USA > Connecticut > Biographical encyclopaedia of Connecticut and Rhode Island of the nineteenth century > Part 18
USA > Rhode Island > Biographical encyclopaedia of Connecticut and Rhode Island of the nineteenth century > Part 18
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" The part he had already taken in awaking the people to the subject [of higher Christian education], his devotion to it, and his solid and splendid talents made him more than ever a leader in the cause of education in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Students gathered to the institution from every part of the nation, and many soon went forth from it who, by his recommendation, became presidents, professors, and teachers in the rapidly multiplying colleges and seminaries under the patronage of the Church throughout the United States."
Dr. Fisk's heart was in his work. He believed that he occupied the position where an all-wise Providence designed him to be, and declined to vacate it for one of more signal conspicuity and power, and of more varied usefulness. When elected to the bench of bishops in 1836, he refused consecration to the episcopal office on the ground that he could accomplish more good where he was. "If my health would allow me to perform the work of the episcopacy," he said, " I dare not accept it, for I believe I can do more for the cause of Christ where I am than I could do as a bishop." His deliberate decision was no less wise than honest, and subsequent events justified his choice. His efficiency as an educator of young men for the great work of life, and his share in imparting correct ideas of the value of education to the entire Church, were not less important than the supervisory and administrative work of a general superintendent.
In 1828 he was elected bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Canada, but declined the office. In 1829 Brown University honored itself by the recogni- tion of his consummate and cultured gifts in the bestowment of the honorary
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degree of D.D. In the same year he was elected President of Lagrange College, Alabama, and also professor in the University of Alabama, both of which offices he declined. His life for many years was an incessant and precarious struggle with pulmonary disease. In 1835-6 he travelled extensively in Europe for the benefit of his health. But medical skill and change of scene and air were alike unavailing, and he died at Middletown on the 22d of February, 1838, universally beloved and lamented.
As an author, Dr. Fisk's reputation rests upon an immovable basis of learning, logic, and piety. Among his writings are: The Calvinistic Controversy (N. Y., 18mo), a volume of remarkable dialectic skill, and couched in forceful but courteous style ; Travels in Europe (N. Y., 1838, 8vo), a work that enjoyed wide circula- tion, and was highly commended ; Sermons and Lectures on Universalism, in which he assails with energy and wisdom doctrines antipodal to those of the Genevan theologian ; Reply to Pierpoint on the Atonement, and other tracts and sermons.
President Fisk was modelled after Archbishop Fenelon, whose best mental and moral characteristics he exhibited. Eminently saintly in spirit and in action, he was also remarkable for the perspicuity and logical force of his reasoning, for his flexibility and adroitness in controversy, and for the earnest love of truth and good- ness which stimulated him to close thinking and beneficent procedure. Eloquent and fervid as a preacher, he was excelled by few of his contemporaries in popularity and usefulness. In teaching, he displayed the rare power of kindling the enthusi- asm of his pupils.
" Take him for all in all, he was a man" of rare symmetry of character, moral and intellectual, of whom all whom he knew would be more willing to say, "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright," than of any man of his time who held so high a place. Dr. Abel Stevens, the gifted historian of Methodism, describes him as follows: " Wilbur Fisk's person bespoke his character. It was of good size, and remarkable for its symmetry. His features were beautifully harmonious, the contour strongly resembling the better Roman outline, though lacking its most peculiar dis- tinction, the nasus aquilinus. His eye was nicely defined, and, when excited, beamed with a peculiarly benign and concilatory expression. His complexion was bilious, and added to the diseased indication of his somewhat attenuated features. His head was a model, not of great, but of well-proportioned development. It had the height of the Roman brow, though none of the breadth of the Greek. There is a bust of him extant, but it is not to be looked at by any who would not mar in their memories the beautiful and benign image of his earlier manhood by the disfigurations of disease and suffering. His voice was peculiarly flexible and sonorous ; a catarrhal discharge affected it, but just enough, during most of his life, to improve its tone to a soft
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rotund, without a trace of nasal defect. Few men could indicate the moral emotions more effectually by mere tones. It was especially expressive in pathetic passages. His pulpit manner was marked in the introduction of the sermon by dignity, but dignity without ceremony or pretension. As he advanced into the exposition and argument of his discourse (and there were both in most of his sermons), he became more emphatic, especially as brilliant though brief illustrations ever and anon gleamed upon his logic. By the time he had reached the peroration his utterance became rapid, his thoughts were incandescent, the music of his voice rang out in thrilling tones, and sometimes even quivercd with trills of pathos. No imaginative excitement prevailed in the audience, as under Maffitt's eloquence, no tumultuous wonder as under Bascom's, none of Cookman's impetuous passion, or Olin's overwhelming power, but a subduing, almost tranquil spell of genial feeling, expressed often by tears or half- suppressed cjaculations ; something of the kindly effect of Summerfield, combined with a higher intellectual impression. Fisk lived for many years in the faith and exemplification of Paul's sublime doctrine of Christian perfection. He prized that great tenct as one of the most important distinctions of Christianity. His own experience respecting it was marked by signal circumstances; and from the day he practically adopted it, till he triumphed over death, its impress was radiant on his daily life. With John Wesley, he deemed this important truth-promulgated in any very cxpress form almost solely by Methodism in these days-to be one of the most solemn responsibilities of his Church, the most potent element in the experimental divinity of the Scriptures."
Most of the clerical and lay contemporaries of Dr. Fisk have followed him into the spirit world ; but how they esteemed and honored him in this hard earthly life may be gathered from the July number of the Methodist Quarterly Review for 1852; from Dr. Holdich's Life of Wilbur Fisk (N. Y., 1840, 8vo); from Sherman's New England Divines, p. 238; Mcclintock's Lives of Methodist Ministers, Sprague's Annals, vii., p. 576; Stevens' History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and many other books and periodicals.
Dr. Fisk left no children, but his venerable wife still (1880) survives, and resides on the college campus at Middletown, Conn.
Ab Steams
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TEARNS, HENRY PUTNAM, A.M., M.D., Superintendent of the Retreat for the Insane, Hartford, Conn. Born in Sutton, Mass., April 18th, 1828. His parents were Asa and Mary (Putnam) Stearns. Both werc members of Massachusetts families, and endowed with the characteristic qualities of the strong, massive, thoughtful, and energetic people who colonized the State, at the outset of New England history.
After the usual preparatory education, young Stearns matriculated at Yale Col- lege, from which he honorably graduated with the degree of A.B. in 1853. Natural tastes and aptitudes, together with conviction that largest individual usefulness could be best attained in the medical profession, next led him to attend lectures in the cxcellent medical schools associated with the Universities of Harvard and Yale, from the latter of which he received the diploma of M.D. in 1855. Desirous of enriching native culture by the best knowledge and most approved art of the Old World, he then crossed the Atlantic, and spent the two following years in diligent study at Edinburgh, in connection with the celebrated school of Scotch physicians and sur- geons, which has added so many eminent names to the list of scientific practitioners of the healing art.
Returning home in 1857, Dr. Stearns settled at Marlboro, Mass., and there practised successfully until 1859, when he removed to Hartford, Conn. In April, 1851, he was commissioned as surgeon of the First Regiment of Connecticut Vol- unteers, and on the expiration of their three months' term of service, received the appointment of Surgcon of United States Volunteers. In this position he served until September, 1865, when he was honorably discharged, with the brevet of Licu- tenant-Colonel. In 1873 he accepted the responsible position of Superintendent of the Retreat for the Insane at Hartford, and has since been engaged in the discharge of the duties pertaining to that officc.
Dr. Stearns is a member of the Connecticut State Medical Society; of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; of the New England Psychological Society, and of sundry other Icarned bodies. His contributions to medical literature have mainly taken the form of pamphlets reprinted from medical journals. They deal with questions, some of which arc old as humanity itself, and reflect much light upon the occult causes of human depreciation and suffering. Among the earliest of his publications was a paper on Fracture of the Base of the Skull, in the American Journal of Medical Science for 1866. An essay on the Use of Chloral Hydrate, appeared in the Transactions of the Connecticut Medical Society in 1874. A critique on the Discovery of Modern Anesthesia followed, in the New York Medical Record of 1876. A paper from Professor Henry J. Bigelow, M.D., of Harvard University on The Discovery of Modern Anesthesia, in The
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Journal of the Medical Sciences, claiming that honor for Dr. Morton, of Boston, called forth a reply from Dr. Stcarns. He vindicated the claim of Dr. Horace Wells, of Hartford, to the discovery of anesthesia, in opposition to that of Dr. Morton ; and did it with the incontrovertible logic of authenticated facts. On the Ioth of Decem- ber, 1844, Wells witnessed some experiments made with nitrous oxide, and saw one person, while under its influence, bruise himself severely. The injured man, to his own surprise, was unconscious of his hurt at the time. The fact, thus observed, suggested to Wells the possibility of painless surgical operations while the patient was under the influence of the same agent ; and led him to subject himself to experiment. His friend Riggs extracted one of his molar teeth, and he himself afterward ex- tracted teeth from the jaws of fifteen different persons, without pain to any of them, except two, to whom he had not administered a sufficient quantity of the anasthetic. From Hartford Wells went to Boston, where his statements were re- ceived with incredulity, and where his first experiment proved to be a partial failure, because of the inadequate quantity of ether inhaled by the patient. Returning to Hartford, he resumed the practice of dentistry, and employed his newly discovered agent successfully in fully fifty cases during the two following years. Dr. Marcy, one of the surgeons of the city, "after a conference with Wells in relation to the proper- ties of sulphuric cther as compared with those of gas, used ether, and removed an encysted tumor without pain, while Wells was present." Dr. Morton, a former pupil of Wells, laid claim to the honor of the discovery, because he had succeeded with cther in 1846. Stung by this treacherous ingratitude of the man to whom he had revealed the steps to his discovery of gas and ether, Wells attempted to establish the validity of his own pretensions, but unfortunately bccamc insane and died. What he could not do for himself Dr. Stearns has effected for him, with admirable skill and convincing argument ; and for his services in this one particular is entitled to the gratitude of all lovers of truth and righteousness.
On the 17th of February, 1876, Dr. Stcarns delivered an address to the graduat- ing class in the medical department of Yale College, which was afterward published by the medical faculty. It reveals his intimate acquaintance with the history, thcories, and practice of medicine ; and illustrates his ability not only to describe them, but also to promote the further triumphs of the science and art whose achievements hc so eloquently details. First of all, he calls attention to " the change in our ideas in reference to the nature and causes of disease. Within the memory of man, it was an accepted idca that disease was an entity, a something existing within the system which it was necessary to expel before a condition of health could return." Now, " so far from disease being an entity or a unity, we are taught that it is as diverse and multifarious as we find morbid conditions, and much more so than nosological
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tables indicate ; that it consists in the grand total of diseased states or disordered actions to which the system is subject ; and in consequence, the prime object of the physician should be to aid nature in restoring to normal activity functions abnor- mally performed, and [to] renovate structures already changed." In doing this hc needs "to interrogate the history of parentage, and take into consideration the im- mensely powerful factor of heredity."
" Passing from the primary or antecedent causes or conditions of disease to the proximate or exciting causes, we are no longer content to regard them as something sent in punishment for sin (unless we regard sin as the moral violation of natural law), or from some inscrutable source, and of a nature past finding out ; but, in the case of many diseases we have learned to look for active, recognizable, and prevent- able causes." " When we are called to treat the neuroscs, our first step is an inquiry into and removal of any existing causes ; we interrogate the habits of life, which specially act upon the nervous system ; hours of business, amount of sleep, amount of exercise out-of-doors, anxiety, reverses in fortune, overwork, habits of body, hours of study in school-rooms and out of school-rooms, amount of mental labor imposed on the brain, ctc., etc."
Another point to. which he calls attention is " the introduction of the micro- scope into the field of medical research." "The power of the eye by this means becomes increased almost indefinitely, and thus equipped, we may examine every fibre and cell of the various structures and organs of the system. We determine the composition of the blood, relative to its white and red corpuscles, and the different sceretions as to whether they are normal or otherwise, and if changed, the nature of such change in many cases; whether it be chemical, or consists of for- eign and abnormal substances or formations. We examine the nature and structure of abnormal growths, determining the question of innocencey by their divergence from normal and healthy structure." "As an example in point, I may here refer to diseases of the nervous centres, manifesting themselves in the form of insanity. Fifty years ago this was supposed to be a disease of the mind, with little if any special connection with the brain, or the manifestation of some spiritual possession. No cxamination of the brain with the means then available had been sufficiently delicate to detect the slightest alteration in its tissues, in cases where persons had died insane ; and, though suspicions may have existed, as to morbid changes, they could not be verified.
" Now, however, we are able to demonstrate by means of the microscope that insanity is a disease of the brain, and attended by morbid changes in its structure -as much as pneumonia or tuberculosis are diseases of the lungs, and attended with morbid changes there. In cases of death from insanity, we can demonstrate,
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that either the cells, or blood-vessels, or connective fibres, are diseased, because their normal structures are found to be changed. And, from this fact, we infer with certainty that in non-fatal and curable cascs, there exists a condition in which the functions of the brain are imperfectly, or abnormally performed; or, in other words, functional disease exists, dependent on brain changes, just as we have func- tional disease of the stomach or liver.
" Whether these functional diseases arise from some changes in the blood, which affect the red corpuscles or the white corpuscles or the serum, or the relative pro- portion of these, or all of these conditions; or whether they may be due to as yet inappreciable changes in the brain cells, impairing their power of secretion or absorption, or to changes in these cells of diverse character, yet undetermined ; or, yet again, to changes in the connective fibre, so that the cells receive false or imperfect messages, it is not necessary for my present purpose to inquire. But that there is, from some cause, or causes, such a change, that they are no longer fully obedient to the Ego, which seeks to use them, resulting in some cases in one form of insanity, and in others, in other forms, there can be no doubt. And some pathologists think the time is not very far distant when they will be able to point out the peculiar pathological changes which occur in the several forms of insanity, as they now do in diseases of the lungs."
Passing to another point, intimately connected with and growing out of this illustration, Dr. Stearns next referred to "our advance in the treatment of insanity within the last fifty years." Here also he speaks with the authority of an experienced and acknowledged expert. "I would not," he says, " and hardly could if I would, exaggerate either the cruelties practised by society in general, toward those afflicted with this most terrible of human maladies; or, the utter lack of appreciation by our profession, of the true nature of the disease, before, and during the first quarter of the present century. And this was true, not of any one country, but in all the fairest and most highly civilized countries of Europc. The chronic insane, when they were thought to be harmless, were permitted to wander about from village to village, the objects of the hootings, mockery, and abuse of cruel boys and men. When they became excited or dangerous, they were chained up like wild beasts in barns, or sheds built for the purpose, or thrown into dungeons, where they were scourged, or beaten, till the evil spirit should be subdued. There they were kept month after month, neglected or forgotten, without sunlight, in the heats of summer and the frosts of winter fed with the refuse of tables, if fed at all, till wasted to skeletons, and not unfrequently starved to death."
After an exceedingly graphic and powerful description of the prisons erected throughout Europe for the detention of the insane, and of the horrible treatment
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therein meted out to them, Dr. Stearns proceeds to contrast the accommodations and treatment now provided ; "so that countries of the whole civilized world seem to be vieing with each other in the strife to make amends for past ignorance and cruelties, and secure better things for the future. The old idea that insanity was a disease of a spiritual nature has faded away, and now we investigate it as a physical lesion; we diagnose by study of symptoms and conditions its different forms, and adapt our courses of treatment, as we do in diseases affecting other organs or structures of the body. Nay, more; by as much as insanity is a disease most obscure in its beginnings, and difficult to be investigated, by so much are we pushing researches, and putting forth efforts to unveil its mystery; and, by as much as it is the most fearful of all forms of disease, by so much are we endeavoring to alleviate its sufferings, and surround its unhappy victims with every restorative measure likely to be of service. We build costly mansions surrounded with panoramic views, of rivers, mountains, green fields, and leafy woods. Airing courts, filled with trees, shrubs, and the fragrance of flowers, are open for their enjoyment at all hours of the day. Rooms with the cleanest of walls and floors, and filled with the purest air and sunshine, adorned with cheerful pictures, and supplied with every needed comfort, and even luxury, have taken the place of dark, narrow, and lonely cells. Kindness and sympathy have forever driven into darkness cruelty, chains, and scourg- ings. We strive to allay fearful bodings and to alleviate suffering. We bring quiet and sweet repose to the weary and exhausted brain, and by soothing care and gentle steps, we try to lead back the mind disordered and wandering again to the bright visions of reason."
We try to paint "that terrible spectacle-
' The intellectual power, thro' words and things, Went sounding on its dim and perilous way '-
with another and a brighter color; and, not unfrequently, when, to all human appear- ance, the end seems to be drawing on, and the golden bowl to be breaking ; when the silver chord is fast being unloosed, and that 'animula, blandula, vagula, hospes, comesque' is ready to leave the body on its dark journey to an unknown land, our art wins it back, and braids again the unravelling strands of the silver chord.
" More than fifty per cent of the acute cases of insanity admitted to our hospitals now recover; and I boldly declare without fear of challenge that if medical science had achieved nothing else for humanity during the last fifty years, than to have wrought such a change in our views and treatment of insanity-a change so great that the disease is shorn of half its terrors-it would be entitled to honor and gratitude, till that time comes when diseased brains and mental suffering shall no more be known."
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But medical science, he justly affirms, has accomplished far more than that. It has decreased the general death-rate throughout Christendom; it has warded off those terrible epidemics of disease formerly known under the names of plague and pestilence ; it has ascertained the natural history of cholera, and shorn it of much of its dread power; it is successfully resisting the inroads of yellow fever, and has added half a year or more to the average duration of human life. The pecuniary value of the last achievement is one worthy of profound consideration. Po- litical economists estimate the annual value of the products of each male laborer's toil to be about five hundred dollars. Half this sum multiplied by fifty thousand-less that half the number of adult male citizens in Connecticut-reaches the enormous total of twelve millions and a half of dollars, added to the wealth of the state by the skill of its physicians and surgeons. Multiply this sum again by eighty- the number of times that the population of the United States exceeds that of Connecticut-and the almost incredible sum of one thousand millions of dollars presents itself as the amount of wealth saved to the country by medical science in a single generation. And yet we stand "only on the border-land; we are just beginning how to learn; we have but just entered the paths which will lead to more brilliant discoveries and grander achievements in the future, so that we who are older, almost envy you your youth, and the prizes awaiting you in the future." Such an address is peculiarly stimulative of enthusiasm and application, and especially when its auditors remember "that advancement in all departments of science generally goes on by the grains contributed by the many;" that "the largest prizes come only rarely ; that there has been but one Newton, one Franklin, one Jenner, one Wells."
In 1876 Dr. Stearns also published a very valuable series of Statistics of Insanity Relative to Re-Admissions to the Retreat. From this it appears that "the whole number of , persons re-admitted is to the whole number who have been admitted but onee, as 834 is to 2856 ; that is, nearly three tenths (29 + per cent) of all persons who have been admitted to the Retreat have been admitted more than once. It is certain that many of this number have also been treated again in other hospitals, and consequently do not appear as cases of re-admissions to the Retreat; " therefore it is reasonable to expect," he adds, " that from thirty to fifty per cent of all persons who shall in future be received at the Retreat for the first time as insane, and recover, will again apply for admission either here or at some other hospital." These tabulated statistics show the number of re-admissions, the result of previous admissions, the interval from discharges to re-admissions, the whole number of admissions of 834 persons re-admitted, the recoveries of eases re-admitted, and the deaths and the causes of death in re-admitted cases. They supply the matter -for
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