Ohio History Journal

MARILYN VAN VOORHIS WENDLER

Doctors and Diseases

on the Ohio Frontier

Nineteenth century Ohio historian Samuel Hildreth ob-

served that "As a class no order of men have done more to pro-

mote the good of mankind and develop the resources and natural

history of our country than the physicians. . . ." Hildreth likely

referred to professional contributions in the field of natural

science, yet doctors also played an integral part in bringing

civilization to the frontier. Whether drawn by spirit of adven-

ture, prospect of personal gain or increasing Eastern competition,

they accompanied every major wave of western migration.² Many

abandoned medicine for more lucrative pursuits, but a sizable

remainder divided their energies between fulfilling medical com-

mitments and assisting in the cultural and commercial develop-

ment of their infant communities.

The pioneer physician needed to be innovative, adaptable,

and possess great powers of physical endurance. An example of

such a man was Jabez True, whose life and career typify that of

the early frontier doctor. During the early summer of 1788,

True left his medical practice in New Hampshire to begin life

anew in the Ohio Country. True never attended a medical col-

lege, yet he became the first resident physician in the vast area

now comprising the seventeenth state.³ His professional cre-

Marilyn Van Voorhis Wendler is Official City Historian for the

City of Maumee, Ohio, and is a Ph.D. candidate and teaches Ohio history

at the University of Toledo.

1. Edmond C. Brush, "The Pioneer Physicians of the Muskingum

Valley," Ohio Archeological and Historical Society Quarterly, 3 (1890),

241-59.

2. Ibid. See also U.S. Department of Health, Education and Wel-

fare, Medicine on the Early Western Frontier, no. (NIH), 78-358 (1978).

3. Samuel Hildreth, Memoirs of the Pioneer Settlers of Ohio (Cin-

cinnati, 1852), 330.

Doctors and Diseases                                      223

dentials were similar to those of his contemporaries: three years

of preceptorship during which the student "read medicine" while

he observed and assisted an established doctor were sufficient

training to earn the title "legal practitioner" in colonial

America.⁴ In addition, True's Revolutionary War experience as

a surgeon on a rebel privateer prepared him for the rigors of

frontier practice.⁵

The young doctor's skills were in immediate demand. The

settlers of Marietta, where True established residence, suffered

repeatedly from outbreaks of small pox and fevers.⁶ Venomous

snake and insect bites were commonplace, as were burns from the

open fires. Extremities were often severed or mutilated through

careless use of knives and axes, and wounds from poisoned ar-

rows were an additional hazard of life in the wilderness. Doctors

were often faced with situations for which their eastern training

had not prepared them. On one such occasion, True was called

to aid a woman in an outlying settlement who had been scalped

by a band of marauding Indians. He arrived the following day

after traveling over thirty miles by canoe. The patient survived,

but the physician left no records divulging the secrets of his

successful treatment.7

Early inhabitants of the fortified communities scattered

throughout the Ohio River Valley existed at a bare subsistence

level. Consequently, a doctor's fees were seldom collectable and

thus economic necessity forced True to turn to farming. How-

ever, mounting hostilities between settlers and Indians expanded

the ranks of militia and brought additional troops into the area.

When faced with a shortage of physicians, it was common for

the military to contract with local doctors. In 1791 True re-

ceived an appointment as surgeon's mate with a monthly salary

of twenty-two dollars, an additional sum of money which en-

abled him to continue practicing medicine.⁸

The extent of a frontier doctor's practice was determined

by the availability of transportation. Thus, a reliable steed,

4. Frederick Waite, "The Professional Education of Pioneer Ohio

Physicians," Ohio Archeological and Historical Society Quarterly, 48 (1939),

191-92.

5. Hildreth, Memoirs of the Pioneer Settlers, 330.

6. Hildreth, Pioneer History: Being An Account of the First Exami-

nations of the Ohio Valley and the Early Settlement of The Northwest

Territory (Cincinnati, 1848), 263, 334, 378-79.

7. Hildreth, Memoirs of the Pioneer Settlers, 331.

8. Hildreth, Pioneer History, 329.

224                                            OHIO HISTORY

a sturdy saddle, and waterproof saddlebags were prime requi-

sites. The bags were connected by a leather strap which enabled

the bearer to transfer them to his own shoulders when crossing

high water or traveling on foot. Within the specially designed

compartments could be found such basis drugs as calomel-a

derivative of powdered mercury-and laudanum, a compound

containing opium. Various Indian remedies, particularly the

popular emetic, Ipecac, were also widely used.⁹

Bartin's Materia Medica, an early-nineteenth century medi-

cal book, credits the Indians with the discovery of medical prop-

erties in such common plants as tobacco, hemp, and euonymous,

as well as the effectiveness of Peruvian Bark in the treatment of

Malaria. Additional borrowed recipes include the various roots:

Grass and Miami combined for tonics; Blacksnake for liver and

kidney disorders, and Cornsnake for purifying blood and healing

arrow wounds. Powdered root was mixed with tobacco or bark

and smoked in a pipe. The amount of the solid material neces-

sary to effect cure was determined by the relationship of the

size of the root to the patients's index finger.¹⁰

The primitive conditions under which the early physician

practiced often forced him to rely upon his own igenuity and to

adapt many of the procedures used by his native American coun-

terpart. For example, he used pieces of sharp flint to make in-

cisions, lance boils, or inject powdered medicine under the skin.

A deer's bladder fitted with a reed irrigated wounds or served

as a makeshift enema and the fibers of the animal's tendons

provided suturing material. Bear's grease, beeswax, honey and

"mutton suit" served as ointments and lubricants.11

Simple tools such as knives and bleeding lancets were the

rule, as few frontier practitioners posessed more sophisticated

instruments. In one instance, a southern Ohio doctor, Edward

Tiffin, successfully executed an emergency amputation in a

wheat field with only his penknife and a hand saw.¹² Anti-

septics and anesthetics were unknown. When the first ovariec-

9. Howard Dittrick, "The Equipment, Instruments and Drugs of

Pioneer Physicians," Ohio Archeological and Historical Quarterly, 48 (1939),

202. Examples of physicians bags, c. 1830s, are in collection of Wyandot

Historical Society, Upper Sandusky, Ohio.

10. Dittrick, "Equipment, Instruments, Drugs," 207-09.

11. Dittrick, "Medical Agents and Equipment Used in the Northwest

Territory," Physicians in the Indian Wars (Columbus, 1952), unpaginated.

12. Linden F. Edwards, "Edward Tiffin, Pioneer Doctor," Ohio

Archeological and Historical Quarterly, 56 (1947), 359-60.

Doctors and Diseases                                    225

tomy was performed by a pioneer physician in 1809, both surgeon

and equipment were unsterile and the woman's only relief was a

few drops of opium.13 Thus, it is not surprising that patients

often recovered from surgery only to succumb to resulting in-

fections.

Financial and transportation limitations restricted the

amount of drugs and equipment which civilian doctors brought

to the frontier. However, the influx of troops during the Indian

campaigns eventually brought new physicians, some fresh from

eastern schools, into Ohio. By comparison, the army medical

officers were much better supplied. Surgeon's chests issued by

the government usually contained the latest drugs and equip-

ment, including marble mortar and pestles, syringes, bandages

and apothecary scales. Each surgeon also received a set of

pocket instruments.¹⁴ Yet, the "injudicious assortment of Medi-

cine" received at Fort Washington led senior medical officer

Richard Allison to complain that "the greatest part we have ever

been furnished with has been nothing more than the refuse of

the druggists shops ...."15

In spite of the obvious handicaps of frontier practice, many

army physicians remained in Ohio after their tour of duty was

terminated. The establishment of Fort Washington in 1789 en-

couraged immigration and gave protection to the adjacent set-

tlement, the precursor of Cincinnati. Military surgeons Allison

and John Elliot and surgeon's mate John Sellman cast their lot

with the new community, where they gained reputations both as

doctors and civic leaders. Allison was particularly active and

served as county justice of peace while branching into farming,

commerce, and town development. He later represented his

county as delegate to the Ohio Medical Society. By 1800, civilian

Dr. William Goforth was instructing his protege, Daniel Drake,

in the art of frontier medicine. Drake, considered one of Ohio's

most eminent nineteenth century physicians and urban pro-

moters, contributed immeasurably to the scientific, cultural and

educational development of the mid-west.16

13. James Flexner, Doctors on Horseback: Pioneers of American

Medicine (New York, 1937), 127.

14. An inventory of an army surgeon's chest, circa late eighteenth

century, may be found in Physicians in the Indian Wars, unpaginated.

15. Letter to General Harmar from Richard Allison, April 16, 1789

quoted in Virginius Hall, "Richard Allison-Surgeon to the Legion,"

Physicians in the Indian Wars, unpaginated.

16. Ibid.

226                                          OHIO HISTORY

Meanwhile, in Marietta, the only other patch of civilization

north of the Ohio River, a similar pattern was repeated. Former

army physicians Thomas Farley and Nathan McIntosh remained

in southeastern Ohio to share True's extensive practice. They

were soon joined by civilian doctors Josiah Hart, Increase

Matthews, and Samuel Hildreth. Two immigrant physicians,

former Royal Navy surgeon William Leonard and former French

citizen John Baptiste Regnier, were also drawn to the frontier.

By 1821 eleven men shared the medical practice of Washington

County, and each contributed in additional ways to the develop-

ment of their communities. For example, nine held public office,

seven engaged in successful commercial enterprises, one served

as city architect, and another founded a rival community.¹⁷

As the frontier rolled steadily onward, the former wilder-

ness became checkered with farms and towns. The northwest

corner of the state, surrounded by an almost impenetrable

swampland and hitherto controlled by Indians and British, re-

mained briefly untouched, but the conclusion of the War of 1812

removed the final barriers to civilization. The process of settle-

ment began anew as adventure-bound, land-hungry settlers

swarmed into the Maumee River Valley.

Physicians were once again in the vanguard of frontier

society. Among the newcomers was Dr. Horatio Conant, a young

Vermonter whose life closely paralleled that of Jabez True, his

predecessor from neighboring New Hampshire. Neither man

held a prestigious medical degree, although both were excep-

tionally well educated for the period. After a rigid classical gram-

mar school education, Conant attended Middlebury College in his

home state and graduated in 1810. Three years later he began an

apprenticeship under Dr. Harry Waterhouse of Malone, New

York, and attended a series of lectures at Yale University.¹⁸ Two

years as a tutor in the East prepared him as school master to

a handful of Maumee Valley children, just as True held classes

in a fortified blockhouse almost twenty years earier.l⁹ In ad-

dition, both Conant and True acquired valuable training as mili-

tary surgeons. Perhaps most important, they believed that their

17. Brush, "The Pioneer Physicians of the Muskingum Valley,"

243-59.

18. David O. Powell, "The Early Life of a Pioneer Ohio Physician:

Dr. Horatio Conant, 1785-1816," Northwest Ohio Quarterly 69 (Summer,

1977), 98-106.

19. Hildreth, Pioneer History, 335.

Doctors and Diseases                                      227

destines were linked with the future of the western country and

they determined to work toward its advancement.²⁰

For thirteen years Conant was the only resident physician

in an area bounded by present-day cities of Defiance and Bowling

Green, Ohio, and Tecumseh, Michigan.²¹ In 1829, he convinced

Oscar White of New Hampshire to enter into partnership. White

was well qualified. After three years of preceptorship with his

uncle, Dr. Charles White of New Hampshire, he graduated from

the medical school at Dartmouth College and immediately set out

for the West.²² White was the first Maumee Valley physician

to be fully accredited by the medical profession, although he was

only twenty years old, less than half the age of his new partner

from whom he presumably took over many of the more strenuous

duties. In later years he recalled the rigors of those days when he

was

... compelled to ride horseback days at a stretch in order to reach his

patients; fording streams, wet often for hours and chilled with the

fierce winds; often in winter having his clothes frozen upon his per-

son, there being no houses to stop at; riding night and day, summer

and winter, keeping a relay of horses when needed.²³

The 1830s land boom brought additional immigrants into the

valley and eleven towns were plotted in a fifteen-mile stretch

along the Maumee River almost overnight.²⁴ All competed for

commercial supremacy, but only Toledo,²⁵ Manhattan, and the

established communities of Maumee and Perrysburg were cities

in reality as well as on paper. The new wave of population in-

cluded at least twenty-five physicians. Of the thirteen who set-

tled in Maumee, six claimed certified medical degrees, including

one from Harvard and another from Boston.²⁶ This is indeed

impressive, since less than 20 percent of all Ohio physicians held

a medical degree prior to 1835.27

20. Powell, "Early Life of a Pioneer Ohio Physician," 101.

21. Clark Waggoner, History of the City of Toledo and Lucas County

(New York, 1888), 542.

22. Horatio S. Knapp, History of the Maumee Valley (Toledo, 1873),

656.

23. Ibid.

24. Randolph Downes, Canal Days (Toledo, 1968), 56.

25. Toledo was formed from a union of Port Lawrence and Vistula in

1833.

26. Waggoner, History of the City of Toledo, 543-47. Additional in-

formation in Maumee Express, 1837-1840.

27. Waite, "Professional Education," 189.

228                                             OHIO HISTORY

During the formative years of their communities, doctors

served in many capacities outside the field of medicine. For

example, while serving as schoolmaster, Conant also established

a profitable mercantile partnership in Maumee City. In succeed-

ing years he served as postmaster, mayor, founder of the local

Whig party-he also served on its central committee-and was

the first clerk of the Lucas County Court. In addition, he dealt

in real estate, held stock in the Maumee Insturance Company, and

was a member of the local merchant association. Both Conant

and White helped organize the first county medical society and

served as president and vice-president, respectively.²⁸

Available evidence indicates that at least nine of the other

eleven physicians practicing in Maumee in the 1830s were in-

volved in activities unrelated to their profession. These supple-

mental interests included real estate, banking, merchandising,

farming, lumbering, mining, and wholesale. One doctor owned

the local land agency, while another operated a popular tavern.

In addition, three served as city councilmen and four others held

positions as municipal health officers.²⁹ Dr. Erasmus Peck, of

neighboring Perrysburg, was involved in milling, merchandising,

and banking. He also served as village mayor, district repre-

sentative in the state legislature, and state senator.³⁰

Religion also played a part in the lives of many early phy-

sicians. Doctors and laymen alike concurred with the philosophy

that "disquitudes and diseases and untimely death ... spring not

from fulfillment but from infraction of the laws of God."³1 Thus,

medical and theological concepts were closely intertwined, as

were the roles of physicians and preachers of the gospel. A few,

such as medical doctor and ordained minister Edward Tiffin,

combined the vocations. Most, such as Conant, were content to

be among church incorporators and serve as vestrymen, lay

readers, and occasional authors of religious tracts, while men of

the cloth expounded upon the relationship between moral and

physical well-being.32

28. Marilyn V. Wendler, "Maumee City: A Study of Urban Develop-

ment in Frontier Ohio" (Master's Thesis, University of Toledo, 1977),

124-25.

29. Ibid.

30. Commemorative Historical and Biographical Record of Wood

County, Ohio (Chicago, 1897), 103, 358.

31. Sylvester Graham, "Science of Human Life," Scientific Tracts

for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (Boston, 1836), 212.

32. Waggoner, History of the City of Toledo, 542-47. See also Brush,

"The Pioneer Physicians of the Muskingum Valley," 241-59 for biographical

information.

230                                           OHIO HISTORY

tures.³⁶ Among the three licensed physicians was a Toledo doc-

tor who managed to divide his time between lecturing at Wil-

loughby and attending to his patients back home.³⁷ Most doctors

could not afford to sacrifice their practice for the dubious pres-

tige of a western faculty position.

Daniel Drake, founder and first president of the Ohio

Medical College, learned his trade as an apprentice in Cincinnati.

He practiced for eleven years before he completed the second

session of lectures at Philadelphia and received his degree.

Drake's frustrating experience convinced him of the need for

adequate training facilities in the West. However, the major

opposition to medical schools came from local doctors who lacked

formal educations and feared competition from a younger group

of professionally-trained practitioners. Rivalry and resentment

within the medical community and between faculties continued

to impede growth of western medical institutions and limited the

number of Ohio trained physicians for several years.

Occasionally, the honorary title of M.D. was conferred upon

veteran physicians who distinguished themselves in the move-

ment to raise standards of medical competency. For example,

John Sellman, presiding officer of the committee which adopted

the "Code of Medical Policy and Rules and Regulations" for Cin-

cinnati on February 27, 1821, received this token of respect af-

ter thirty-five years of civilian and military practice.³⁸ Another

noted recipient of the honorary degree was Marietta historian,

politician, and doctor, Samuel Hildreth. When elected to the

state legislature in 1810, Hildreth promptly introduced a bill

to divide Ohio into five medical districts, each with three exami-

ners appointed to interview doctoral candidates and issue licenses.

His proposal, which became law on January 14, 1812, stipulated

that applicants demonstrate good moral character, produce evi-

dence of three years preceptorship or a license from a regional

medical group, and satisfactorily answer questions pertaining

to a basic knowledge of medicine. It did not, however, prohibit

practice by unlicensed persons and thus was replaced on Feb-

ruary 8, 1812, by a statute levying a five to one hundred dollar

fine for each such offense. The harsher law also increased the

36. Waite, "Professional Education," 191.

37. Maumee Express, August 19, 1837.

38. Richard Knopf, "Biographical Data," Physicians in the Indian

Wars, unpaginated.

Doctors and Diseases                                     231

number of medical districts to seven, required the establishment

of a medical society within each division, and provided for the

incorporation of a state organization of physicians. In addition,

the law proposed that a medical convention be held in Chilli-

cothe on November 1, 1812, for the purpose of exchanging pro-

fessional information among delegates from each of the dis-

tricts.³⁹

Due to lack of attendance at the Chillicothe convention,

little progress was made before 1821 when delegates to the Ohio

Medical Convention assembled in Columbus. During this ses-

sion, members stipulated that prospective candidates, in addi-

tion to possessing a knowledge of medicine, be familiar with

Greek, Latin, and mechanical philosophy as well as certain pre-

scribed textbooks.⁴⁰ At least a few physicians recognized that

an effective way to maintain medical standards was to adopt a

more disciplined educational approach to their profession.

Neither the efforts of the medical organizations nor the

remoteness of the frontier towns halted invasion by medical

charlatans, and by 1833 the state legislature abandoned all ef-

forts to regulate the practice of medicine.41 Doctors previously

ignored or rejected as practitioners in the East quickly found

the unsophisticated westerners easy prey. Cultists and quacks,

encouraged by the success of the Botanics and other self-help

societies, spread throughout Ohio.⁴² The lack of professional

physicians and educational opportunities provided optimal con-

ditions for acceptance of various curative claims ranging from

ingenius to preposterous, and no community was immune.

Frontier newspapers spread the messages of the cultists

and proclaimed the miraculous qualities of such cure-alls as

"Dr. Benjamin Brandreth's Vegetable Universal Pills" or

Stabler's "Expectorant and Diarrhea Cordial," alledgedly ap-

proved by five hundred physicians !43 According to the Maumee

Express, a Dr. Sherwood developed an "original mode of prac-

39. Donald R. Shira, "The Legal Requirements for Medical Practice-

An attempt to Regulate by Law and the Purpose Behind the Movement,"

Ohio State Archeological and Historical Quarterly, 48 (1939), 183.

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid.

42. Samuel Thomson received a patent to administer his "treatment"

which incorporated steam baths and vegetable compounds and later sold

"family rights" to anyone willing to purchase his book. The botanics were

particularly numerous in Ohio in the 1820s and '30s.

43. Ohio Whig, November 7, 1840; Northwest Democrat, March 27,

1854.

232                                            OHIO HISTORY

tice" termed "Electro Magneticism." His method was reported

to "set at defiance every practice heretofore followed. . .."44

By 1850, Aesculapius self-help cults were popular and local

papers announced the sale of The Pocket Aesculapius or Every-

one His Own Physician at twenty-five cents a copy or five for

one dollar. Not surprisingly, the promoter was a "doctor" from

Philadelphia. Even the "regular," or professional, physicians

advertised their skills in the local weeklies.⁴⁵

Lack of statewide success in regulating medical practices

prompted Maumee Valley physicians to form their own society in

1840. Over half of the sixteen members resided in Maumee and

Toledoans comprised the next largest group. The society, how-

ever, proved largely ineffective as a regulatory agency, although

it provided means of sharing new theories and discoveries.⁴⁶

Even so, medical progress continued to lag far behind

science. Eastern and western physicians alike were reluctant to

accept technological advances. For example, the microscope was

already in limited use during the 1830s, but few medical men were

aware of a relationship between microscopic particles and di-

sease. Some doctors utilized modern medical equipment such as

stethoscopes, but most preferred to rely upon their ears, eyes,

and hands.47   Their skepticism  was shared by their patients,

many of whom held deep-seated prejudices and superstitions

concerning medical practice. A contemporary writer bemoaned

that "society tends to confine the practicising physician to the

department of therapeutics and make him a mere curer of di-

sease" while only a few rise above ". . . the discriminatory en-

couragement which they receive from society to pursue an ele-

vated scientific career."⁴⁸ Thus, although the pioneer physician

practiced under greater physical handicaps, his intellectual iso-

lation from his urban colleagues was of little consequence.

In addition, both eastern and western physicians subscribed

to centuries-old theories of disease. One popular concept was the

humoral theory which postulated that disease was caused by an

imbalance of four humors-blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow

bile.⁴⁹ In the seventeenth century, Thomas Syndenham specu-

44. Maumee Express, August 1, 1838.

45. Northwest Democrat, November 7, 1853.

46. John Killets, Toledo and Lucas County, I (Chicago, 1923), 653.

47. The stethoscope was not in regular use in northern Ohio until

after 1835, according to Dittrick, "Equipment, Instruments, Drugs," 203.

48. Graham, "Science of Human Life," 206.

49. John Duffy, "Medical Practice in the Ante-Bellum South," Journal

of Southern History (1959), 54, 55.

Doctors and Diseases                                        233

lated that a morbific substance entered the body in particles of

air and tainted the blood. Various theories evolved from the

basic theme, including the notion that disorders result from gen-

eral physical weakness or the more sophisticated speculation

designating the nervous system as the center of all ailments.⁵⁰

The course of treatment for all types of illness was funda-

mentally the same. Barton's Materia Medica, an early-nineteenth

century drug manual, included only "astringents, tonics, stimu-

lents, errhines or sternutatory remedies, sialogogues or salivat-

ing remedies, emetics, cathartics, diuretics, and anthemintics."⁵1

Drugs of the first three categories were used to stimulate bodily

functions, while the next two were employed to cleanse the

system through excessive sneezing and salivating; the last four

were used to purge the patient. Additional techniques included

blistering and bleeding, usually in combination with cathartics.

These procedures were so widely accepted that one innovative

physician even advocated "bleeding and carthartic or either" for

a case of "love sickness."⁵²

The age-old practice of bleeding was accomplished through

the use of lancets, leeches, or a series of cups. The lancet came

in various forms, but the most widely used was the spring

lancet which automatically penetrated to the desired depth.

Heated cups were also used to draw blood. The lancet cup, a

small brass box holding six to twelve knives, was the most in-

genius device: at the release of the trigger, the knives swept

forward, counter to each other; the physician then applied a

hot cup over the incisions to "suck out" the blood.⁵3 If the fron-

tier doctor lacked such proper equipment, the same result could

be obtained using a sharp pointed bistourie and an animal horn

in the traditional manner of the Medicine Man.⁵⁴

Leeches were carried by many doctors and were spurred

into action through the application of cream, sugar, or blood

spread over the patient's body. Although physicians disagreed

on the proper amount of blood-letting necessary to cure, up to

50. Ibid. See also Jonathan Forman, "The Prevailing Concepts of

Health and Disease," Physicians and the Indian Wars, unpaginated.

51. Dittrick, "Medical Agents and Equipment," unpaginated. Ben-

jamin S. Barton was a professor of botany and natural history at the

College of Philadelphia; his work was published in 1810.

52. Becklard's Physiology (Cincinnati, 1855), 75, Collection of

Maumee Valley Historical Society.

53. Madge Pickard and R. Carlyle Buley, The Midwest Pioneer: His

Ills, Cures, and Doctors (Crawfordsville, Indiana, 1945), 108-10.

54. Dittrick, "Medical Agents and Equipment," unpaginated.

234                                              OHIO HISTORY

fifty ounces was commonly recommended!55 As late as 1888,

a Toledo physician advocated "Bleed until you think you are

killing the patient and he will get well."⁵⁶

If bleeding did not bring about the desired results, other

means were resorted to. A typical method of purging was the

administration of large doses of calomel, a powerful physic.

Physicians and laymen hotly debated the drug's value. While

one victim of a "bilious" attack implored "Then, Calomel, thou

great deliverer, come!," its widespread overuse led another to

plead:

And when I must resign my breath

Pray let me die a natural death

And bid you all a long farewell

Without one dose of Calomel!57

Emetics such as ipecac or tartar induced vomiting and

diuretics drained the kidneys and bladder. When the patient

was suitably void of all humors, a tonic of peruvian bark, or

possibly cherry bark mixed with whiskey, was given. In the

last stages, a few drops of opium were administered.58 The

severity of the treatment led more than one historian to marvel

not that the patients recovered from the illness, but that they

survived the cure!59

Maumee Valley physicians treated a variety of disorders

during the 1830s. Infrequency of bathing or change of apparel

led to skin diseases known as scabies or "prairie itch."⁶⁰ In-

juries were still commonplace and children were particularly

susceptible to cuts and puncture wounds. Lockjaw was a par-

ticularly serious problem: a home remedy for this "dreadful af-

fliction" passed on to the readers of a Maumee Valley paper,

called for the application of strong "ley" made from wood ashes.61

Epidemics were commonplace. Early physicians and lay-

men were equally unaware of the germ theory, and sanitation

measures were primitive and inadequate. Water for bathing,

55. Pickard and Buley, The Midwest Pioneer, 110.

56. Waggoner, History of the City of Toledo, 545.

57. R. Carlyle Buley, The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period, 1815-1840

(Bloomington, Indiana, 1950), 46.

58. Jo Ann Carrigan, "Some Medical Remedies of the Early Nine-

teenth Century," Historian, 22 (November, 1959), 69.

59. Pickard and Buley, The Midwest Pioneer, 113.

60. William J. Petersen, "Diseases and Doctors in Pioneer Iowa,"

Iowa Journal of History, 69 (April, 1951), 99.

61. Maumee Express, June 23, 1838.

236                                             OHIO HISTORY

Although smallpox was particularly virulent, treatment for it

changed little over the years. In 1803, Dr. Richard Allison ad-

vised a patient to take forty drops of balsamic tincture on sugar,

morning, noon and night.⁶⁶ Fifty years later, the Northwest

Democrat printed a physician's "recipe" which called for one

gram each of powdered foxglove and sulphate of zinc "rubbed

thoroughly in a morter . . . with 4-5 drops water. Add: nogg

[sic] or about 4 oz. some syrup or sugar. One tablespoon of the

mixture was to be administered every other hour until the symp-

toms vanished.67

Some early physicians practiced inoculation, using live mat-

ter from smallpox sores, theorizing that the recipient would

contact a lighter case of the disease. In 1793, Jabez True is said

to have successfully inoculated the entire population of Belpre,

Ohio.⁶⁸ This procedure, in which the doctor used a pocketknife or

similar instrument to scrape the scabs and insert matter into

open cuts, had obvious risks. Edward Jenner's method em-

ploying cow pox vaccine was introduced into America in 1800

and was in limited use as far west as Cincinnati a year later.

However, tradition died hard and three years later that city's

council resorted to levying fines against persons who continued

to use the earlier method.⁶⁹

Outbreaks of smallpox in 1837 prompted the government

to commission Dr. White to conduct a mass vaccination program

for the departing Ottawa Indians of the Maumee Valley. White

later described their suspicion and terror of the procedure,⁷⁰ a

reaction which, although prompted by primitive superstition,

was not unlike that of many frontier residents who believed that

vaccination was contrary to divine will. Although incidents such

as one in which a southern Ohio doctor was beaten by his neigh-

bors for vaccinating his own family⁷¹ became less common, the

general public remained skeptical for many years.

Diseases such as pluerisy and pneumonia afflicted most pio-

neer families. A common remedy consisted of bloodletting, fol-

lowed by a "gentle" purging with calomel and a few grains of

66. Hall, "Richard Allison," Physicians in the Indian Wars, un-

paginated.

67. Northwest Democrat, March 27, 1854.

68. Hildreth, Pioneer History, 391-92.

69. Hall, "Richard Allison," Physicians in the Indian Wars, un-

paginated.

70. Brush, "Pioneer Physicians of the Muskingum Valley," Ohio

Archeological and Historical Quarterly, 241.

71. Knapp, Maumee Valley, 656.

Doctors and Diseases                                     237

opium to control the cough.⁷² Consumption was also prevalent.

Physicians disagreed upon its most effective treatment and the

disease defied their efforts to control it. Most doctors followed

the traditional pattern of bleeding and purging, but others ad-

vanced more novel methods. One doctor informed Maumee Val-

ley residents that he "treated sufferers" for over twelve years

and was ". . . not aware of having lost four to five patients."

His miracle cure consisted of "nauseating" doses of one-half

grain sulfate of copper to five grains gum ammonia with one

teaspoon of water.⁷³ In the event the remedy was ineffective, the

nausea was perhaps calculated to keep the patient too occupied to

dwell on the symptoms.

By far, the most widespread complaints throughout the en-

tire northwest territory concerned the fevers and a form of

malaria called "ague." Malaria, typhoid, typhus, and yellow

fever were referred to as intermittent, remittent, continued, or

autumnal fevers. Treatment was much the same for all and

usually called for bleeding, followed by doses of chincona or

quinine.⁷⁴ Although ague was known throughout all the states,

it was particularly prevalent in the swampy lowlands bordering

the Maumee River. An early settler recalled that by fall entire

families who arrived the previous spring were "taken down so

that there would not be enough well persons to take care of

those who were sick."⁷⁵

The inhabitants of the valley accepted the onset of the ague

season as inevitable. One Wood County physician remembered

that:

The ague usually came on every other day, and when there was not peo-

ple enough they had to have it everyday, for sometimes there appeared to

be about two agues for one man; and oftentimes they had to have it

twice a day.⁷⁶

The chills and sweats struck with such regularity that in some

communities work schedules, and in extreme cases church serv-

ices and court sessions, were planned accordingly.⁷⁷ In spite of

the inconvenience, the settlers retained their sense of humor,

as illustrated by a local parody:

72. Tucker, "Methods of Treatment," 217.

73. Maumee Express, May 20, 1837.

74. Tucker, "Methods of Treatment," 217.

75. Perrysburg Journal, March 13, 1869.

76. Commemorative Record of Wood County, 102.

77. Pickard and Buley, Midwest Pioneer, 17.

238                                              OHIO HISTORY

On Maumee, on Maumee,

'Tis Ague in the fall;

The fit will shake them so,

It rocks the house and all.

There's a funeral every day,

Without a hears of pall;

They tuck them in the ground

With breeches, coat and all !78

Fortunately, ague was rarely fatal and one had only to

survive the fits and wait until an immunity to "the baneful in-

fluence of Miasmi" developed. Meanwhile, frontier families

swallowed quantities of quinine and ipecac during the sickly

season.

Most of the maladies which afflicted the mid-westerners

were age-old and, although physicians did not yet know how to

control them, their familiarity made them seem less frightening.

In 1832, Asiatic Cholera invaded the United States. The disease

traveled to Detroit with General Scott's troops during the Black

Hawk uprising and spread throughout Ohio. The suddenness

with which it struck caused confusion and terror among the

populace. One Maumee resident observed that "people fall down

as they walk through the streets as though they were intoxicated.

They are talking one minute and then they fall down in the

next."⁷⁹

Doctors throughout the country were as uncertain about

the treatment of the epidemic as they were the cause, and they

were no better informed when the disease reappeared in 1849.

The prestigious Dr. Drake leaned toward a theory of minute

invisible animalculae, even as he clung to bleeding as a cure.⁸⁰

Most practitioners agreed, including a Toledo doctor who re-

affirmed in 1888 that "If I treated cholera now I would bleed

and save my patient."⁸¹ Another local physician espoused a pro-

cedure in which he injected a large amount of saltwater into

the victim's veins and then restricted liquids to cold water only.

Unfortunately, the "cure" was insufficient to save the origi-

78. Maumee Express, June 6, 1837.

79. Letter from 0. C. Geer to relatives, May 1832: family papers and

memorabilia, estate of Mrs. John Botte, Maumee, Ohio.

80. Zane L. Miller and Henry Shapiro, Physician to the West: Selected

Writings of Daniel Drake on Science and Society (Lexington, Kentucky,

1977), 373-75.

81. Waggoner, History of the City of Toledo, 545.

Doctors and Diseases                                       239

nator who fatally contracted the disease while ministering to his

patients.⁸²

Considering the prevailing concepts of disease and treat-

ment in the pre-Civil War period, it is little wonder that era is

often referred to as the "heroic age" in medicine. Although more

enlightened men cautioned that "it is wrong to abuse the proverb

that desperate diseases require desperate remedies," the adage's

prescription predominated well into the nineteenth century.⁸³

Still, somewhere between the cultists and the extremists

were rational practitioners who looked forward to a time when

technology would boost their profession to the level of science.

Usually underpaid and overworked, they were subject to the same

privations as their patients. In 1811, Tiffin aptly expressed the

sentiments of many of his colleagues when he lamented, "I shall

not long be able to undergo the drudgery of country practice. It

is too hard on me."⁸⁴ The conditions under which western doc-

tors practiced showed scant improvement over the next few

decades. The physical demands of the occupation, particularly

the grueling rounds on horseback and constant exposure to di-

sease, drained the physicians' health and often led to premature

death.⁸⁵

Moreover, doctors were sometimes unappreciated by their

own contemporaries. During a funeral oration for a "Beloved"

Maumee Valley physician, the speaker charged, "It is getting

fashionable to ridicule and deprecate the medical profession,"

and added that most people ". . . never half appreciate the hard-

ships, trials, danger, self-denials, and rewards of the good

physician."⁸⁶

Perhaps Samuel Hildreth exaggerated when he asserted that

"wherever the well educated in that profession are found, they

are uniformly seen on the side of order, morality, science, and re-

ligion,"⁸⁷ but it is apparent that as a group, physicians were sub-

stantially involved in efforts to raise medical, cultural, and eco-

nomic standards on the frontier. In addition, their educational

82. Ibid., 542.

83. P. M. Donalson, A. M., "Education of a Woman-Its Obstacles

and Necessities," Ladies Repository, January, 1857.

84. Letter from Edward Tiffin to the Supporter, October 31, 1811.

85. Two of the early Maumee Valley physicians died as the result of

falls from a horse. Others succumbed to various fevers, pneumonia, and

epidemic diseases such as cholera and erysipelas.

86. Northwest Democrat, November 27, 1852.

87. Brush, "Pioneer Physicians," 241.

240                                         OHIO HISTORY

background prepared them for positions of responsibility and

leadership which they willingly accepted. Edward Tiffin pro-

vided the ultimate example of civic participation in his rise from

country doctor to first governor of Ohio. Furthermore, lesser-

known men such as Horatio Conant and his colleagues helped

push back the frontier in their own political spheres. Despite the

physical and intellectual handicaps under which they labored,

Ohio's pioneer doctors remained dedicated to their profession

and their communities and thus played a crucial role in the de-

velopment of the state's frontier.