Ohio History Journal

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DR

DR. SAMUEL P. HILDRETH, 1783-1863 1

 

By A. E. WALLER

 

Medical science in the nineteenth century engaged in its main

task of healing in full consciousness of its professional obligations.

Methodically and with enthusiasm it likewise cradled and kept

alive the spark of curiosity in all the natural sciences. Botany and

zoology profited most, followed closely by geology, chemistry.

physics and meteorology. Many of these medical men, not spe-

cialists themselves, established firm foundations of special tech-

niques and procedures. The doctors were trained in laboratory

methods not then in fashion in other college studies. Through

medical practice they were constantly in touch with people in all

walks of life, in a day when social lines of cleavage were more

marked than they are at present.  Practical application of scien-

titic principle became routine attitude for those young men trained

in medical college.

It is easy to see how the doctors could become collectors of

specimens as well as the facts of natural history as they made

their rounds of calls. They often had grateful patients who,

guided by their interest, turned collectors and correspondents for

them. Every successful doctor could readily become the head of

a small community of disciples if he chose. The more learned

the man, either from good training in the colleges of the day or

from his own studious habits, the less he might be inclined toward

cultisms and the more inclined toward adding observations to the

growing body of natural science facts.

Such a man was Dr. Hildreth, whose story is deeply inter-

twined with Marietta and with the growing Ohio Commonwealth.

He arrived four years after its admission to Statehood and re-

mained in medical practice for over a half-century. These were

the important years of the expansion from pioneering to modern

commercial, agricultural and industrial living.  He arrived on

 

1 Papers from  the Department of Botany, the Ohio State University,  No. 469.

313