History of Middlesex county, Connecticut, with biographical sketches of its prominent men, Part 6

Author: Whittemore, Henry, b. 1833; Beers, J.B. & Company, publishers
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: New York : J. B. Beers & co.
Number of Pages: 818

USA > Connecticut > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex county, Connecticut, with biographical sketches of its prominent men > Part 6

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The adaptation of Middlesex county to the raising of poultry and the production of eggs is beyond question. J. Cowan, of Middletown, with more than 1,000 hens, and W. T. Clark, of Durham, with several hundred, are examples of highly successful egg producers.

Sheep husbandry is successfully conducted by Messrs. Lyman, of Middlefield, Hubbard, of Middletown, and other farmers in the county. Much land in the hill towns is well adapted to the keeping of sheep with a decided profit and increased fertility of land. Here, as elsewhere. dogs are the great drawback to sheep husbandry.

AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS.

Probably Middlesex county is not behind in agricul- tural progress. The old wooden plough, the old corn fan for winnowing, and many other clumsy devices have given place to better and more convenient implements and ma- chines. Farmers' clubs and agricultural societies are established in most of our towns, and at the exhibitions of choice fruits, grains, vegetables, fancy work, and beautiful flowers we . find that all our town's have made very decided progress, and they are fully as far advanced as other parts of the State or country. The improved fruits and vegetables are abundantly found in the farm- ers' orchards, fields, and gardens. At the recent State fair more than half the fruit premiums were awarded to Middlesex county farmers.

The social status of the farmer and farmers' families is much advanced. The farmer's home is now the abode of intelligence and cheerfulness. The book, the magazine, the daily and weekly journal, the voice of song, the sweet notes of instrumental music, the fragrance of flowers, and sterling independence and manliness of character, with genuine politeness, make the farmer's home often an ideal home, and farmers' sons and daughters are called to fill the highest places of honor, usefulness, and responsibility. This is not a matter of wonder. The educating influence of the farm is potent. A continuous series of object lessons is ever at hand, a constant pano- rama of nature's choicest views ever before and around us. The accumulated experience of the past is to accel- lerate future progress, and though the last half century has been unequaled in history it will unquestionably be greatly surpassed in the future.

CHAPTER V.

MEDICAL PROFESSION IN MIDDLESEX COUNTY.

BY RUFUS W. MATHEWSON, M. D.

T HE Middlesex County Medical Society was organ- ized in 1792. That the professional standing of the men who organized it may be better understood, a brief review is here given of the previous medical history of the territory which, seven years before, had been in- corporated into this county. It was here that the "Cler- ical Physicians " instituted the reform in teaching and practice which resulted in the elevation of the profession throughout the colony to a proper standard.

Jared Eliot, the father of the regular practice in this State, was a son of the minister of Guilford, and grand- son of the apostle, John Eliot. He graduated at Yale College in 1705, while the institution was located at Say- brook, which at that time belonged to New London county, and spent his whole professional life in Clinton, then Killingworth. He was assisted and succeeded by his pupil and son-in-law, Dr. Benjamin Gale, who gradu- ated at Yale in 1733, making that place for three-quar- ters of a century a great resort for niedical instruction, equal in importance for that period to any of the cities for the present day. Drs. Jared Potter and Elihu Tudor were educated there. It was there that the first medical treatise was published in the colony, in 1750, by Dr. Gale; and later, "Cases and Observation," by the same; all of which were favorably noticed in Europe. Those were the only medical publications in this State before the present century.

Dr. Eliot had eleven children. The first, a daughter, died young. The second, Hannah, married Dr. Gale, and had eight children, most of whom died young. The third, Samuel, graduated at Yale, 1735, studied medicine, and died on a voyage to Africa for his health in 1741. The fourth, Aaron, studied medicine, married a daughter of Rev. William Worthington, of Westbrook, and settled in his native place as a physician and merchant. He was a

GENERAL HISTORY.

judge, a colonel, a deacon, and one of his Majesty's just- ices. He was engaged largely in the manufacture of steel. In a petition to the Colonial Assembly for pecu- niary aid to carry on the work to better advantage, it was claimed that he supplied the colony and other gov- erhments with steel. The sum of £500 was voted, for three years, without interest; when due, an extension of two years was granted, on account of a large loss of steel by fire in Boston. He had three sons, who studied med- icine, mostly with their uncle, Dr. Benjamin Gale. One of them married a daughter of Dr. John Ely. They all settled in the new clearings at the West. Dr. Jared Eliot's fifth child, Samuel (Yale, 1740), studied medicine, and died at Saybrook in 1747, unmarried. He had six other sons, neither of whom studied medicine or divin- ity. Dr. Eliot was pastor of the church in Clinton for forty years, hardly failing to preach a single Sabbath.

Dr. Gale built the first story of the stone tavern at Clinton, inside of which was another stone house, two stories high, constituting a house within a house, con- structed in a way to withstand the general conflagration. The upper story of the inner house, it was supposed, was used for anatomical purposes, and for meditation and study of the Scriptures, on which he wrote largely. After the doctor's death, the inner house was removed, and another story added to the outer walls. He was buried in the cemetery north of his house, at right angles with other graves, his feet toward the south, so that when he arose he would face his former home. From his monument we read:

"In memory of Dr. Benjamin Gale, who, after a life of usefulness in his profession, and a laborious study of the Prophecies, fell asleep May 6th A. D. 1779, at. 75, fully expecting to rise again under the Messiah, and toreign with him on earth. 'I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, and mine eyes shall behold him.'"

Dr. Phineas Fiske was a son of Dr. John Fiske, of Milford, one of the most noted physicians in the colony. He graduated at Yale College, at its third commence- ment, and two years in advance of Dr. Eliot, yet, having spent six years as a tutor in that institution, he did not commence practice as soon. He was cotemporary with, and equal to, Dr. Eliot, but the misfortune was, he did not live as long. He was settled as a minister at Had- dam, then in Hartford county, where he died in 1738.

Dr. Moses Bartlett, of Madison (Yale, 1730), studied both professions with Dr. Fiske, married the daughter of his preceptor, and settled in East Middletown, now Port- land, where he died in 1766. A monument was erected to his memory near the quarries, by his parishioners, on which is inscribed: " He was a sound and faithful divine, a physician of soul and body."

Dr. Bartlett had three sons-Moses (Yale, 1763), Phin- eas, and Elihu (Yale, 1764). The two former studied medicine with Dr. Gale. Moses succeeded to his father's practice in Portland, surviving him for forty years. He was a deacon in the church.

The foregoing includes those clerical physicians of this county to whom the profession is so much indebted for its advanced standing. All the sons of the clerical phy-

sicians who studied a profession took to medicine; not one to the ministry. At the time this society was organ- ized, there were but two medical colleges on this side of the Atlantic; and those had not fairly become established institutions. Not one of these original members had en- joyed advantages of medical college instruction, but they were confined to private teaching. Each physician constituted a faculty to teach, and an examining and li- censing board.

Several of the members of this society made profes- sional teaching a specialty. Doctors had to be prepared for the new frontier settlements. They were like the medicines-hand-made. Steam and machinery had not come into use. The candidate " served his time," as it was then called, which was divided between the books on the shelf, the skeleton in the closet, the pestle and pill-slab in the back room, roaming the forests and fields for roots and herbs, and following, astride of the colt he was breaking, the horse which was honored with the sad- dle-bags.

The practice of inoculation was at its height at the time this society was organized, and was a source of great income to many of the members. The keeping of pock-houses (as they were called) was profitable. The location of these can generally be traced by the graves of the patients in the fields adjoining. Jenner's great discovery was not made until after this society had been in existence several years.

Early in the present century, medical students desiring to obtain higher advantages resorted to Dartmouth Col- lege, where the celebrated Nathan Smith, M. D., was then sole medical professor. The first graduates in med- icine in this county were graduated there. After the re- moval of Professor Smith to New Haven, and the open- ing of the medical institution there, a large majority took a single course of lectures, this being a great advance on former advantages, and received merely a license to prac- tice; and if they proved deserving, a degree was con- ferred in after years. This practice was discontinued about 50 years ago, since which two full courses of lec- tures have been required for an examination.

Dr. John Osborn was the only one of the forty-seven incorporators of the Connecticut Medical Society resid- ing in this county, and it devolved on him by the char- ter to organize the county society. He was the first chairman of the county meeting, and the first treasurer of the State society. He was re-elected Fellow each year as long as he remained a member, also as one of the committee of examination for the county.

The Osborn family furnishes a rare instance of supe- rior talent being transmitted from generation to genera- tion for nearly two centuries.

Dr. John Osborn, the first of the name in Middletown, was born in Sandwich, Massachusetts. He graduated at Harvard in 1735, when he was offered a tutorship, which he declined, with a view, probably, of becoming, like his father, a Presbyterian minister. When in college he was distinguished for mathematical investigations, and Latin verses, which were much admired by the faculty. It was

HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.

while in college he wrote the elegy on the death of a sis- ter, which has been copied by Dr. Field in his Middle- town centennial address. After leaving college he wrote the " Whaling Song," a copy of which may be found in Barber's "Connecticut Historical Collections."

The son, whose views were in accordance with his fa- ther's, was induced to give up the ministry, and turn his attention to medicine. The misfortune of the Osborns seems to have been that they were a century in advance of the times in their religious belief and their sentiments of toleration.

It is to these differences with the sons of the pilgrims that the medical profession is indebted for five genera- tions of able members, and the Episcopal Church for large accessions of true churchmen.

Dr. Osborn, about 1739, removed to Middletown, where he soon felt the cold shoulder of the pastor of the only church in Middletown, Rev. William Russell, who did not show favor to the new physician. He died of consump- tion in 1753, aged 40 years.

Dr. Osborn shared the practice of Middletown with Dr. John Arnold, who, with his brother Joshua, of Mid- dle Haddam, was a student of Dr. Fiske (the former died in 1754, having had two wives and fifteen children), and, with Dr. Abijah Moores, who died of small pox in 1759, having been the father of twelve children, was succeed- ed by Dr. John Dickinson, who left the profession for public life. Dr. Eliot Rawson, a descendant of the noted secretary of Massachusetts, removed from East Haddam to Middletown about the time Dr. Osborn's health began to fail.

John Osborn, the second of that name, was about thirteen years old at the time of his father's death. We do not learn that he possessed any extra advantages for a classical education. He early entered the office of the celebrated Norman Morrison, in Hartford, to study medicine. John Osborn and Alexander Wolcott, son of the governor, were considered the most distinguished of all his students. In 1758, before the former had at- tained his majority, he went with the army that attacked Ticonderoga, in the second French war, and in a sub- ordinate capacity was in the medical department of the provincial troops.

The Osborns were hereditarily haters of France and lovers of England. If Dr. Osborn ever worshiped the likeness of anything in the earth beneath, it was the British crown. It was for this reason that his valuable services were not made available during the Revolutionary war. About 1763 he commenced practice in Middle- town, where he followed the profession more than sixty years. He was a man of extensive reading, and for some time possessed the best medical library in the State. His knowledge of materia medica was extensive and accurate ; he excelled in chemistry; he exerted himself to remove the prejudices against inoculation for the small-pox, and to improve the treatment of that distressing disease. About twelve hundred persons were inoculated in Middletown during the winters of 1777 and '78. He was a very thorough teacher of medicine, and the char-

acter of such physicians as Moses F. Coggswell, his sons, Prof. John C. and Dr. Samuel, as also Dr. Thomas Minor, taught solely by him, attest the thoroughness of his training. "As a practitioner he was eminent. He appreciated the worth of well-bred and faithful physi- cians, but held quackery in the utmost abhorrence. He had great sensibility, quick apprehension, and strong passions ; he spoke his mind fearlessly, when and where he pleased, and it was not safe for any to attack him in words, for none better understood the retort keen." He inherited none of the courtesy or poetry of his father. These ornamental qualities seemed to have passed around him, to re-appear in full force in his four sons. His success, which depended on his great ability and strict integrity, was a compliment to the people of his day. His presence was a terror to the young, and the aged now speak of their feelings at his approach with a shrug of the shoulders. He was emphatically a man of few words, and meddlesome talk and inquiries brought out from him sharp answers.

He built and last occupied the frame house on Main street, opposite the Episcopal church. He died in 1825, aged nearly 85 years, and a plain brown stone in the Mortimer Cemetery marks the last resting place of one who was so long a prominent citizen, and a physician who spent his whole life in Middletown.

Dr. John Osborn had two sons who entered the profes- sion.

Dr. William Brenton Hall was the son of Brenton Hall, Esq., a respectable farmer of Meriden, and grand- " son of Rev. Samuel Hall, of Cheshire. Both places were societies of Wallingford at that time. Dr. Hall was born in 1764, and graduated at Yale College in 1786, and probably studied medicine in New Haven-perhaps while pursuing his college course. He commenced practice in Middletown in 1790. He married, in 1796, Mehitable, the sixth daughter of Major-General Samuel Holden Parsons, of Revolutionary fame. Dr. Hall made surgery a speciality, and had the most of that branch of practice. In August, 1796, he gained notoriety by his heroic professional conduct in attending the cases of yellow fever at Knowles Landing, or Middle Haddam. Dr. Tully, in his letter to Dr. Hosac, and in his work on fevers, gave the following account of that occurrence : "The brig Polly arrived from Cape St. Nicholas Mole ; on her homeward passage, one of her crew by the name of Tupper, died on board, of the yellow fever ; the clothes which he wore while sick were thrown overboard, though a sail, on which he lay when he died, was retained.

" On the arrival of the brig at this landing, Hurd and Ranney were employed to assist in clearing her out. They were known to handle the sail on which Tupper died. At the same time Sarah Exton and Elizabeth Cook were employed in washing some of the sailors' clothes. A few days after, these persons were attacked with yellow fever. In about five days Hurd died, and within twelve hours Ranney and Sarah Exton. The alarm in the village was already so great that Sarah Exton was left alone in the night, and was found dead

GENERAL, HISTORY.

in the morning, with her infant child at her breast. The whole village was panic struck. After the three first deaths, Dr. Bradford, an old physician resident of the place, and Drs. Hollister and Thatcher, two young men, departed precipitately, and did not return until all traces of the disease had disappeared. About two hundred of their employers followed their example. Only five persons had firmness and humanity sufficient to remain to take care of the sick and bury the dead. The physicians who attended the latter cases were Dr. Wm. Brenton Hall, of Middletown, and Dr. John Richmond of a neighboring parish. From this single vessel there originated eleven cases of yellow fever in the town of Chatham, nine of which proved fatal."

Dr. Hall was an active member of the medical society, was treasurer of the State Society from 1799 to the year of his death; was elected Fellow from 1797 to 1809 ; was five years on the examining committee. He was largely engaged in teaching medicine. Dr. Osborn used to say he turned off doctors as fast as a rake-maker. could rakes.

In 1792, the town of Wallingford voted permission to Dr. Hall to open a house of inoculation for small-pox on his father's farm, in the northeast part of Meriden, near the Middletown line, Dr. Hall becoming bound to pay forty shillings or more for each case of small-pox in the town, spreading from the persons inoculated.

Dr. Hall was noted for hospitality ; his house was a great center for the profession in the neighboring towns. His side-board was especially free. On his last attempt to visit a patient he fell from his horse before leaving his yard ; he was taken to his bed, which he was not after able to leave, and died in 1809, aged 45.

Dr. Hall built and occupied the house next south of the Mutual Assurance building, on the west side of Main street.

Dr. Ebenezer Tracy was born in Norwich town in 1762, and was cousin to the late Dr. Tracy of the same place. He studied medicine with Dr. Philip Turner, who was surgeon-general of the northern States during the Revolutionary war. Dr. Tracy settled in Middle- town in 1785, where he practiced more than 60 years, or as long as Dr. Osborn. Through his whole life he visited his patients on horseback, as did the Tracys and Turners of his native place. He was a gentleman of great smoothness of manners, and his practice was in ac- cordance with his character-mild and expectant. He was elected Fellow in 1794 and '98, after which he seems to have ceased his connection with the society. He was one of the examining committee as long as he remained a member. He built and occupied the house next east of the North Church, and he died in 1856.

ated four years later. Throughout his life he deplored his ignorance of arithmetic and mathematics, branches which were totally neglected in his preliminary education.

For three or four years after graduation Mr. Tully spent This time in teaching and in studying medicine, taking, during that time, two courses of lectures under the cele- brated Nathan Smith, M. D., at Dartmouth College. In March 1810 he entered the office of Dr. Ives, of New Haven, where he gave much attention to botany, a science in which he afterward became an authority. In the fol- lowing October he was licensed by the Connecticut Med- ical Society to practice medicine and surgery, and in 1819 Yale College conferred upon him the honorary degree of M. D.

After practicing successfully in Enfield, Milford, and Middletown Upper Houses, Dr. Tully finally removed in September 1818, to Middletown, where he became the intimate friend of the late Thomas Miner, M. D. The two published in 1823 a joint volume entitled "Essays on Fevers and other Medical Subjects." The book, writ- ten throughout with great ability, contained new and startling opinions, and dealt unceremoniously with the cherished prejudices and practices of the profession. It maintained that the fevers of the day had decidedly ty- phoid tendencies; that anti-phlogistic and reducing meas- ures were contra-indicated, and that a free use of stimu- lants was required. The work was extensively read, and opinions as to its merits were widely divided. It opened a controversy which lasted several years, and as this was not always conducted in the most tolerant spirit, it en- gendered against the authors a prejudice which neither survived.

In 1824 Dr. Tully was appointed professor of Theory and Practice in the Vermont Academy of Medicine, Castleton, where he afterward discharged the additional duties of lecturer on Materia Medica and Therapeutics, a position which he held until 1838. In 1839 he suc- ceeded Eli Ives, M. D. as Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in Yale College, and the following year he removed to New Haven, the different periods of the year at which the terms were held enabling him to con- tinue his lectures at Castleton. In 1833 he refused a pro- fessorship in the Medical College of South Carolina.

Dr. Tully's last course of lectures was delivered in New Haven in the winter of 1840-1. Ten years later he re- moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he died Feb- ruary 28th 1859. Only three of his ten children sur- vived him.

Among Dr. Tully's valuable contributions to medical literature may be mentioned his " Medical Prize Essay " on Sanguinaria Canadensis, published in the American Medical Recorder for 1828, and " Results of Experiments and Observations on Narcotine and Sulphate of Mor- phine," published in Silliman's Journal, January 1832. These, like all his other works, are characterized by thorough and elaborate scholarship and original observa- tion. But his greatest work, published during his resi-

William Tully, the only child of William and Eunice Tully, was born at Saybrook Point, Conn., February 18th 1785, and was descended from John Tully, who canie from England in 1647. Young Tully early manifested a taste for books. In September 1802, after what he him- self termed " an exceedingly defective preparation," he dence in Springfield, is to be found in two large volumes entered the Freshman class at Yale, where he was gradu- entitled " Materia Medica, or Pharmacology and Thera-

HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.

peutics." It is a monument to the industry, learning, and ability of the writer, and contains sufficient material to furnish capital for a score of ordinary authors. He also assisted Dr. Webster and Professor Goodrich in the scientific department of their dictionary, furnishing the definitions of the terms of anatomy, physiology, medi- cine, botany, and some other branches of natural history. All of Dr. Tully's knowledge was singularly minute and accurate. He was doubtless the most learned and thor- oughly scientific physician in New England.

Thomas Miner was born in Westfield, Connecticut, Oc- tober 15th 1777. His father was a Congregational min- -ister, and personally superintended the elementary edu- cation of his children. In September 1792, young Miner entered Yale College, where he was graduated in 1796. He spent the next six years, when not interrupted by ill- ness, in teaching and the study of law, and it was not until he was twenty-five that he commenced the study of medicine, which he did with the late Dr. Osborn, of his life. Middletown. In 1807 he began to practice under a li- cense from the Medical Society, and, after spending short periods in several places, he finally settled in Middle- town, where he spent the remainder of his life.

Dr. Miner's constitution had always been delicate, and, in 1819, he contracted a disease of the heart from which he never recovered. His professional career may be said to have ended at this time, though he was frequently called upon for consultation, and he contributed quite largely to medical literature. He was an accomplished linguist, and made many translations from the French and German for the medical journals. In 1823 he pub- lished, in connection with William Tully, M. D., a work, entitled "Essays on Fevers and Other Medical Subjects," which created a great sensation among the profession. Two years later he published an account of Typhus Syn- copalis, which was several times republished, wholly or as an abridgment, in other medical publications.

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History of Middlesex county, Connecticut, with biographical sketches of its prominent men, Part 6

Author: Whittemore, Henry, b. 1833; Beers, J.B. & Company, publishers Publication date: 1884 Publisher: New York : J. B. Beers & co. Number of Pages: 818

Author: Whittemore, Henry, b. 1833; Beers, J.B. & Company, publishers
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: New York : J. B. Beers & co.
Number of Pages: 818