1844-1845. This is the

younger Robert McNeil who, in 1847, became a surgeon in the

Mexican War. Again in 1856 he formed a partnership with Dr.

G. W. Boerstler which lasted for two years. Dr. Boerstler was

a founder of the Ohio State Medical Society, and active through-

out his long life as a Lancaster physician.

Aside from the assumption that the partnerships displayed

good sense in increasing his office practice, what we now know of

Dr. Bigelow indicates that he had his own reasons for wishing to

be away from his office. We do not know exactly how remu-

nerative or absorbing his work with his patients may have been.

We do know that he was developing another sort of work that

was to demand a share of his time. His other love was botaniz-

 

3 Clara Armstrong, "Plant Names Commemorative of Ohio Botanists," Ohio

Naturalist (January, 1901).

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316   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

ing and he was beginning to collect plants zealously and with a

growing understanding.

It should be remembered that in the period of which we now

are writing, a doctor was keenly interested in observing and know-

ing plants. He would want to identify them and if possible find

those used in pharmaceutical preparations. This no doubt calls

to the reader's mind the names of Dr. Asa Gray and Dr. John

Torrey, American botanists and both holders of degrees in medi-

cine.

Purely utilitarian ideas however were not always uppermost

in the minds of these men. Ohio was just in process of being

carved from wilderness. Torrey and Gray were just beginning

to accumulate materials from which the knowledge of North

American plants was built. The earliest plant collectors and

botanists were European and a great many of the type specimens

of our commonest plants are in European herbaria. You will also

remember that as the applications of the plant sciences to agri-

culture, horticulture, forestry, pedology and other fields of learn-

ing were scarcely dreamed of at that time, training in medicine

and pharmacy were almost the only courses of study which in-

cluded any subject to which the name botany might apply. In

short botany and medicine were closely allied, as they had been

for many centuries previously.

One can, therefore, see in Dr. Bigelow's medical partnerships

and in his absences from his office the same urge that assails many

another doctor who wishes to find out more about his medical

work or to explore it from another angle. In the case of Dr.

Bigelow this was eventually to lead him into the field of plant

collecting wherein his claim to fame is well established. His re-

search took him from the town of Lancaster farther out into the

country and finally across the continent to the Pacific Ocean.

Materia Medica was in Bigelow's day largely obtained from the

plant kingdom.

Fortunately one can trace the way in which John Milton

Bigelow's activity forms a link in the great chain of scientific ex-

ploration to discover the physical extent and the nature of the

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58                317

then unknown parts of continental United States. Not later than

1840, though how much earlier it is defficult to say, he had be-

come acquainted with William S. Sullivant, at that time a student

of plant life. A letter4 to Torrey and Gray in the files of the

Torrey letters in the New York Botanical gardens dated Decem-

ber 29, 1840, sets forth the facts, and establishes itself as his first

letter to Dr. Torrey. He writes: "The whole subject of my let-

ter, I give as the apology that might seem necessary in a total

stranger addressing you."   He also mentions he is sending cer-

tain plants notably asters and golden rods for further identifica-

tion. The significant fact is this statement, "Last summer I col-

lected pretty thoroughly, having been stimulated to it by an ac-

quaintance with Mr. William S. Sullivant of Columbus." He

apologizes that his plants are not put up with the neatness required

of a professed botanist. "Many times some of my most interest-

ing specimens are brought home in my hat and probably before I

have time to smooth out some of the wrinkles consequent upon

their cramped position in the hat, a call is made post haste and

my poor plants are obliged to suffer the withering influences of a

hot summer day," he complains. The letter further contains one

other important item showing that Dr. Bigelow was more than

an ordinary country town doctor. He states, "I am also anxious

to get a good microscope; if Dr. Gray can procure one from

France of the quality and at the price of Mr. Sullivant's I should

be glad."

What are the threads connecting these names and events?

Sullivant, distinguished resident of Columbus, was the oldest son

of Lucas Sullivant, the surveyor, who died a wealthy land-owner.

His son, William Starling Sullivant, having spent approximately

twenty years since his father's death in consolidating and increas-

ing his fortune had, about 1839, decided to turn his attention to

botany. He was later to become so noteworthy for his studies of

 

4 a. The Bigelow letters to Dr. John Torrey are on file in the New York Botanical

Gardens, Bronx Park, N. Y. The entire collection was recently photostated for Mr.

A. D. Rodgers to whom thanks are due for permission to examine and use them. h.

For all the newspaper notices from Lancaster, Ohio, grateful acknowledgement is

herewith offered to Edward S. Thomas and the WPA assistants at the Ohio State

Archaeological and Historical Society Museum.

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318   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

mosses as to be known as the "father of American Bryology."

The account of his career has recently been made the subject of

a book by A. D. Rodgers.⁵ Sullivant at that time was just get-

ting started and had been for three years in correspondence with

Dr. Torrey and Dr. Gray, America's two leading botanists. Early

in the year 1840, Sullivant had published his first botanical trea-

tise, A Catalogue of Plants Native or Naturalized in the Vicin-

ity of Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Bigelow's letter to Torrey and

Gray indicates at this time that he knew Sullivant well enough to

have heard of his work, perhaps even to have seen the precious

microscope or used it, and to want one of his own at the same

price. May it not be inferred that Bigelow possessed an interest

in medicine and botany that is superior to idle curiosity and that

he was wealthy enough to afford such a scientific luxury as a

good microscope? He was at least bold enough to ask.

Dr. Asa Gray's name and career,⁶ well known to almost

everyone who has a nodding acquaintance with American plants

needs little mention here. It may be recalled, however, that at

this time (1838) he had been chosen professor of botany in the

newly founded University of Michigan, but as the buildings were

not completed, the Regents had entrusted to him the assignment

of making the first purchase of books for the general library and

sent him abroad with a fund of five thousand dollars to buy the

books. This unusual procedure on the part of the Regents not

only resulted in beneficial sequences to the Michigan Library but

Dr. Gray met Darwin and Hooker in England and other scien-

tists on the European continent and formed lasting friendships.

On his return from Europe, the pleased Regents extended Dr.

Gray's leave for a year. As everyone knows he worked with Dr.

Torrey on the flora of North America and later went to Harvard

instead of assuming his post at Michigan. Dr. Gray had brought

a microscope which was shipped to Sullivant in April, 1840. In

May, 1840, Sullivant wrote Gray that he was making "short trips

around the country of 2-3-4 days." It may have been in these

 

5 A. D. Rodgers, Noble Fellow (New York, 1940).

6 A. E. Waller. See foreword in Rodger's book cited above.

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58             319

short trips that Sullivant first met Bigelow. He does not happen

to have mentioned how or where the meeting took place. Yet the

remarks quoted from Bigelow's letter above prove that Bigelow

knew all about Sullivant's microscope, doubtless the first one in

central Ohio, and that he considered himself an able enough scien-

tist to request that Dr. Gray perform for him the same kindness

he had for Sullivant.  Sullivant's microscope was one of the

earliest brought into Ohio.

The point of all of this is its significance for early Ohio plant

studies. Sullivant's catalogue of the plants collected near Colum-

bus was followed the next year by Bigelow's Florula Lancas-

triensis.⁷ John M. Bigelow's title for this work follows the Jacob

Bigelow Florula Bostonensis. It is known that Sullivant possessed

a copy of this popular plant guide. The Florula Lancastriensis

of John M. Bigelow has the subtitle of a catalogue Comprising

nearly all the flowering and filicoid plants growing naturally

within the limits of Fairfield County, with notes of such as are

of medical value. For the grasses and sedges credit is given to

Dr. Asa Horr who lived in the northern portion of Fairfield

County at Baltimore, Ohio. The paper was presented, at least by

title (one can hardly imagine anyone having the courage to read

a lengthy list of plant names) to the Medical Convention of Ohio

in May, 1841. It was published in the Proceedings of that con-

vention. The minutes of the meeting record that a vote of thanks

was tendered to Dr. Bigelow for presenting it.

At the present time not more than three copies of the

Bigelow-Horr paper are known to exist. The Florula Lancas-

triensis has frequently been referred to in the century that has

passed since its publication. Notice of it is contained in Dr.

Britton's compilation of State and Local Floras, and in the Torrey

Bulletin. It formed the basis for some of the plants not seen but

included "Fide Bigelow," in the Sugar Grove paper of Dr. Robert

F. Griggs.⁸

 

7 John M. Bigelow, "Florula Lancastriensis," Proceedings Ohio Medical Convention

(Columbus, 1841).

8 Robert F. Griggs, "A Botanical Survey of the Sugar Grove Region," Ohio

Biological Survey 1, No. 3.

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320   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Asa Horr9 was born in Worthington, Ohio, September 2,

1817. Originally the family name had been spelled Hoar. Asa

received his M. D. from the Cleveland Medical College and began

to practice medicine in Baltimore, Fairfield County, Ohio. It is

not known how or where he became acquainted with Dr. Bigelow.

He did not remain in Ohio, however, for many years after the

Florula Lancastriensis was published. In 1846 he moved to Ga-

lena, Illinois, and in 1847 to Dubuque, Iowa. Dubuque was to

remain his home for the rest of his life. Dr. Asa Horr is at the

moment a forgotten man in Ohio medical history, but his career

was remarkable. Interested in botany, mineralogy, astronomy

and meteorology, he was with Professor Lapham of Milwaukee

the inventor of the methods for forecasting the weather for the

United States weather reports. He established a private astro-

nomical observatory in Dubuque in 1864 and was the first to de-

termine accurately the longitude of that city. He was examining

surgeon to the United States recruiting service during the War

between the States and in 1875 examining surgeon to the United

States Pension Bureau. He was president of the Dubuque Medi-

cal Society, a founder of the Iowa Institute of Sciences and Arts

in 1868, and its president in 1869. In 1872 he was president of

the American Association for the Advancement of Science and

one of a hundred English and American short-hand writers chosen

to make improvements in phonography. He deserves a special

study as one of Ohio's early medical botanists, but this brief men-

tion must suffice.

How much help Dr. Bigelow received in the preparation of

his work from his friend Sullivant or from Torrey, Gray or Horr

may not be important. Ten plants of the list are specially marked

with credit to W. S. Sullivant, twelve are similarly credited to

Asa Horr. It is clear that they all knew of his work and that his

own labors of collecting were benefitted by the knowledge and the

experience of these four notable contemporaries. The list con-

tains eight-hundred seventy-one flowering plants and ferns. Some

of the species also are found in Franklin County and included in

Sullivant's list. Some, particularly the plants of acid soils, are

9 Kelly and Burrage, American Medical Biographies (Baltimore, 1920).

• 62
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58            321

 

excluded from the Franklin County list. Rhododendron is in-

cluded from Hocking County, as is Iris lacustris. Its larger con-

gener, Iris cristata, widely distributed in Ohio is not mentioned.

Bigelow did not collect the Rhododendron specimen himself,

but gives it as collected by Jacob Greene "near the mouth of

Clear Creek." The patch of Rhododendron known now is within

a quarter mile of the intersection of the Fairfield-Hocking bound-

ary with Clear Creek Valley. It is nearer to the village of Re-

venge than it is to the mouth of Clear Creek. The two lists, Sul-

livant's and Bigelow's, together make an unusually complete ac-

count of plant records of central Ohio a hundred years ago. About

the same time Thomas G. Lea of Cincinnati, collecting between

1834-1844, prepared a manuscript of his list of plants of that

region. In 1849 Sullivant, after Lea's death, edited and published

from his manuscripts. Thus the Ohio Country has botanical lists

of a century ago that are today invaluable.

It is unfortunate that the possible existence of the herbarium

of Bigelow's Ohio specimens is not known. The collections of

Sullivant were by his wish given to the Gray Herbarium after his

death in 1873. His microscopes went to the Starling Medical

College. Thomas Lea's collections were sent to the Philadelphia

Museum of Natural Sciences. The absence of the Bigelow col-

lections led Dr. Griggs to doubt in some cases certain plants named

in his list. Yet to the credit of Dr. Bigelow's and Dr. Asa Horr's

keen powers of observation, it should be stated, that year by year

as Fairfield and Hocking Counties have been revisited many of

the doubtful specimens have been collected.

Some interesting items selected from Dr. Bigelow's list in-

clude 26 ferns, 18 orchids, 68 grasses. Among 65 sedges 45 are

species of the genus Carex, in which Sullivant was for a time in-

terested. Medicinally noteworthy are 5 species of Lobelia, 3 of

Gentian, 8 species of boneset. The European species of Saponaria

is recorded. Apparently a hundred years ago it had already be-

come naturalized in Ohio. There are medical notations on 190

of the plants in the list.

From another point of view the Florula Lancastriensis de-

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322   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

serves special mention.  It apparently brought to a close the

herborizing activities of medical botanists of this section of the

United States. From this time onward botanists were less in-

terested in the medicinal value of Ohio's plants. The collections

were made by men who began to specialize in the taxonomic

groups. The old urge to find new plants to use in medicines goes

back a long time. As Monardes said in Seville in 1577 in his

Joyfull Newes out of the Newe Founde Worlde (Frampton's

translation, 1577), "as there are discovered new Regions, New

Kingdoms, New Provinces by our Spaniards so they have brought

into us new medicines, and new remedies, wherewith they do cure

many infirmities, which if we did lack them, would be incurable

and without any Remedie." Many Europeans looked to America

to furnish the road to health.

Botany and medicine of the previous centuries were very

much together. It has frequently been stated that the need for

an accurate plant nomenclature had its beginning in medicine.

From the middle of the nineteenth century their ways were to

become parted. Dr. John Milton Bigelow was one of those who

was to see this parting and perhaps deplore some of its effects.

He was himself always to follow plant collecting and in his sev-

entieth year of age to publish lists of plant families with notes on

the medicinal plants, and to teach to his students the plant lore he

so well loved. Perhaps in his own point of view he was a cham-

pion of the cause of materia medica from the plant kingdom. He

may have wanted to see the two old sciences remain together. He

was as successful as Canute in stemming the tides. The old herb-

orizing was swept away by newer, more refined chemical methods.

From Lancaster newspapers of early dates and other sources,

a brief record may be obtained of Dr. Bigelow's standing in the

community as a citizen. Both A. A. Graham's History of Fair-

field County and C. L. Wiseman's Centennial History of Lancas-

ter accord him prominence. When the first Board of Health for

Fairfield County was organized in 1837 one finds that he was a

member of this Board. He was a member of the committee call-

ing a meeting of all "Regular Scientific practitioners of Medicine

• 64
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58           323

and Surgery" to form a medical society which had for its object

the advancement of "medical literature and knowledge in the

great and extending west." A notice of this meeting appeared in

the Ohio Eagle and Fairfield Advertiser, February 24, 1838. Dr.

Bigelow was interested in education probably from his own well-

remembered days teaching school. He is mentioned as a member

of a committee "to visit and inquire into the condition of the com-

mon schools of the town"--later he was a school examiner. In

1843 he was named as treasurer of the Irish Repeal Association,

a temperance group formed by the Washington temperance move-

ment and the Irish Americans. When trouble and even threatened

military hostilities excited people over the Oregon boundary dis-

putes, Dr. Bigelow's name appears in the Ohio Eagle of June 12,

1845, in a notice that "in view of the menaces of war which Great

Britain has thought proper to make use of in reference to this

question" a meeting discussing the matter would take place.

Judging by all of the committee memberships and board work in

which he was engaged Dr. Bigelow's life must have been full.

There is a notice in the Ohio Eagle, October 30, 1845, calling at-

tention to the dissolving by mutual consent of the partnership

with Dr. McNeil. This notice adds, "persons with unsettled ac-

counts are earnestly requested to call and close them immediately."

Apparently this problem of medical practice is not unknown today.

There is no indication that Dr. Bigelow's practice made him

wealthy. He had a large family to rear. Apparently he lived in

comfortable circumstances. His wife, Mary, is known to have

been the sister of Mrs. Phelan. He was probably, like most coun-

try doctors, too busy serving his patients to worry much about

his income. His record as an exemplary citizen stands unchal-

lenged. The credits were on the giving rather on the receiving

end and still seems to be fairly typical of the doctors of small,

healthy thriving communities.

For reasons, now not known, he accepted, in 1850, the posi-

tion of surgeon on the Mexican Boundary Survey. Perhaps the

most reasonable explanation is his love for plants and his oppor-

• 65
 

324   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

tunities to collect in new fields. His former partner, Robert

McNeil, may have told him about the country of the Southwest.

The survey of the United States-Mexican Boundary, with

R. B. Campbell, Col. J. D. Graham and J. R. Bartlett as com-

missioners in charge, was authorized in 1848. The boundary

crossed unknown, partly unexplored, territory. In its execution,

Torrey and Gray saw the opportunity to attach to field parties one

or more botanists to study and collect the plant life of the South-

west. From the start the whole affair was poorly managed. Bart-

lett, an ethnologist and antiquarian, has been most frequently

blamed for much of the bungling. Two treaties were signed. The

Guadaloupe-Hidalgo Treaty ended the war. The Gadsden Treaty

arranged for a purchase of a strip of land. Major W. H. Emory,

as astronomer, was sent, in 1849, to San Diego to run a line east-

ward. He had with him Dr. Charles C. Parry to study the geol-

ogy and the plant life. Parry described the plants around San

Diego, naming among other items the Torrey pine. He proceeded

to Yuma, Arizona, with Emory and when observations at that

point were completed the party and the astronomical instruments

were to be moved over to Texas. To do this they were obliged

to return to San Diego as no more direct road was open than via

the Isthmus of Panama.

The main party, with Commissioner Bartlett, was to go from

New York around to Indianola, Texas, by boat and thence to San

Antonio and El Paso. John M. Bigelow had been recommended

to Torrey by Sullivant, but Torrey as professor of chemistry in

Princeton and working also at Columbia was often difficult to

find. The following letter indicates this. It is written to Torrey

while Bigelow was in New York, July 25, 1850.

Dear Sir:

You may think I am crazy and I certainly know I am confused. This

is the third time I have attempted to transmit Mr. Sullivant's letter to you.

This is the charm. If I do not succeed this time I must give up in despair.

I saw Mr. Thurber and he thinks you may visit New York soon. If you

do will you be so kind as to let me know!

Yours most respectfully,

John M. Bigelow

 

 

*

• 66
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58                 325

 

Events were moving at a rapid clip for the Boundary Survey

when a month later Dr. Torrey wrote a letter to Dr. Gray who

was in the British Isles studying the North American plant col-

lections of various European herbaria. "It would not take more

than half a year to settle most of the knotty points in our botany

if we could both be with Bentham," he wrote. He also tried to

untangle the situations that troubled the collectors for the Bound-

ary Survey.    He mentioned Bartlett's appointment as commis-

sioner:

Bailey also informed me six weeks ago that he had recommended

Thurber of Providence as Botanist to the Survey not knowing anything

about Parry. Accordingly I at once wrote Bartlett informing him about

Parry's position and claims to the situation. He replied the appointment

had been made. He would retain Parry, as it was his intention to have a

full scientific corps. I communicated this to Parry by next steamer.

Afterwards I found that a Dr. Bigelow of Ohio had also been appointed

Surgeon and Botanist to the Survey. Bigelow was strongly recommended

by Sullivant but I think he is not a Botanist. He and Thurber came here

to see me. Neither of them, I believe, have the official title of Botanist.

The former is Surgeon, the latter a "computer", but both are expected to do

duty as botanists. The commission has left it to themselves to settle the

question of botanical rank but Bigelow in his letter writes to Thurber as

his assistant. Thurber says he will not play second fiddle to such a poor

stick. The commission will certainly have a full staff of Botanists when

all three are on the ground.

Dr. Torrey's fears were to prove more than imaginary.

The next letter from Bigelow indicated that the parties in

the field were proceeding with their work. Bigelow had seen an

interesting walnut which he would have liked for Torrey to dedi-

cate to Lieut. Whipple. There is no mention of wrangling with

Thurber. They did not always travel together. Thurber and

Bartlett followed the northern route. Bigelow took the southern

route.  Parry eventually met them  and also a fourth botanist,

Charles Wright, a life-long friend of Dr. Gray. Wright had col-

lected in Texas previously. He probably knew, more than the

others, what the collecting difficulties were -- most particularly

lack of facilities for drying and preserving specimens to suit the

needs of critical examiners. Bigelow is known to have made the

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326   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

same complaints and Torrey, in turn, found some fault with many

of Bigelow's specimens. Bigelow had not understood at first that

every plant new to him was not a new plant. He had not been

aware of Wright's previous collections nor of Parry's successes

around San Diego. He was disappointed to learn that some of

his collections contained plants already named. For as there was

no grasp of modern plant ecology, where the specimen was picked

up was only a minor matter. When Gray published the Plantae

Wrightianae Bigelow felt he deserved a larger share of credit and

some years afterwards wrote he had been "Wrightized" out of

his plants. On the whole he was cheerful, however, and often

the best companion of the party. He was the oldest of the four

botanists, being, in 1850, 46 years of age. Wright was 39, Thur-

ber 29; Parry, the youngest, was 27. All of them, for endurance

and fidelity to duty, deserve praise without stint.

Of particular interest at the present time, one of John M.

Bigelow's newly discovered plants was an arid land shrub. Dr.

Asa Gray described it and named it Parthenium argentatum.

Bigelow found it near Escondido Creek, Texas, in 1852. Today

it is grown by its Mexican name guayule. When chopped and

macerated it yields a satisfactory amount of rubber in fair qual-

ity. In 1917, methods of getting seeds to germinate readily were

devised and in the present emergency, attention is being given to

its cultivation. This single discovery should serve to focus atten-

tion, perhaps on Bigelow at the moment, but more importantly on

the permanent debt of civilization to its botanical explorers. Dr.

Bigelow knew little about the value of his discovery or the years

of research and the millions of capital that would go into prob-

lems of the development of a rubber supply.

Bigelow deserves a belated laurel for a constructive sugges-

tion that was to save the botanical records from utter confusion.

It was to wait and publish results only after all the materials were

assembled. This simple solution saved an otherwise impossible

situation. For Gray had already published some of Wright's

early collections. If this practice had been continued the whole

matter would have gone out of hand. Torrey's work in the

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58              327

Boundary Survey Report is complete. The confusion resulting

from the several collectors rushing into print was avoided since

all the work had to pass under the watchful eyes of Torrey and

Gray. So Bigelow of whom Torrey had written in the letter

quoted above "he is not a botanist" in a peculiar sense performed

for botany the greatest service.

Passing over much correspondence during this field work

period, a letter dated January 23, 1853, tells Torrey he would

soon be back in Lancaster. From here he wrote March 19,

With regard to the disposition of our plants, you will please let me know

as soon as you get something definite from Maj. Emory. By what I hear

from Washington our Commission, I judge, is in rather a state of jumble.

I am told Congress passed a deficiency for the relief of Maj. Emory's party,

but whether any of it can be used for scientific purposes is more than I

know.

Actually Commissioner Bartlett was removed and Maj. Emory

was appointed instead as Commissioner. Bigelow followed his let-

ter with a visit to see Torrey about the plant collections in New

York a month later. On his return this interesting commentary

on travel at that date is given: "I arrived safely in Columbus

34 hours from New York, but behold after arriving within 28

miles of my home it cost me 61 hours to get here. I arrived at

Columbus at 3 o'clock A. M. on Saturday, but every seat in the

coach for my town was taken. Our mail is daily only through

the week."

He had made Torrey his friend by showing how he could

serve botany. His talents as a collector were proved and his ex-

perience was valuable. His next letter May 21, 1853, had a piece

of great news. He told Torrey he had received from Lieut.

Whipple the commission of assistant on the Southern Railway

Route to the Pacific and was "assigned as Surgeon and Botanist

to this expedition."

The Lancaster Gazette, on May 5, 1853, carried a notice that

"Dr. J. M. Bigelow has returned and will attend to the practice of

his profession. Office at his old residence on Wheeling Street, 3

doors east of Columbus Street." It seems therefore that the offer

from Lieut. Whipple to join the Pacific Railroad expedition came

as something of a surprise.

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328    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

In contrast to the Boundary Survey, there was little con-

fusion connected with the Whipple Expedition.¹⁰ Also, after

twenty-six months in field work with the Boundary Commission

Dr. Bigelow could bring to his new duties the benefit of his ex-

perience. He approached the problems with zest and offered no

complaints. He probably remedied the shortage of drying papers

or other such equipment that he had found lacking previously.

In June, 1853, from the Steamer James Robb on the Mississippi

enroute for Napoleon at the mouth of the Arkansas River, he

wrote Dr. Torrey that he had spent "parts of the 2 or 3 last days

with Dr. Engleman looking over our collecton of Cactaceae and

getting items for more." Here is plain evidence that he was

making a continuing experience of the work of collecting. He

asked Torrey to compare some specimens of the earlier collections:

"Will you please have the kindness to send some of the stem,

spines, flower and fruit to Dr. Engelmann?"

During the course of the journey, Dr. Bigelow was possibly

too busy to write frequently. Only two letters are in existence,

and besides establishing date lines that serve to confirm the trail,

these letters contain little important information. One is marked

Albuquerque, October 29, 1853, in which he says he is preparing

for the long, arduous trip across the Colorado Valley, and the

other is from Sonora, California, May 13, 1854. The expedition

completed its route in Los Angeles. Then, in his own interest,

Dr. Bigelow journeyed by steamer to San Francisco and crossed

the Sacramento Valley to the Sierra Nevada. In July, 1854, he

was back in Washington at work with Lieut. Whipple and the

artist, Baldwin Mollhausen, and others of the members of the ex-

pedition preparing reports.

The Ohio Eagle, July 21, 1854, offers the following summary

of the expedition:

Returned--our esteemed fellow citizen, Dr. John M. Bigelow Physician

10 "The Botany of the Expedition," Report of Explorations and Surveys, House

Executive Documents, 33 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 91, Vol. IV, pt. 5.

No. 1. J. M. Bigelow, "General Description of the Botanical Character of

the Country."

No. 2. J. M. Bigelow, "Description of Forest Trees."

No. 3. George Engelmann or J. M. Bigelow, "Description of Cactaceae."

No. 4. John Torrey, "General Botanical Collections."

No. 5. W. S. Sullivant, "Mosses and Hepatics."

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58                 329

 

and Botanist to Lt. Whipple's Surveying Party spent a few days with his

family last week. He informed us that the party to which he is attached

has run a line from Ft. Smith on the Arkansas to the Pacific at San Diego,

California. This line is on the so called northern route of the contem-

plated Pacific Railroad and is practicable. The company enjoyed excellent

health, losing but one man who wandered off from camp alone, and was no

doubt killed by the Indians. Dr. Bigelow has collected a very extensive

cabinet of Botanical and Geological specimens, and is able from his laborious

research into his department of the expedition to make a full report of the

Botany and Geology of the extensive and interesting country over which he

passed. We shall look with interest for the Doctor's report. Dr. Bigelow

has gone to Washington on business connected with the expedition. It will

be recollected that the Doctor was a Physician and Botanist to the Boundary

Commission under the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo, and acquitted himself

with such credit that his present post was given him unasked.

The above item is quoted as it stands since all the facts may

be substantiated. In all probability it represents as nearly a direct

statement from Bigelow himself as one may hope to find.

The results of the Whipple Expedition gave Dr. Bigelow his

greatest opportunity for scientific writing.   The report is di-

vided into five parts. The first is a general account of the coun-

try, its topography and climate, and contains an elaborate chart

of the elevations at which certain trees are to be found.     This

was pioneering in plant ecology before that science had been sep-

arated from its sister sciences. The second part gave notes on

the trees and their usefulness in supplying timbers for railroad

ties. The third part is a record by Dr. Bigelow and Dr. Engle-

mann of the Cactaceae encountered and collected.       The fourth

part is Dr. Torrey's general list and description of the botanical

collections of ferns and flowering plants. The fifth is Sullivant's

description of the mosses.    These were collected in California