Ohio History Journal

MEDICAL JOURNALS OF PIONEER DAYS

 

By JONATHAN FORMAN, M.D.

 

We are going back today to a time "when entrance into our

profession was largely through apprenticeship, when operations

were done without anesthesia and without antiseptics, when mis-

takes in diagnosis, errors in judgment or lack of dexterity in

operating were published with every accompaniment of insult

and derision which malice could suggest, when nursing in hos-

pitals was done by women of the charwomen class, when the

study of anatomy depended upon the activities of the resurrec-

tionists, when cholera, typhus, and hydrophobia were ever-present

realities, when phrenology was called a science and there still

lingered a belief in the possibility human beings undergoing spon-

taneous combustion."

At about the beginning of the epoch under discussion here

today, there occurred a great impetus within the profession to

spread its ideas by means of periodicals. About 1790, the first

medical journal in the United States appeared. It was called

A Journal of the Practice of Medicine and Surgery and Pharmacy

in the Military Hospitals of France and contained merely transla-

tions from the French journals of military medicine. The first

real American medical journal was The Medical Repository (New

York), begun in 1797 and discontinued in 1824. Its pages were

filled with descriptions of the prevalent diseases. Its twenty-first

volume presented a series of articles on the "summer epidemic

of Yellow-fever" and its eighteenth volume presented a systematic

study of the "Winter Epidemic" of 1812-13-14 and -15.

In 1812, the New England Medical and Surgical Journal

began its existence under the sponsorship of John Collins War-

ren and James Jackson.

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220   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Most of the new medical journals, as was to be expected,

sprung up along the Atlantic seaboard in the larger cities there.

New York produced more than a score, then came Philadelphia

to be followed by Boston and Baltimore. Later, as settlement took

place west of the Alleghenies, they began to appear in the ex-

pected centers, Lexington first and then Cincinnati. At first a

prominent physician and teacher would enter into an agreement

with a publisher to prepare for him a medical journal. In a few

instances, a group of physicians would form an association and

the effort of editing and publishing a medical journal would be

cooperative.

In 1820, The Philadelphia Journal of Medical and Physical

Sciences was founded as a quarterly under the editorship of Dr.

Nathaniel Chapman, professor of institutes and practice of physic

and of clinical medicine in the University of Pennsylvania. In

1824, Dr. William P. Dewes and Dr. John Goodman joined the

staff. In 1827, Dr. Isaac Hays also was added to the staff and

the name was changed to The American Journal of Medical

Science which name is still used today.

About 1819, the first secret Greek letter medical society of

Lambda Kappa was formed by that visionary professor of medi-

cine at Transylvania in Lexington, Kentucky, Dr. Samuel Brown,

with the purpose of promptly raising the professional standards

without consulting the doctors themselves. In 1826 the society

secretly founded the North American Medical and Surgical

Journal in Philadelphia. With its distinguished group of editors,

it maintained comparatively high standards of medical journalism

but went out of existence when its sponsoring society fell into

disrepute.

Around 1820, Transylvania University put literally hundreds

of its medical graduates into the communities of the Middle West.

Many of these alumni, later no doubt, subscribed to The Transyl-

vania Journal of Medicine and Surgery (Lexington, Ky.) which

began in 1828, because when the cholera threatened in 1832, we

find the newspapers of central and southern Ohio filled with

what these alumni had learned by a visit to Lexington and with

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PIONEER PHYSICIANS OF OHIO             221

 

reprints from the Lexington Journal, about the prevention and

treatment of cholera.

So, too, the physicians of the Western Reserve had come from

the schools of New England and more especially from the schools

of western New York and it was but natural that they should

subscribe to the journals from Boston and New York. Many of

the physicians in central Ohio came with settlers from Pennsyl-

vania and if they had attended a medical college, it was the Uni-

versity of Pennsylvania and so they were likely, if they subscribed

at all, to take a journal from Philadelphia..

Ohio's first medical journal was The Ohio Medical Reposi-

tory, a semi-monthly begun in 1826 by Dr. Guy W. Wright and

Dr. James M. Mason. Both being western graduates and intensely

patriotic with everything pertaining to the western country, their

ambition was to give the profession a western medical journal

edited by and for western doctors. Mason retired after one year.

Dr. Daniel Drake taking his place, the magazine became a monthly

under the title The Western Medical and Physical Journal, origi-

nal and eclectic. Drake soon became the sole owner and editor and

issued it under the new name of The Western Journal of the

Medical and Physical Sciences.

In 1839, Drake took the journal with him to Louisville where

it was subsequently combined with the Louisville Journal of Medi-

cine and Surgery. Drake's contributions included case reports,

papers on pathology, and the treatment of special diseases as well

as essays and comments on medical education.

It was not long until medical journalism in this country was

in its development closely related to the growth of medical

schools. As the various medical colleges sprang up, it became a

necessary part of the equipment to have a medical journal asso-

ciated directly or indirectly with the faculty. In almost every

instance, the outstanding figure on each faculty started a medical

journal to serve himself, his school, his faculty, and their alumni.

The medical faculty of the University of Pennsylvania had been

organized in 1765 and the college which is now the Medical

School of Columbia University in 1767. In 1785, Harvard opened

its medical college. These three institutions were all the medical

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222   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

schools that there were when the Northwest Territory was estab-

lished. From that time on until the end of the period under dis-

cussion--1835--there were established some twenty-six more col-

leges and with them came many new medical journals.

As historical documents, these journals are of great impor-

tance because they depict the interests of the profession. The

usual make-up was first "Original Communications." Here were

set forth case reports or case studies, descriptions of prevalent

diseases, and local botanical surveys. Next came reprints from

other medical journals here and abroad. Very often this grew to

be the largest department of each issue. Of it, a critical commit-

tee of the American Medical Association, as late as 1849, said,

"The committee has been struck with the fact, that the same

articles have been presented over and over again to the notice, in

many different periodicals, each borrowing from its neighbors

the best papers of the last preceding number, so that the perusal

of many is not so much laborious than that of a single one, as

would be expected. The ring of editors sit in each other's laps,

with perfect propriety and great convenience." One must not take

this criticism too much to heart. Discoveries were rare. The read-

ers had few books and no other journals. They were interested in

practical things and wanted help in their daily tasks. The postal

rates and regulations of the day pretty much confined the circula-

tion to a very limited distance. As the third department in the

make-up of one of these journals, came book reviews. These, too,

often were not reviews but lengthy exhibitions of the opinions

of the reviewer. Finally, the last section dealt with news, items

from medical colleges, and societies, an occasional editorial and in

some instances literary excursions and comments on current

reforms.

When one considers that twenty-five cents was about the

professional fee for a journey from downtown Columbus through

almost impassable roads to Alum Creek for a house call, it will be

seen that a subscription rate of from $1.50 to $5.00 made these

journals rather expensive to the physician of that day. Conse-

quently many doctors did not take even one but relied upon a few

texts for their information. That such was the case, is borne out

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PIONEER PHYSICIANS OF OHIO                223

by an editorial statement in the Boston Medical and Surgical

Journal, "There is not a profitable medical journal in this country

and what is more surprising there never was one." Dean John

Butterfield of the Starling Medical College writing editorially

of these times in his journal in 1848 described the preceptor-

trained physician of these days:

A very considerable proportion of the practitioners of medicine in our

state never received a regular medical education ... Some of them entered

a physician's office and after studying, from a few months to two or three

years, perhaps Bell's Anatomy and Thomas' or Eberle's Practice more or

less, started out with a certificate from their preceptor, hoisted their

"shingle" in some backward settlement and was, thenceforth, past all

redemption or recall dubbed "DOCTORS".

As American medical journalism grew older, it fell more and

more into the hands of medical educators who gave increasing

space to the trends in medical education. To these, they added

attacks upon quackery and advocacy of adequate organization

and legal protection. They conducted frequent surveys to show

the comparative state of the profession as to numbers in relation

to the total population, fees, and education. "It is," as Henry B.

Shafer says, "noteworthy that the magazines, even more than the

colleges, were instrumental in fostering the medical convention

which led to the formation of the American Medical Association."

Of all of the medical journals brought out in this period,

two were alive by 1850 and they have continued to the present

day. They were The American Journal of Medical Science and

The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.

Thus as Ohio and the western country were settled, there

arose medical publications of a varying degree of worth but with

each decade they were more scientific than in the preceding one.

Beginning with the next epoch in Ohio's medical history, Ohio

medical journalism became something more extensive, more inter-

esting and more worth while.

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