Ohio History Journal

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY OF THE PERIOD,

1835-1858*

CONTRIBUTIONS OF OHIO PHYSICIANS TO THE

INVENTIONS OF THE PERIOD, 1835-1858

 

By DONALD D. SHIRA, M. D.

 

When the chairman of this section suggested the title of this

paper it seemed to be a relatively easy assignment. Offhand one

would naturally assume that many Ohio physicians must have

conceived and perfected inventions outside the field of medicine.

However, such does not seem to be the case. Evidently most

physicians were too deeply absorbed in developing and improving

instruments and equipment of use to their own profession to stray

very far away into less familiar fields. Many physicians "rode

hobbies," or made original discoveries in the realms of art and

the natural sciences, but those who possessed real inventive genius

deserted, in part or completely, the practice of medicine.

The deeper one delves into this subject the more limited

appear to be its possibilities. No originality whatever is claimed

for this brief paper; it consists merely of an assembly of facts

already known. It is hoped, however, that it may serve as an

humble beginning to which factual material may be added from

time to time.

John Locke, M.D. (1792-1856)1

Dr. John Locke was an eccentric genius. In him was com-

bined the accurate, calculating mind of a scientist, with the

aesthetic, sensitive nature of a poet. He was born February 19,

1792, in Fryeburg, Maine, the son of Samuel Barron and Hannah

Pussell Locke.

 

* The eight papers under this heading were read before the second annual meet-

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

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

April 5, 1940.

1 References: Otto Juettner, Daniel Drake and His Followers (Cincinnati, 1909),

155-62; Howard Atwood Kelly and W. L. Burrage, American Medical Biographies

(Baltimore, Md., 1920), 710.

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316    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

At an early age young Locke manifested his mechanical tastes,

his ingenuity and his love for books. Botany was his favorite

study, although books on that subject were at that time extremely

scarce. In 1816 he met Dr. Solon Smith of Hanover and spent

two years with him in the further study of botany, studying medi-

cine at the same time. Later he became interested in chemistry

and, although he had never seen a piece of chemical apparatus,

his genius was such that he was able to construct his own para-

phernalia.

Although he had studied medicine as an apprentice, and had

served as an assistant surgeon in the United States Navy, he did

not receive his medical degree from Yale College until 1819.

After his graduation he started to practice medicine but soon

abandoned it, not for lack of patients, but because most of them

did not have any money with which to pay him. From that time

until 1837, when he became professor of chemistry at the Medical

College of Ohio, Cincinnati, he experienced a checkered career,

having delivered lectures in Portland, Maine, at Boston, Salem

and at Dartmouth College. In June, 1821, he went to Lexington,

Kentucky, and founded a school for girls. The year 1822 finds

him in Cincinnati where he founded a similar school which became

famous.

While professor of chemistry at the Medical College of Ohio,

largely with self-manufactured equipment, he experimented ex-

tensively in the field of electricity. As a result he invented a

number of scientific instruments such as, a thermoscopic galva-

nometer described in the American Journal of Science (XXXIII);

and a microscopic compass, a description of which also appeared

in the American Journal of Science (XXIII).

However, the crowning glory of his inventive genius was his

"Electric Chronograph" or "Magnetic Clock," which was adopted

by the United States Navy. A letter from Lieutenant Charles

Maury, announcing officially the invention of Dr. Locke to Hon.

John Y. Mason, Secretary of the Navy, dated at the National

Observatory, Washington, January 5, 1849, and quoted in the

National Intelligencer (June 8, 1849), reads thus:

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                 317

 

I have the honor of making known to you a most important discovery

for astronomy, which has been made by Dr. Locke, of Ohio, and asking

authority from you to avail myself of it, for the use and purposes of this

observatory. The discovery consists in the invention of a magnetic clock by

means of which seconds of time may be divided into hundredths with as

much accuracy and precision as the machinist, with rule and compass, can

subdivide an inch of space. Nor do its powers end here. They are such

that the astronomer in New Orleans, St. Louis, Boston and any other place

to which the magnetic telegraph reaches, may make his observations, and at

the same moment cause this clock, here in Washington, to record the instant

with wonderful precision. Thus, the astronomer in Boston observes the

transit of a star as it flits through the field of his instrument, and crosses the

meridian at that place. Instead of looking at a clock before him, and noting

the time in the usual way, he touches a key, and the clock here subdivides

his seconds to the minutest fraction, and records the time with unerring

accuracy. The astronomer in Washington waits for the same star to cross

his meridian, and, as it does, Dr. Locke's magnetic clock is again touched;

it divides the seconds, and records the time for him with equal precision.

The difference between these two times is the longitude of Boston from the

meridian of Washington. The astronomer in New Orleans, and St. Louis,

and every other place within the reach of the magnetic wires, may wait for

the same star, and as it comes to their meridian, they have but to touch the

key, and straightway this central magnetic clock tells their longitude. And

thus this problem, which has vexed astronomers and navigators, and per-

plexed the world for ages, is reduced at once, by American ingenuity, to a

form and method the most simple and accurate. While the process is

simplified, the results are greatly refined. In one night the longitude may

now be determined with far more accuracy by means of a magnetic telegraph

or clock than it can by years of observation according to any other method

that has ever been tried. It is, therefore, well entitled to be called a most

important discovery. It is a national triumph and it belongs to that class of

achievements by which the most beautiful and enduring monuments are

erected to national honor and greatness.

To quote Dr. Otto Juettner, "John Locke, a giant in intellect,

was a child at heart, tender, naive, lovable, sincere and full of

youthful enthusiasm."

Dr. Locke died in Cincinnati, July 1O, 1856.

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318    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND   HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Thomas Wood, M.D. (1813-1880)2

Here was another physician who was a versatile genius.

Thomas Wood was born in Smithfield, Jefferson County,

Ohio, August 22, 1813, the son of Nathan and Margaret Wood.

In 1835 he began to study medicine with Dr. W. S. Bates of

Smithfield. He received his medical degree in 1839 from the

University of Pennsylvania.

Even before he was graduated from medical college he in-

vented an instrument called the "Arealite," which was designed

to facilitate the calculation of areas. About the same time he

invented a fountain pen. Both these inventions received the

highest praise from the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia.

On July 22, 1839, he was granted a patent for an instrument

known as the "Linear Mensurator." Its function was to deter-

mine the length of lines and to find the horizontal of a line when

it ascends or descends a hill.

Wood settled in Cincinnati in 1845. Time will not permit

giving in detail the many medical honors which came to him

during his life. Suffice to say that he was at various times pro-

fessor of anatomy and physiology, Ohio College of Dental Sur-

gery; demonstrator of anatomy, professor of anatomy, and pro-

fessor of surgical anatomy, at the Medical College of Ohio; and,

in connection with Dr. L. M. Lawson, was editor and owner of

the Western Lancet.

Dr. Wood died in Cincinnati, October 20, 1880.

 

Richard Jordan Gatling, M.D. (1818-1903)3

Richard Jordan Gatling was born September 12, 1818, to

Jordan and Mary (Barnes) Gatling in Hertford County, North

Carolina. His father, a well-to-do planter, possessed considerable

mechanical ability and inventive talent, because he invented a

cotton-seed sowing machine and a machine for thinning cotton

 

2 References: Juettner, Daniel Drake, 223-4; Kelly and Burrage, American Med-

ical Biographies, 1258-9.

3 References: Who's Who in America (Chicago, 1899), I, (1899-1900), 263; Dic-

tionary of American Biography (New York, 1928-1937), VII, 191-2; Encyclopaedia

Britannica. 14th ed. (London; New  York, 1929), X, 71.

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          319

plants. Young Gatling, still in his teens, is said to have helped

his father in perfecting them.

Gatling, after completing the course in the county schools,

at the age of nineteen began to teach school. After one year of

teaching he gave it up and opened up a little country store. Evi-

dently the business was none too prosperous for he closed it in a

few months. Being of an inventive turn of mind he began to

brood over various inventions. During the year 1838 he devised

a screw propeller, but when he applied for a patent discovered

that John Ericsson had anticipated him. The little set-back by

no means dampened his ardor, for he immediately turned his at-

tention to the improvement of agricultural implements, and one

year later (1839) perfected and patented a rice-sowing machine,

and a wheat drill operated on the same principle. In 1844 he

went to St. Louis to have his machines manufactured.

Here enters a side light on the indomitable perseverence and

determination which made his name known throughout the civil-

ized world. In the winter of 1845, while on a business trip by

river steamer from St. Louis to Pittsburgh he contracted smallpox.

For two weeks the steamer was ice-locked and he could get no

medical attention. Right then and there he decided to take time

out of a busy, business career to study medicine so that ever after,

if an emergency arose, he could give to himself and his family

proper medical care. Eventually his determination was rewarded,

for he entered the Medical College of Ohio from which he re-

ceived his M.D. in 1850. It was not his intention to practice

medicine, nor did he ever.

His business of manufacturing agricultural implements be-

came so prosperous that he established factories in St. Louis,

Springfield, Ohio, and Indianapolis. He continued with his in-

ventions, having secured patents for a hemp-breaking machine,

and for a steam plow.

When the Civil War broke out he promptly turned his at-

tention to the instruments of warfare, and in 1862 patented a

steam marine battering ram. On November 4, 1862, he obtained

patent no. 36,836 for a rapid-fire gun known as the Gatling gun

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320    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

which brought him world-wide fame. To this day yeggs speak

of their automatic pistols as "gats". His first gun, although crude,

had a firing capacity of 250 shots a minute. He labored incessantly

to improve his gun and at last perfected it to the point where it

would fire 1,200 shots a minute. Records reveal that in several

instances it fired as many as 500 shots in two and one-half seconds.

It was officially adopted by the United States Army in 1866.

Briefly described the Gatling gun consisted of a group of rifle barrels

arranged lengthwise around a central shaft and the whole revolved by suit-

able gears and by a hand crank. Cartridges were automatically and suc-

cessively fed into the barrels, the hammers of which were so arranged in

connection with the barrels that they were kept in continuous revolving

movement by turning the hand crank. Ordinarily, the gun had ten barrels

with ten corresponding locks which revolved together.

In 1886 Gatling invented a new gun-metal composed of an

alloy of steel and aluminum. In 1897 he persuaded Congress to

grant a subsidy of $40,000 for the construction of an 8-inch gun,

which was built at Cleveland, Ohio, under his direction. In the

trials at Sandy Hook (1899) the gun burst and Gatling always

contended that sabotage during the process of manufacture was

responsible for its failure.

Despite the fact that Gatling was now eighty years old he

again turned his attention to agricultural implements, and invented

(1900) a motor-driven plow, but before arrangements for its

manufacture could be completed he died, February 26, 1903, at

Hartford, Conn.

The time alloted to this paper having nearly run its course,

one might mention a few other Ohio physicians who made dis-

coveries or inventions in the non-medical field--Dr. Rives Landon

Longworth (1846-1879), Cincinnati, who invented (1878) an

electric candle;4 Dr. Theodatus Garlick (1805-1884), Cleveland,

who was commissioned to make a medallion likeness in bas-relief,

after his own process, of President Andrew Jackson, who con-

structed a daguerreotype camera, and who was the first person

4 Kelly and Burrage, American Medical Biographies, 716; Juettner, Daniel Drake,

282.

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                321

in the country to essay the artificial culture of fish;5 Dr. Daniel S.

Young (1827-1902), Cincinnati, who was the first to discover

that zinc plates could be used for engraving;6 Dr. Walter Shield

Christopher (1859-1905), Cincinnati, who as research chemist

developed some of the exquisitely beautiful glazes that have made

Rockwood ware famous the world over;7 and Dr. James Cogswell

Fisher (1825-1893), Dayton, who assisted Morse in perfecting

the telegraph instrument.⁸

No doubt many other physicians in Ohio have made inven-

tions of practical utility, or which have enhanced our pleasure and

ease of living. As was stated at the outset, this is intended to be

a beginning only, and it is sincerely hoped that the names of other

physicians together with their achievements may be added from

time to time in order to complete our records.

5 Kelly and Burrage, American Medical Biographies, 426; see Joseph T. Smith

in Pioneer Medicine in the Western Reserve (Cleveland, 1932), 71.

6 Kelly and Burrage, American Medical Biographies, 1282.

7 Ibid., 220.

8 Ibid., 386.

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THOMSONIANISM IN OHIO

 

By FREDERICK C. WAITE, Ph.D.

 

Ohio has long been a battleground. Because of its geograph-

ical position, its terrain, and its internal and bordering waterways,

it was the site of many wars between different Indian nations

before the white man came and also, near the end of the eighteenth

century, the location of the major warfare between the white

men and the Indians.

Because of the geographical position, fertility of the soil and

ownership during the colonial period, it attracted early settlers

from three different cultural areas--Virginia, Pennsyvlania, and

New England. As a result of the mingling of these three different

groups, Ohio, throughout its history as a state, has been a political

battleground. Moreover, in the nineteenth century, since each

of these three groups of early settlers had different predominant

church affiliations, Ohio became the chief battleground of different

sectarian religious groups. Within its borders two important

religious sects, the Disciples and the Mormons, passed their

infancy.

Traceable to the same convergence of different social cul-

tures Ohio has been the major battleground of conflicts between

regular medicine and various medical cults and medical sects. The

center of homeopathy was long in northern Ohio, while the origins

and centers of activity of both eclecticism and the physiomedical

sect were in southern Ohio. For nearly a hundred years Ohio

has been the arena of controversies between regular medicine,

homeopathy, and eclecticism, and the location of sectarian medical

schools.

Except through consideration of the early medical back-

ground, one cannot understand why this contest of medicine oc-

curred in Ohio, nor the reason why a large number of practitioners

and lay adherents of sectarian medicine were resident in this State.

The basic explanation of all this medical contention in Ohio for a

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          323

 

hundred years lies in the prominent position occupied here by

Thomsonianism from about 1825 until about 1850.

The leader of Thomsonianism was Samuel Thomson. He

was born in southwestern New Hampshire in 1769. He became

a small farmer with the avocation of blacksmith. About 1805

when he was thirty-six years of age he became convinced that

under divine guidance he had a gift for treating the sick. At this

time he could neither read nor write.

His original thesis was the unity of disease and that, there-

fore, all diseases could be cured by a single remedy. His panacea

was lobelia, a powerful emetic. Herein lies the origin of the

theory of specifics which became the keystone of the eclectic

system of practice, the major successor of Thomsonianism.

About 1806 Thomson began to sell for $20 each the rights to

practice his system. He enlarged his medicaments, first adding

Cayenne pepper, and then others, until he had six remedies which

he numbered, but for several years he kept secret their ingredients.

He moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, then to a village

near Salem, Massachusetts, and finally about 1818, to Boston.

In 1809 he was indicted and tried at Salem for murder of a

patient who died under his treatment, but he was acquitted be-

cause no intent could be shown. He capitalized the publicity

secured by this trial.

In March, 1813, he was granted a patent on his system of

practice. This was replaced by another patent in 1823 which

would run fourteen years. Just before its expiration it was re-

newed for another fourteen years. This patent in 1813 is the

first patent of a medicine in the United States and the mother of

a host of offspring for more than a century.

With the aid of Elias Smith, a Universalist preacher in

Boston, he produced his book entitled A Narrative of the Life and

Medical Discoveries of Samuel Thomson, Containing an Account

of His System of Practice, etc. The first edition, containing 180

pages, was printed in Boston in 1822. It contained what he called

a diploma, an engraved page giving to the purchaser the right to

practice the system. Each purchaser was required to agree not

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324   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

to lend the book nor reveal any of its contents except to other

purchasers. The price was $20.00 and the purchaser, ipso facto,

became a member of the Friendly Botanic Society. In later edi-

tions the phraseology of the title was somewhat changed.

This book ran through thirteen editions. The fourth edition

was a translation into German, published at Lancaster, Ohio, in

1828. According to Thomson, the total sales exceeded 1OO,OOO

copies. At least four editions were printed in Ohio. Following

the publication of this book the growth of the cult was rapid.

Although Thomson himself called it Botanic Medicine, the desig-

nation of Thomsonianism soon superseded the original name. The

cult spread all over New England and into New York. This was

just the period of increased migration into Ohio of settlers from

this same area, and they brought Thomsonianism into northern

Ohio about 1825.

In 1821 Thomson's son Cyrus made a trip to Ohio to spread

the cult. In the summer of 1825 Charles Miles was appointed a

general agent and located at Columbus. In a year and a half

he sold five hundred rights to practice. In January, 1827, Horton

Howard came into control of the western headquarters at Colum-

bus. He sold four thousand rights in Ohio and neighboring states

in three and a half years.

The cult spread from New York southward and there were

many centers of adherents in New Jersey, in eastern Pennsylvania,

in Maryland, in central Virginia, and in central Georgia.

In 1827 a schism among the Thomsonians was led by Wooster

Beach of New York City. Beach called his faction the Reformed

Botanics. One of the points of difference was the question of

establishing botanical medical schools to train men in the cult.

Thomson opposed this, for, being himself uneducated, he con-

sistently said that education was a deterrent in the practice of

the cult and that ignorance was an asset since the ignorant indi-

vidual had a more open mind.

Wooster Beach tried to establish in New York City what he

called the Reformed Medical College, but the state authorities

refused to grant the charter and he could give no degrees. The

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, ₁8₃₅-1858         325

 

diploma of this school was an elaborate certificate of membership

in the Reformed Medical Society, but this failed to satisfy those

who wanted a medical degree. Therefore this educational effort

was transferred to Ohio where the college began operation in

1830 at Worthington, in the buildings and under the dormant char-

ter of Worthington College, which institution had been abandoned

and established elsewhere under a new charter as Kenyon College.

In 1832 Horton Howard of Columbus deserted Thomson

and established another rival faction called the Improved Botanics.

One of the most important individuals in the early develop-

ment of Thomsonianism in Ohio was Alva Curtis (1797-1880).

He was born in New Hampshire and graduated from an academy

in that state, not from a college as has been erroneously stated.

Like many New Englanders he went south about 1825 and be-

came a teacher in a girls' school in Richmond where he continued

successfully for several years. When William Lloyd Garrison in

1831 proclaimed his theory of immediate emancipation, Alva

Curtis supported the doctrine. This terminated his availability

as a teacher in Richmond and he was dismissed from his teaching

position. He had been converted to Thomsonianism about 1830,

and he now attempted to practice that medical cult in Richmond,

but his known adherence to abolition made him unacceptable.

He found it necessary to move to a northern state, and since

Ohio was in a period of rapid growth, he chose Columbus, where

he settled in 1834. Here he took over the editorship of the Thom-

sonian Recorder, the most prominent journal of the cult.

Alva Curtis was far above the average Thomsonian in both

education and ability. Soon after he arrived in Columbus he

established a school to teach Thomsonianism, and as he was an

experienced teacher he attracted students. The school had no

charter at first, so could grant no degrees, but degrees were quite

unnecessary then, for anyone, if he could find patients, could prac-

tice medicine without any legal certification as to medical or other

education.

In 1839 Alva Curtis secured a charter for the Literary and

Botanico-Medical Institute of Ohio. It was conducted for two

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326   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

years in Columbus, but moved to Cincinnati in 1841. This was

the first chartered Thomsonian school as distinguished from the

Reformed Botanics; thus Ohio had the first chartered schools of

each faction.

Since 1825 Columbus had been the western outpost of pure

Thomsonianism, while near at hand, at Worthington, was the

center of the Reformed Botanics, and one of Samuel Thomson's

three sons settled in Portage County. Thus the Western Reserve

came to have a large number of Thomsonian adherents.

Ohio was prominent in Thomsonian publications--books, as

well as journals. Of the thirteen editions of Thomson's book at

least four were printed in Ohio. One of these, a German edition

for the Pennsylvania Germans resident in the east central part of

the State, was the only translation into a foreign language. Also

at Columbus in 1829 and at Cincinnati in 1830 were published

Samuel Robinson's Lectures on Medical Botany which became

second only to Thomson's work for text-book use.

The period of the greatest growth of Thomsonianism was

from 1822 to 1837. By 1835 the popularity of the cult began

to wane in New England and New York, and many practitioners

were among the large numbers of people who were then moving

westward to increase the settlements in Ohio and the states im-

mediately west.

The cholera epidemics of 1832 and 1834 accelerated the ac-

ceptance of Thomsonianism by the people of this region. The

regular profession acknowledged their helplessness against the

disease, but the Thomsonians proclaimed that they had cured

every case of cholera they had treated and numerous specific in-

stances were cited and supported by testimonials and affidavits

of the patients. A check of the location of these patients shows,

however, that the great majority were in towns where there is

no reliable record that cholera actually occurred.

These "cures" resulted from a favorite method of all cultists,

that is, diagnosis of a mild disease under the name of a severe

disease. Every case of ordinary summer diarrhea was diagnosed

by the Thomsonians as cholera, and their treatment cured these

patients, or the patients recovered in spite of the treatment.

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858         327

 

However, the people accepted the claims and there was a

great increase in the number of those who relied upon the Thom-

sonian method of treatment. In 1835 the governor of Mississippi

stated publicly that one-half the people of that state relied upon

Thomsonianism. In the same year, in Ohio, the Thomsonians

claimed the adherence of one-half the population and the regular

profession acknowledged that one-third of the people were ad-

herents of the cult. Ohio was then the third state in the Union

in size of population, and therefore became the most extensive

field for the Thomsonians in the country. In 1839 Thomson

claimed three million adherents in the United States.

The technique of the Thomsonians was to inveigh against

regular medical practice, especially the use of mercury, poly-

pharmacy, and blood-letting. But the Thomsonians outdid the

regular physicians in the matter of compounds, some of their

thirty ingredients including inert and superstitious ones. As for

blood-letting, three days of continuous emesis, enemas, and steam

baths were far more depleting than drawing four ounces of blood

--the usual maximum in phlebotomy.

The Thomsonians called the regular physicians mineral doc-

tors, and the regular physicians retorted by designating the Thom-

sonians as steam doctors and (referring to emesis) "puke doctors."

One of the prominent activities of Samuel Thomson was the

manufacture of the medicaments that he advocated, especially of

numbers one to six. While he abandoned his early complete

secrecy as to the ingredients of his remedies, the directions that

he gave in his book for preparing them were very general and he

warned his followers that the only efficacious and reliable prepa-

rations were those made by the several manufacturing concerns

which he either owned or controlled.

The growth of the cult in the Middle West resulted in the

largest of these manufacturing concerns being in Cincinnati. From

it, all the territory tributary to the Mississippi and Ohio rivers

was supplied. Thus, Ohio came to have the largest number of ad-

herents in any one state, the center of its publications--both books

and journals--and the location of its principal manufacturing

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328   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

concern. The direction of the activities by Samuel Thomson and

his three sons was a prosperous business and from this fact de-

veloped opposition to Thomson and his lieutenants. Three of

these lieutenants were Alva Curtis and Thomas Hersey of Co-

lumbus, and Samuel Robinson of Cincinnati.

Moreover, in spite of the opposition of Samuel Thomson,

several botanic medical schools had been established in Georgia,

Virginia, Tennessee, and Massachusetts, and the graduates of

these schools knew more about medicine than did the members of

the controlling hierarchy. They began to protest against some of

Thomson's dogmas, supporting the Reformed Botanics' attitude.

The controversy within the cult began to be prominent in 1837

when the patent was about to expire, and the decline began. Of

the several rebels against Thomson, Wooster Beach was the first,

but the most prominent in Ohio were Horton Howard and Alva

Curtis of Columbus. Howard died of cholera in 1834 and his

faction soon disappeared.

Samuel Thomson died in Boston in 1843 and his sons could

not hold the cult together. Like the wonderful one-horse shay,

"it went to pieces all at once and nothing first, just as bubbles

do when they burst."

A considerable proportion of the remnants gathered around

three foci known as the Eclectics, the Physiomedicals, and the

True Thomsonians. The latter group, finding that the name of

Samuel Thomson was no longer a lode-stone soon changed their

designation to the Botanics. Their better members deserted to one

of the other factions and the Botanics rapidly disappeared, there

being very few left after the Civil War. Each of the three fac-

tions established a medical school in Cincinnati, although the

Botanico-Medical College was really a transfer of the school of

Alva Curtis from Columbus, and the Eclectic Medical Institute

was a revival of the Reformed Botanic College of Worthington,

dormant for five years. Alva Curtis soon deserted the Botanics

and became the leader of Physiomedicalism.

The Eclectic and Physiomedical schools were the parents of

all other schools of these sects in the United States, and thus Ohio

became the parent of both of these medical sects.

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 18₃₅-1₁85           329

 

The Physiomedical sect became moribund with the death of

Alva Curtis in 1880. The Eclectics lasted the longest, its last

school closing only a few years ago, so there are still several hun-

dred graduates of eclectic medical schools in practice in the United

States.

When the dissolution of Thomsoniansm came in 1843 the

Eclectic faction attracted the more able and better educated men,

including the Reformed Botanics; the Physiomedicals were next

best, and the Botanics the least competent. However, these three

factions do not account for all the former Thomsonians. What

became of the rest?

A few went into regular medicine. In the records of regular

medical schools of that period are occasional requests for the

conventional year of credit for having been a practitioner, with

refusal of that request because the applicant had practiced Thom-

soniansm.

A very considerable number went over to the water curists.

This accounts for the fact that the original European thesis, of

use by this cult of only cold water, was modified in America by

addition of hot water and steam. There was a further modifica-

tion of this therapy by the absorption of many Grahamites, the

vegetarian cult of that period.

The therapy of the water cure was difficult to carry out in

the home. Moreover, their special desire was to treat chronic

rather than acute illness. Therefore there came the founding of a

large number of institutions known as water cure establishments.

There were several in Ohio. These mostly disappeared by about

1880, but a few still exist in changed attire under the name of

sanitaria. The best known is the one at Battle Creek, Michigan,

which was originally a water cure establishment. Here you will

find a faint remnant of Thomsonian cultism in the use of enemas,

now called colon irrigations, and also a very distinct retention,

as a part of the institutional therapy, of the therapy of the Gra-

hamite cult of a hundred years ago in the insistance upon an en-

tirely vegetarian diet.

However, another goal attracted many former Thomsonians.

• 15
 

330    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

It will take more argument than room here permits to convince

American homeopathists and their historians that the major rea-

son for the sudden growth of Homeopathy between 1840 and 1855

was the collapse of Thomsonianism, but a considerable amount

of investigation, yielding several different kinds of data, all points

to the conclusion that large numbers of Thomsonians went over

to the more novel Homeopathy.

One would not expect it to be difficult for an individual who

had depended for his entire knowledge of how to practice upon

a single book by Samuel Thomson to shift his allegiance to an-

other single book by another Samuel, the Organon of Samuel

Hahnemann.

I have time to mention but one of the lines of evidence.

Thomsonianism was strongly entrenched in certain areas from

1830 to 1840. These were eastern Massachusetts, southern Ver-

mont, the eastern part of the Mohawk Valley in New York, eastern

Pennsylvania, northern, central, and southwestern Ohio, and

southern Michigan. It was in exactly these areas and in no others,

that Homeopathy had its early growth and developed most before

the Civil War. One might contend this was due to a series of

coincidences, but when several other lines of evidence are added

I am convinced that Homeopathy arose out of the remnants of

Thomsonianism and received far more accretion from this source

than from desertion from regular medicine to this new doctrine of

similia similibus curentur and infinitesimal doses.

Thomsonianism was the second medical cult that arose in the

United States. It was preceded by about fifteen years by Perkin-

ism which, because of the early death of its founder, was short-

lived. However, for a few years Perkinism created quite a stir in

England, while Thomsonianism never crossed the ocean. Samuel

Thomson for a time put into his practice elements of Perkinism,

using what he called an electrical machine for external treatment.

Among educated men Thomsonianism had few adherents or

supporters. Benjamin Waterhouse, professor of medicine at

Harvard, stated that it might possibly be worth investigating to

see if there were any minor elements of truth in its claims. So

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          331

hungry was Thomson for even a nod of recognition from anyone

in high places that thereafter he reiterated that Waterhouse was

an ardent supporter. A similar result followed a polite non-com-

mittal personal compliment to Samuel Thomson by Samuel L.

Mitchell of New York, and a comment by Constantine Rafinesque,

the French naturalist and professor of materia medica in Transyl-

vania University.

Thomsonianism, by Thomson's own claims, was a medical

system of and for the ignorant. Nevertheless, it had the largest

following of any American medical cult and holds an important

place in the history of American medicine because out of it came

one of the medical sects (Eclecticism) that persisted for nearly a

century, and another sect (Homeopathy) at its outset received

major accruals at the disintegration of Thomsonianism.

This cult is more important in the medical history of Ohio

than in that of any other state, both because it was stronger in

Ohio than elsewhere, and also that its disintegration came just

at the time to furnish the foundation of the three most prominent

medical sects in Ohio, namely, Eclecticism, Physiomedicalism, and

Homeopathy.

Its great acceptance in Ohio arose from the fact that when

Thomsonianism was at its peak the population was growing more

rapidly than the regular profession and therefore, with lack of

adequate medical service, Thomsonianism was tolerated as better

than nothing.

The important place of this cult in the medical history of

this State makes it highly desirable that someone should give it

extensive study. There is much material. No writer has given

it any extensive critical historical attention.

This short sketch makes no claim to being a history of this

feature of Ohio's medical history, but it is hoped it may lead

someone to investigate it thoroughly and make a detailed record

of the events that characterize it and the results that have come

from it.

• 17
 

THE RISE OF HOMEOPATHY

 

By LUCY STONE HERTZOG, M. D.

 

In the course of correspondence concerning this paper, Dr.

Frederick Waite wrote me: One of the questions is, "What was

the previous relation of those who became homeopaths in the

early era?" All the homeopathic histories stress the point that

many of the homeopaths had previously been in regular medicine

but he was unable to prove this true, except of only a small

minority. Dr. Waite also raised the question, "Whence come the

homeopaths" and advanced the idea that the great majority are

lineal descendants from the Thomsonians and Eclectics. Worthy

as these sources may be as ancestry, nothing could be further

from the truth. Complete statistics on the medical background

of all the individual homeopaths would be difficult to procure--

but the facts concerning these earlier days are matters of authentic

record to be found in the libraries of our colleges in New York

and Philadelphia.

It seems fitting to answer these questions as a logical start-

ing point in order that the early years of Homeopathy in Ohio

may be presented with proper background, in a truthful and or-

derly manner with appropriate continuity.

Homeopathy is truly "the lengthened shadow of one man."

It stems from but one source, the founder, Samuel Christian Fred-

rich Hahnemann, born in Meissen, Germany, in 1755. His father

was a painter on porcelain in the royal establishment at Meissen.

He may seem remote from us but he has been and still is a

very vibrant, vital influence in medicine. His problems were in-

tensely human, so that we can feel close to the precocious boy,

the first born of a large family, who thirsted and hungered for

education in the face of extreme poverty. He made himself a

little lamp of clay and used forbidden oil to study while others

slept. His wise father must have divined the possibilities in this

(332)

• 18
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 18₃₅-1858          333

child for no matter where he was or what he was doing, at a

certain time he always left saying, "I must go home and give my

boy his lesson in thinking." In their walks, he taught him nature.

He urged upon him the importance of finding a reason for every-

thing.

When his father could no longer pay his tuition in school, a

devoted teacher asked the privilege of directing his intellectual

training until he was twenty. During these years he became a

marvelous linguist, being adept in English, French, German, Latin,

Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit and Arabic. Against his father's wishes

he decided to study medicine and this he did with the assistance

of only twenty crowns from home. He taught French and German

and translated books to pay his bills. Every other night he sat

up all night to study. His remarkable linguistic ability enabled

him to translate many important medical works in later years.

The student ripened into a profound scholar with an un-

usually logical mind. Hahnemann became an expert chemist of

world-wide reputation. He insisted that all drugs must be pure

to be effective. His insistence upon the purity of mineral drugs

remained an innovation into the next century. In 1793 he ad-

vocated the manufacture of tinctures from fresh plants which

was the last word in practical chemistry.

He voiced strong disapproval of the universal purgation of

that day, of the blood-letting, used often in hemorrhages, until

the patient fainted or died. Today they would get transfusions.

He condemned severely the administration of mercury until the

teeth fell out of the jaw. Today all the world agrees with him.

Hahnemann unchained the insane and demanded decent treatment

for them. He fought a bitter fight for cleanliness in obstetrics.

He stood alone in expounding the need for quarantine and public

sanitation in checking epidemics, and he condemned hand-shaking,

kissing and using the same drinking vessels. He advocated pre-

ventive medicine and mechanical cleanliness in sick room and

hospital. He stressed baths, massage, pure air, proper clothing

and hygiene for young and old, but above all, diet. He was par-

ticularly anxious to discover the causes of disease and remove

them. All of this is old stuff today but in 1790 it was startling,

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334  OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

revolutionary and led inevitably to persecution. As one of the

Mayo's said, "He was 100 years ahead of his time."

In his day prescriptions of the most revolting mixtures and

dangerous drugs were assembled numbering anywhere from sixty

to 200 ingredients in one prescription. The progress of modern

medicine in all schools toward smaller, more accurate, much more

pleasant dosage began with Hahnemann's fight on this one point

when he denounced the messes and the apothecaries who concocted

them. His was the revolt of a thinking man against the tyranny

of tradition, ignorance, bigotry, intolerance, and medical aggres-

sion.

Hahnemann's logical and scholarly mind rebelled at giving

unknown medical combinations to people whose physical condition

no one understood fully. So he decided to try drugs on himself

in order to learn at first-hand their effect on a healthy person.

The nature of the work he was translating at the time, led him to

take first Cinchona bark. It was the one drug of that age that

was known to produce results, and on Hahnemann it brought

startling results for it produced in him the chill, fever and sweat

distinctive of the ague that Cinchona was curing.

Hahnemann hoped and believed he had chanced upon one of

nature's facts--a law or principle of cure to the effect that a drug

would cure a disease similar to the symptoms produced on a

healthy person by taking that drug. By this proving Hahnemann

rediscovered the law of similars the truth of which had always

existed--used even by savages, long before Hahnemann, and it

will always exist--even though organized Homeopathy becomes

a thing of the past. The doctrine has been referred to in every

century of recorded medical thought. Claudius Galen and Hip-

pocrates used "Helleboris which caused mania, to cure mania."

This law is illustrated in the common knowledge of the value

of heat for burns and cold for frost bites.

The word "homeopathy" is derived from Greek words mean-

ing like and disease, and is used as an adjective by scholars and

writers to describe things infinitesimally small. Homeopathy is

simply a method of treating the sick in accordance with its formula

• 20
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858         335

 

"similia similibus curentur"--let similars be treated by similars,

rather than by "contraria."

Hahnemann studied and experimented for sixteeen years

before announcing his discovery, in the first edition of his

Organon, published in 1810. It has been translated into many

languages, and ran through five editions.

Hahnemann insisted that drug action can only be learned by

proving on healthy human subjects. He contended that to treat

the sick scientifically and homeopathically, but one remedy should

be used, and that in the minimum dose to cure and not aggravate.

Hahnemann gave accurate instruction in case taking, individual-

izing the case. The homeopath might give a different remedy to

each of a number of cases of cough.

Hahnemann taught that the action of the homeopathically

administered remedy is due to its power of stimulating the cells

of the body to curative reactions. His terms "dynamis" and

"spirit-like force" are the equivalent of the modern term "vital

function of cells" and his logic could have been written by a

modern immunologist. Bacteriology, immunology, and allergy

have given substantiation to Homeopathy. Vitamins and hormones

illustrate the potency of the minute dose--the infinitesimal, that

the body works with. Antitoxins, serums, and vaccines confirm

Homeopathy.

The modern Arndt-Schulz law which is accepted by leading

medical thinkers is only another way of stating Hahnemann's pri-

mary and secondary action of drugs. It has been suggested that

this may prove to be the common ground where minds of all

medical schools may meet, eventually, in their need for a medical

principle in selecting a remedy. Homeopathy and other methods

of drug therapy are not incompatible. They may be comple-

mentary. Hahnemann never claimed to have inaugurated an all-

sufficient law of cure.

The great reformation in medicine brought about by Hahne-

mann's rebellion against the medical orthodoxy of his day is not

appreciated solely by his immediate followers. Queen Victoria's

physician said: Homeopathy is the remote if not immediate cause

of more important fundamental changes in the practice of the

• 21
 

336   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

healing art than any since Galen himself. Sir William Osler fre-

quently said that no one individual had done more good to the

medical profession than Hahnemann. A long list of old school

clinicians such as Richard Clarke Cabot, Benjamin Rush, Roberts

Bartholow, Jacob da Silva Solis Cohen and Rudolf Virchow have

inadvertently advocated homeopathic therapeutics.

In Hering Laboratory a file covering five years from 1930 to

1935 shows 1200 references substantiating homeopathic doctrines

in general practice from old school sources.

As a profession we are growing more tolerant, and we need

to. There have always been detractors of every great leader of

any innovation in medicine. It took fifty years for the doctors

to accept William Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the

blood. They called him demented and he lost his big practice,

and his life was in danger. Michael Servetus who advanced the

same ideas was burned at the stake for it in 1553. In this very

epoch, Ignaz Philipp Semmelweiss of Budapest -- 1847 -- made

students wash their hands before going into the obstetric wards,

in chloride of lime. Mortality dropped but he was so persecuted

by the doctors he became insane. At the same time Oliver Wendell

Holmes here, asserted child-bed fever was contagious and trans-

mitted by the hands. He was ridiculed and abused. So it is not

strange that Hahnemann was attacked on all sides.

He lectured at the University of Leipsic from 1812 to 1821

--and for a time was court physician. During this time the

doctors and publishers determined to get rid of him by fair

means or foul. A brilliant young medical student Constantine

Hering was given the job, to get his man. So he proceeded to

study every phase of his work and philosophy. To the amaze-

ment of those who had hoped for something different, he became

a convert to Hahnemann's teaching and upon graduation his thesis

was entitled "Future Medicine," a delineation of Homeopathy

completely in its favor. Hering came to Philadelphia in 1833

and under his able leadership Hahnemann College came into being.

Hahnemann's marvelous cures with single remedies naturally

maddened the apothecaries, robbed of their prescription revenues

--consequently they accused him of breaking the law by dispensing

• 22
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          337

his own medicine, and won their case in court. Thus he was

forbidden to prepare or dispense his own medicine in Saxony.

Denied the right to practice medicine he left Leipsic, reduced to

poverty, hounded from town to town with his family, yet he

persisted to tell the truth by pen, precept and example. Gradually,

disciples gathered to his support and in a quiet little town in

Germany under the protection of the reigning duke, he studied

intensively, while patients came to him from all over Europe,

because of the fame of his cures. Hahnemann's last marriage was

to a pupil and patient, a titled French woman. Through her in-

fluence he received a royal ordinance granting him permission

to practice in Paris. At the age of ninety, covered with honor

and glory, having kept the faith and fought a good fight, he

departed this life.

Hahnemann had published seventy original works on chemis-

try and medicine and had translated as many at least into French,

Latin and English. He left ten volumes of provings, among them

the story of ninety-nine drugs proved on his own body. It is to

this brilliant medical pioneer, reformer and teacher, Samuel

Hahnemann, whose name deserves to be ranked among the im-

mortals in medicine, that Homeopathy owes its existence, its prin-

ciples, its philosophy, and its law of cure, and to no other source.

He had as lasting effect in the realm of medicine as Louis

Pasteur, Lord Joseph Lister, Edward Jenner and Harvey had

in other fields. All alike suffered persecution.

"God sends his messengers to every race and age

Illuminati, bearers of the light;

And here and there upon the dismal page of history,

celestial, bright

Their names shine forth."

Homeopathy quickly found its way to America, only fifty

years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Hans

Burch Gram born in Boston, a Dane, went to Copenhagen at the

age of eighteen to look after the family estate. His uncle, then

physician to the king, encouraged him to study medicine and so

• 23
 

338   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

gifted was he that he graduated from the Copenhagen University

with the three highest honors it could confer. Hearing of the

work of Hahnemann he studied, and adopted it, and brought it to

America in 1825, the first direct line from Hahnemann, just ten

years before the epoch we are considering.

Gram's first converts were Drs. John F. Gray and Thomas

Bellerby Wilson, medical students of Drs. David Hosack and

Valentine Mott, who never forgave them for their action nor for

their success. The prominent Dr. Federal Vandenberg, who be-

came a convert, tells the story of a man patient of his with a

toe set at right angles with his foot by a contraction of the tendon.

He and Mott had advised him to have it divided but the man

would have none of it. A month later he met the man on the

street entirely cured who said Gram had given him some sugar

pellets the size of a mustard seed which had done the trick.

Cures which seemed miraculous except to a homeopath

brought converts, and they were graduates of the best universities

of Europe and of the allopathic schools in America. They had to

be--because there were no homeopathic schools. They were mem-

bers of identical societies and hospital staffs.

Hahnemann himself was elected by ballot in 1828 to mem-

bership in the New York Academy of Medicine and the reason

given was that he was the founder of Homeopathy. He is still

an honorary member.

It is difficult to understand why these physicians who adopted

Homeopathy were so persecuted by their fellows who saw red

and foamed at the mouth at the idea. All homeopaths were barred

from membership in county societies, hence from license to prac-

tice in those days, therefore they were forced to organize to pro-

tect themselves and their patients. It was not the wish nor inten-

tion of homeopathic physicians to form a separate school. It was

the persecution of those bitter days, and the action of the state in

extending equal protection to all of its citizens that forced the

issue. For today physicians of all schools hold their right to

practice from the state and not from a medical society that could

be prejudiced.

• 24
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          339

 

This freedom possessed by all schools today we owe to the

rugged courage of those old homeopaths who fought and won

their rights; that broke up the cliques that decided what their

confreres should think and what medicine they should or should

not prescribe.

The second direct line to the United States from Hahnemann

came through his pupil Dr. Johann Ernst Stapf. Because of

trouble in Saxony a number of self-exiled physicians came to

America and settled in Northampton County, Pennsylvania. All

were well educated in German universities, not a quack or preten-

der among them. They often gathered together, and on one

occasion Dr. Conrad Wesselhoeft showed the others some books

and a box of homeopathic remedies sent him by Stapf in Germany.

They were deeply interested and studied and adopted Homeopathy.

When Constantine Hering came to Philadelphia, being a born

leader of men, he organized these brilliant German homeopaths

into a school at Allentown, Pennsylvania, the first homeopathic

school in the United States which was parent institution of twenty-

two homeopathic colleges, including Hahnemann at Philadelphia.

Homeopathy grew step by step with the young state of

Ohio and both became strong. A Dr. Cope had come in 1836

to practice in the vicinity of Plymouth, Richland County. He

must have been a believer in highly diluted drugs, administering

only a single dose, repeating it in two weeks if such "radical"

treatment were required. It is recorded that he made remarkable

cures and had a large practice. Tradition has it that a German doc-

tor settled in Delaware County about this same time and treated

his patients with "very little pills and whose habit in typhoid cases

was to give the patient one dose and return at the end of a week

to see how it was working." These men had the courage and

faith of their convictions.

Dr. William Sturm began practice in 1839 in Cincinnati. He

was educated in Germany, and was a personal student of Hahne-

mann. He was first of the long line of fine homeopaths in that

region. His skill and success gave him fame and a large practice

all through the Ohio River Valley. The second to come down the

river to Cincinnati under the homeopathic banner was Joseph

• 25
 

340   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

H. Pulte in 1840. He was one of the founders of the Allentown

Academy, the son of a distinguished physician. He was a notable

physician of great learning and a prolific writer. One of his books

on domestic practice reached the seventh edition, and was trans-

lated into several foreign languages. He translated many German

homeopathic works into English. It is said of him that once when

a distinguished Greek visited the city, Pulte was the only citizen

to be found able to converse with the foreigner in his native

tongue. He was later the founder of Pulte College.

Benjamin Ehrmann, whose father and grandfather were

physicians in Germany, a graduate of Allentown Academy, joined

the tide of western emigration and became the partner of Pulte.

In 1849 an epidemic of Asiatic cholera scourged the West. Along

with Pulte and Ehrmann worked Edwin C. Wetherell, a New

York graduate who had spent some time in the hospitals of Lon-

don and Paris, and Dr. F. A. Davis, who had studied with Pulte,

who opened a free dispensary for the cholera victims. Dr. James

G. Hunt, Dr. William Peck and a Dr. Price--members of the

orthodox school, were converted to Homeopathy because pri-

marily, it was so extremely successful in curing this cholera.

During the cholera epidemic, the homeopaths somehow did

not know about making reports to the authorities as did the allo-

paths and Pulte and Ehrmann were haled before the mayor for

trial--but were dismissed--the health board not being lawfully

organized. At this time the editor of a religious paper, being a

minister and also an orthodox physician became irritated and irked

at the amazing results of homeopathic practice, so he proceeded

to rip them up in his paper. The homeopaths answered him

gentlemanly but firmly to no effect. After the abuse had gone

far enough the grateful citizens of Cincinnati formed an associa-

tion which appointed a committee to investigate and report. As

a result, the homeopathic doctors were exonerated, and the eminent

editor was asked to correct promptly his published statement.

The period from 1849 to 1852 was very important in the

history of Homeopathy in Ohio. The Homeopathic Society of

Cincinnati, composed chiefly of laymen, had a membership of

1,000. Its chief objectives were: to vindicate Homeopathy, and

• 26
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                341

 

to uphold the truth regarding the cholera epidemic; to petition

the General Assembly of 1849 for an act establishing a homeo-

pathic college; to promulgate the lectures delivered by Dr. Storm

Rosa at the Eclectic College in 1849; and to organize a college in

Cleveland in 1850.

From the beginning many obstacles had been thrown in the

path of progress of the homeopathic practitioners in Cincinnati,

but in time of need this little bunch of pioneers were offered

an educational home in the eclectic school in that city. Dr. E. M.

Hale gives this narrative:

When the Eclectic Medical College was organized it was understood

by the legislature that chartered it and the original faculty, that it was to

be organized upon the broadest base of pure Eclecticism. Drs. Morrow, Hill,

Gatchell and other able men were on the faculty and Dr. Storm Rosa was

selected by the homeopaths of Ohio as a suitable person to occupy the chair

of homeopathic practice. He had studied medicine in New York, but after

practicing 25 years he began to investigate homeopathy at the suggestion of

friends who had been helped by it and he formally adopted it in 1843.

His labors in the Eclectic school mark an era of homeopathy in the

west, and gave an impetus to the system that is still felt. He had been

asked to prepare two courses of lectures, but the first course had the effect

of converting not only one-third of the class, but two of his most prominent

colleagues on the faculty--Drs. Hill and Gatchell. This was a result not

relished by the Eclectic School and so the Trustees formally abolished the

chair in 1850.

So thorough had been Rosa's teaching that in the spring six

students received both eclectic and homeopathic diplomas. These

were the first homeopathic diplomas given in the West, and the

date preceded by nine days only, the graduation of six men from

the Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania.

Just what the strong personality of Rosa and the stronger

truths of Homeopathy had to do with the decision of the board

of trustees may be left to the imagination. A convention was

called at Columbus in 1851 to organize a State Homeopathic So-

ciety. At that time and place Dr. Benjamin L. Hill, a surgeon

of national reputation who had been professor of anatomy and

surgery at the Eclectic Institute, avowed his conversion to Homeo-

pathy and gave his reasons, later published in a series of articles.

• 27
 

342   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Among other prominent eclectic graduates who took up

Homeopathy about this time were: Dr. William Owens, demon-

strator in the Eclectic Institute, later holding the same position

in the Cleveland Homeopathic College, and Dr. William Webster,

descendant of Noah and son of the pioneer homeopath, Dr. Elias

Webster. He had settled in Middletown, was converted to Homeo-

pathy by Rosa's teaching and later moved to Dayton, where he

remained. Another, was the homeopathic pioneer of Hamilton

County, Dr. Alfred Shepherd, who for years was the only homeo-

path between Cincinnati and Dayton. Dr. J. Beeman of Birming-

ham and Dr. T. W. Cuscaden of Lebanon were the pioneers of

their districts. Dr. David H. Beckwith who graduated at the

Eclectic Institute in 1849, later settled in Cleveland.

The association of the homeopaths with the Eclectic Institute

for the one year of 1849, added to the fact that then and later,

so many other eclectics were converted to Homeopathy, no doubt

explains the claims of outsiders that the homeopaths stem from

Eclecticism.

Among others already mentioned of the medical men of

the orthodox school who preferred homeopathic practice in this

period were three from Cincinnati: Dr. Jesse Garretson, Dr. John

Bigler and Dr. Gerald Saal, educated in Germany. Dr. John Tifft

of Norwalk practiced Allopathy many years before changing in

1852. After being an allopath for twenty-five years, Dr. H. N.

Manter who was of superior literary and medical education, began

practicing Homeopathy in Elyria. Dr. Henry L. Sook said that

in 1844 a friend brought him a small case of remedies and a

homeopathic book. He said: "Like other simpletons I attempted

to make sport of the little pills, but becoming convinced of their

superiority, I later studied the system in opposition to all friends

and relatives." He graduated in Homeopathy in Cleveland and

practiced at Pomeroy, Steubenville, and Newark during his life.

Dr. E. W. Cowles, graduate of Jefferson Medical College, became

a convert after practicing Allopathy for thirteen years. He began

practicing Homeopathy in Cleveland in 1845.

Before this, Dr. R. E. W. Adams introduced Homeopathy to

• 28
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858           343

Cleveland in 1843. The next year, Dr. Daniel O. Hoyt, an allo-

path, graduate of Dartmouth took up Homeopathy and became a

partner of Adams. Dr. John Wheeler, also a graduate of Dart-

mouth, became a convert after practicing Allopathy twenty-seven

years. He was one of the best-known and best-beloved of the

early homeopaths and was President of the Cleveland Homeo-

pathic College many years. Dr. Alex H. Burritt, graduate of

Physicians and Surgeons College in New York, after practicing

Allopathy for nine years, visited his relative, Dr. John Gray in

New York, saw his successes with Homeopathy, and became a

convert. He was later appointed to the chair of obstetrics in

1850 in Cleveland. Dr. Hamilton Ring graduated at the Homeo-

pathic Medical College in 1851 and located in Urbana.

Plans were begun in 1849 for a homeopathic college in

Cleveland but they did not materialize until the fall of 1850 when

the Cleveland Homeopathic Medical College opened its doors in

a building at the corner of Prospect and Ontario streets, with an

able faculty and a fine course of study planned. It was the second

institution of its kind in America. It was not the outgrowth of

any institution in the East--as claimed, nor of any other school of

medical thought.

At the opening exercises a large, enthusiastic, fashionable

audience greeted with cheers the opening address of Prof. C. D.

Wiliams, who was to teach homeopathic medicine. He was a

brilliant physician who had practiced a number of years in New

York. It was he who drew up the charter for the Western Homeo-

pathic College. Notable among the teachers was Jehu Brainard,

A.M., M.D., a scholar with degrees from many colleges. He now

taught the physical sciences, botany, and anatomy--which he had

taught in other colleges. He was a writer of note. He finally

removed to Washington, D. C., where he helped get certain laws

repealed that had been passed by Congress and which were ad-

verse and oppressive to the homeopathic school. Dr. Storm Rosa

of Painesville, Ohio, who had made such an impression with his

homeopathic teaching at the eclectic school, was now called to

the chair of gynecology and obstetrics. Dr. Benjamin Hill, the

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344    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

surgeon, came from the eclectic school to act as a founder of the

new school and to teach surgery. He published a small domestic

medical book, The Epitome of the Homeopathic Healing Art,

which ran through eighteen editions. In 1855-1856 James G.

Hunt came to teach surgery and with Hill collaborated on an

outstanding book on surgery. Also in that same year came Dr.

J. S. Douglas as professor of materia medica. Douglas and Hill

proved black cohosh with great care on forty students, male

and female. Hill finally went to Nicaraugua as consul for one

year and served two terms in the State legislature.

In the first year of the new school, Dr. H. P. Gatchell came

from teaching in the Eclectic Institute and was a tower of strength

to the institution. Dr. E. C. Wetherell from New York, a man of

fine education and great ability held the chair of anatomy eight

years. Dr. Lewis C. Dodge a man of exceptional education taught

materia medica. Dr. John Wheeler, a man of parts, was president

of the board of trustees during the first ten years of the school's

existence and was always at the head of the college directing and

advising its policy. He never shrank from duty and when as-

sailed by enemies in the profession he knew no fear.

In the first year the college had sixty students. There were

then about fifty homeopathic physicians in the State. During this

first year a disgraceful episode is remembered regretfully by the

citizens of Cleveland. At that time there was no proper provision

for bodies for the dissecting rooms. They were provided by out-

side parties and sold to the medical colleges. A grave was dis-

covered to have been robbed in a Cleveland cemetery. This act

of vandalism created great excitement. Probably because the

homeopathic school was newly started, and so fresh in the public

mind, suspicion was directed at it. Those interested easily got a

mob together to force an entrance and search for the body. The

college doors were broken open, and the mob became a riot. After

entering and searching fruitlessly, the work of destruction began.

Windows were broken, extensive chemical laboratories with con-

tents, were dismantled and destroyed. The fine museum of Brain-

ard, the botanist, the result of years of collection was entirely

• 30
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858         345

destroyed. All anatomical models, manikins, and charts were

ruined and every piece of furniture was either thrown out of the

windows or carried away by the mob. Several times the torch

was applied and it was only by excessive effort the fire department

prevented the destruction of the building. Just as the mob started

towards Williams' home to destroy it, a force of State troops

appeared and quelled the riot. It was later successfully proved

that the stolen body was never in the homeopathic college. The

entire loss was sustained by the faculty. They received no recom-

pense from the State or the city of Cleveland.

In the spring there was a direct reaction from the persecu-

tion during the winter and there came a revival of good will of

the citizens, many of whom contributed money with which the

trustees bought a building called the Belvidere. In 1852 it was

deeded to the trustees. Many changes and improvements were

made and the college moved into its new home. There were now

required three years of study and two courses of lectures--at a

cost of $99 per year.

Pulte came from Cincinnati to teach clinical medicine but

finally took over gynecology and obstetrics. Dr. John Ellis, an-

other of the strong men in Homeopathy, the author of many

medical books was teacher of the practice of medicine for six

years. The Beckwiths played important parts in Homeopathy in

Cleveland. Dr. David H. Beckwith graduated at the Eclectic

Institute in 1849, went East for honorary degrees and settled in

Cleveland. In 1851-1852 he, with others, had entire control of

the county buildings and they tested thoroughly the comparative

methods of the two schools of medicine in scarlet fever and

dysentery. The result was so favorable to Homeopathy that the

old use of drugs was abolished. In the next forty years it was

said of him that he rang more silver door bells in Cleveland than

any other doctor in the city.

Dr. Seth R. Beckwith graduated from the Cleveland Homeo-

pathic College in 1853 and located in Norwalk. From there he

was called to teach surgical anatomy at the college. He was the

surgeon of the railroads entering Cleveland. He opened the first

• 31
 

346   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

organized hospital in Cleveland in 1856--the Cleveland Homeo-

pathic Hospital of twenty beds, on Lake Street. Beckwith used

it for those injured on the railroads and it was open to all surgical

cases. During 1855-1856 the name of the college was changed to

the Western College of Homeopathy. Including 1858, the years

of the college were successful in having a strong faculty and

splendid graduating classes numbering from twenty to thirty each

year.

In 1845 a homeopathic pharmacy was opened in Cincinnati, an

agency for the Leipsic pharmacy in Germany. In 1846 the first

homeopathic pharmacy was opened in Cleveland at the corner of

Superior and the Public Square. A homeopathic drug store was

opened in this epoch in Cleveland to be owned eventually by

Beckwith and L. H. Witte.

During this epoch, the first woman to practice medicine in

Ohio came to Cleveland in 1852, Dr. Myra Merrick, educated in

medicine in Rochester, New York City and New Haven, Con-

necticut. She was a great homeopath of outstanding personality.

She was the first physician in Cleveland to place her patients in

the Walcher position and hers was the motive power behind the

Women's and Children's Dispensary, which led eventually to the

present Women's Hospital in Cleveland.

All honor to the achievements of the pioneer homeopaths.

Many more deserve special mention. There were giants in those

days. The pioneers of all schools of medical thought took their

religious and medical beliefs seriously, militantly. With the

simplest equipment they became keen observers, depending on

their senses, and their wits, instead of instruments of precision.

They braved weather, no roads, danger, ignorance, and primitive

conditions with salty courage and resourcefulness in their battle

with the Grim Reaper when epidemics of malaria, smallpox, dysen-

tery, and typhoid, raged. Each generation is pioneer to the next.

Upon the work of these men was built the medical structure of

today.

• 32
 

URINALYSIS, INSTRUMENTS OF PRECISION, THE

STETHOSCOPE, ET CETERA, OF THE PERIOD,

1835-1858

 

By HOWARD DITTRICK, M. D.

 

The period 1835 to 1858 was one during which there was little

or no advance in the scientific side of medicine. According to

F. H. Garrison, the scientific movement did not start until well

after the middle of the nineteenth century. Medicine of the early

half was, with a few exceptions, only part and parcel of the sta-

tionary theorizing of the preceding age. This was particularly true

regarding development and use of instruments of precision.

The field of my assigned topic is restricted within two limita-

tions: first, instruments of precision, that is, those of definite

scientific measurement in the field of diagnosis; and second, those

used in Ohio within this comparatively barren period.

If, therefore, this paper should be restricted to precision in-

struments of this period certainly used in Ohio, there would be

little to say and I would have saved much time for myself and

some twenty minutes for you. I had almost reduced it to the

well-known essay of a school boy on baseball--"Rain, no game."

But I propose to adhere to the outline set forth by your chair-

man in his letter of last January, in which he allotted to me, in

addition to precision instruments, chemical analysis of urine, the

stethoscope, etc. I crave your indulgence if I place undue em-

phasis on the et cetera. Under that heading you may mentally

catalogue all those instruments which you may not agree to be

properly classified as instruments of precision.

For even that line of demarcation may be vague. Dr. Ralph

H. Major said that while stethoscope, thermometer and blood

pressure apparatus were classed as instruments of precision when

first introduced, they are not now considered more precise than the

finger-tips. Because since we have become familiar with them,

we have learned that they are subject to strange caprices, and can

(347)

• 33
 

348   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

easily lead us astray. Evidently the et cetera must salvage the

only remaining shreds of my topic. I shall begin with urinalysis.

The story of the examination of urine is very intriguing, and

goes far back into history. May I touch briefly on these facts

leading up to the period under discussion today, in order to afford

perspective for progress within this era.

For example, the Fehling test for sugar goes back to Un-

guentum Egypticum. In the preparation of this ointment, which

contained verdigris, honey and vinegar, it was noted that boiling

produced a change in color, due to the reaction of the copper and

sugar. This led ultimately to the present test which results from

the reduction of copper solutions by glucose.

In the middle ages the examination of urine, or uroscopy,

consisted of observations of urine in large flasks, these having

been collected by pages and brought to the doctor in woven straw

containers called matulas. This practice is frequently illustrated

in old art.

Modern qualitative analysis dates from Lorenzo Bellini

(1643-1704) who evaporated the urine and found that the gross

characteristics were due to the variations in amounts of water and

solids present. Hermann Boerhaave (1668-1704) emphasized the

measurement of urine. He discovered urea, but little heed was

paid to it until Ruelle, in 1771, again directed attention to it.

In 1772 Matthew Dobson studied the urine in diabetes, and

described it as clear, pale, and sweet. By evaporation he obtained

a residue indistinguishable by taste and smell from ordinary sugar

(Burroughs-Wellcome). Later William C. Cruickshank pointed

out that the residue was a vegetable sugar differing from sugar of

milk. He also noted that, in the urine of dropsy, the addition of

nitrous acid produced cloudiness, and that, in the presence of bile,

the addition of muriatic acid produced a green color. John Black-

all, in 1813, discovered the heat test for albumen, and two years

later, M. E. Chevreul observed that the sugar in diabetic urine

differed from cane sugar and was more like grape sugar. William

Prout, in 1820, was the first to use litmus paper in urinalysis.

Jonathan Osborne in The Nature and Treatment of Drop-

• 34
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858               349

sical Diseases, published in 1837, recommended "heating the urine

in a spoon over a candle, when a white coagulate will be found in

those portions of the fluid next to the metal, long before the heat

has advanced to the boiling-point. As the heat is continued, the

coagulate will become more firm and distinct."

In 1839 Pierre Francois Olive Rayer called attention to the

value of the microscope in examining urinary deposits. Trommer

developed the copper test for diabetes in 1841. Hermann Fehling's

description of the test was first published in 1848 (Burroughs-

Wellcome).

Although Ohio publications of the period under discussion

contain abstracts and editorials on progress in all fields of medi-

cine, including discoveries in urinalysis, references to activity in

this field are few and far between. The majority of references are

of a general or casual nature, but occasionally there appears a

comprehensive article. In the Western Lancet for 1850, a test is

described in which the urine is heated with mercury dissolved in

nitric acid. This gives a bright red color in the presence of al-

bumen. Again in 1855 an editorial in the same journal discusses

presence of sugar in the urine but no definite statement indicates

the frequency with which tests are made.

In an editorial in the Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal for

1855, there appears the following:

 

We have received from the author, John King, M.D., of Cincinnati,

Ohio, "Table of Urinary Deposits, with Microscopical and Chemical Tests

for Clinical Examination." . . . These deposits relate to a field of inquiry

vast in extent and difficult of explanation, and nothing like a general interest

in regard to it has yet been awakened. . . . What are we to infer from

the presence of alubmen, . . . of cystine, . . . of oxalate of lime and

oxalurate of lime? Or even in the presence of phosphates? . . . Albumi-

nous urine has a latitude in disease not yet understood. The same may be

said in regard to the other articles noticed. To such points investigations

should now be directed and that they will be rich in results, and practical,

no one who has paid the least attention to the subject can for a moment doubt.

In the Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal for July 1855,

there appears an excellent contribution on the "Systematic Quan-

titative Analysis of Urine" by Dr. Theo. G. Wormley of Co-

• 35
 

350    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

lumbus, Ohio, which indicates the possibilities of urinalysis at

this period. Since the tests for albumin, sugar and bile are not

nearly as intricate as many that he describes, it is evident that

they were purposely omitted from this discussion. He does fur-

nish, however, clear and definite tests for determination of urea,

uric acid, mucus, water and solids, fixed salts, earthy and alkaline

salts, chlorides, chloride of ammonia, phosphoric acid, lime, sul-

phuric acid, potassium and inorganic substances. The prepara-

tion of the reagents is also fully described. Those used by Worm-

ley were caustic and nitrate of baryta, chloride of barium, nitrate

of silver, nitrate of mercury, oxalic acid, bichloride of platinum,

chloride of lime, carbonate and caustic ammonia.

Among the apparatus required were the following, "specific

gravity bottle (with perforated stopper), a few Berlin evaporating

dishes, a few beaker glasses, a small platinum crucible, a graduated

tube, a balance, a few small funnels, and a small quantity of filter-

ing and litmus paper."

In the advertising pages of the above journal prices of equip-

ment are listed by Bullock and Crenshaw of Philadelphia. They

offer urinometer cases "containing a urinometer and graduated

glass for floating it, a delicate thermometer and test paper com-

plete for $5.00." Bear in mind that the urinometer had only re-

cently been introduced in 1849 by Johann Florian Heller of

Vienna. Another form of urinometer contained "a delicate ivory

scale, very accurate" and made in London. Thermometers used

in testing temperature of urine and reagents cost from $1.50 to

$6.00.

Wormley's remarks are of interest. "In making an analysis

of the urine, the discharge of an entire day should be received in

a clean vessel, and the amount noted, as also its reaction to litmus

paper. The specific gravity taken at a temperature of 60?? F. . . .

It is scarcely necessary to add that the urine should be well agi-

tated before taking its specific gravity." "Unfortunately," he adds,

"the complex character of that fluid in regard to its chemical con-

stituents, and the difficulties attending the methods of analysis

have heretofore prevented any but the scientific chemist from at-

• 36
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          351

 

tempting its systematic investigation." Such a scholar was Worm-

ley. Later he filled with distinction the chair of chemistry and

toxicology in the University of Pennsylvania, and wrote an excel-

lent work on the micro-chemistry of poisons (1867).

As to the use of instruments of precision in Ohio, little evi-

dence can be presented except by inference based on their discus-

sion in medical literature written by physicians of Ohio. Some

instruments will be discussed with more certainty, those which

have come into our museum in the Cleveland Medical Library as

the property of Ohio physicians of that era.

As part of their equipment, there comes to us certain instru-

ments necessary and helpful in both diagnosis and treatment such

as the uterine sound, as old as the Talmud, and instruments for

exploring the vagina, which go back to Paul of Egina and the

Arabians, though the vaginal speculum was introduced to modern

medicine by Joseph Claude Anthelme Recamier in 1818. The

rectal speculum was used as far back as Hippocrates, indeed we

have in our museum a reproduction of one buried in the ashes of

Pompeii in 73 A. D. The ophthalmoscope, devised by Hermann

Ludwig von Helmholtz in 1851, and the laryngoscope, devised by

Manuel Garcia in 1855, were of such recent discovery that I have

found no evidence of their local use within this period.

The stomach-pump was used, but rather for treatment than

diagnosis. There was in local use a general utility kit which con-

tained a combination pump and tube for emptying the stomach, a

second for giving an enema, a third for colonic irrigation, a glass

device for use as a breast-pump, and a cup for letting blood. For

this kit a Dr. L. B. Coates was sales representative, and it was

advertised to sell "at a price to bring it within the means of every

physician, being peculiarly adapted to the wants of our brethren

in the country." The enterprising Coates had "obtained certifi-

cates in its favor from the entire faculty of Transylvania Univer-

sity and two of the professors in the Medical College of Ohio."

I can well believe it for we have in our museum a similar combi-

nation package, this one made about the same time in Oshawa,

Ontario, which was recommended by the entire faculty of the

University of Toronto. Another Yankee salesman, no doubt.

• 37
 

352    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Of the instruments of precision, the Western Lancet, pub-

lished in Cincinnati in 1850, mentions a galactometer invented in

New York, to test the quality of milk. The editor of the New

York Commercial had tried it and found his household supply had

been diluted with one fourth part of water. In our museum we

have a milk tester based on a color index, intended for breast milk,

but probably of later origin.

The galvanometer, which might be called the germ of the

electrocardiogram, may be classed in this group. Although its

use is founded on the work of Michael Faraday and G. B. Du-

chenne de Boulogne, we read that in 1835, Dr. John Locke of

Cincinnati invented a new galvanometer. He stated:

In qualifying myself with the proper knowledge of the new sciences of

Electro-Magnetism, I find myself unable, from the works within my reach,

to get an intelligible account of the Galvanometer or Electric-Magnetic

Multiplier, so I finally undertook to supply the deficiency by inventing one.

. . . This instrument indicates the direction of the galvanic current and

measures its intensity.

The facial goniometer and other anthropological measuring

devices are described in the Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal

for 1855, in an abstract from the Philadelphia Medical and Sur-

gical Journal. The author, Dr. Samuel G. Morton, also describes

an accurate method of obtaining the cubic contents of the skull

through the use of shot and an accompanying cylinder fitted with

a scale.

A few other contemporary devices were of little importance

except as antecedents of future scientific precision. The ther-

mometer was in use at this time for some purposes. For example,

there were indications of its use for finding the temperature of

urine before testing its specific gravity, and also for preparing re-

agents. An abstract from a French journal advises preparation

of a mustard plaster with cold water, since "water heated to 190??

F. and upwards prevents the disengagement of the volatile prin-

ciple of mustard."

Dr. Elisha Bartlett, professor of the theory and practice of

medicine in Transylvania University, wrote on typhoid and typhus

• 38
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          353

 

fevers in 1842. There is no mention of any instrument of pre-

cision being used, although he quotes observations made by John

Cheyne of Dublin on temperature of the skin in a series of fever

cases. Dr. T. W. Forshee of West Jefferson, Ohio, in 1855,

speaks of increased heat in muscle following exercise, and adds

"the average temperature of the human body is 98?? or 100??."

He does not state, however, that he himself had taken any tem-

peratures.  Cornelis Drebbel, Galileo Galilei, Roemer, Santorio

Santoro and Boerhaave all contributed to the evolution of the

thermometer, but the introduction of the clinical thermometer was

made by Karl Reinhold August Wunderlich in 1868. Even in

Guy's Hospital it was not in use before 1870. Edouard Seguin's

thermoscope did not appear until 1871.

De Pulsibus has been an important contribution to medical

literature since early times. J. H. Baas testifies to its widespread

use. "Simple counting of the pulse by the watch," he writes, "a

method which (particularly as a result of Pierre Charles Alex-

andre Louis' investigations) has become popular in our day every-

where." A special pulse watch, the angiometer, was invented by

Louis Waldenberg of Berlin (1837-1881).

Another device, used in the diagnosis of circulatory disease,

was the sphygmoscope. Invented in 1856, it appears in Ohio

publications for the same year. Its purpose was to measure the

movements of the heart and blood vessels. It consisted of a glass

tube with an attached graduated scale, resembling a stethoscope.

"A trumpet mouth at one end is covered by a thin membrane, say

of gum elastic, the other end remaining open, and the tube being

filled with colored water. The large end being pressed against the

ribs, where the pulsations of the heart are seen, the impulse of the

systole is indicated by the rising and falling of the water in the

tube, and measured by the scale." About the same time (1855)

Karl Vierordt introduced the graphic method of studying the

pulse. These were preliminary steps to the sphygmograph of

Etienne Jules Marey in 1860, the sphygmomanometer of Samuel

Siegfried Karl Ritter von Basch in 1876 and that of S. Riva

Rocci in 1896.

• 39
 

354   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

The spirometer, first step toward the study of basal meta-

bolism, was brought out by John Hutchinson in 1846, but there is

no evidence that it attained wide use. Hutchinson was the author

of The Spirometer, the Stethoscope and the Scale Balance. . . .

Their Value in Life Insurance Offices (London, 1852).

Pneumatometry, investigation of the amount of respiratory

pressure, was introduced by Phil. Biedert, but was not popular

(Baas).

Associated with the stethoscope in chest examination were

several other instruments, most of which are now of only his-

torical interest. One of these was the stethometer, described at

length in the Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal of May, 1851.

It was invented by Prof. Richard Quain and was intended to

measure differences in expansion or in development of corre-

sponding parts of the two sides of the chest. The instrument con-

sisted of a case like that of a watch, on the upper surface of

which was placed a dial and an index. Within was a simple

movement by means of which the index was acted upon by a silk

cord reeling in and out of the case. The cord acted as a measur-

ing device, its extension registering on the dial, and thus the

examiner could readily determine any existing difference in the

relative mobility of corresponding sides of the chest at the point

under examination. Dr. Morrill Wyman, in cooperation with Dr.

Henry I. Bowditch, introduced in 1850 a suitable aspirator for

tapping pleuritic effusions. Leopold Auenbrugger von Auenbrug

in his classical treatise (1761) made known the principle of per-

cussion in physical diagnosis. Auenbrugger, Jean Nicolas de Cor-

visart-Desmarets, and Rene Theodore Hyaccinthe Laennec elicited

the note by the fingers alone. In 1826 Pierre Adolphe Piorry in-

vented the pleximeter for the practise of mediate percussion, and

emphasis was laid not only upon the pitch of the note, but also

upon the resistance which came from underlying organs.

The pleximeter was made of a variety of materials--wood,

ivory, leather, whalebone, hard rubber, and glass. In outline this

was circular or oval, and either large or quite small. Piorry's

pleximeter, for example, was a rather large ivory semicircle with

• 40
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, ₁8₃₅-1858           355

two lateral rims and a graduated scale on the straight edge; Louis

Traube used a zither-like form with adjustable rims; Seitz a

trowel-shaped one; W. Hesse, an oval glass type, and Louis, one

of hard rubber.

L. M. Lawson of the Medical College of Ohio, in his ex-

haustive articles on diseases of the chest in the Western Lancet of

Cincinnati (1850) writes, "But by far the most convenient and

. . . the best pleximeter is the index finger of the left hand; or,

if it be necessary to impress a larger surface, several fingers may

be used." It seems doubtful who first had the happy thought of

using the fingers as a pleximeter, "perhaps it was Skerrett, and

from this singular obscurity we infer that he was an individual

of rare modesty."

The percussion hammer was the invention of Max Anton

Wintrich (1813-1882), and consisted of a metal handle and hard

rubber head. Austin Flint simplified this somewhat, while Eugen

Seitz devised one made of horn. Bigelow used an elastic ball

covered with velvet for the hammer head, which fitted into a

wood stethoscope. Charles J. B. Williams substituted whalebone

in the handle and shot covered with leather and velvet in the

heavy end.

These instruments are described in Ohio medical literature

of the period and many examples of both percussion hammers

and pleximeters have found their way into our museum.

Divers other instruments appeared in the literature -- the

acoustic sound for investigating vesical calculi, the solid akuoxylon

of Paul Niemeyer, the so-called resonators (closed at either end

by elastic rubber), the hydrophone (stethoscope filled with water),

the sphygmophone combined with chimes of bells. Autophony

and acouophony were suggested, the latter by the Americans G. P.

Cammann and Alonzo Clark. Karl Christian Adolph Jacob Ger-

hardt studied heart sounds through a tube introduced into the

larynx. All aspects of auscultation were scrutinized closely and

overemphasis placed on unimportant features as they searched for

new truths. Varieties of sound and qualities of tone were deemed

of special significance. Even "the atmosphere of a greatly heated

• 41
 

356    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

room, although but slightly changed, is, nevertheless, not the most

favorable for the examination of cases in which it becomes neces-

sary to appreciate very slight variations in degrees of sound."

But the final reductio ad absurdum was Ferdinando Verar-

dini's investigation of uterine sounds by a stethoscope introduced

into the vagina, which he designated impressively as "Intravaginal

Auscultation."

So now to the stethoscope. Laennec's first instrument (1815)

was a cylinder of paper consisting of three quires, secured by

paste. He investigated glass, metal and wood and presented a

table of conductivity which demonstrated that wood was ten times

as efficient as air. "In consequence of these experiments," wrote

Laennec, "I now employ a cylinder of wood an inch and a half

in diameter, a foot long, perforated longitudinally by a bore three

lines wide, and hollowed out into a funnel-shape to the depth of

an inch and a half at one of the extremities." The stethoscope is

divided in the middle to make it more easily portable. The hol-

lowed out extremity has an obturator which, when inserted, is

utilized in studying heart sounds. There is a slight concavity of

the ear extremity.

Many changes were made in the Laennec stethoscope. The

plug in the chest extremity proved to be useless, the tube was

shortened and made thinner, and the ear-piece made removable.

The material of which it was made varied widely, and included

cedar, lignum vitae, maple, walnut, dogwood, ivory, silver, hard

rubber, metal and many other varieties. The stethoscope of Dr.

John B. Harmon of Warren was made of ebony with an ivory

earpiece. His son was the preceptor of Dr. J. M. Lewis of Cleve-

land whose stethoscope was made of lignum vitae. Most of our

stethoscopes are made of cedar, but others are of boxwood, metal,

celluloid, hard rubber and one beautiful specimen of ivory.

Examples of Laennec's stethoscopes may be seen in medical

museums of Paris, Rouen, Rome, Florence, Zurich, London, and

doubtless in many other places. We have two replicas in Cleve-

land. Lawson of Cincinnati wrote in 1850, "I have in my posses-

sion about twenty varieties of stethoscopes collected in Europe and

• 42
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858           357

America . . . Judging from the specimens before me, very wide

differences have existed in regard to these modifications (ear-

piece and pectoral extremity); some use a convex and others a

concave ear-piece; one employs perfect conical, another irregu-

larly conic, and still another, parabolic chest extremities."

Let us consider more closely some of the points of difference

in stethoscopes of the period, most of which have been used in

Ohio. First let us examine the chest-piece. The Laennec and

Trousseau types, according to Lawson, had a bell or parabolic

curvature. Dr. Peter Allen of Kinsman, and Dr. J. S. Smith of

Wellington had stethoscopes of this type. The Skoda, Stokes and

Louis chest-pieces were all conical. The walls of the cone in the

chest-pieces of the Skoda instrument were all conical. In the

Skoda instrument they appeared convex on the outer surface. Dr.

John B. Harmon's stethoscope shows a similar convexity. The

Stokes pattern was like our instrument with a short cone, and

the Louis specimen like one presented by Dr. E. P. Edwards,

with a very much larger cone. The Stokes chest-piece, by the

way, was encircled by a rounded band of rubber, in order that it

might be used as a percussion hammer. One of this type in our

museum formerly belonged to Dr. W. A. Hobbs of East Liver-

pool.

Occasionally in these short stethoscopes the obturator was re-

tained, as in one which belonged to Dr. Allen, of Kinsman, and in

another used by Dr. J. E. Darby of Cleveland.

In some of the early stethoscopes the ear-piece was fashioned

with a protrusion to adapt itself to the external auditory meatus.

This is seen in stethoscopes of Dr. Harmon of Warren, and Dr.

Darby of Cleveland, and in another small cedar stethoscope

donated by Dr. T. C. Young of Cleveland.

The surface of the ear-piece also reveals individuality.

Laennec used a very shallow concave arc. Recamier's ear-piece

was of wide diameter, but the contour was convex. The Stokes

ear-piece was also wide, with the center concave and the peri-

phery convex.

The length of the stethoscope varied from very short, about

• 43
 

358   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

four inches, to seven or eight inches. The short one was used to

listen to the fetal heart. We have an example of this type. Other

lengths were a matter of choice of the designer.

The late Dr. T. Wingate Todd donated to our museum some

monaural stethoscopes of boxwood, which had belonged to his

teacher, Dr. Steell of Manchester, England. One was nine and a

half inches long, the current length for that time and place.

Graham Steell added an improvement, making it thirteen inches

in length, "just beyond the hop of a flea."

Dr. Alfred Stengel of Philadelphia, in looking over our col-

lection, told of the stethoscope owned by a member of the Dublin

school which was long enough to serve as a walking stick, "and it

was so convenient in case of the vermin."

Arnold and Jean Baptiste Bouillaud used a flexible tube be-

tween the top of the stem of the stethoscope and the ear, increas-

ing the length in this way. The flexible tube could be dispensed

with and the ear-piece applied to form the ordinary short stetho-

scope.

Lawson recommended as the ideal stethoscope "an instru-

ment made of cedar, from six to seven inches long, with concave

ear-piece two and a half inches in diameter, and expanding into

a cone at the pectoral extremity, two inches in length, which ter-

minates in a central canal a quarter inch in diameter." He also

stated that a good copy of the Stokes instrument "is manufactured

in this city by Reeze, of Sixth Street, and Wocher of College

Street, who, by my directions, omit the india-rubber margin of

the ear-piece. Wocher makes a longer cone than belongs to the

original instrument. These instruments, I have no hesitation in

saying, are decidedly superior to any others in the United States."

Toward the end of the era under discussion today, the bin-

aural stethoscope made its appearance, the Scott-Alison with two

tubes and ear-funnels, with which one can listen to the heart and

lungs at the same time. The Cammann stethoscope of two gutta-

percha tubes attached to the chest-piece at one extremity, and at

the other to the ear-pieces, was completed in 1852. Since this

time numerous modifications have been made in the outward form,

• 44
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                 359

 

but little has been added to the essential principle of a single chest-

piece with sound collection chamber and a tube leading from it to

dual ear-pieces. The monaural stethoscope still survives in Europe,

but with us it survives only as a museum piece.

Physicians and their friends are cordially invited to visit our

museum in the Cleveland Medical Library and to examine our

collection of monaural stethoscopes.

Are you interested in the cost of some of these instruments

at the time of their current use?   Tiemann quotes the following

prices:

Glass pleximeter ....................................... $ .50

Hard rubber pleximeter ................................    .40

Ivory  pleximeter  .......................................1.00

Percussor, whalebone stem .............................                                1.00

Wintrich's hammer ....................................                                    2.50

Flint's percussion hammer ..............................                                                                          .75

Quain's  stethometer  ...................................15.00

Stethoscopes

Elliottson          ............................................. 5.00

Stokes         ................................................                                   1.00

Quain -- telescopic ............................. .....                                                                                  2.00

Short cedar ........................................                                                                                            .75

Cammann           .............................................                                                                                4.50

Scott-Alison           ........................................                                                                              6.00

The diagnostic armamentarium of Piorry (1794-1879), who

invented the pleximeter, consisted of a taper for illumination,

tongue spatula, magnifying glass, warm water, grease for anoint-

ing the finger, stethoscope, pleximeter, tape measure, rectal and

vaginal specula, dressing forceps and tweezers, oesophageal, rectal

and urethral sounds, nitrate of silver for marking, test tube, nitric

acid and other reagents, litmus paper and graduated glasses. This

impressive array indicates that physical diagnosis had reached a

high standard during the time that we are discussing.

Have you remembered the commonest precision instrument

of them all, the watch? Quoting at length from Dr. S. Weir

Mitchell in The Early History of Instrumental Precision in Medi-

cine, 1891, we have the following information filled with charm

and flavor:

• 45
 

360     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Floyer in 1707 tells us "I have for many years tried pulses by the

minute in common watches and pendulum clocks and then used the sea minute

glass" such as was employed to test the log. At last he was more happy.

One Daniel Quare, a Quaker, had in the last ten years of the seventeenth

century put in watches what Floyer called a middle finger, or, as we say, a

hand. Floyer's pulse watch ran sixty seconds and you may like to know

"can be had of Mr. Samuel Watson in Long Acre. The inventor tests this

and a half-minute watch which has a cover, by a sand glass which runs for

one minute, and finds them not quite correct; one must add, he thinks, five

beats."

In the eighteenth century one finds now and then a pulse count, as

when Morgagni describes a pulse which beat twenty-two times in the sixtieth

of an hour. Evidently the minute had not yet gotten into the daily life of man.

Statements of the numbers of pulse and respiration are very rare in

Rush, Cullen, and their Contemporaries. It was not until a later day and

under the influence of the great Dublin school that the familiar figure of the

doctor, watch in hand, came to be commonplace.

I have thought it well to illustrate thus fully the medical history of the

watch as an instrument of precision. How small, but how essentially a part

of the pulse study are the enumerations it enables us to make accurately, you

all well know. We could better lose this knowledge than the rest of what

the pulse teaches, and yet it is the only pulse sign we can put on paper with

perfect precision, as Heberden remarked a hundred years ago.

You know that we now use as many instruments as a mechanic, and that

however much we may gain thereby, our machines are not labor-saving.

They force us, by the time their uses exact, to learn, to be rapid and at the

same time accurate.

The instrument trains the man; it exacts accuracy and teaches care; it

creates a wholesome appetite for precision which, at last, becomes habitual.

Unless men keep ahead of their instrumental aids these . . . will merely

dementalize them.

Bibliography

Baas, J. H., History of Medicine, tr. by H. E. Handerson (New York, 1889).

Bartlett, Elisha, History, Diagnosis and Treatment of Typhoid and Typhus

Fevers (Philadelphia, 1842).

Burroughs-Wellcome, Evolution of Urine Analysis (Los Angeles, 1911).

Garrison, F. H., History of Medicine (Philadelphia, 1917).

Lawson, L. M., "Diseases of the Chest," Western Lancet (Cincinnati, 1850).

Locke, John, "Galactometer," Western Journal of the Medical and Physical

Sciences (Cincinnati, 1835).

Major, R. H., "Diagnosing Disease without Instruments of Precision,"

Kansas Medical Society, Journal (Topeka, 1939).

"Quain's Stethometer," Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal (Columbus,

1851).

Tiemann, G., Armamentarium Chirurgicum (New York, 1879).

Wormley, T. G., "Systematic Quantitative Analysis of Urine," Ohio Medical

and Surgical Journal (Columbus, 1855).

• 46
 

THE MEDICAL JOURNALS OF THE PERIOD, 1835-1858

 

By JONATHAN FORMAN, M. D.

 

The period which we are describing today was one in which

the American public was very critical of the medical profession.

To the general charges of fraud and futility was added that of

hearsay. In order to save the physician's fee "family medical

books" were frequently bought and sold. Patent medicines were

coming in at a pace parallel to the growth of newspapers in which

they could be advertised.

One New York firm was spending $100,000 a year for ad-

vertising as early as 1840. The element of fear towards doctors

and all of their works was, of course, an old one fostered by the

character of hospitals and the vague suspicions formerly held

that doctors experimented upon the poorer patients. Equally

morbid was the ancient but popular aversion to dissection and

post-mortem examinations. This was strengthened by an instance

of a crime in the United States similar to the "Burking" murders

in Edinburgh (1828) when sixteen persons were killed and their

bodies delivered to Doctor Robert Knox for classroom purposes.

Then there was the common fear of being buried alive which was

almost universal, closely associated with the fear of dissection.

This continued up until embalming became the common practice.

At the beginning of the period there was a growing sentiment

on the part of the people fostered by the Thomsonians, Reformed

Botanists and the Homeopathic physicians against the use of huge

doses of mineral drugs, especially mercury. An ounce of calomel

was commonly advised. These with the strenuous bleeding made

up the regular treatment of the day. In 1845, the citizens of

Westmoreland County, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, petitioned

their legislature to forbid the employment of mercury for med-

icinal purposes. It was denied on the interesting ground that mer-

cury was dangerous only if abused. Nothing was said about the

right of laymen to legislate on a medical matter.

(361)

• 47
 

362   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

The outstanding feature of this period was the appearance

of cheap transportation, postage, and printing. These were essen-

tial to the development of medical societies and publications. It

became increasingly easy to go to meetings at some distance, to

correspond with those one met there and to publish medical jour-

nals. In the earlier years we saw that medical journals were es-

tablished by medical schools. There was also a tendency for them

to represent geographical areas--an element due to postal costs.

The critic of present day morals--a product as he says of the

movie and the automobile--will be surprised to learn that the

American physician of 1850 was much given to charging the sup-

posedly prim public with immorality. The increasing resort to

contraceptives and abortion, the doctors of the day claimed was

becoming a national scandal. We find the transactions of the

Ohio State Medical Society contained many a warning against the

immorality of the times. In the good old days such things were

unheard of but in this period they were common even among the

genteel and the church-going. Religious weeklies and newspapers

in general were carrying many advertisements, all of them along

the line of this: "Dr. ............ 's Female Pills, one dollar a

box, with full directions. Married ladies should not use them.

Sent by mail." These advertisements increased in numbers and

blatancy until finally in 1858, we find one New England weekly

offering for only three dollars, "The only safe and sure preven-

tion from pregnancy."

This was truly a period of popular medical ferment. Thou-

sands were buying the patent rights to treat themselves, their

families or their neighbors with the Thomsonian system. J. C.

Gunn's Domestic Medicine; or, the Poor Man's Friend, published

in Louisville in 1840, ran no less than 100 editions. Hydropathy

spread over the land with the development of a dozen spas here

in Ohio. This period was the zenith of quackery the world over.

For instance, there were living in London, five men in 1849 who

had made $1,000,000 or over each from the sale of quack rem-

edies. Nearly every conceivable type of humbug preyed upon the

American public--nostrums, magnetism, mesmerism, herb doctors,

• 48
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          363

etc. Many have attributed this "wonder-gaping" complex to the

newness of the country, but Europe was just as gullible in this

period as America.

The profession was very conscious of its shortcomings. Many

professional soul-searching papers appeared in the medical litera-

ture under the captions: "The Present Position of the Medical

Profession"; "To What Cause Are We to Attribute the Dimin-

ished Respectability of the Medical Profession in the Estimation

of the American Public?"

Regular physicians began, in increasing numbers, about 1850,

to condemn the routine use of calomel and to counsel moderation

in blood-letting, while some of this was due to the critical methods

introduced into therapeutics abroad, especially in Paris, much of

it came about in response to growing popular demands.

These were the days of social reforms, the days of the be-

ginnings of temperance and prohibition movements, women's

rights, and Grahamite dietary propaganda which came out from

Massachusetts with the rush of cultured expansion from New

England. Here in Ohio it at once assumed a tendency to blend

with Thomsonism. Today it is only remembered by its imperish-

able monument in Graham bread and Graham crackers.

The most important medical advance of the period was the

revolution in the methods which made possible the series of bril-

liant discoverings which put regular medicine back in the full con-

fidence of the American public. "For the first time in the history

of medicine," said Wellington Hooker, in his inaugural address

as he accepted the chair of physics at Yale in 1852, "the medical

world is without a dominant theory. It is a glorious era for our

science." Thus was the stage set for the anatomical pathologist,

to be followed by the bacteriologist and the physiological chemist.

These are the men who gave the public confidence in medicine as

a science and in medical men so far as they are scientists.

The important thing is that when the period opened one

healer was as good as another. All knowledge was empirical.

Today medicine is on a systematic inductive basis, while all the

healing cults make their appeals only to the emotions of the gul-

• 49
 

364   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

lible. Thus it is not exactly luck but rather logic that this period

of greatest scientific progress should have set in just when the pro-

fession's stock was lowest. The results, however, were the pro-

fession's most pertinent answer to popular criticism. This crit-

icism itself was but another expression of the same forces that

made for critical research in medicine--both expressed the rel-

atively critical spirit of the time.

In Ohio we had, as we told you last year, our first medical

journal in The Ohio Medical Repository, a semi-monthly begun in

1826 by Doctor Guy W. Wright and Doctor James M. Mason.

Both being western graduates and intensely patriotic with every-

thing pertaining to the western country, their ambitions were to

give the western profession a western medical journal edited by

and for western doctors. Mason retired after one year. Doctor

Daniel Drake taking his place, the magazine became a monthly

under the title, The Western Medical and Physical Journal. 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 to Louisville where it

was subsequently combined with the Louisville Journal of Medi-

cine and Surgery, as the Western Journal of Medicine and Sur-

gery.

When the Willoughby Medical School was moved to Colum-

bus the Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal was begun by Doctor

John Butterfield. The first volume was a success both profession-

ally and financially. That volume still remains as a model to those

of us who are charged with the responsibility of getting out a

medical journal useful to men in practice.

When illness prevented Butterfield's return to the editor's

desk Doctor S. Hanbury Smith took over his duties. In the min-

utes of the faculty of the Starling Medical College in 1849, we

find a motion, "that the Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal be

vested in the Faculty of the Starling Medical College and that the

dean so arrange it to have it published by the year and that

S. Hanbury Smith be appointed editor for one year beginning

January 1850." It soon became evident that the faculty had ex-

• 50
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          365

 

tended a beautiful gesture to Butterfield's widow but that it was

not prepared to withstand the troubles that are bound to come

with the publication of a medical journal, and so in the minutes

of the faculty meeting of January, 1851, we find that they passed

the following resolution.

"Resolved: That the Dean be directed to pay Riley and

Company the sum of one hundred and fifty dollars as part due on

the publication of the Journal and that all interest be transferred

to Professor R. L. Howard on condition that he assume all re-

maining and further liability," which proposition was accepted.

Smith left the faculty to become superintendent of the Lunatic

Asylum, and Richard L. Howard, professor of surgery and Co-

lumbus' first surgeon, became the next editor. Upon Howard's

death Doctor John Dawson of the Department of Anatomy took

over the editorship. This is the same Dawson who later became a

distinguished resident of Cincinnati. With Volume X (1858-1859)

Doctor John W. Hamilton became co-editor.

The Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal followed pretty

closely with the pattern of the times which we described here last

year. Its conduct presented three problems to its editors. First,

the promotion of its own school and the elevation of medical

standards. The first step was to get every "doctor" to become

an "M. D."--a distinction which was sharply drawn between those

who had attended a medical college and those who had not. The

current controversy was the subject of student fees, and the ex-

changes were sharp on the point, both Cincinnati and Columbus

blaming Cleveland, and Columbus blaming Cincinnati for lower-

ing tuition costs and taking the student's personal note for the

whole amount.

Secondly, the quacks were treating about two-thirds of the

people when this period began. The feeling was bitter and the

"regular" profession maintained its position through solidarity

and organization. The Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal did

not go as far as most of the journals did in this matter. Howard

in Volume III laid down a policy which was followed surprisingly

close. He said, "No man can write or speak or even think in ac-

• 51
 

366    0HIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

tive opposition to any form of quackery, without being himself

corrupted and degraded thereby. . . . Violent and vituperous de-

nunciation never yet demolished or even injured a bad cause."

Thirdly, there was the business of reprinting from other

journals, such as we described at the end of our paper last year.

Naturally there was a good deal of feeling about the use of too

much foreign material in the journals and the use of English text

with a few comments on it by the professor whose name appeared

on the title page. It was as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Most

American writing consists of simply putting British portraits of

disease in American frames."

The special committee of the American Medical Association

on medical literature considered this problem at each annual ses-

sion and noted less and less offense.

The Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal was frequently com-

plaining about the reprinting of its articles in other journals with-

out proper credit. Both of these faults tended to correct them-

selves under the pressure of the American Medical Association.

As we look back upon American medical journalism of this

period (1835-1858), we can agree with the report on medical

literature made in 1858 by the special committee of the American

Medical Association, headed by Alonzo B. Palmer, M. D., who

recently came to Ann Arbor's faculty from a large practice in

Chicago with the title of "Professor of Materia Medica, Thera-

peutics, and Diseases of Women and Children," when they re-

ported:

In conclusion, the committee would say that if, as the sentinels placed

upon the walls of our Medical Zion, they were asked in relation to its litera-

ture, "What of the night?" the response must be, "The morning cometh."

The darkness which has hung over that literature is breaking away. There

is at last dawn in the East and though the charm of day may roll on but

slowly, the full effulgence will come at last.

• 52
 

THE ROLE OF THE "DISTRICT" AS A UNIT IN OR-

GANIZED MEDICINE IN OHIO1

 

By ROBERT G. PATERSON, PH.D.

 

Use of the "district" as a basic unit of medical organization

and administration is, historically, the oldest in the State. It ante-

dates the county, city and state medical societies. A "district" in

the sense in which it is used here includes within its area two or

more counties. From 1811 to 1902 the history of medical organi-

zation in Ohio is full of the trial and error method in attempting

to find a satisfactory unit or units as the basis for local organiza-

tion.²

Broad Outline of Developments

Beginning in 1811 and continuing to 1833, known as the le-

gal period of organization, the laws of the State established medi-

cal districts in the then existing counties. "The first of Ohio's

eighty-eight counties (Washington) was established in 1788. The

last revision in the boundaries (Auglaize, Logan) was made in

1888, exactly one hundred years later."3      By 1833 there were

seventy counties in the State. Population was sparse and scat-

tered. The 1830 census showed 937,903 population. Physicians

were few in number and likewise scattered. Roads and transpor-

tation were primitive. So it was natural for the State legislature

to adopt the district as the basis for the establishment of local

boards of censors, the prime purpose of which was to license

physicians to practice within the State. The law of 1812 went

one step further when it provided for a State medical convention

to be composed of representatives from each of the five medical

districts. From 1811 the number of districts grew from five until

in 1833 there were twenty-two districts set up. After the repeal

 

1 While the period set for discussion covered the years 1885-1858, it was thought

best to treat this subject as a complete unit from 1811 to 1940.

2 See Guy Thompson, District Medical Organization in Ohio. Thesis, M.A., Ohio

State University, Columbus, Ohio, 1987.

3 R. C. Downes, "Evolution of Ohio County Boundaries," Ohio State Arch-

aeological and Historical Quarterly (Columbus, 1887.), XXXVI (1927), 340ff.

(367)

• 53
 

368   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

of all such laws in 1833 physicians had no means of congregating

in meetings other than those of local scope. The first of these was

the Cincinnati Medical Society organized in 1819.

In 1835 the first form of voluntary State medical organiza-

tion was created. It was known as the "Ohio Medical Conven-

tion." The present Ohio State Medical Association rightly traces

its origin to this date. The convention continued to 1851 when it

was merged with the Ohio State Medical Society organized in

1846. At first members of the State convention were listed in-

dividually from counties. By the time the State society was or-

ganized, Ohio had been divided into 83 counties. Population had

increased to 1,980,329 in 1850. Physicians also had increased in

number. Transportation and the means for travel had improved

vastly. Roads and canals had been spread in every direction

throughout the State.

Since the State meeting occured but once a year there was a

growing demand upon the part of physicians for some medium

through which they could gather together more frequently to dis-

cuss their professional problems. These media took two forms--

the county medical society and the district medical society. One

of the earliest considerations before the State society was the mat-

ter of determining what should constitute an auxiliary society. In

1857 it was deemed necessary to incorporate in the constitution of

the State society a provision which sought to improve reports

from the local societies both district and county. With variations

this attitude was continued until 1902 when all district societies

were excluded as auxiliaries and the county form was adopted as

the sole unit of organization.

 

Legal Period of District Medical Organization

A more detailed examination of the legal period of district

medical organization reveals a number of interesting develop-

ments and merits attention at this point.

Dr. Samuel Prescott Hildreth of Marietta was elected to the

House of Representatives from Washington County in 1810.

Almost immediately after taking his place in the General As-

• 54
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858              369

sembly he introduced a bill seeking to give the State some measure

of control over those individuals who sought to heal the sick. In

a preamble to the bill⁴ it is stated, "Whereas the practice of physic

and surgery is a science so immediately interesting to society that

every encouragement for its promotion should be given, and every

abuse of it, so far as possible suppressed."

The law, effective January 14, 1811, divided the State into

five medical districts. A board of three medical censors or exam-

iners, members of which were named in the law, was provided in

each of the five districts. The boards were to meet on the first

Monday of June and November at designated centers, viz: Cin-

cinnati, Chillicothe, Athens, Zanesville, and Steubenville. Exami-

nation of the membership of these five district boards reveals

some illustrious names in the annals of medical history in Ohio.

They are as follows:

District 1. Joseph Canby, Richard Allison, Daniel Drake.

District 2. Edward Tiffin, Alexander Campbell, Joseph Scott.

District 3. Leonard Jewit, Eliphas Perkins, Samuel P. Hildreth.

District 4. John Hamm, John J. Brice, Robert Mitchell.

District 5. George Wilson, John M'Dowell, Thomas Campbell.

At the very next session of the General Assembly, the law of

1811 was repealed and a new law⁵ enacted, effective February 8,

1812. Again we find a preamble stating "Whereas well regulated

medical societies have been found useful in promoting the health

and happiness of society by more generally diffusing the knowl-

edge of the healing art, and thereby alleviating the distress of

mankind." Seven districts were created and out of these seven

districts there was created by law a State society styled "The

President and Fellows of the Medical Society of the State of

Ohio." The law listed one hundred and twenty physicians

throughout the State who were to constitute the society. Places

of meetings of the district representatives were designated as Cin-

cinnati, Chillicothe, Athens, Zanesville, Steubenville, Warren and

Dayton. Meetings were to be held on the first Monday in June.

These district societies were empowered to elect not less than

4 Ohio Laws, Statutes, etc., Acts, 9 Assemb., 1810-11 (IX), 19.

5 Ibid., 10 Assemb., 1811-12 (X), 58.

• 55
 

370    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

two, nor more than three, representatives to the State society

which was to meet in Chillicothe on the first Monday of Novem-

ber. A quorum of ten members was required for this State

meeting.

On November 2, 1812, there gathered at Chillicothe five dele-

gates from the first and second districts. These hardy souls were:

Daniel Drake, Cincinnati, and Joseph Canby, Lebanon, from the

first district; Samuel Parsons, Franklinton; and John Edmiston

and Joseph Scott, Chillicothe, from the second district. It is not

clear at the present time whether the other five districts actually

appointed delegates. If they did the delegates failed to make their

appearance. Even Hildreth, the author of the first law, did not

attend. Since the law specified a quorum of ten members no con-

vention was held.

At the next session of the General Assembly this law was

repealed and a return6 made to the law of 1811. Between 1813

and 1821, the General Assembly amended, repealed and enacted

the law on three⁷ separate occasions.

On February 26, 1824, the General Assembly passed a new

law⁸ entitled "An Act to Incorporate Medical Societies for the

Purpose of Regulating the Practice of Physic and Surgery in this

State." It repealed the law of 1821 and remained in force, with

minor amendments, until 1833 when it, too, was repealed. Again,

we find the pious preamble to the effect that "whereas, well reg-

ulated medical societies have been found to contribute to the dif-

fusion of true medical science, and a correct knowledge of the

healing art."

With the rapid growth in population of the State and the in-

crease in the number of counties, which now numbered seventy, it

became necessary to divide the State into twenty medical districts.

The counties comprising each district were enumerated and the

names of physicians constituting each district medical society were

given. With variations this method was continued by the General

Assembly until 1833 when all such laws were repealed.

6 Ibid., 11 Assemb., 1812-13 (XI), 28, Jan. 19, 1813.

7 Ibid., 15 Assemb., 1816-11 (XV), 195, Jan. 28, 1817; 16 Assemb., 1817-18 (XVI),

105, Jan. 30, 1818; 18 Assemb., 1819-20 (XVIII), 162, Feb. 22, 1820.

8 Ibid., 22 Assemb., 1823-24  (XXII), 142.

• 56
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858            371

 

Thus dosed the first period of medical organization in Ohio.

Regulation through legislation had proved a dismal failure. It

was not until 1868 that a return to this method is to be noted and

the law then enacted was so weak in its effects that in 1896 the

General Assembly finally set up the present form of regulating

the practice of medicine.

 

Voluntary Period of District Medical Organization

Between 1833 and 1835, the physicians throughout the State

had no means by which they could gather together for discussion

of their professional problems except for the few local medical

societies which existed. In 1835 the organization of "The Medical

Conventions of Ohio" on a voluntary basis was effected. These

continued until 1851^. Membership in these conventions was open

to all regular physicians throughout the State on an individual

basis. This situation continued to exist until 1846 when the Ohio

State Medical Society was organized.

The Ohio State Medical Society soon became a delegated

body and scores of local medical societies sprang up either as

auxiliary to or independent of it. A study of the Transactions

of the Ohio State Medical Society reveals that one of the earliest

considerations before it was the matter of auxiliaries. From its

auxiliaries, the State society drew its strength and it constantly

promoted local organization. It frequently found reason to quar-

rel with its component societies and in many cases refused to ad-

mit a local society because its constitution did not embrace some

code of ethics which was deemed essential.

The development of the constitution of the Ohio State Medi-

cal Society gives an insight to the story of district societies. The

first formal recognition of the need for a plan for auxiliaries is

found in a report⁹ of the committee on a new constitution and

code of by-laws and a plan for the organization of auxiliary so-

cieties. This plan which was adopted May 16, 1848, was:

Associations desirous of becoming auxiliary, must furnish to the Com-

9 Ohio State Medical Society, Transactions . . . from Its First Organization in

1846 to the Close of Its Last Session in 1850, with Addresses and Essays (Columbus,

1850), 5.

• 57
 

372     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

mittee on Medical Societies a copy of their Constitution and By-Laws, and

a list of their members. The Committee will report thereon, a majority vote

of the Society, admitting as members the President and Secretary, ex-officio,

together with one delegate for every ten members the proposed auxiliary

society may consist of. Delegates will present to the State Medical Society,

such papers, etc., etc., as the Association they represent may select, copies

of which they will deposit with the Committee on Publication.

In questions of a general nature affecting the profession of the State,

should the yeas and nays be demanded, the delegates, on producing the indi-

vidual authority of each, may vote by proxy for absent members of the

State Medical Society, who are also members of the Same Association with

the delegate.

Auxiliary Societies will, so far as possible, contribute to the furtherance

of the objects of the State Medical Society, by selecting from their own

archives such original papers, essays, reports, and especially statistics, as

they may deem of sufficient value, on every subject connected with medical

science.

In 1850 a listing of auxiliary societies showed the following:

1849. Hamilton County Medical Society .................Auxiliary No. 1

1849. Warren County Medical Society of Lebanon .......Auxiliary No. 2

1849. Clark County Medical Society....................Auxiliary No. 3

1849. Lancaster Medical Institute .......................Auxiliary No. 4

1849. Preble County Medical Society ...................Auxiliary No. 5

1850. Meigs County Medical Association................Auxiliary No. 6

1850. Wayne County Medical Association...............Auxiliary No. 7

1850. Richland County Medical & Surgical Society .......Auxiliary No. 8

1850. Medical Association of Adams, Brown & Clermont.Auxiliary No. 9

1850. Stark County Medical Society ....................Auxiliary No. 10

1850. Erie County Medical Society .....................Auxiliary No. 11

In 1857, it was deemed necessary to incorporate in the Con-

stitution of the Ohio State Medical Society something which

would improve reports from the local societies. From the first,

auxiliaries had been requested to submit annually a "catalogue"

which included a list of its members, papers and similar informa-

tion. The local societies were very dilatory in complying with

this request and the State secretary reprimanded them every year

in his report. Even after the amendment of 1857 the reports were

unsatisfactory.   The State secretary frequently changing each

year, appears not to have performed his work very well.

The State society was still recognizing district societies in its

• 58
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                 373

constitution as late as 1891. The State secretary in 1893 pointed

out that the work of the county societies was anything but satis-

factory. He lamented the general inactivity of the county societies

and gave the impression that they were losing the position of im-

portance which the State society had hoped for them. He said:

 

Why this state of lethargy or inactivity or lack of interest in the county

societies? The fact is very prominent that the county societies, which are

least active, are located within the boundaries of flourishing district societies.

Without hastening to condemn the district societies, for their success must

be prima facie evidence that they are supplying a real demand in medical

society work, we must conclude that they are depriving the county societies,

if not also the State Society of the interest that should be taken by them.¹⁰

This struggle between the county, district and State society is

to be noted each year until in 1902 when the State society changed

its constitution to comport with that of the American Medical

Association. Article III of the constitution read: "Component

societies shall consist of those county medical societies which hold

charters from this Association." The adoption of this provision

marked the downfall of district medical societies in Ohio.

So far as can be ascertained the district medical societies

which were organized in Ohio and which were represented in the

Ohio State Medical Society by delegates were:

The Medical Association of Adams, Brown and Clermont,11

was organized Jan. 21, 1847. This was the first district medical

society in Ohio and was the first such auxiliary of the State so-

ciety. It continued as such until 1884 when it disappeared from

the rolls of the State society. One cannot be sure if the organiza-

tion was really active until 1884 or if the State secretary was

careless in preparing his reports.

Records do not reveal the organization of another district

medical society in the State for seventeen years when there was

organized, April 12, 1864, the Union Medical Association of Co-

lumbiana, Mahoning, Portage, Stark and Carroll counties.¹²

This society was composed of physicians of the "old school"

10 Ohio State Medical Society, Transactions (Columbus, 1851-1904), 1893, 7-8.

11 Lancet-Clinic (Cincinnati, 1842-1916), VII (1848), 285.

12 Brant and Fuller, pub., History of the Upper Ohio Valley (Madison, Wis.,

1891), II, 161.

• 59
 

374   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

or what is termed by them "regular practice" and from the origi-

nal faith and practice it never departed. A committee of five was

appointed in 1866 to effect an organization of county societies in

the counties composing the union. This is the only instance that

was found where such an action was taken by a district society.

It continued as an auxiliary of the State society until 1902.

The Union District Medical Association was organized Oc-

tober 22, 1867. This society is unique in Ohio in that it included

counties in both Ohio and Indiana. At first it included Union

County (Indiana) Medical Society and Butler County (Ohio)

Medical Society. Later Fayette and Franklin counties (Indiana)

and Preble County (Ohio) were added. This society never be-

came an auxiliary of the State society. Delegates were sent to

the State meetings in both Ohio and Indiana. On April 27, 1939,

it held its 142d semi-annual meeting at Eaton, Ohio.¹³

The Central Ohio Medical Society was organized June 14,

1869. This society became an auxiliary of the Ohio State Medi-

cal Society July 1, 1869. It met quarterly and drew most of its

membership from Columbus and vicinity. From the record the

society existed as a paper organization after 1896. The last meet-

ing of which we have record was a joint session with the North-

western Ohio Medical Society in 1903.

The Northwestern Ohio Medical Association was organized

about 1869. The actual date of organization of this body is ob-

scure. It was admitted as an auxiliary of the Ohio State Medical

Society in 1869 and continued as such until 1902. In 1892 it as-

sented to Article 3, Section 10, of the State Constitution and thus

was allowed to continue as a component society. In that year, the

list of members which appeared in the Transactions14 numbered

255. The State society had only 428 members at this time. How-

ever, this statement should be qualified by saying that there were

probably incomplete returns of the State society's membership

from local societies. The last official trace of the society is in

1903.

The Union Medical Association of northeastern Ohio was

13 Ohio State Medical Journal (Columbus, 1905- ), XXXV (1939), 636.

14 Ohio  State Medical Society, Transactions, 1892, 18.

• 60
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858            375

 

organized about 1870. Again, the actual date of organization of

this society is obscure. It was admitted as auxiliary of the Ohio

State Medical Society in 1870. The membership was drawn from

nine counties in northeastern Ohio and does not seem to have ex-

ceeded 250 at any one time.15

The Miami Valley Medical Society was organized June 13,

1877. This society drew its membership from Clermont, Hamil-

ton and Warren counties at the time of organization. Later it

extended its area to include Butler, Clinton, Greene and Highland

counties. In 1901 the society had a membership of only ninety-

seven members when there were 1228 physicians in the counties

comprised in the district.¹⁶ The society existed as late as 1907

when the thirtieth annual meeting was held at Loveland, Ohio,

October 8.

The North Central Ohio Medical Society¹7 was organized

March 31, 1881, at Mansfield, Ohio, largely through the active

efforts of Dr. Robert Harvey Reed. It was accepted as an

auxiliary of the Ohio State Medical Society in 1881 and con-

tinued as such until 1902. Its membership was never large, not

exceeding 100 in the best years.

The Southwestern Ohio Medical -Society¹⁸ was organized

August 31, 1889, at Cincinnati and included twenty-four counties

in its area from southwestern Ohio. Meetings were held twice a

year. Its membership numbered around 100. It never became an

auxiliary of the Ohio State Medical Society. The date it ceased

to function is shrouded in obscurity.

The Eastern Ohio Medical Association¹⁹ was organized in

1892. This society embraced Belmont, Columbiana, Harrison and

Jefferson counties. It was admitted as an auxiliary of the Ohio

State Medical Society in 1894 and remained as such until 1902.

Its membership never exceeded 100.

In addition to the district societies listed there were a number

of others organized about which data are fugitive. These were:

 

15 Ibid, 1901, 473.

16 Lancet-Clinic, XCVIII (1907), 336.

17 Mansfield Herald April 7, 1881.

18 Lancet-Clinic, LXII (1889), 257-8.

19 Columbus Medical Journal (Columbus, O., 1882-1916), XIII (1894), 65-72.

• 61
 

376    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

The Northern Ohio District Medical Society was organized

sometime in the early '90's. This society was probably a combi-

nation of the three district societies in the northern part of the

State and seems to have been designed to promote a legislative

program.

The Muskingum Valley District Medical Society was or-

ganized in the later '80's. This society became an auxiliary of the

Ohio State Medical Society in 1886 and disappeared as such after

1891.

The Midland Medical Society of Fayette and Adjoining

Counties was rejected by the Ohio State Medical Society and

never appears in any lists.

It is doubtful if the Delamater Medical Association of

Norwalk and Vicinity comes within the definition of a "district

society."  The Transactions show that it was admitted as an

auxiliary of the Ohio State Medical Society in 1859 and dropped

in 1870.

Very little can be learned of the Athens, Morgan and Wash-

ington Medical Association. It appears to have been the second

district society to become an auxiliary of the Ohio State Medical

Society. This was in 1855. It was dropped from the rolls in

1884.

Nothing was learned about the origin of the Northeastern

Ohio Medical Association. It was admitted as an auxiliary of

the Ohio State Medical Society in 1870. It disappeared from the

rolls in 1892.

The Southeastern Ohio Medical Association was admitted as

an auxiliary of the Ohio State Medical Society in 1890. It was

dropped from the rolls in 1892.

Facts relative to the Ashtabula, Lake and Geauga Medical

Society are difficult to obtain. It was active in the middle '90's.

Thus we find the period 1846 to 1902 filled with the activities

of physicians organized on a district basis. Unfortunately, the

records are difficult of access or do not exist. There are physicians

in Ohio still alive who have knowledge of one or more of such

organizations and what a contribution these men could make to

• 62
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858           377

 

medical history in Ohio if they would set themselves to the task

of detailing such histories.

After 1902 the "district" came back into use by the Ohio

State Medical Association as a basis for membership in the

"Council." The struggle between the "county society" and the

"district society" was resolved by using the "county society" as

the basis for membership in the State association and the creation

of the House of Delegates as the legislative body representing

county societies. The component county societies were then

grouped into districts for the purpose of creating a Board of

Directors of the State association which is known as the "Coun-

cil" with one representative from each of the districts, of which

there are eleven at the present time.

• 63
 

NOTES ON CHOLERA IN SOUTHWESTERN OHIO

 

By DAVID A. TUCKER, JR., M. D.

 

The first invasion of the North American continent by

epidemic, or Asiatic cholera, occurred in 1832. The disease ap-

pears to have been carried across the Atlantic by emigrants from

Ireland who landed during April and May at Gross Isle, thirty-

two miles below the city of Quebec.

Cholera had appeared in a serious epidemic at Jessore, India,

on the Delta of the Ganges in 1816-1817. It had spread slowly

over almost the whole of Asia in the succeeding ten years and

finally reached Europe in 1829-1830, being seen first in the Near

East and in Russia. It passed westward along the river trade

routes of the Danubian Basin and northward to the Baltic areas.

A severe epidemic occurred in Moscow during 1830. It was

found in England during the summer of 1831 on the river front

below London, and aboard vessels recently in from Baltic ports,

and quickly spread over all of England, Scotland and Wales. In

the latter part of the year it reached Ireland from which area it

was carried to America. It is known that the ship Constantia

from Limerick arrived at Gross Isle on April 28, 1832, with 170

emigrants aboard, twenty-nine deaths from cholera having oc-

curred during the voyage. Within the next few weeks a number

of vessels carrying the disease disembarked their passengers. On

June 8 the disease was found at Quebec, and at Montreal a day

later. The explosive nature of the epidemic was due to the com-

bination of intense heat and heavy rains contaminating the water

supplies, and the unsanitary conditions of the receiving stations.

It reached its height in ten days, then slowly declined.

Medical records show that the disease moved along the routes

of travel from Canada to New York State. There is some evi-

dence to indicate that cases had arrived in the port of New York

before or at the same time that they had reached Quebec and

(378)

• 64
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858               379

 

Montreal from abroad. By July 5 official reports in New York

City were issued and in two weeks some five or six hundred

deaths were reported. Cholera was noted in Philadelphia on

July 7, in Baltimore on August 12, or 13, and in Washington,

D. C., about August 20.

It appeared first along the tributaries of the Ohio at Pitts-

burgh on July 2, in a boarding house frequented by immigrants

who had crossed from Canada. Shortly thereafter cases were

found among immigrants who had come by way of New York

City. Meanwhile, soldiers of the United States Army traveling

westward carried the infection to Detroit, Mackinac and Chicago.

The advent of cholera in Cincinnati was quite generally at-

tributed to an immigrant from Canada, who, coming by way of

the canal from Cleveland to Portsmouth on October 8 reached

Cincinnati on the steamboat, Sylph, dying a few hours after he

arrived. However, Dr. Daniel Drake maintained that there were

some twenty cases in the city prior to the arrival of the Sylph.

The disease really broke out extensively about September 20. At

first officials attempted to deny the existence of the malady, but

on October 18 a death list from     cholera was published.    In

October 423 individuals died, the epidemic then receding, only

to return the next spring and summer. In July, 1833, there were

176 deaths from cholera and whereas the epidemic of 1832 was

thought to have reached the Ohio Valley from the north, the

pestilence in 1833 came from the region of New Orleans.       A

contemporary description of Cincinnati during the first epidemic

is as follows:

"The city, during the prevalence of this dreadful epidemic, presented

a mournful aspect. Thousands of citizens were absent in the country; very

many were closely confined by personal affliction or the demands of sick

friends; hundreds were numbered among the dead; the transient floating

population had entirely disappeared; the country people, in terror, stood

aloof; business was almost wholly suspended; the tramp of hurrying feet

was no longer heard on the streets, the din of the city was hushed, and every

day appeared as a Sabbath. Instead, however, of the sound of church-going

bells and the footsteps of happy throngs hastening to the house of God, were

heard the shrieks of terrorstricken victims of the fell disease, the groans of

the dying, and the voices of lamentation. For weeks funeral processions

• 65
 

380      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

might be seen at any hour, from early morning to late at night. All classes

of people were stricken down in this fearful visitation. Doctors, ministers,

lawyers, merchants and mechanics, the old and the young, the temperate and

the intemperate, the prudent and the imprudent, were alike victims."1

The return of the cholera in 1834 seemed to cap the climax of the city's

misfortunes and for a time the universal depression had a serious effect upon

the business of the city and its general atmosphere was one of hopelessness

and despair. The town seemed lifeless and inert and property fell to very

low prices. The following year however was free from the expected return

of the disease and a period of extraordinary activity ensued. Enterprise and

business growth rapidly increased. Many public works were projected dur-

ing this period, including the great Southern Railway route to Charleston,

the railroad to St. Louis, the little Miami, the Cincinnati, Columbus & Cleve-

land railway, the Mad River & Lake Erie, Covington & Lexington, and the

White Water Canal. All of these enterprises though perhaps under different

names were finally carried out.²

 

Under the date of July 20, 1832, and before the disease had

reached the Ohio Valley, Drake issued a small volume, entitled

A Practical Treatise on the History, Prevention and Treatment

of Epidemic Cholera--Designed Both for the Profession and the

People. In the preface the author stated, "The object of this

little volume has been to present to the physician and reading

public of the Valley of Mississippi with an authentic digest of the

most important facts relative to the Cause, Symptoms, and Treat-

ment of the Epidemic which is now impending." He further

stated:

When the news of Cholera sickness in Quebec reached Cincinnati regu-

lations to prevent its contagion, were immediately proposed in our City

Council; but no steps to this end, have, I believe, been taken. Other towns,

in the valley of Mississippi, have possibly indulged the reverie of shutting

themselves up from the pestilence. They who cherish this scheme, have

thought little on the consequences of its execution. In the first place, even

in the despotic kingdoms of Europe, where such restrictions could be best

enforced, they have not stayed the march of the disease a single hour.

Secondly, such restrictions cannot be executed without a military force, and

a superintending head. Thirdly, the health of those who are thus shut up,

invariably suffers. Fourthly, the losses in business, and the discomforts and

inconveniences, consequent upon such restrictions, are calamitous in the

1 C. T. Greve, Centennial History of Cincinnati and Representative Citizens

(Chicago, 1904), 1, 588, quoting from the Life of Bishop Morris.

2 Ibid., I, 589.

• 66
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                 381

 

highest degree. I cannot but hope, therefore, that no state government or

civic corporation in the West, will undertake so mad an enterprize. Look at

the example of New York. Did not her legislature and people exert their

utmost power to confine the pestilence to the shores of the St. Lawrence?

And has it not already settled over the valley of the Hudson? Did not the

disease appear in her Capital, and disperse the very Assembly which the day

before had sent out a decree against its approach! And has it not overspread

her great Emporium, without any human eye having been keen enough to see

by what channel it approached! These are facts which should instruct us.

They display the utter fruitlessness of all restrictions on the social and com-

mercial intercourse of society, and call loudly on us to prepare for that which

we cannot avert.3

 

Drake did not accept the popular miasmatic theory as to the

cause of the disease but believed it to be due to some very small

microscopic agent--an animalicule.      He did not believe that it

was contagious, advocated strict sanitation and good personal

hygiene as the measures most likely to prevent the pestilence. He

published as a supplement to the Cincinnati Chronicle, dated

October 13, 1832, an extra sheet with the following notice.

 

Cure of Cholera

FELLOW CITIZENS,

Would you be cured of Cholera take the disease in time.

It begins with some sort of Bowel Complaint, or disturbance of the

stomach. In this stage it is easily cured; and all who neglect this stage are

in danger of perishing.

Whoever has a lax or sickness at stomach, or Colic, should instantly

take to his bed, in a warm room and drink hot tea of sage, balm, or

Thorough wort, or even hot water--bathing his feet if cold, and applying

a warm poultice over the bowels.

Without this nothing will do any good--All who go about in the damp

air after the bowel complaint has set in will get Cramps and Spasms and die

--I again say they will die. Besides what I have mentioned, they should take

a powder, of ten grains of Calomel and one of Opium mixed, if grown

person, and children should take less in proportion; or a teaspoonful of

powdered Rhubarb.

They should, also take a teaspoonful, every hour, of the Aromatic

Camphorated water, which is a cheap article, and may be had of most of the

Apothecaries.

All who are of a full habit, or have Fever, or Colic should be bled.

3 Daniel Drake, A Practical Treatise on the History, Prevention, and Treatment

of Epidemic Cholera (Cincinnati, 1832), 167-8.

• 67
 

382 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Again let me warn every one, that the dreadful Epidemic commences

as a mild bowel complaint, and in that stage may be cured--when vomitting

coldness and spasms combined, come on, death will follow--has followed,

in almost every case that has yet occurred in the city. He who goes about

with a mild complaint upon him should expect to perish.

The Epidemic would lose all its terrors, if people would attend,

instantly, to the first symptoms--Go to bed, drink hot water or tea, promote

a perspiration, and send for their family Physician.

Terror is a great exciting cause. The disease produced by terror

requires treatment. Let no one presume to laugh another out of his fears.

All the terrified should take to their beds--this will best counteract its bad

effects.

Let all who read what is here written, recount it to their friends. Let

us unite in aiding each other, for a few days--The Pestilential Cloud will

soon pass away. The disease, absolutely, is not catching.

DANIEL DRAKE, M.D.4

 

Cholera prevailed in the vicinity of Cincinnati during the

years 1832-1833 and 1834. During the first two years there were

831 deaths due to this cause. Epidemics also occurred in terri-

tories surrounding Cincinnati. Many deaths were reported in or

near Salem, Madison and Versailles, Indiana. To the north the

disease raged at Lebanon and Dayton, Ohio, and at Richmond,

Indiana.   Cases occurred in Columbus during July and August

The upper Ohio was also invaded particularly at Gallipolis (June,

1833) and spread through the Kanawha Valley at Charleston,

and other places in West Virginia. Wheeling was an important

center for the spread of this disease, which progressed eastward

to the Valley of the Potomac, but then did not reach to the eastern

seaboard. Previous to its infestation of the Cincinnati region it

had appeared among the laborers along the Lake Erie and Ohio

Canal. It took a heavy toll in 1832 near Chillicothe.

The second great invasion of cholera occurred in 1849. As

in the first, the starting focus was India, where at Calcutta a very

virulent form of the disease appeared in 1840, and passed as if

in a wave through China to Siberia and then to Russia. From

the Near East the epidemic spread to the Mediterranean areas.

In Russia during 1847-1848 more than a million succumbed. In

 

4 Cincinnati Chronicle Extra, Sat. afternoon, Oct. 13, 1832.

• 68
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                  383

 

France 150,000 died. The German areas were also infected and

with the large stream    of German immigration the cholera was

again brought to North America. It invaded the Ohio Valley

from the South in 1849. In Dearborn County, Indiana, the toll

was very heavy, the town of Aurora alone having 132 deaths.

Cincinnati in 1849 was a city of 110,000, the largest in the Middle

West. It had a public water system by means of which water

was pumped into reservoirs in the hills and then piped by gravity

throughout the city. A few cases appeared in January, but the

epidemic reached severe proportions in April and its peak in the

last week in June when the deaths numbered 903. The toll of

the fifteen weeks' period was 5969 or at a rate of 188 per 1000.

A feature of this epidemic was the controversies which raged

between the Allopaths, the Homeopaths and the Eclectics, each

group maintaining its own method of treatment to be the superior

one.

Drake wrote two open letters⁵ to the public which I quote

in full:

 

To THE PEOPLE OF CINCINNATI: The publication of the Board of

Health and the weekly report of the trustees of the Hospital in yesterday's

Daily Gazette, having shown that the cholera has at length begun to prevail

among us as an epidemic, I propose to say a few words on certain points on

which all have a deep interest.

In the first place, then, let no one leave the city because the epidemic

has come. In whatever known manner this disorder travels from country

to country, it is not like smallpox, a catching disease; if it were, going

out of the city would be a preservative. As in 1832, the cases that have

occurred, were in various retired parts of the city, and largely among women

and children, who had been in no degree exposed to boats, railroad stations

or hotels, where they could have caught any disease. In fact the cause has

spread through the city, and already been received into the bodies of its

inhabitants--old and young, rich and poor; and those who escape to the

country are as likely--more likely--to be ill than if they remained at home.

The true and safest course is for families and friends to draw closer than

common and watch over and assist each other.

In the second place it ought to be known, that epidemic cholera has no

premonitory symptoms. When the sentinel on the walls of a fortified city

fires his gun, it is a premonition that the enemy is close at hand--when there

5 Cincinnati Daily Gazette, May 10-11, 1849.

• 69
 

384    OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

is a circle around the moon, it is a premonitory sign of a storm, but cholera

attacks without any premonition. We are accustomed to apply the word

cholera to a summer disease of our own climate, which generally begins with

vomiting, or that symptom and diarrhoea combined; and have, therefore,

fallen into the fatal error of regarding the first stage of epidemic cholera

as a forerunner of that, from the moment when the diarrhoea sets in the

cholera is as positively present as when it has advanced to vomiting, or

coldness and collapse. When one shingle sends up smoke, the roof is as

positively on fire as when the flames light up the city. The man who should

stand still when he saw the smoke, it was only a premonitory sign, that his

house might be on fire after a while, would be regarded as insane; yet his

absurdity would be no greater than that of the individual who does not

regard himself as laboring under the cholera, from the moment the diarrhoea

begins.

In the third place, it may be declared as a fact, that the disease may

generally be stopped, if met in the early stage; at all events, if it cannot then

be put an end to, it cannot afterwards. It will run its course, and the patient

may or may not recover, according to his constitution--but let no one believe

that this first, mild stage, can be successfully treated, if the patient continues

on his feet. His life depends on his lying by--no medicine can succeed if he

should not. They may check it for a moment, and delude him into a fatal

security, but can go no further. In the fourth place all persons who can

have warm flannel during the winter should keep it on, until the epidemic has

passed away. They may put on cooler outer clothing but should not throw

off what they have worn next the surface of the body.

Tomorrow these practical remarks will be extended, meanwhile I may

say, that they most certainly express the experience and settled opinions of

the medical profession, both in Europe and this country.

CINCINNATI, May 10, 1849, DANIEL DRAKE, M.D.

 

TO THE PEOPLE OF CINCINNATI:

I briefly pointed out yesterday, in the public prints, that no one should

leave the city for the purpose of escaping the cholera--that it is not a disease

which has premonitory symptoms, but that it is present from the beginning

of the diarrhoea, which is its first stage; that early treatment and rest are

indispensible to its cure; and that warm clothing should not be laid aside

until the epidemic shall have passed away.

The last opinion relates to the prevention of the disease, and on that

point I propose to say a few words.

Strictly speaking there is no prevention of the cholera; but all consti-

tutions are not liable to it, any more than all are liable to ague and fever.

influenza or any other form of disease. But although we know of nothing

that will prevent the disease, we know of many things which can and do

• 70
 

OHIO  MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858                385

 

bring it on, after the poison has been taken into the system. These are

exciting causes, and ought to be carefully avoided.

Of the exciting causes one has just been mentioned, the premature lay-

ing aside of flannel and other warm clothing. In addition to this (and be-

longing to the same head) getting wet in a shower--remaining long in damp

places--sitting in a strong current of air at night--and sleeping with but

little bed covering--should all be carefully avoided. Every sitting and lodg-

ing room ought to have a fire in it for a part of every day, especially for a

few hours before occupying it, thus the shop, office, family sitting room,

church, and school house should have fires kindled in them early in the

morning, and kept up for two or three hours; but this is still more necessary

in lodging rooms which should be warmed and dried by brisk fires, kindled

in the early part of the evening, and allowed to burn down before bed time.

A second class of exciting causes is connected with diet. Loading the

stomach with any kind of food, especially at night, may bring on the disease;

and omitting to eat at the usual time may do the same thing. Much reduc-

tion in the quantity (the individual still be in health) is not proper. In fact

a nourishing diet is best; but should be plain and digestible. Meat or boiled

eggs, should be eaten every day. Boiled ham, corned beef, and poultry,

corned mutton, and well seasoned, beef steak are the best. On the whole

salted meats are more proper than fresh and all should be well seasoned.

Veal, fresh pork and fresh fish should be avoided. Of salt fish, mackerel

and salmon are too hard; but codfish with potatoes is proper. Old cheese is

safe, and macaroni prepared with cheese may be eaten. Hot bread should be

avoided--stale bread or crackers only, should be used. Of culinary vegetable

mealy potatoes, well boiled hominy and rice, are not only the best but all

others had better be omitted. Pie, tarts and all kinds of pastry are improper,

except perhaps, well baked and highly spiced gingerbread.

Of drinks, sweet milk, tea, coffee and chocolate may be taken as usual.

Those who drink malt liquors at their meals should limit themselves to

freshly brewed beer, well hopped. As to brandy and whiskey, they cannot

prevent cholera. They who are in the habit of using either, should not lay

either aside; but they should by all means not begin it now. The use of

brandy in the treatment of disease, must not be confounded with its use as

a preventive. The irritation of the stomach and bowels produced by the first

impress of alcoholic drinks, may even contribute to bring on the disease, and

sour wines are still more likely to have that effect.

DAN DRAKE, M.D.

CINCINNATI, May 11, 1849.

• 71
 

DENTISTRY AND DENTAL EDUCATION

 

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

 

To obtain a true concept of dentistry and dental education

during the period under consideration, it is necessary to present

a general summary of previous conditions, and of the qualifica-

tions, activities and contributions of some of the pioneers in

dentistry, which ultimately developed into the present system of

dental education.

The course of empire has ever been westward--and this

truism may apply in the development of dental education. The

seed sown by the early pioneers and itinerants in this State, ma-

tured so fully that a heritage of rich harvests were returned to

the East, contributing to the first dental college in the world--

the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery in 1840.

The colonists had their physicians, apothecaries and barber-

surgeons who administered relief to dental, as well as to other

bodily ailments. The earliest known announcement of a dental

nature was by one James Mills in the New York Weekly Journal

of January 6, 1735, who claimed proficiency in extraction.

The first practicing dentist was Robert Woofendale from

England in 1766. He returned to his native country in 1778. He

again came to this country in 1795 and practiced in New York

City for a short period when he was succeeded by his son, Robert.

Contemporaneous with Woofendale, we find John Baker who

practiced in Boston, New York City and Philadelphia. While in

Boston he instructed Paul Revere--the Revolutionary patriot--

at least in the prosthetic branch of dentistry, as evidenced in Re-

vere's announcement in the Boston Gazette of August 29, 1768.

Among others from England, we find the announcement of Mr.

Hamilton, Surgeon-Dentist from London, in the New York

Chronicle, June 1769.

The incessant wars of France during the early years of the

(386)

• 72
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          387

 

eighteenth century had a tendency to develop surgery, and that

country surpassed her neighbors in this art. Dentistry received

early attention, as in 1700 practitioners were required to be

licensed. Dentistry shared in the advance with surgery to the

extent that a master-hand, in the person of Pierre Fauchard, pub-

lished in 1728--after forty years of practice--a monumental work

in two volumes, Le Chirurgien Dentiste, containing practically all

that was known at that period, and foretold future possibilities

that became a reality.

In December 1785, we find Dr. DuBuque, a Frenchman in

Boston; also Dr. Dustwige in 1780, who announced having studied

in the schools of Paris as an operator on the teeth. During the

Revolutionary period, we find Drs. James Gardette and Joseph

Le Mayeur, also French dentists, had found their way to our

shores--both having recognized ability for that period.

From the foregoing, it is evident that the colonies were be-

coming more attractive to English and French practitioners, most

of whom were of an itinerant type, contributing nothing to the

advancement of dentistry, with but an obsession to satisfy their

monetary desires and then to return to their native country.

John Hunter, who was born in 1728 (the year Fauchard

gave his work to the world) published in 1771 The Natural His-

tory of the Human Teeth and laid the foundation of dental sur-

gery on a physiological and pathological inquiry. Numerous other

works of minor importance followed, devoted to the care of the

teeth, exploiting the ability of the writer. With the opening of

the nineteenth century we come to an epoch in dental history

when events of great subsequent influence began to appear on the

dental horizon.

In 1801, Robert Skinner of New York produced the first

American work entitled, On the Human Teeth. This was fol-

lowed by works by B. T. Longbotham, Benjamin James, Eleazar

Parmly, Joseph Flagg and others, which--excepting the articles

published in medical journals by physicians who were devoting

some of their time to dentistry--was the extent of our contri-

butions up to 1828, when Samuel S. Fitch, just one hundred

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388   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

years after the publication of Fauchard's work, published his

work, A System of Dental Surgery, in three parts: 1--"Dental

Surgery as a Science"; 2--"Operative Dental Surgery"; 3--

"Pharmacy Connected with Dental Surgery." This was the first

systematic treatise published in America, and was intended as a

text in dentistry. A second edition followed in 1835. The author

states that the work is a compilation of everything of value which

had been written upon dental surgery, having made use of the

works of English, French and writers of other countries.

During this formative period many names appear which made

a lasting imprint, and whose ability and precept went far in

moulding the destiny of the art that was within a few years to

rank as a profession, and become an important branch of health

service. Josiah Flagg of Boston was the first native-born dentist

who was exclusively prepared to practice dentistry, and the first

of three generations of dentists of the name, all of whom con-

tributed to the credit and advancement of the profession.

Of the Greenwood family of dentists the father was Isaac

of Boston, who was a wood and ivory turner, and later a dentist.

Four of his sons were dentists, the most distinguished of whom

was John Greenwood, often referred to as one of the dentists

who served General George Washington. His greatest service to

dentistry was his inducement of Horace H. Hayden who had

called upon him for dental services, to adopt dentistry as his call-

ing, and who later became one of the founders of the Baltimore

College of Dental Surgery.

Edward Hudson, who had been educated in Trinity College,

and later received instruction in dentistry from a cousin, practiced

in Dublin, but having become involved in the political movements

of the time, removed to America and established himself in Phila-

delphia in 1805. For more than thirty years his talent and skill

made him a recognized leader and his influence was an important

asset to American dentistry.

John Randall, a graduate of Harvard, later received his medi-

cal degree. He became interested in dentistry because observa-

tions led him to believe that dentistry, as then practiced, was

• 74
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          389

 

largely the substitution of lost teeth, rather than the preservation

of the natural ones. He was a highly respected citizen of Boston

where he practiced medicine and surgery, but gave special atten-

tion to dentistry. He died in 1843.

Hayden, who was to be a co-founder of the first dental col-

lege in the world, was born October 13, 1769, at Windsor, Con-

necticut. He began life as an architect and later was a teacher

near Hartford. In New York City, as previously stated, he called

on John Greenwood for dental services and decided to adopt

dentistry as his calling. He procured such literature as was avail-

able and with energy and ambition qualified himself sufficiently to

announce his services to the public. He located in Baltimore in

1804 and was soon actively engaged as a dentist, scientist and

teacher. To perfect himself in his specialty, he studied medicine,

and also gave a course of lectures on dentistry to the medical class

of the University of Maryland. With some reluctance, he assisted

Chapin A. Harris in founding the American Journal of Dental

Science in 1839. He was one of the organizers of the American

Society of Dental Surgeons, August 18, 1840; was elected presi-

dent and continued as such until his death on June 25, 1844.

Leonard Koecher, a native of Hanover, Germany, located in

Baltimore in 1807, became interested in dentistry and practiced

from 1812 until 1822, when he located in London, England.

Through studious methods he acquired an enviable reputation as

a dentist. He introduced several new methods into practice, and

during his residence in London, contributed several treatises on

artificial teeth, obturators and palates.

A resume of the dentists of the Atlantic seaboard would be

incomplete without reference to the family of Parmly. Of the

five sons of Eleazar Parmly of Braintree, Vermont, four became

dentists and through these sons and their descendants, the name

appears frequently in the annals of dentistry.

Eleazar, the third son, studied with his brother Levi S. who

had studied with John Randall, previously mentioned. He prac-

ticed in Montreal, and later--to gain more information--made a

tour of the Western and Southern States, practicing as an itinerant,

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390    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

as evidenced by the following announcement from     the Liberty

Hall and Cincinnati Gazette.

 

E. Parmly, Dentist, Intends staying in this city for a few weeks, and

will devote a share of his time to the duties of his profession. Having re-

ceived the most flattering encouragement from the inhabitants of Montreal

and Quebec (where he regularly studied this surgical branch of science) also

from the citizens of Pittsburgh, Lexington and Louisville, he cannot but ex-

pect similar patronage from the gay, the fashionable, and the wealthy of

this young and flourishing metropolis. Application to be made at his lodgings

at Mrs. Burley's, Main Street. November 3, 1817. 85-tf.

He practiced in New Orleans, then in Paris, and later in

London with his brother Levi S. Parmly. Impaired health caused

him to return to this, his native country, and establish himself in

New York City in 1823. For thirty years he was dean of the

profession in that city and was most active in the events tending

to dignify his calling as a profession. He was the first president

of the first dental society in the world, The Society of Dental

Surgeons of the City and State of New York, organized December

3, 1834. He retired from practice in 1861, having amassed a

fortune through his diversified interests, business acumen and rise

in real estate values. He published a treatise, Disorders and Treat-

ment of the Teeth, in 1822, and after his retirement a volume of

poems, Thoughts in Rhyme.

Dr. Solymon Brown, a contemporary of E. Parmly, should

be mentioned at this time. He has been referred to as "Classical

instructor, author, sculptor, minister and poet-laureate of the

dental profession." After practicing in New York City twenty-

eight years, failing eyesight caused him to dispose of his practice.

Dentalogia, a didactic poem on the diseases of the teeth and their

treatment consisting of five cantos, appeared in 1833 and another

poem, Dental Hygeia, in three cantos, in 1838. His son, E.

Parmly Brown, late of New York City, and a grandson, E.

Parmly Brown, late of Peekskill, New York, well known for

valuable contributions to the history of dentistry, represent the

three generations of dentists in the family. Many other names

are deserving of mention as contributing to the development of

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          391

dentistry, but the foregoing will suffice in presenting the back-

ground of those dentists from the Atlantic States who were to

follow in the wake of the tide of emigration to the West.

Many of the outstanding dentists of that period were medi-

cally trained, often practicing dentistry, not as a specialty, but in

conjunction with medicine. With the phenomenal influx of

population to Ohio during the first quarter of the eighteenth

century, came one such physician in the person of Dr. John

Harris who located at Madison near Cincinnati. He had practiced

medicine several years, and became interested in dentistry and

early recognized pathological conditions of the teeth in relation to

systemic conditions. His technical knowledge according to Dr.

James Taylor--one of his students--was acquired from itinerant

dentists passing through Cincinnati during his residence at

Madison, among whom--during the period 1817-1819--were

Eleazar Parmly; Dr. Plantou, "Surgeon and Dentist from Paris

on his way to New Orleans;" Mr. Green, "Surgeon-Dentist from

England;" G. T. Ratrie, who "would refer any prospective pa-

tients to Dr. Bohrer of the Medical College of Ohio;" C. Munroe,

Dentist, "having perfected himself with one of the most eminent

dentists in the United States, and being an eye-witness to most of

the recent improved operations upon the teeth in the Atlantic

States;" Dr. Rufus Somerby, later of Louisville, Kentucky, who

had studied with Dr. Durroux, a French dentist in Washing-

ton, D. C.

As early as 1820, Harris began devoting more than half his

time to the practice of dentistry. About the year 1825, he located

in the village of Bainbridge, continuing the practice of medicine

and dentistry. In 1824 an Act of the Ohio legislature made it

obligatory that a candidate for examination before the Medical

Censors must "have received instruction under a preceptor."

This afforded an opportunity for Harris, and under the caption

"Medical Instruction," he published an announcement in the

Supporter & Gazette of Chillicothe, November 1, 1827. There

were some ten students who responded to this announcement, nine

of whom later pursued the practice of dentistry. Among these

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392    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

students were Chapin A. Harris (John Harris' brother), and

James Taylor, who were destined to become the founders of the

first two dental colleges in the world--the Baltimore College of

Dental Surgery in 1840, and the Ohio College of Dental Surgery

in 1845.

Previous to and subsequent to this period, it was a difficult

matter to prepare one's self for the practice of dentistry. Dr.

John Harris was fortunate in having had medical training, and in

contacting itinerants acquired his dental technique. For those

without medical training, it was more difficult. Medical education

obtained was from such books as were then available and for

technical knowledge they were under the preceptorship of some

practicing dentist whose skill and qualifications were not always

par. Some interesting documents are "Indentures," binding an

apprentice, and "Contracts," or "Agreements" between the pre-

ceptor and his student.

Dr. James Taylor writing of the subject of dental education

stated, "Dr. John Harris and myself had many protracted discus-

sions on the importance of a medico-dental education and the best

method of securing it. In these we were joined by C. A. Harris."

We here have positive evidence that the idea of formal dental

education was conceived in Bainbridge, and it is certainly no mis-

nomer to refer to this village as "The Cradle of Dental Educa-

tion." It may be of interest to quote in part, John Harris' dictum

regarding pulpless teeth, in a paper read in 1845 before the

American Society of Dental Surgeons, of which he was a member.

"The proper treatment in the majority of cases is the removal of

the diseased organ. ... So many dentists substitute their treat-

ment, which at least is inefficient, and subjects the unfortunate

sufferer to a train of evils far greater than mere toothache itself.

Cures have been speedily and permanently effected by the removal

of diseased teeth, even where they have not been productive of

pain or suspected as the cause of mischief."

The group at Bainbridge by 1830, had drifted to other quar-

ters and in this paper we will briefly follow the destiny of but three

--John Harris, his brother Chapin A. Harris and James Taylor.

• 78
 

OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          393

John Harris located in Chillicothe in 1830 and established himself

on East Second Street in a building then standing on the lot where

the old Masonic Opera house was built.

From Chillicothe, he made itinerant trips until about 1834,

when he established himself in Kentucky, practicing in George-

town, Frankfort and near-by towns. A few years later he was

practicing in Annapolis and Frederick, Maryland, and while on

one itinerant trip to Hertford, N. C., he died on July 26, 1849.

While in Kentucky in 1835-1836, he attended medical lectures in

the Transylvania University at Louisville, and also gave a course

of dental lectures in this institution. In 1836 he attempted to have

legislation enacted to establish a dental college in Kentucky. The

records show that on February 10, 1836, there was introduced in

the Senate a bill to "regulate the practice of Dental Surgery in

the State of Kentucky." This would have antedated the Alabama

law by five years. Had Dr. John Harris succeeded in his efforts,

to him would have been given the credit of the first dental college,

and the first enactment to regulate the practice of dentistry in

the States. However, his attempts were without direct results,

but they kindled a desire for improved methods of education and

regulation of practice, and they will ever stand as a monument to

his zeal, enthusiasm and sacrifice in the promotion of dental

science.

Chapin A. Harris was born May 6, 1806, and studied medi-

cine in Madison, Ohio, with his brother John, beginning practice

in Greenfield, Ohio. John Harris--who in the meantime had

located in Bainbridge, some ten miles distant--with James Taylor,

a pupil, made trips to Greenfield and practiced dentistry in the

same office. Chapin A. Harris soon became interested in dentistry

and joined the group of students at Bainbridge, and eventually

devoted his entire time to dentistry. This was indeed fortunate,

because in him was the dynamic force to bring to maturity and

actuality, the ideas that had been lurking in Hayden's mind, in

Baltimore, Maryland. After leaving Bainbridge, he practiced at

several places, including Bloomfield, Ohio, and Fredericksburg,

Va., and in 1835 located in Baltimore.

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394    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Hayden, then in his seventy-first year, and who had been

ambitious in his calling, was desirous of establishing a dental

school as an adjunct to the Medical Department of the University

of Maryland. Hayden had received his medical knowledge there,

and two others interested in the project, Drs. H. W. Baxley and

Thomas Bond, were graduates. The oft-repeated statement that

the faculty considered dentistry of too little importance and re-

fused to cooperate, is without foundation. The "fly in the oint-

ment" seems to have been the fact that Baxley had recently been

dismissed by the faculty of the medical school, and owing to the

bitter controversy that had taken place, the faculty pursued the

policy of "hands off."

Harris' support was now enlisted in the project and after a

visit to New York City to consult the leading practitioners there

as to the feasibility of establishing a school in one of the New

York Medical Schools, he was disappointed and returned to Bal-

timore. During the winter of 1839-1840, almost unaided he se-

cured signatures to a petition to the legislature and as a result an

Act incorporating the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery was

enacted February 1, 1840, with Hayden, Harris, Bond and Baxley

as the faculty, with Harris as dean. This act was to continue in

force for thirty years, and at the session of 1870 it was amended

on March 31, making the charter perpetual. On June 15, 1923,

this college was merged with the University of Maryland, under

the title of Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, Dental School,

University of Maryland.

Harris was one of the most voluminous writers which the

dental profession has produced. His Dental Art in 1839, as Har-

ris' Principles and Practice, passed through its  ₃th edition in

1896. He was founder and first editor of the American Journal

of Dental Science, the first dental journal in the world, financing

it with his own funds until his death on September 29, 1860. He

was also author of the first Dental Dictionary in the English lan-

guage in 1849, the sixth edition of which was in 1898.

James Taylor, another student of John Harris at Bainbridge,

was one of four brothers, natives of near that village, all of whom

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          395

exercised great influence in developing dentistry in the West.

Taylor later received his medical degree at Lexington, Kentucky,

and practiced medicine and dentistry at Bainbridge. In 1842 he

located permanently in Cincinnati, and in 1844 advocated a dental

school in that city. Fortunately no opposition was met with and

the Ohio legislature, at its forty-third General Assembly (1845)

authorized the establishment of a school to be known as the Ohio

College of Dental Surgery, the second dental college in the world.

Taylor was its first dean.

The college was discontinued July 1, 1926, after an existence

of eighty-one years, much to the disapproval of its alumni, scat-

tered to every quarter of the globe. Taylor was the first editor of

the Dental Register of the West, established in 1847--the second

dental journal in the world. It was discontinued in November

1923, after an existence of seventy-six years. In addition to his

editorial duties, he was a voluminous contributor to dental

literature.

Another factor not to be overlooked as an adjunct to dental

education, is that of professional organizations. These bodies

have frequently been referred to as "Post graduate courses." The

early organizations were handicapped, owing to sparseness of

population when we had but the local society, then, with the in-

crease of population, the State and finally a national organization,

were brought into existence.

The first society--the Society of Dental Surgeons of the City

and State of New York--was organized December 3, 1834, with

E. Parmly, president. It continued until 1840, when most of its

members were instrumental in forming the American Society of

Dental Surgeons, on August 18, 1840. Hayden was the first

president. This society was dissolved August 7, 1856.

The American Dental Convention was first held in Phila-

delphia, August 2, 1855, and conducted its last meeting in 1875.

The American Dental Association was organized at Niagara

Falls, N. Y., on August 3, 1859.

The Southern Dental Association was organized at Atlanta,

Ga., July 28, 1869.

The National Dental Association was organized on August

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396    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

5, 1897, by union of the two foregoing, and on July 21, 1922, the

name was changed to the present American Dental Association.

Nine Ohioans have served as presidents of this association.

The Virginia Society of Dental Surgeons organized at Rich-

mond, December 12, 1842, is deserving of special notice in that

it was the first legally incorporated dental society and the legis-

lative act was the first legislation placing dental interests entirely

in the hands of the profession. The constitution and by-laws of

the society provided for an Executive Examining and Publication

Committee whose duty it was "to appoint a time and place at least

once a year for the examination of applicants for the degree of

Doctor of Dental Surgery; and the certificate shall entitle the

holder to receive the diploma of the Society conferring this de-

gree." Among the requirements for examination was that the

candidate "shall have studied and practiced for the full term of

two years with some practical dentist known to this Society." But

one diploma issued by this organization is known to be extant,

and that is possessed by Dr. W. S. Sedgwich of Newark, Ohio,

to whose great grandfather it was issued on October 15, 1846.

The spirit of organization was early manifested in Ohio.

The Cincinnati Association of Dental Surgeons adopted a con-

stitution on January 6, 1844; and on August 13, of the same year,

the Mississippi Valley Association of Dental Surgeons was or-

ganized in Cincinnati in the lecture room of the Medical College

of Ohio. This was a sectional society, and met annually until

April 15, 1896, having served its purpose well during the fifty-

two years of its existence.

The Northern Ohio Dental Association organized at Cleve-

land, November 3, 1857, met annually until recent years, and was,

at that time, the oldest society in existence operating under its

original name.

Another society, the Mad River Valley Association, was or-

ganized at Springfield, Ohio, October 25, 1859. This organization

served a valuable purpose in the western part of the State, but

due to the Civil War was discontinued until 1865; it again sus-

pended activities in 1876, and was reorganized at Dayton in 1882,

and then discontinued May 18, 1886.

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OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-1858          397

 

In addition to the foregoing, some forty societies have existed

in various parts of Ohio, exclusive of the Ohio State Dental

Society and its twenty-three Components.

The Ohio State Dental Society was organized in Columbus,

on June 26, 1866, with a charter membership of forty-one; it

affiliated as a Component of the American Dental Association in

December 1912, and at the close of 1939 had a membership of

2,482. This organization has been of great educational and eco-

nomical value to its membership; has safe-guarded the interests of

the laity, and has taken an active part in promoting all activities

conducive to the health and well-being of the citizens of our State.

We have referred to the Dental Register of the West as the

second dental journal published. Ohio has not been remiss in its

journalistic literature. The Dental Reporter of six undated and

unnumbered issues, and a volume of quarterlies in 1858, and the

Dental Lamp of Cincinnati (1858-1860) had ephemeral existence;

likewise the Practical Dentist, Toledo (1888-1890); the Dentists'

Magazine, Cleveland (1906-1909); and the D. D. S., Dayton

(1906-1911). The Ohio State Journal of Dental Science made

its appearance in February 1881, and continued until 1902, when

it was re-christened the Dental Summary. It was discontinued

December, 1925. For many years it was the official organ of the

Ohio State Dental Society, and in that capacity--like its contem-

poraries--disseminated valuable information to the profession in

the Middle West and preserved to posterity much information of

historical value.

The Transactions of the Ohio State Dental Society were pub-

lished annually, 1875-1883 inclusive; for 1895; 1898 and 1909.

Since May 1927, the State society has published its Journal, issued

quarterly.

Ohio has added many names that will survive in the annals

of dentistry. Our heritage has been one of which we should in-

deed be proud, and which should be an incentive to ever higher

professional ideals and attainments. As this State holds high

rank in various fields of endeavor, it behooves us, as members of

the professions of health service, to contribute our share to that

glory which is hers.

• 83