Ohio History Journal

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.

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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,

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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-

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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-

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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-

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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.

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