USA > Delaware > History of the state of Delaware, Volume III > Part 22
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The very first physician of whom Delaware's history tells was Dr. Tyman Stidham, a Swede, who came over with Gov- ernor Risingh in 1654, and settled at Fort Christina, now known as The Rocks, within the present city limits of Wil- mington, a part of whose site includes a large tract of land which he acquired under Dutch patents, afterward confirmed
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HOUSE BUILT BY DR. TYMEN STIDHAM.
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by the English under Governor Lovelace. Dr. Stidham was appointed city surgeon of Christina in 1662. He died in 1686; was twice married, and had several children, whose descendants are now in Delaware and other states.
Dr. John Des Jardins practiced medicine in what is now Kent County as early as May, 1675; and one Dr. John Rhoads early settled at Horekill, in Sussex County, where, doubtless finding patients few and fees fewer, he accepted, in 1673, the office of magistrate, but was murdered the next year by the Indians. Dr. Thomas Spry, about the same period, in lower New Castle County, supplemented the medical with the legal practice.
In 1676 the first mal-praxis suit in the State was brought in New Castle County by one Powell against a Dr. Hans Peterson, who, on his own confession of error, was fined one hundred and fifty gilders damages, besides costs.
Dr. Thomas Wynne, a Friend, and the first Speaker of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, came to Lewes in 1685, where he became prominent in politics ; so Dr. John Stewart was Sheriff of New Castle County in 1702, and Dr. Peter Clower of Sussex County in 1743. Eleven members of the Delaware regiment in the Revolutionary War were then, or afterwards became, physicians.
Dr. Henry Fisher, who came from Waterford, Ireland, in 1725, was probably the first physician of eminence in the State. He was the only regularly educated doctor in Sussex County during his life, and his wide practice extended into Kent County, Maryland. Governor William Penn vainly offered him flattering inducements to come to Philadelphia. He gave important aid to the government during the war of the Revolution, superintending the defences of the entrance to the Delaware bay, and receiving and executing all orders from Congress. Through his swift pilot and whale boats, he ob- tained information and gave warnings of inestimable value to the Continental forces.
To Delaware belongs the high honor of possessing the third
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oldest State medical society in this country, those of Massa- chusetts and New Jersey only being older. The Delaware State Medical Society was incorporated February 3, 1798, the Legislature conferring upon Drs. John McKinly, James Tilton, Edward Miller and twenty-four other physicians in the State, the corporate name of "The President and Fellows of the Med- ical Society of Delaware," with the powers usually granted to such bodies. Pursuant to the Act of Assembly the society held its first meeting at Dover, May 12, 1789, Dr. James Tilton, chairman pro tem., and Dr. Edward Miller secretary ; and a constitution having been adopted, James Tilton was chosen president; James Preston, vice president ; Edward Miller, secretary, and James Sykes, treasurer ; and Doctors Nicholas Way, Matthew Wilson, Joshua Clayton and Nathaniel Luff, censors. It is a noteworthy circumstance that in May, 1790, after the delivery of the first anniversary oration by Dr. Edward Miller, this pioneer medical society showed its aggres- sive public spirit by raising a fund for a premium upon the best essay on some subject of general medical or hygienic interest ; and it is creditable to the acumen of those medical gentlemen that at so early & period they should have recogn- ized the far-reaching importance of the very same problem whose solution modern medicine is seeking so hard to dis- cover, viz., " The Origin, Nature and Cure of Malarial Fevers," and to make it the theme for their first premiumed thesis.
After setting forth the extent of the ravages of this disease and the great benefits to accrue to mankind from its control and cure ; and also while conceding the formidable character of the_ task, they proclaimed their belief in its ultimate ac- complishment. Nor does it derogate from the honor due these pioneer investigations that they were fruitless, when we re- member it was almost one hundred years later that Laveran, in 1900, discovered the specific germ parasite in the blood which causes malarial fever. Commenting on the character of the papers submitted, Dr. Stellwagen says: "The study of the diseases peculiar to Delaware was very materially advanced
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by the labors of the members of the Delaware Medical Society, by Drs. Snow, Barrett, Capelle, Tilton, Wilson, David Bush and Edward Miller. The last contributed largely to the treating and successful combating of intermittent and yellow fevers by means of the then novel remedy Peruvian bark, the alkaloidal principle of which, quinine, is to-day one of the most universal and generally trusted remedies of the Pharmacopœia.
It is plain enough that the founders of the society adhered to their original purpose of promoting the practical advance- ment pro bono publico of the science of healing, not less than xenity and fraternity among its practitioners. From 1819 to 1835 this society was empowered by the Legislature to appoint annually a number of their own members a " Board of Medical Examiners," with power to authorize any one to practice medicine who presented a reputable medical diploma, or sub- mitted to a full examination by the Board and read a satis- factory paper upon some medical subject. The practice of medicine in Delaware is now otherwise regulated. The char- acter and achievements of a number of these founders of this society merit especial mention.
Dr. James Tilton, the society's first president, was born in Kent County, in 1745, and after receiving a classical educa- tion at Nottingham Academy, Maryland, under the Rev. Samuel Finley, afterwards president of Princeton College, graduated in 1771 from the medical department of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania. Though he had already acquired a good practice at Dover, he early espoused the cause of inde- pendence, becoming a first lieutenant of a company of light infantry. After the Declaration of Independence he was ap- pointed surgeon to the First Delaware Regiment, and was with the Continental forces at Long Island and White Plains, and in their subsequent retreat to the Delaware river. In 1777 he was in charge of the General Hospital at Princeton, New Jersey, which was then, to quote his own words, " so shock- ingly mismanaged that the disease swallowed up at least one- half of the army," and boldly pointed out the errors and abuses
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which contributed to this result. He was himself prostrated with the deadly typhus fever, and narrowly escaped death.
In the winter of 1779-80 Dr. Tilton was in charge of the General Hospital at Trenton, New Jersey, and originated a new system of hospital construction by building small log huts roughly built so as to allow free ventilation through the crevices and accommodating only six patients. A fireplace was set in the center with a small smoke hole at the top, giv- ing both draft and ventilation, while the dissemination of a portion of the smoke acted germicidally upon the typhus germs. The result was in the highest degree satisfactory, and the typhus-fever scourge was thereby so lessened that the plan was thereafter generally adopted. General Washington, in a letter September 9, 1780, expressed his appreciation of the meritorious labors of Dr. Tilton.
Though honored by his alma mater, the University of Penn- sylvania, with a professorship in 1781, he refused to desert his country's service. After the surrender of Cornwallis at York- town in 1782, he resumed his practice in Dover. He was elected a member of Congress in that year, and was thereafter repeatedly returned to the State Legislature. His well-estab- lished reputation and his high standing as an honorable man and a judicious and skilled physician, made his service in great request, both among the laity and among his professional brethren. Upon the declaration of war against Great Britain in 1812, the National Government, remembering his valuable services in the war of the Revolution, again sought his aid as a medical and sanitary expert, and appointed him Surgeon- General of the Army of the United States. Being in poor health, and nearing his three score and ten, he was reluctant to attempt the arduous task, but finally consented to leave the comforts of his lovely home-spot near Wilmington, to give a second time, to the service of his country his ripe experience and profound knowledge. On his tour of inspection of the hospitals on the northern frontier he established sanitary regulations in place of the neglected and ill-ordered conditions
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theretofore existing, the marked benefits of which were soon apparent.
When past his seventieth year a tumor of the knee neces- sitated the amputation of his thigh. Nothing could better illustrate the heroic fortitude of this remarkable man than the fact that though so infirm and aged, and at a time when anesthetics were unknown, he cooly observed and aided so stupendous an operation without losing consciousness or utter- ing a single groan. He lived several years after this event, dying May 14, 1822. In 1857 his remains were disinterred and placed in the Wilmington and Brandywine cemetery ; and the Delaware State Medical Society erected a suitable monument to the memory of this great and good man. Be- sides a work on military hospitals, Dr. Tilton wrote on yellow fever, rabies canina, the curculis, the peach tree and its dis- eases, and on many other subjects.
It is proper to cite once more the opinion of a critic as un- biased as he is competent. Alluding to Dr. Tilton's services in abating this typhus-fever scourge at that critical epoch in the war of the Revolution, Dr. Stellwagen says : "Probably without this device of the little huts at this time, Washington would have been defeated-there could have been no hope of success if this scourge had not been arrested. It is but fair to claim that American independence would very likely have suffered either total extinction or a long delay had it not been for this son of Delaware."
Another early physician and charter member of the State Medical Society who attained distinction in medicine was Dr. Edward Miller, born near Dover in 1760, and the son of the celebrated Presbyterian divine, Rev. John Miller, whose dis- tinguished career is elsewhere noticed in this history. Before finishing his studies with Dr. Charles Ridgely of Dover, .young Miller entered the army as surgeon's mate, and after- wards as surgeon to an army ship. Returning home he entered the University of Pennsylvania and graduated there- from in 1785. In 1790, only five years after his graduation,
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he was called upon to deliver the university inaugural address. In 1793 he prepared a thesis on the yellow fever, then for the first time prevalent in Philadelphia, and Dr. Benjamin Rush declared that " the author of the paper was second to no physician in the United States." It is a remarkable fact that Dr. Miller always contended that yellow fever was not contagious, a doctrine then, and till within a half-dozen years, flatly at variance with the generally accepted medical opinion. He passed through the epidemics of 1798 and 1803; and Apple- ton's Cyclopedia of Biography, Volume 4, page 327, says his report of the yellow fever in New York in 1805 is " the source from which most of the authorities have drawn their argu- ments in support of the non-contagious nature of that disease." He thought the origin of the fever was due to " certain noxious miasmata or poisons which find admission into the system through the mouth or nose or pores of the skin or which are inserted by the bite of a rabid or venomous animal." Truly, marvellously near the true origin, but lately discovered, the stegomia faciata mosquito's envenomed germ-bearing bite.
In 1796 he removed to New York, and with Doctors Mitchell and Elihu Smith, founded the " Medical Repository," the first medical journal issued in the United States. This work every- where bears marks of his genius and cultivation, and discloses the brilliancy of his style, his lucid arguments and his original and varied knowledge. He was made port physician of New York City, Professor of Practice and Physic in the University of New York, one of the physicians to the New York Hos- pital, and a member of the Philosophical Society of Philadel- phia. His wide reputation and the charm of his writings brought him into correspondence with eminent men in Great Britain, Germany and France. Dr. Stellwagen says: "His reputation was the most world-wide of any one of his profes- sion in this country, except probably Dr. Benjamin Rush, the distinguished Philadelphia signer of the Declaration of Independence." Dr. Miller wrote upon cholera infantum and recommended a treatment different from that prescribed
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by the leading physicians of the day. He was also among the first to advise the drinking of water in fevers-a grateful innovation upon the cruel practice then in vogue.
Together with Dr. Samuel H. Black and others, he was also an ardent advocate of vaccination. He died at the early age of fifty-two, universally lamented, and Dr. Rush and other distinguished physicians wrote touching memorials of his life.
Dr. Nathaniel Luff, a corporator of the Medical Society, was born in Kent County in 1756, and after studying medi- cine in Philadelphia, served in the army as assistant surgeon, and was afterwards promoted to the post of surgeon in Col. Hugh Lloyd's battalion from Chester. Near the close of 1776 he was made surgeon of the 1st battalion of Philadelphia under Col. Morgan, composed chiefly of the sons of Quakers and popularly known as the silk-stocking gentry. Crossing the Delaware on December 25, they were present at the repulse of the British at the Trenton Bridges. At the expiration of their term of service, soon after, they were discharged. Dr. Luff began his practice in lower Delaware. The people were very poor and could pay but little, six hundred to eight hundred bushels of wheat being paid for a common horse, and fifteen to twenty-five dollars for a bushel of salt ! Abandoning medicine, he became a farmer, and finally joining the Society of Friends, spent his time chiefly in traveling in the interests of their meetings on the peninsula.
One of the foremost names in early Delaware medicine is that of Dr. John McKinly, who was born in Ireland in 1721, and after practicing medicine for some years in Wilmington, was elected President of the State in 1777, after the adoption of the constitution. On the eve of the battle of Brandywine, September 11, 1777, a squad of British entered Wilmington at night, and seizing the doctor in his bed, carried him to Phila- delphia and he was imprisoned till the summer of 1778.
Caesar Rodney having been elected President, Dr. McKinly resumed his practice at Wilmington, where he lived in a large and commodious residence on the corner of Third and French
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streets, surrounding it with a garden ornamented with choice fruit trees and flowers, and whonce he dispensed a rare hospi- tality to many notable characters. He died August 31, 1796, and his monument in the First Presbyterian churchyard, after reciting his distinguished career, adds, " he became eminent in his profession, served in several important employments, and was the first to fill the office of President of the State after the Declaration of Independence. He died full of years, having lived usefully to the public and honorably to himself."
Dr. Joshua Clayton, a corporator of the Medical Society, and a member of the famous family whose achievements are a part of Delaware's history, was born in Cecil County, Mary- land, in 1744. His father John and his uncle Paul Clayton came over with William Penn. Dr. Clayton served as a surgeon at the battle of Brandywine. He married Governor Bassett's adopted daughter, and was the last President of Delaware and thereafter Governor. While attending Congress as a Senator in Philadelphia in 1798, he was taken with yellow fever. His friend, Dr. Rush, whose yellow-fever patients he had assisted, wished him to remain in the city, but he re- turned home, where he died at the age of fifty-four. His son, Dr. James Lawson Clayton, practiced medicine for many years in Bohemia Manor.
Dr. Joseph Hall, born in Lewes in 1748, was a descendant of the Plymouth settlers, and a founder of the Medical Society. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, and soon acquired an extensive practice which necessitated at times his absence from home for days. He served as surgeon in the Revolution. He was an elder in the Presbyterian church, and died young, leaving but one of his six children, Dr. Henry F. Hall.
Dr. Nicholas Way, the son of a respectable Quaker in Wil- mington, graduated in 1771 at the age of twenty-one from the University of Pennsylvania. He was a founder of the Medical Society and a skilled physician. When the yellow fever first appeared in Philadelphia, so great was the dread of that epi-
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demic that many of the refugees from there were refused an asylum in Wilmington until Dr. Way, assisted by Major George Bush, with equal courage and philanthropy, secured for them everywhere the hospitality of the citizens of that city. In 1797 he himself fell a victim to that dread disease in Phila- delphia, a martyr, Dr. Stellwagen says, " to his personal, stead- fast devotion to those to whom he administered !" "Greater love hath no man than this !"
Dr. Henry Latimer was born at Newport in 1752. After receiving his degree of Master of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 1773, he studied medicine in Philadelphia and Edinburgh, and in 1777 began practicing medicine in Wilmington. He was appointed surgeon in the Continental army that very year, and served his country from Brandywine to Yorktown so acceptably that General Washington men- tioned his name for Surgeon-General for the Northern Divi- sion of the Continental army.
Dr. James McCallmont, a charter member of the Medical Society, was born of Welsh-Irish ancestry at Newport in 1755. At twenty-two years of age, after finishing his medical training under Dr. Matthew Wilson of Lewes, he be- came a surgeon in the United States navy and in 1777 took part in a general engagement near Long Island. Later, the same year, his ship was boarded by a Spanish privateer but his life, with that of a young brother, was saved by his giving the Masonic sign to the Spanish officer just as they were about " to walk the plank !" Both were then taken to a Spanish prison in the West Indies, whence they were re- leased finally through the influence of the United States consul. After leaving the navy he practiced in New Castle until his death in 1824.
Dr. Joseph Philippe Eugene Capelle, born in Flanders in 1757, came to America with Count Rochambeau, and was afterwards on General La Fayette's staff as surgeon or sur- geon's mate.
It is said that when General La Fayette was shot in the leg
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at the battle of Brandywine, Dr. Capelle rode up and offered to dress the wound, but La Fayette declined his services, re- marking that his injury was trivial, but that the wounded soldiers were in more urgent need of medical attention than himself. The general's wound was bound up by a camp follower named Belle Mccluskey, who wore until her death a bullet suspended from her neck, which she declared was taken from General La Fayette's leg. When La Fayette visited the United States in 1824, he called upon this old woman in Wilmington, and expressed to her his gratitude for her ser- vices upon that occasion. Dr. Capelle practiced medicine in Wilmington until his death in 1796, when he was buried with imposing ceremonies, Masonic and religious, in the Old Swede's cemetery. He was an incorporator of the State Medi- cal Society, and was several times chosen censor. He was very popular professionally.
Dr. David Bush was born in Wilmington in 1763. Three of his brothers were officers in the Revolutionary army, Lewis, a member of the bar, was appointed major, and fell at Brandy- wine; George, also a major, died of his wounds, and the third, John, appointed captain, passed through the war unharmed. Dr. Bush was made a member of the Medical Society in 1793, and his dissertation on small pox showed so much ability that he was honored by the assignment of orator at the next annual meeting. He was highly esteemed by all classes in Wilming- ton, and died when but thirty-six years old.
Dr. George Monro was born in New Castle in 1760, his mother being a niece of Governor Hall. After graduating in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, he served during the Revolutionary War as surgeon in the Virginia line, and at its close continued his medical studies in London and Edin- burgh. In 1797 he married Col. John Hazlet's youngest daughter, and resumed the practice of his profession in Wil- mington, where he soon attained a high position among the leading physicians by his skill in medicine and surgery, win- ning by his liberality and benevolence the esteem of a large
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circle of friends. He died ir 1820. Although highly edu- cated he wrote but little, his most noted contribution being a paper on " Yellow Fever in Wilmington," published in 1798 in the New York Repository.
Dr. James Sykes was born in 1761 near Dover. His father held important trusts in the State, and was a member of the State Constitutional Conventions of 1776 and 1792. Dr. Sykes read medicine with Dr. Joshua Clayton, and attended the lectures of Drs. Shippen, Morgan, Kuhn and Rush. He won a fine practice as physician and surgeon in Dover, and Dr. Tilton, Surgeon-General of the United States army, declared him unsurpassed as a lithotomist. He was repeatedly elected to the State Senate, and was eleven years presiding officer of that body, and for about a year served as Governor. One of his sons, George Sykes, was an officer in the Mexican War and a commander in the Army of the Potomac during the war of the Rebellion, died in 1880 and was buried at West Point. Dr. James Sykes died in 1822, and his only daughter died of grief a few years later.
Dr. Edward Dingle was born near Dagsboro in 1779, and after reading medicine practiced there. He was appointed an Associate Justice of the County Court, and served as a member of the convention that framed the Constitution of 1831, and made the very valuable suggestion of holding State elections biennially which has since become general among the states.
Dr. Thomas MacDonough, the father of Commodore Mac- Donough, the hero of Lake Champlain, in the War of 1812, was born at The Trap, and was practicing medicine when the war of the Revolution broke out. He entered the army as Major of Col. Haslet's Regiment, resuming his practice at the close of the war. For a time he served as a court justice and died in 1795.
Dr. Martin Barr was born in Pennsylvania, in 1792, and studied in the office of Dr. Benjamin Rush, and after graduat- ing from the University of Pennsylvania in 1813, removed to Middletown, Delaware, where for upwards of fifty years he
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practiced his profession with unusual zeal. Possessing a rarely generous and kindly nature, he was greatly beloved ; he seemed to use his skill and knowledge almost solely for the good of his fellows, seldom presenting a bill for his services. He closed a highly successful career September 14, 1874, at the ripe old age of eighty-two years. His son, William Barr, who graduated at twenty-five from the University of Pennsyl- vania in 1852, joined his father in his practice at Middletown, and like him came to be noted for the altruistic disregard of fees with which he practiced his profession. He died young to the great sorrow and loss of the whole community to whom his talents and experience, like his father's before him, were at once an ornament and a blessing.
Dr. Samuel H. Black was born in New Castle County in 1782, and after finishing his studies at the University of Penn- sylvania, enjoyed a practice that extended in all directions throughout the county. He was finely educated, and owned a handsome library. He was for several sessions a member of the Assembly, and a popular writer on medical and agri- cultural subjects. He was especially zealous in his advocacy of vaccination, at a time when the great value of Jenner's epochal discovery was skeptically viewed by both the laity and the profession. To demonstrate the prophylactic char- acter of vaccination, Dr. Black took his little son Robert, whom he had previously vaccinated to a camp of Indians then at Cooch's Bridge, enroute to Washington, and among whom were a number of small-pox cases, and with a fortitude and faith truly sublime, placed him among the diseased Indians ! The success of this crucial, public-spirited demonstration did much to convince the unbelieving people of the value of vacci- nation.
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