USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Historical review of Chicago and Cook county and selected biography, Volume I > Part 27
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DR. JOSEPH C. GOODHUE. shire Medical College. After graduation, Dr. Goodhue settled for a time in Canada and from thence removed to Chicago in 1835. He first formed a partnership with Dr. J. H. Barnard and a year later with Dr. S. Z. Haven. In 1837, he united with Dr. Brainard in the drafting of the bill for incorporation of Rush Medical College which was passed by the legislature that year, although by reason of the financial panic which swept over the country, it was not organized until 1843. When Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837. Dr. Goodhue was elected one of the board of aldermen from the First ward. He was also one of the commissioners for the obtaining of subscriptions for the building of the Galena Railroad, the first link in the vast network which was soon to span the continent. He subsequently changed his location to Rockford, Illinois, and was one of the founders of the Winnebago County Medical Society, which was for a time the leading Vol. 1-18.
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medical organization in the state .. Here he acquired an extensive practice and by reason of an accident met with premature death.
Dr. Charles Volney Dyer was born in Clarendon, Vermont, in 1808. He graduated in medicine at Middlebury, in 1830, and com- menced the practice of medicine in Newark, New DR. CHARLES V. DYER. Jersey. In 1835, he came to Chicago. The follow-
ing year he received the nomination for member- ship in the state legislature, but was ineligible, not having resided for the requisite time in the state. In 1837, he was elected judge of probate. In 1840, he was appointed surgeon of the city guards. He was married in 1837 to Miss Louise M. Gifford, of Elgin. Their daughter, Mrs. Stella Louise Loring, has for years been celebrated for her development of one of the most popular young ladies' semi- naries in this country. Dr. Dyer was always deeply interested in educational work. When Bell's Commercial College was organized in 1853, he was one of its trustees. He was also a trustee in a popular private school known as the Garden City Institute. While yet an active practitioner of medicine he was also interested in many outside matters. He was one of the corporate members of the Chicago Eye and Ear Infirmary in 1858. In 1859, he was a corporate member of the North Chicago City Railway. The same year he was a charter member of the Rosehill Cemetery. He was a leading Abolitionist and knew all the ins and outs of the "underground railroad," and harbored many a fugitive slave in Chicago. His home was one of the most prominent residences north of Lincoln Park. Dr. Dyer died in 1878 at the age of seventy years.
The year 1837 was one of the most eventful in the early history of Chicago, in which, as before stated, the whole country was ab- sorbed in wild speculation, and Chicago was one of the principal centers. It was incorporated as a village in 1833, and contained at that time three hundred inhabitants. Four years later it was incor- porated as a city and the number had increased to 4,179. In connec- tion with this rapid influx of population there was a proportionate, or rather excessive increase of doctors of every name and creed. Some came but for a day and were known no more. Others became the stalwart representatives of the profession, achieving not only local but national reputations: They were to be the founders of our colleges and hospitals which would make this city such a center for
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medical education that its students would outnumber those of any other in this country.
Dr. Levi Daniel Boone was one of the many physicians who came to reside in Chicago in 1836, and who attained to special prominence not only as a practitioner, but by reason of business
DR. LEVI D. BOONE. and civic relations as well. He was born in the state of Kentucky in 1808, and was named for his uncle, Daniel Boone, the famous Kentucky pioneer. He was a grad- uate of Pennsylvania University and saw service as a captain in the Black Hawk war in 1832. In 1839, he was a partner of Dr. Volney C. Dyer, of whom mention has been made. He served as city phy- sician for three years and for the next three years was one of the city aldermen. In 1855, he was elected mayor of Chicago, the only physician who in the seventy years since its incorporation has attained to that position. While thus allied with civic interests during his earlier years, he was in close touch with his profession. When the Cook County Medical Society was organized October 3, 1836, the same year of his arrival, he was elected secretary, and when, in 1850, it was re-organized and took the name of Chicago Medical Society, he was its first president. During this period Dr. Boone was also interested in educational matters and was associated with his former partner as a trustee of Garden City Institute. He was also at that time, 1853, one of the publishers of the Christian Times, then one of the leading Baptist publications in this country. In his earlier years he was a decided pro-slavery man, in strong contrast with his partner, Dr. Dyer, who was one of the most pronounced Abolitionists. He delivered a series of lectures to prove the scriptural warrant for human slavery. Such was the intensity of feeling on that subject and the difference of views that it led to a withdrawal of a portion of the members of the First, and the organization of the Second Baptist church. Notwithstanding his views concerning slavery, he was a kindly mannered man, gentle and courteous to all, of perfect integrity, hospitable as became his Southern origin, and much beloved by all who knew him. . When Chicago University was first organized under the auspices of the Baptist denomination, Dr. Boone was one of its incorporators. He was eminently a man of business affairs. As early as 1837, he was the secretary of the banking institution known as the Chicago Fire and Marine Insurance Company, and in
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1852 was the president of the Merchants and Mechanics Bank of Chicago. At the age of sixty years, Dr. Boone relinquished medical practice and became extensively engaged in real estate and insurance business, in which he was largely successful. His benefactions were many and unostentatious. He is said to have contributed $100,000 to one religious organization. He passed peacefully to rest, sur- rounded by a devoted family, in 1884, aged seventy-four years.
Dr. Brainard, whose ancestral record dates back to the immigrant from England of the same name, who settled in Haddam, Connecti- DR. DANIEL BRAINARD. cut, in 1662, was born in Oneida county, New York, in 1812. He came to manhood with the development of a fine physique and a commanding presence, at once inspiring respect. He was a farmer's son and trained after the old New England fashion by the parents of whom he might be justly proud. During his school days, and while pur- suing his academic studies, he was noted for the exhaustive manner in which he pursued his investigations. In fact this was character- istic of him through life. As a result he was remarkably varied in his attainments. While pursuing the study of medicine he found time to deliver a course of scientific lectures at Fairfield, New York. Also within his chosen field of study, two years after graduation, he delivered a course of lectures on anatomy and physiology in Oneida Institute. He studied at Rome, Whitesborough and in New York City and graduated at Jefferson Medical College in 1834. During the following year he was engaged in practice in Whitesborough, New York, but as the tide of immigration towards the west was strongly set, he determined to breast the vicissitudes of pioneer life and came to Chicago in the autumn of 1835. From that day to the date of his death, although achieving an international reputation, he continued to make Chicago his home. Though he had located at what was then the extreme border of civilization, his firm determina- tion was to maintain close relations with all that was best in his profession. He foresaw that one of the needs of the mighty tide of emigrants so rapidly peopling the great northwest would be a medical college, in close proximity to their home, where the sons of these hardy pioneers might be thoroughly trained for medical prac- tice. As early as the winter of 1836-37, he outlined his project to Dr. Goodhue, then one of the leading practitioners in the village,
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later located in Rockford, who heartily joined him in the consumma- tion of this purpose. He justly aspired to be a leader in his profes- sion and to found a college which both at home and abroad, should command respect. He determined, though at pecuniary loss, for the time being, to avail himself of opportunities for further medical and surgical research the best which the world afforded. In 1839, he went to Paris, where he spent two full years in close relation with those who as physicians and surgeons had received world-wide repu- tations. On his return he delivered a course of lectures in St. Louis, still having in mind the founding of a medical college in Chicago. In 1843, that purpose was fulfilled, and such was the profound respect that Dr. Brainard entertained for his old preceptor, Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, that he gave to the new organization the name of Rush Medical College. A brief history of the college will be given later. In 1852, Dr. Brainard again visited Paris, and having gained permission to pursue original investigation in Le Jardin des Plantes, he made an extensive series of experiments, noting the effects of woora and other poisons upon wounds inflicted upon reptiles placed at his command. While there he was made an honorary member of leading French societies, and also the Medical Society of Geneva, Switzerland. In 1854, he obtained the prize offered by the American Medical Association for his treatise on "Ununited Fractures," a paper which was translated into most of the leading foreign journals. In the further prosecution of his inves- tigations, and for the completion of his works designed for publica- tion, now well advanced, Dr. Brainard was contemplating a third visit to Europe in the near future. But while in the full maturity of his years, and in the midst of splendid achievements, his life was suddenly cut short. At the early age of fifty-six years he died of cholera in Chicago on the tenth day of October, 1866. Thousands of graduates from Rush Medical College, scattered world wide, unite to venerate the name of Daniel Brainard.
Dr. Blaney was born in Newcastle, Maryland, in 1820. He graduated at Princeton, New Jersey, when eighteen years old, and
DR. JAMES V. at the early age of twenty-one received his medical
diploma from Jefferson Medical College. It was
BLANEY. his rare privilege to be a pupil of Professor Henry, so long and so favorably known in connection with the Smithsonian
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Institute. Though an inviting field was at his command he early determined to try his fortune in what was then termed "The Western Frontier." In 1842, he visited St. Louis, and for a brief time was in the government employ at Jefferson barracks. Later in the year he went to St. Paul. In 1843, when the faculty of Rush Medical College was organized, he was invited to occupy the chair of chemistry and materia medica, and from that time forward, Chicago was his home. From the first he was regarded as one of the most popular lecturers and was an especial favorite with medical students. He also engaged in the practice of medicine and soon held a position second to none in the city. His testimony in the celebrated Green trial, and the dem- onstrations there made before the jury, were such as to gain for him a national reputation as a chemical expert. As a literary man he stood in the front rank of his profession, and had the honor of con- ducting as editing chief the Illinois and Indiana Medical Journal, the first medical periodical published in this section of the west. He was one of the founders of the Cook County Medical Society, and one of its delegates to the Springfield convention in 1850, which resulted in the formation of the Illinois State Medical Society. For several years he served as its treasurer, and later was its president. At the outbreak of the Civil war, Dr. Blaney tendered his services to the Department of the Union Army, and was soon assigned to the important position of medical director and medical inspector at Fort- ress Monroe. Such was his power of discrimination and such his excellent judgment in matters of appointment that he was soon regarded as one of the most important officers connected with the medical department in the army. In 1864 he was made medical purvevor and stationed at Chicago, in which position army stores, the value of which was counted by millions, passed under his super- vision, and the fidelity with which he executed the trust won for him special commendation by the government and he was given the rank of lieutenant colonel. At the conclusion of the war he resumed his former position in the faculty of Rush Medical College and when, by reason of the sudden death of President Brainard, the presidency of the college was vacated, he was unanimously chosen for that posi- tion. The highest honor within the gift of the Masonic fraternity came to him wtihout solicitation. Personally Dr. Blaney rarely had his equal as an accomplished gentleman. As a conversationalist he
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was at once brilliant and always instructive. On the platform he was a most attractive speaker, and his addresses on public occasions won for him the admiration of his fellows. When the corner stone of the old Chicago University was to be laid with Masonic cere- monies, by common consent Dr. Blaney was the orator. Such was the strenuous life he led in connection with his public duties that his healthı gradually failed. He was obliged to resign the presidency of the college, and deeply to the regret of his patients, compelled to relinquish his medical practice. During his active years his services had been valuable in many ways, and in the formative period of the city just such men were especially needed. He was not only active in organizing and building up medical societies but also was one of the founders of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, the Microscopical Society of Chicago and a specially active member of the Chicago Historical Society, to all of which he made important contributions. In 1876, he passed peacefully to his rest at his Chicago home, one of Chicago's most cherished citizens.
Dr. William B. Herrick, a native of Maine, was born at Durham, in 1813. He received his literary education at Gorham Academy,
DR. WILLIAM and spent several years in teaching. He received
the medical degree from Dartmouth College in
B. HERRICK. 1836. He had early determined to make his home in the west, and in 1837 settled in Louisville, Kentucky. During his residence there he was connected with the Louisville Medical College. In 1839 he removed to Hillsborough, Illinois. The following year he was married to Miss Martha J. Seward, daughter of John B. Seward, one of the prominent pioneers and a near relative of the Hon. Wm. H. Seward. Dr. Herrick remained in medical practice in Hillsborough four years, when he accepted the chair of anatomy · in Rush Medical College, and came to Chicago in 1844. Two years later he was enrolled as assistant surgeon in the first company of Illinois volunteers and saw much active service in the Mexican war. He served as surgeon-in-chief at Buena Vista and later had charge of the hospital at Saltillo. He was compelled to resign this position by reason of health and returned to medical practice in Chicago and to his chair in the college. Though never restored to his former health Dr. Herrick was able to meet the requirements of a very extensive practice and of a large social acquaintance. He was active
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in the support of the local medical societies and editor of the North- western Medical Journal. When a convention was called to meet at Springfield in June, 1850, Dr. Herrick and Dr. Blaney were appointed to represent the Cook County Medical Society, and as there was at that time no railroad communication with Springfield the journey was performed on horseback. At that convention the State Society was organized and Dr. Herrick had the honor of being its first presi- dent. During those years Dr. Herrick was one of the most promi- nent and popular members of the Masonic fraternity, being past master of Oriental Lodge, a member of Apollo Commandery, and grand past master of the Grand Lodge of Masons of Illinois. Suf- fering gradually but increasingly from spinal paresis, Dr. Herrick was obliged to relinquish practice and retire from active life in 1857. He had the undoubted sympathy of a host of ardent friends and his retirement was a serious loss to the medical profession. He returned to his native state with the hope that in his old home beside the sea he might yet improve, but the hope was vain. The insidious disease through eight long years never relinquished its hold. Bravely he bore his sufferings, tenderly he was cared for, and on the last day of the year 1865 he entered into rest, aged fifty-two years.
Dr. Evans, the founder of Evanston and of the Northwestern University, was born in Waynesville, Indiana, March 9, 1814. He DR. JOHN EVANS. graduated at the Cincinnati Medical College in 1838. He came to Chicago in 1848, was appointed Professor of Obstetrics in 1849, and held that position until 1855. Through the ministration of Bishop Simpson, he was led to unite with the Methodist Episcopal church, and became a most influential man in that denomination. It was he who in con- nection with Bishop Simpson first selected a location for the North- western University, and for him, when the site was selected, the place was named Evanston, and when the institution was organized, he was its first president, and to it he made liberal contributions. We are indebted to him also for the inauguration of the Chicago high school. For several years he served as editor of the Northwestern Medical and Surgical Journal. He was also active in political affairs and was one of the delegates to the Republican convention which nom- inated Lincoln for the presidency in 1860. He was also actively engaged in railroad enterprises and was largely instrumental in secur-
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ing the right of way for the entrance of the Pennsylvania Central Railroad into Chicago, and also in the building of the Chicago & Ft. Wayne Railroad. He retired from medical practice in 1855 and devoted himself to extended real estate and business enterprises. President Lincoln appointed him governor of Colorado in 1862 and at the first session of the Colorado legislature he was elected United States senator. He was largely instrumental in the building up of the new city of Denver, which had become his permanent home, and where he died July 3, 1897, aged eighty-three years.
Perhaps no other man of the medical profession has been more widely known or more highly honored than was Dr. Davis. Probably no one exerted a like influence in bringing into inti-
DR. NATHAN S. DAVIS. mate relation and fraternal fellowship the leading members of the medical profession in this country. The powerful organization known as the American Medical Associa- tion has done more to secure this result than all other influences com- bined, and to him as to no other it is indebted for its organization and successful development. It would require a volume to give adequate expression to the work which he accomplished. Our limits only permit a brief outline of his life and labors.
He was born in Chenango county, New York, in 1817. Until he was sixteen years old he labored on his father's farm and had the educational advantages of the common district school. Although the youngest of seven children, such was his love of books that he was permitted to attend the Cazenovia Academy, then in the zenith of its prosperity, and from which so many eminent men entered public life. He commenced the study of medicine at the early age of seventeen years under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Clark, one of the most prominent physicians in his native county. Ile attended his first course of lectures at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City during the winter of 1834-35. In the spring of '35 he registered with Dr. Thomas Jackson, one of the leading physicians in Binghamton, New York, and graduated at Fairfield in 1837, when he was not yet twenty-one years old. The same year he opened an office in Binghamton and in 1838 was happily married to Miss Anna Maria, daughter of Hon. John Parker of Vienna, New York. Hle was soon elected a member of Brown County Medical Society, and was an officer continuously in that organization until he removed from
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the county. In 1842 he was appointed to represent the county in the New York State Medical Society and took his seat in that body in Albany in February, 1844. At this first meeting with the state society he offered a series of resolutions having for their object the securing of a higher standard of medical education, and so ably did he advo- cate that at the next annual meeting, in 1845, the following resolution presented by him was adopted, to wit : "Resolved, That the New York Medical Society earnestly recommend a national convention of dele- gates from medical societies and colleges in the whole Union to con- vene in the city of New York on the first Tuesday in May, 1846, for the purpose of adopting some concerted action on the subject set forth in the preamble." The resolution was adopted, and a committee appointed to carry out the purpose of the resolution, of which Dr. Davis was made chairman. As the result of extended correspon- dence, a large and influential meeting was held in New York City in 1846 representing nearly every state in the Union. At this meeting committees were appointed to perfect a permanent organization. The meeting adjourned to meet in Philadelphia the following year. At that meeting the committees reported, plans were duly perfected, and the American Medical Association was organized. By reason of the arduous labors in organization and later development, by common consent Dr. Davis has been recognized as the "father" of the associa- tion. In 1847 he removed from Binghamton to New York City and became connected with the College of Physicians and Surgeons. While thus connected and also engaged in private practice, he still found time to edit the medical journal called The Analyist. In 1849 he accepted a call to the chair of physiology and general pathology in Rush Medical College, and came to reside in Chicago in the fall of that year.
Of his relations with Mercy Hospital from its founding in 1850, until his retirement in 1890, a period of forty years, further mention will be made when speaking of that institution. At the close of his first course of lectures in Rush Medical College he was transferred to the chair of principles and practice of medicine and of clinical medi- cine. He occupied this position for ten years. When the medical de- partment of Lind University was organized in 1859 he resigned to accept the like position in that institution. The reasons for this change are fully set forth in the history of the Lind University and need not
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be recited here. Though not present at the organization of the Illinois State Medical Society at Springfield in 1850, he was elected a miem ber at that time, and rarely through all the successive years until the time of his death was he absent from its annual meetings. He was elected its president in 1855, and for twelve consecutive years served as its secretary. Whether in local, state or national society. His labors were alike conspicuous and helpful. He wickled the pen of a reply writer, and his productions were able, terse and convincing. In 1855 he had become the leading editor of the Chicago Medical Journal, and held that position until 1859. In 1860 he began the publication of a new journal named the Medical Examiner, and continuel the same until 1873, when it became the property of the Medical Publication Society and was merged with the Chicago Medical Journal with the two names united.
When in 1853 it was determined by the American Medical Asso- ciation to journalize its transactions and issue them weekly. Dr. Davis was by common consent chosen editor of the journal. He gave to it a vast amount of personal attention until it was successfully and per- manently established. At the eighth International Medical Congress held in Copenhagen in 1884, it was voted to hold its next session in Washington, District of Columbia, in 1887. In the preparation for the meeting the arduous work of the general secretary rested upon Dr. Davis. While in the midst of the labors incident to this respon sible position, Prof. Austin Flint, Sr., the president-elect of the com- ing congress, suddenly died, and Dr. Davis was at once called to that position. In the furtherance of its interests he visited England and held extended correspondence with most of the principal men in Eu- rope who were specially interested in the congress. The congress at Washington was an eminent success. Dr. Davis presided over its deliberations with conspicuous ability.
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