Ohio History Journal

AN ANCESTOR OF OHIO MEDICINE:

FAIRFIELD MEDICAL SCHOOL (1812-1840)*

 

by HOWARD DITTRICK

 

Over the scenic terrain of northern Pennsylvania, along the

Allegheny and Susquehanna rivers, through picturesque Wyalusing

and historic Azilium, we turned northward toward the Mohawk

Valley of central New York. The purpose of our pilgrimage was

to visit the historic village of Fairfield, and so we proceeded through

the Royal Grants along West Canada Creek as it came tumbling

down from the foothills of the Adirondacks to pour its black

waters into the Mohawk. Finally we arrived at Fairfield, high up

on a plateau four miles east and seven hundred feet above the

village of Middleville. My wife and I had been invited to participate

in the annual meeting of alumni of Fairfield Academy.

This school had functioned almost one hundred years, but we

recalled it as the former seat of a renowned medical school. Academy

buildings were erected about two sides of a quadrangle, and trees

were planted by successive classes. Today there remain the neatly

kept campus and the class trees, but the only building is the Old

Chapel, now a meeting place for the local Grange. Academy

alumni tell of laborious stoking of wood stoves with weather

twenty below zero.

On July 4, 1802, an enthusiastic Presbyterian minister, the Rev.

Caleb Alexander, and the cooperative Captain Moses Mather led

Fairfield pioneers in assembling materials, labor, and capital, and

together they erected the framework of the Old Chapel.¹ The

following year the school was incorporated, with the Rev. Mr.

Alexander as president at $300 per year. In 1809 a stone laboratory

was constructed for teaching chemistry and anatomy.² This proved

popular among local physicians, and in 1812 a complete medical

 

*Read before the Committee on Medical History and Archives of the Ohio State

Archaeological and Historical Society at its annual meeting, held at the Ohio State

Museum, April 5, 1952.

1 Carl Peterson, "Fairfield Academy," New York History, XXXI (1950), 41-46.

2 Fairfield Alumni Directory (Fairfield, N.Y., 1936).

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course was organized. The medical department was known as the

College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District of

New York. In 1833 enrollment was 217 students,³ exceeded only

by the medical schools of Philadelphia and Transylvania. Before

the coming of the railroads and the building of the Erie Canal,

Fairfield despite its hilltop location was as favorably located as

many other towns. Unfortunately, with improved transportation

Fairfield was by-passed by medical schools at Geneva, Albany, and

later Buffalo, which lay more in the path of progress. With the

growth of these cities greater conveniences attracted more students,

and the number at Fairfield decreased accordingly. In 1840, after

having graduated 555 physicians, the medical school was closed.

Fairfield Academy, however, continued to function. Shortly before

this, Presbyterian President Caleb Alexander had resigned. Trinity

Church offered to up the salary to $750 if an Episcopal clergyman

was named in his stead. Thus for a time the school was known as a

divinity school. In 1844 "South College" was occupied as a female

seminary. In 1891 the war department installed a department of

military training. Progressive changes were unavailing; free

secondary schools made pay institutions like Fairfield unnecessary

and in 1901 the academy was closed.

Some Fairfield objects have found their way to the Howard

Dittrick Museum of Historical Medicine. Besides pamphlets and

clippings, there is a license to practice issued by the Medical Society

of the State of New York to Roeliff Bevier, M.D. (1839), Fairfield.

He practiced in Plymouth, Ohio, for forty years and was censor

of Wooster Medical College. This license and a catalog of faculty

and students, dated October 1811, were donated by F. C. Waite.

A print of the chapel, one of the group of buildings, and photo-

stats of other Fairfield documents were gifts of Reba Helligas of

the Herkimer County Historical Society. In the home of this

society in Herkimer is an entire room containing Fairfield

memorabilia, catalogs, lecture cards, diplomas, and photographs.

A book of botanic specimens collected by Asa Gray, and the record

 

3 T. W. Clarke, "The Birth of Medical Education in Upstate New York," New

York State Journal of Medicine, XLIII, No. 16 (August 15, 1943).

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An Ancestor of Ohio Medicine            367

 

of proceedings of the medical school, neatly written in long hand,

are two precious volumes.

Popularity of the school was doubtless due to ability of the

teachers. T. Romeyn Beck, in 1823, published the first American

book on medical jurisprudence, including a chapter on infanticide

written by his brother in 1817.⁴ The book went through four English,

one German, and five American editions. James Hadley, professor

of chemistry, was a grandfather of Arthur T. Hadley, president of

Yale. John Stearns, graduate of Yale, taught theory and practice of

physic. He founded the Medical Society of the State of New York,

and later was first president of the New York Academy of Medicine.

A brilliant teacher was the first professor of surgery, Lyman

Spalding, a graduate of Harvard, and assistant to Nathan Smith

in founding Dartmouth Medical School. In New Hampshire he

performed vaccinations and from such funds he paid Benjamin

Waterhouse twenty-five percent royalty. Spalding initiated and was

the author of the first U.S. Pharmacopeia (1820). He was re-

sponsible for bringing to Fairfield the able G. C. Shattuck of

Boston.

Two teachers were of interest to Ohioans. John Delamater was

probably the most versatile medical teacher of his day. He taught

in nine different schools, and his subjects included pharmacy and

materia medica, midwifery, surgery, theory and practice of physic,

diseases of women and children, and pathology. Westel Willoughby

was president of the Fairfield Medical School and professor of

obstetrics. He was judge of court of common pleas and a member

of the state assembly in 1807 and of congress in 1814. In the

village of Chagrin near the mouth of the Chagrin River a medical

school was founded. The school and later the village were both

named for him.

Of noted Fairfield students I will mention only two. John

Gorrie, M.D., 1827, settled in Columbia, South Carolina. He in-

vented the first ice machine, now in the Smithsonian. His statue is

in Statuary Hall in Washington. Asa Gray, M.D., 1831, taught

4 F. L. Kozelka, "Legal Medicine in the United States," Ciba Symposia, XI, No. 7

(Winter, 1950), 1307.

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368     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

botany at Michigan and later at Harvard. He was recognized as

one of the most eminent botanists of his time.

Organization was uncomplicated. In the 1811 catalog the subjects

taught were: chemistry, mineralogy, and materia medica; anatomy

and surgery; institutes of medicine; and obstetrics. The record book

in the Fairfield Room at Herkimer reveals some of the requirements

of study. Beginning on the first Tuesday in November, the pro-

fessor of chemistry gave one daily lecture throughout the term.

The other professors gave two lectures a day for a month, at a

time mutually agreed upon.

The record further states that "young gentlemen" (mark the

young gentlemen) "who have not had Collegiate education shall

previously to examination give satisfactory evidence to the President

and Professors that they have an acquaintance with the latin

language, profess a correct knowledge of the English Grammar,

natural and experimental philosophy, and sustain a fair moral

character." It might be noted in passing that grammar was spelled

with a capital G.

The fee for the course of lectures was $50.00, each professor

receiving $12.50. "But if any Gentleman should not choose to

attend all the professors, then he shall pay $15.00 to every Pro-

fessor he may attend." Each candidate for the M.D. degree paid

a graduation fee of $20.00, which was divided between the presi-

dent and professors. "Every Gentleman who pays for two courses

of lectures shall be entitled to attend those lectures in future

without any fee."

An unusual provision was instituted at Fairfield whereby $10

was paid for the analysis of every mineral substance (not ex-

ceeding five) found in the state of New York. In addition to the

two terms of lectures, the candidate for the M.D. degree was re-

quired to spend three years with an approved preceptor. At the

time of graduation the student presented and defended a thesis.

In a catalog for the session 1818-19, a trend is noted that has

never been stopped. "The whole amount of tuition, at the above

institution is sixty-two dollars fifty cents," an increase of twenty-five

percent. This was offset by the good news that "board in the village

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can be obtained from one dollar fifty cents to two dollars per

week." This session likewise began on the first Tuesday in November

and continued twelve weeks.

The list of students who attended this medical college is prefaced

as follows: "The following are the young gentlemen who attended

the Lectures." Never in my day was such polite language addressed

to medical students. Our status was either slightly above or below

that of the janitor; I am not sure which is true.

Of such was the ancestral teaching at Fairfield. Was there any

connection with Ohio schools? In northern Ohio we are very con-

scious of this influence; in central Ohio a direct line is traced; and

in southern Ohio the influence is less pronounced.

Willoughby University of Lake Erie was incorporated in Chagrin

in 1834.⁵ Many earlier settlers had come from central New York

and were familiar with the Fairfield school and its president, Westel

Willoughby. Either to confer prestige or possibly to elicit bene-

factions from this elderly bachelor the university was named for

him. Four incorporating physicians had been his students; a majority

of the members of the faculty from 1834 to 1843 had been teachers

or students at Fairfield and that school formed a model for

Willoughby University. Amasa Trowbridge, John Delamater, and

J. L. Cassels (a graduate of Fairfield) taught at both schools.

F. W. Walsh and 0. S. St. John, graduates of Fairfield, taught at

Willoughby. Other graduates, S. W. Card and J. M. Henderson,

practiced in Willoughby. Horace Ackley, a teacher of surgery at

Willoughby, and George Jones, a local practitioner, had attended

some lectures at Fairfield.

At the end of the 1846-47 session the medical department of

Willoughby University of Lake Erie was closed and its apparatus

moved to Columbus. In 1848 the provision in the charter per-

mitting medical teaching was annulled, and under a new charter

Starling Medical College replaced the transported institution. By

direct legal succession Starling Medical College went on to become

the college of medicine of Ohio State University.

5 Frederick C. Waite, Western Reserve University Centennial History of the School

of Medicine (Cleveland, 1946), 42-49.

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370     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

The medical department of Western Reserve College exhibited

an influence of Fairfield similar to that seen in Willoughby. Among

members of the first faculty in 1843, John Delamater and J. L.

Cassels taught at Fairfield, as has been noted above. Horace Ackley

and Jacob Delamater, who also had attended some Fairfield lectures,

were likewise teachers there. Experiences in Fairfield doubtless in-

spired these men in launching a new school on a century of

progress.

The schools of southern Ohio were less affected by Fairfield.

These schools looked for their stimulation more toward Virginia

and Maryland. One of the outstanding teachers at Cincinnati, how-

ever, was Reuben D. Mussey, who taught at Fairfield in 1837 before

coming to the Medical College of Ohio.⁶

From this study it is evident that progress of medical education

followed along paths by which settlement of the country developed.

Migration affected also personalities and methods in medical

teaching. In northern Ohio pioneers from New England came

across New York state by boat and by oxcart. In southern Ohio

they came over the mountains and settled along the Ohio River.

The Fairfield school was caught in the wake of New England

peoples about to settle in Ohio. This would account for the much

greater influence of this school upon the medicine of Cleveland

than upon other medical centers of the state.

Perhaps some may detect a moral in this analysis. A medical

school must remain on the path of progress in order to survive.

 

6 Otto Juettner, Daniel Drake and His Followers (Cincinnati, 1909), 162-170.

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