Ohio History Journal

THE CINCINNATI LANCET-CLINIC

by DAVID A. TUCKER, JR., M.D.

Professor of the History of Medicine, University of Cincinnati

 

The Cincinnati Lancet-Clinic was formed in 1878 by the merger

of the Lancet and Observer (1842) with the Clinic (1871). It was

known as the Lancet and Clinic until 1888 when the hyphenated

title was assumed.

The Lancet and Observer was founded by L. M. Lawson in

1842 as the Western Lancet, a monthly journal.        It was issued in

Cincinnati under his direction for thirteen years, although during

part of that time he resided in Lexington, Kentucky.

We quote the opening editorial of the Lancet:

We present to the profession the first number of The Lancet, and accom-

pany the offering with a brief exposition of its principles and objects. Un-

influenced by sectional or party interests, and free from the debasing effects

of clique government, we will in all sincerity endeavor to promote harmony

and unity of action, and never permit our journal to become a medium for

conveying off the debris of personal collisions. We claim to be an honest and

devoted member of that great branch of the human family, whose days are

spent in mental and physical exertions to ameliorate the anguish of their

fellow beings, and whose sleepless nights form but a counterpart to the same

scenes of toil; and so long as the light of reason shall illumine our path, and

the tide of destiny roll harmless by, so long will we candidly and fearlessly

endeavor to defend our common interests, and expose common evils.

The Lancet is designed to be essentially practical. Abstract speculations

and obscure theories will be sedulously avoided, while true principles, leading

to practical conclusions, which will exclude empiricism and establish rational

deductions, will be carefully cultivated. For these purposes, we solicit from

the profession contributions, and hope they will select from the vast amount

of materials within their reach, such facts as will essentially aid our enterprise.

Through the kindness of the distinguished gentlemen who have, ex

officio, control of the Commercial Hospital, we expect to present an interesting

clinique of medical and surgical cases. Our readers will also be regularly

informed of all important improvements, foreign and American.

We have entered upon the enterprise with a full understanding of the

labor, perplexity and responsibility, inseparably connected with a medical

periodical; but at the same time, with a fixed resolution that the Journal

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shall be made worthy the patronage of an intelligent profession, and that our

efforts shall not be relaxed, until it rests upon a permanent and sure

foundation.

Such arrangements have been consummated for publishing as will insure

the uninterrupted appearance of the work throughout the year.

In 1858 the Western Lancet combined with the Medical Ob-

server (1856) under the title of the Lancet and Observer. It was

purchased by Dr. J. C. Culbertson in 1873. In 1878 Culbertson

acquired the control of the Clinic which had been issued weekly for

seven years by members of the faculty of the Medical College of

Ohio. Its first editor was the scholarly James T. Whittaker, his

collaborators being W. W. Dawson, P. S. Connor, W. W. Seely,

Charles Kearns, Thaddeus A. Reamy, C. D. Palmer, Samuel Nichles,

John L. Cleveland, and Roberts Bartholow.

The original announcement of the Clinic read as follows:

The Publisher of the Cincinnati Medical Clinic begs leave to state to

the Medical Profession that the Journal, of which the first number is issued

today, is thoroughly organized on sound, working principles:

1st Because its corps of editors is composed of gentlemen well known to

the profession as working men.

2nd Because it has a fixed pecuniary basis.

The Clinic's policy-none.

Its object-to give the profession the best original matter possible-to

make its selections from domestic and foreign journals, as judicious and

practical as space will allow-thus to keep its readers au courant with the

progress of modern medicine.

Besides the contributions of its own immediate collaborators, the Clinic

will contain communications at least one every month, from leading medical

writers at home and abroad.

The department of selections will be especially cultivated. The tables

of the City Library contain the principal medical journals of the World, and

the editorial lists are choice and full.

Medical publications will be noticed and reviewed to an extent sufficient

to acquaint the reader with the most select literature in every department of

medicine, and the corner for News will contain all items of interest that can

be gleaned from every source of professional intelligence.

Each advertisement in this Journal is exclusive, and the space allotted

to every kind of business suitable for publication in a Journal of this

character, is open to the highest bidder.

The contents of each number were usually arranged under the

following headings: Original Articles, A Lecture, Scientific Notes,

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ThE CINCINNATI LANCET-CLINIC                     389

 

Medical News, Correspondence, and Clinical Memoranda. The early

republication of items of interest from the current French, German,

and Italian literature was a special feature of the Clinic.

The first issue of the new weekly journal-the Lancet and

Clinic-was published on July 6, 1878, under the joint editorship

of Dr. J. C. Culbertson and James G. Hyndman. The first editorial

read in part:

During the past year efforts have been repeatedly made to secure the

consolidation of the two principal medical journals of our city, The Lancet

and The Clinic. It was always admitted that the interests of all the parties

concerned in their publication, the interests of the subscribers, the interests

of our medical institutions, in short, the interests of the medical profession

at and in the vicinity of this great medical metropolis could be best subserved

by one Journal, which should secure the virtues and escape the faults peculiar

to each alone.

These peculiarities have always been so obvious as to scarcely require

mention. The Clinic, while it presented to its readers, in its weekly issues,

the quickest accounts of discoveries and reports of news, was so limited in

space as to virtually exclude detailed communications and society reports for

fear of imparting too much monotony to its pages; The Lancet, while it

afforded the necessary space for such contributions, was published at such

long intervals of time as to deprive its news and selections of freshness and

first appearance among its contemporaries. The unification of the two journals

completes the requirements of modern medical journalism and renders it as

effective, if we may use the comparison, as an army equipped with both light

and heavy artillery.

"The Lancet and Clinic" has peculiar claims upon the medical profession

in the West, for the reason that it represents the union of the first medical

monthly (now the oldest in the United States), and the first medical weekly

published in the West. It will hope to unite to the dignity, wisdom and

experience of age, the enthusiasm, activity and enterprise of youth. It will

have space for entire essays and full society reports, and show promptitude

in presentation of discoveries and news. It brings to its pages as immediate

collaborators the working corps of editors and translators previously engaged

upon The Clinic and the solid ability and accumulated influence belonging to

The Lancet. It will exhibit also as entirely new features, regular correspond-

ence, (at least one letter a week), from all the principal medical centres in

the East as well as in the West, with full accounts of all the transactions of

importance in the various hospital and medical societies in this city, in this

State and in neighboring States, whenever competent secretaries will furnish

histories and reports.

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390     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

The contents of the Lancet and Clinic were arranged in a man-

ner similar to those of the Clinic and under the following headings:

Original Communications, Reports of Societies, Correspondence,

Continental Medicine, Book Reviews, and Selections from the

Literature.

The first volume of the Lancet and Clinic contained a number

of original contributions by Dr. A. J. Keyt, who was the American

pioneer in cardiographic and sphymographic research.

It was the custom for Cincinnati physicians traveling either in

this country or abroad to write accounts of such visits to the medical

press, describing particularly the things which were of professional

interest. The Lancet and Clinic published a large number of such

letters, many of which are of considerable historical interest. Of

these we may mention a series entitled "A Doctor's Summer Vaca-

tion Letters" written from Europe by Roberts Bartholow (professor

of the theory and practice of medicine in the Medical College of

Ohio). One letter from Philadelphia, in the November 9, 1878,

issue describes a paper read by Dr. William Pepper at a meeting

of the Philadelphia County Medical Society in which the intra-

venous injection of milk was advocated as a form of therapy. The

milk, obtained directly from the cow or goat, was to be strained

through a fine wire sieve, then placed in a sealed can which was im-

mersed in boiling water, the object being to keep the milk heated

to 100^°. The intravenous injection was made through a fine needle

connected to the milk reservoir by rubber tubing. The corre-

spondent says that "Dr. Pepper stated that at first there was pro-

duced marked depression, followed by an exhilarating stage of

excitement and stimulation." Unfortunately the disease or diseases

for which the milk was to be used in this fashion were not noted.

A summary of the sanitary reports issued each week by the

surgeon general of the United States Marine Hospital Service under

the authority of the national quarantine act were published. These

consisted, in the main, of statistics concerning reportable diseases

in the various localities in the United States. The report for the

week of September 14, 1878, is very interesting as it records the

spread of yellow fever in the last great epidemic. In the week

ending September 12, there were 530 deaths in New Orleans, 607

deaths in Memphis, 7 in Louisville, and 4 in Cincinnati.

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THE CINCINNATI LANCET-CLINIC            391

In the volume for 1878 (p. 194) there is an abstract of the

article written by Dr. Adolph Hammer of St. Louis in which he

reported the diagnosis of a thrombus of the coronary artery before

death. The original article appeared in the Wien med Wocken-

shrift, XXXVIII (1878), 102, and thus was promptly announced

to the medical profession in Cincinnati, but apparently no one

recognized the significance of the report.

Another interesting paper was one written by Dr. R. B. Davy

of Cincinnati, in which he advocated what we would now call "air

conditioning" for the treatment of yellow fever. He described an

apparatus which used ice for the purpose of cooling, but he also

stated that with an engine at hand artificial cold could be produced

by using a mixture of solid carbonic acid and ether, or by using

the carbonic acid alone.

The earlier volumes were filled with discussions both pro and

con of the germ theory of disease; with descriptions of antiseptic

and then aseptic surgical technique; and with announcements of

the discovery of various bacteria as the specific causes of diseases.

Operative procedures made possible by aseptic technique were

described. The importance of preventive medicine in the control

of contagious and infectious diseases was the subject of a number

of papers.

Throughout the entire period of publication frequent refer-

ence was made to medical education in formal papers and in medi-

cal society discussions. The development of our present-day medi-

cal curriculum is readily followed through papers urging better

premedical training, the lengthened and graded course, the intro-

duction of laboratory work, the improvement of bedside clinical

teaching, and the introduction of medical licensure.

Dr. J. C. Culbertson retained financial control of the Lancet-

Clinic for many years-at least until 1893. He also acted as co-

editor up to that time, being assisted by various members of the

Cincinnati profession, among whom were James G. Hyndman,

Frederick Kebler, C. W. Thrasher, J. C. Oliver, A. B. Richardson,

and L. S. Colter.

During the early 1900's Dr. Mark Brown was editor. In 1907

Dr. A. G. Kreidler became editor, being succeeded in 1912 by

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392   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Dr. Charles Castle. In 1916 Dr. Martin Fischer and Dr. A. G.

Kreidler were the editors.

The Lancet-Clinic ceased publication with the issue dated No-

vember 18, 1916. The editor had stated on November 4 "that finan-

cial embarassment had sealed its fate. The sources of the embar-

rassment reside in the high cost of production, the poverty incident

to being clean, and the unwillingness on the part of enough of the

medical profession to make good the difference."

Thus after 74 years of usefulness to the medical profession of

the Ohio Valley, the Lancet-Clinic ceased to exist.

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