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G. W. H. Kemper.
1
A MEDICAL HISTORY
STATE OF INDIAN :
BY G. W. H. KEMPER, M.D.
IMA TRAELD
AMERICAN MEDICAL AMORTIES PES
1411
It. Kemper . .
A MEDICAL HISTORY
OF THE
STATE OF INDIANA
BY G. W. H. KEMPER, M.D.
ILLUSTRATED
CHICAGO, ILL. AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION PRESS
1911
-
HARVARD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH LIBRARY Bv Exchange 19 AUG1933 Long Island College of Medicine Library A I . F. 1911 . 1
Copyright,. 1911 by G. W. H. Kemper, M.D. Muncie. Indiana
TO THE PHYSICIANS OF INDIANA WHOM I HAVE KNOWN AND TO THOSE I KNOW THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR
G. W. H. K.
FOREWORD.
This volume is a collection of the several articles published in The Journal of the Indiana State Medical Association during the years 1909 and 1910 and the earlier months of 1911, and entitled "Sketches of the Medical History of Indiana." In the present form the articles have been revised, mistakes corrected and new his- torical matter added, thus bringing the work up to a later date. The encouragement I have received from numerous readers has stimulated me to reproduce the results of my labor in a more permanent form.
Two years and a half ago, at the solicitation of friends, I began the task of preparing and writing the articles, and I have bestowed time. patience and care upon them. Biographical sketches are confined to deceased physicians ; the living are mentioned only in connection with historical matters.
I became a member of the State Medical Society in 1867, and have been a faithful attend- ant at the sessions of that body ever since. I knew personally many of the founders of the Society. Dr. W. H. Wishard, who is still living and was present at the state medical convention in 1849, has been a personal friend since 1862, when I first met him on the battle field of Shiloh, I was associated with Drs. Bobbs, Mears, Parvin, Field, Hibberd and many others who were active members of the profession fifty years ago-men
viii
FOREWORD.
who were instrumental in elevating the standard of medicine in Indiana, as well as laying the foundation of our present State Medical Asso- ciation.
These men, all save one, have passed away, and I have lived to make the acquaintance of a new generation of physicians. My service as chair- man of the Committee on Necrology gave me a knowledge of the names of deceased members. and the preparation of an "Index of the Trans- actions of the State Society from 1849 to 1900" gave me an acquaintance with medical men and medical articles in those volumes.
The time seems opportune for a medical his- tory of Indiana. In 1916 our state will be 100 years old, and the century has produced no medi- cal history. Some one ought to produce such a work; it seems fitting that I should undertake the task.
While the articles were appearing in the Jour- nal, a few typographical errors escaped detec- tion; these have generally been corrected. Sev- enty-five or sixty years ago it was quite common to give only the surname, or initial letter of christian name, of individuals when used in print. This was common in the Transactions. After considerable search, I have been able to supply nearly all of the deficient names. I wish especially to call attention to the correctness and completeness of names in the index.
I pride myself on the correctness of dates and references. Reference to the Transactions, med- ical journals and books have been verified by referring to the original articles, and the proofs
.
:
ix
FOREWORD.
repeatedly read by copy. This has required time and much care, but I feel a satisfaction in know- ing that my work will be appreciated by the reader seeking information. In spite of all my precaution a few insignificant errors may have escaped detection. If any are found I shall greatly regret it.
My preference has been to first honor the ear- lier physicians of Indiana, and secure knowledge of them while their relatives and friends are vet living.
A few pictures of honored physicians have been inserted.
I wish here to express my thanks to all who have aided me in my work. I dare not begin to name the individuals. Generally, every request for information has been cheerfully complied with ; a few failed to respond.
I lay no claim to perfection in my work; I wish it was a better book. I have toiled at my task in season and out of season. My professional brethren will know how to sympathize with me. And while the world is disposed to be indifferent to others' burdens, it may soften criticism to know-if I may be pardoned for comparing a small affair to a large one-as the great Dr. Johnson said of his dictionary, "that it was writ- ten, not in the soft obscurities of retirement or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amid inconvenience and distraction."
G. W. H. KEMPER. Muncie, Ind., June 1, 1911.
INTRODUCTION.
"He took the suffering human race; He read each wound-each weakness clear -- And struck his finger on the place And said, "Thou ailest here-and here.'" -MATTHEW ARNOLD.
"Why not idealize the doctor some?" is the key-note of the biography of Indiana physicians presented to his professional confrères by Dr. Kemper in this volume. The writer has a genius for history, and as the first century of our State's existence is drawing to a close, it is eminently proper that Dr. Kemper should now assume the task, and write a medical history of Indiana. His life has happily fallen in the greatest era of devel- opment and progress known to man. Most of this he has seen and part of it he has been. He has brought to his work an infinite faith and a reverent hope, and surely the mind which has received so much has trusted the Power by which it has worked and lived. His threescore and ten years have seen civilization extend over the great- est and fairest valley of the world. He has seen his country rent with strife, and. following his
DR. ALEMBERT WINTHROP BRAYTON, of Indianapolis, so well known to the physicians of this state, is thoroughly conversant with med- ical journalism, is in touch with his- torical matters and comprehends the needs of our profession second to no other person. At my request he con- tributes an introductory chapter to this volume .- G.W.H.K.
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INTRODUCTION.
duty and his will, he has taken a worthy part in the conflict, both as soldier and as surgeon, in the faith that the destiny of organized nature and of human institutions is alike amelioration and bet- terment. For the medical profession, more than any other, imparts to its votaries a reverence and wisdom born of thought and knowledge, inspiring both cheerfulness and hope.
The life of any man rightly and courageously conducted is the true romance. To the soldier- surgeons of our great national struggle such a life in its preparation, in its fulfilment and in its aftermath of experiences, memories and reveries, must have yielded the imagination a higher joy than any fiction. But such a life does not con- tent itself with dreams and fancies; it tends to reason and deduction, to the orderly considera- tion of the things done and the personality of the doers, and their relation to the present and the future as well as the past, and so arises the recording of history and biography. Thus, we take it, have naturally developed these "Sketches of the Medical History of Indiana," by Dr. Kemper.
And to this inherent taste and sense exercised through a half century of writing and note-tak- ing, of wide acquaintance, combined with great geniality of nature and the possession of an un- usual memory for facts and faces, and a wise foresight, is due the collection of the material for the present work. The author has shown in the book throughout, the genius for studious research in the collection and arrangement of details; the patience which goes on like the stars, unhasting and unresting.
.
xiii
INTRODUCTION.
This work of Dr. Kemper's, therefore, is not a series of camp-fire stories or the exaggerated fan- cies of the old soldier "who shoulders his crutch and shows how fields were won." It is a serious consideration of the progress of medicine in Indi- ana from the time the Northwest Territory was wrested from the British in 1799, to the present. The author has consulted histories of the early days; he has collected and edited the historical papers of Dr. Hubbard M. Smith of Vincennes- the town where the first medical society of the Territories was organized, in 1817. In this book may be read the medical history of a number of the cities and counties of Indiana, contributed by distinguished deceased and living physicians of the state.
Dr. Kemper has given us just and true biog- raphies of most of those of our confrères who have gone to their eternal reward. Here a fine discrimination was required and has been exer- cised. The early physicians, those who rendered notable service in medicine and surgery or in education, have received due measure of honor. It may be well doubted if any sister State has had or will have so just and complete a history of its departed physicians as Dr. Kemper has given in his stories of our honored dead. The reports began in 1879 by Drs. J. R. Beck and James F, Hibberd of the Section on Necrology, and their continuation in later years by Dr. Kemper in the State Society "Transactions," have made this part of the work more perfect than usual in such lists. The records were usually written by per- sonal friends of the deceased, or the secretary of
xiv
INTRODUCTION.
the County Society, and often threw side-lights on local history and environment.
With the passing of the old and stately annual volume of the "Transactions," and the substitu- tion therefor of a monthly medical journal, there were losses as well as gains. It is doubtful if a single complete file of The Journal of the Indiana State Medical Association exists in Indianapolis outside those of the City and State Libraries. The writer knows of no others. Therefore, the members have no permanent mailing list or other commensurate means of knowing who are the members of the State Society. There are no longer adequate obituaries ; the Society evidently has no time to stop and gather up its dead. The present writer believes that The Journal of the Indiana State Medical Association has better justified its being by the publication of Dr. Kemper's "Sketches of the Medical History of Indiana" than by any other work it has accom- plished.
Purely medical science will find expression for itself; it cannot be suppressed. The really valuable papers and discussions of any State will continue to appear in the great weekly journals of the country, as they are now doing. But the things of the heart and the life, those which have to do with the social nature of man in his own day and generation-the records of love and service for the living and respect and honor for the dead, are not likely to be sympa- thetically recorded by journals devoted to organi- zation and centralization.
Dr. Kemper's work appeals to our sense and knowledge of the old love and loyalty which develops in the hearts and homes of those who
XV
INTRODUCTION.
have grown up together; who in medical work have developed their own rules and regulations of social life and government in democratic assem- blies ; who elect their own officers and conduct their own business and with whom organization is a means rather than an end. For the greatest enemy of government is government itself, and it becomes dangerous and anarchical to the extent that it is centralized and organized as an object in itself or for those who administer it rather than for those who formed it and for whose peace and happiness it was established.
No introduction to Dr. Kemper's book would be complete without some brief notes of his biog- raphy and a just emphasis upon his life-long interest and success in the different fields of obstetrics, medicine and surgery. His medical life has covered a period of fifty years. His opportunity was great, as the sketch of his life here given shows. Born in Rush County, Dec. 16, 1839, he was educated in the common schools and for two years in a country printing office. He began the study of medicine with Dr. John W. Moodey of Greensburg in his twenty-first year. He had read but a few weeks when Gov- ernor Morton called for 6,000 troops from Indi- ana to assemble at Indianapolis. Dr. Kemper enlisted and served as a private in the Seventh Regiment of Indiana Volunteers during the three months' service, and had the distinction of being present at the first battle of the Civil War - Philippi, W. Va. On Sept. 25, 1861, he reenlisted in the Seventeenth Indiana Volunteers as hospital steward, and was promoted to the rank of assistant surgeon of the same regiment
xvi
INTRODUCTION.
- and this prior to his graduation - a position he filled until the expiration of his three years' enlistment. He attended a course of lectures at the University of Michigan during the session of 1864-65, and went from that institution to a spring course at the Long Island College Hos- pital of Brooklyn, N. Y., where he graduated in June, 1865. The same year he located in Mun- cie, his present home, only being absent from general practice when traveling in Europe and Asia. He spent some time in the Mediterranean countries, being especially attracted to Egypt and Palestine. He served five years as coroner of Delaware County, and for over thirty years as examining surgeon for pensions. He has been treasurer and president of the Indiana State Medical Society, professor of the history of medicine in the Indiana Medical College, and in the Medical School of Indiana University.
Under all these varying functions he has kept his eye single to the practical applications of his art in the healing and prevention of disease and injury, and incidentally prepared himself to be the historian of the Indiana medical profession. He is the ideal representative of the definition of the physician given by Hippocrates: "The good man skilled in healing."
At no time in his long career has Dr. Kemper permitted his talent to lie buried, nor his light hidden. He has contributed more than fifty elaborate articles to medical journals and our state medical society, relating to medicine, sur- gery and obstetrics. In the. State Transactions for 1901 he furnished a complete index of all
1
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1
xvii
INTRODUCTION.
the transactions from 1849 to 1900. In 1897 he published a booklet entitled "Uses of Suffering," and in 1905 another entitled "The World's Anat- omists."
Dr. Kemper was the first to report a case of mycetoma in the United States; the "madura foot," or "fungus foot of India," which is caused by a growth allied to the ray fungus of the more common disease, actinomycosis hominis (Ameri- can Practitioner, Vol. xiv, p. 129). This dis- covery was made by .Dr. Kemper more than twenty years before the widespread appearance of blastomycosis, spirochotrosis, and actinomy- cosis through the United States was generally recognized, although cases of these diseases are few in number and their occurrence not infre- quently overlooked. Dr. Kemper's case had all the clinical indications of the disease in question, and there is no reasonable doubt of its pathology as determined and published in his report.
He has always taken a great interest in the subject of Cesarean section. His recent paper before the State Medical Association at the Fort Wayne meeting in September. 1910, is probably the only paper extant which gives a concise and yet complete account of every Cesarean operation performed in any single state of the Union. This essay, published in the April, 1911, issue of The Journal of the Indiana State Medical Associa- tion, is entitled "A Plea for the Cesarean Opera- tion, Based on a Report of Fifty-Three Cases Per- formed in Indiana."
If the teachings and experience of Dr. Kemper could have been resorted to in earlier years,
xviii
INTRODUCTION.
Cesarean section might not have been left for so long a period to outside towns and county-seat surgeons. Commenting on Dr. Kemper's paper, Dr. Walker Schell no doubt expressed the senti- ment of the society when he said in his discus- sion : "This society feels very grateful to Dr. Kemper for his able paper, for the interest he has shown in Indiana medicine in preserving this history. Certainly we ought to be proud that a man of his years should grow old so gracefully. May God preserve him long in our midst !"
In his sympathetic note on Dr. John S. Bobbs, in these sketches, Dr. Kemper states that "the crowning glory of Dr. Bobbs' professional life is his well-earned reputation as the Founder of Cholecystotomy."
This operation was performed June 15, 1867, in a rented room over a drug store, now the site of the Indianapolis Commercial Club. A brass tablet, similar in scope to that commemorating Abraham Lincoln in the south wall of the Clay- pool Hotel, should be set in its front by the state society, in commemoration of Dr. Bobbs .*
An article of some seventeen pages by Dr. Kemper, with the title "Affections of the Gall Bladder Tending to Result in Cutaneous Biliary Fistula," was read before the Indiana State Med- ical Society May 20, 1879, and was published in the Transactions for the same year, on page 120. This notable paper of some 10,000 words,
* The patient, Mrs. Z. Burnsworth, is still residing at McCordsville, Ind. On June 12, 1909, she was visited at her home by Sir Alexander R. Simpson, for thirty-five years professor of midwifery and diseases of women in the Uni- versity of Edinburg, in company with Drs. O. G. Pfaff, A. C. Kimberlin and A. W. Brayton.
xix
INTRODUCTION.
and an extract from a paper by Dr. Martin B. Tinker, in the Johns Hopkins Bulletin, August, 1901 - the latter republished in the Indiana Medical Journal, October, 1899 - were mainly instrumental in bringing the Bobbs case before the medical world.
The results of Dr. Kemper's work and ripe scholarship as embodied in these sketches have been to set the history of our profession in Indi- ana forever beyond the reach of moth and rust. Oblivion cannot claim them; they cannot be alienated. But the soldiers and the soldier-sur- geons of the Mexican and Civil Wars - those who fell in the days of strife, and those who sur- vived for a time, and with whose laurels it is fitting to place not only the wreath but the sword - have been forever commemorated by Dr. Kemper. For to his lot fell the duty and privi- lege of serving our common country over three years in the Civil War, and afterward to have been for over forty-five years in peaceful practice.
The days and years of peace are not ignoble, not without courage and honorable victories. The highest aims of social and political life are to secure the brotherhood of man, the unity of nations, and the peace of the world. To these ends our profession has devoted itself in both times of peace and times of war. But more to the soldier-physicians than to the others who have gone beyond the sound of our transient voices, do we feel that it was given to uphold the ideals of liberty as well as of charity and healing, which by their triumphs have united in the bonds of peace, knowledge, good will, common friend-
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INTRODUCTION.
ship and prosperity all the sections of our coun- try. These he has honored, as is just and fitting, with special mention and remembrance.
Certainly all Indiana physicians will be inter- ested in the chapter devoted to the formation and growth of the Indiana State Medical Society and Association and the lists of its early members. A chapter on medical legislation in the state, the history of the State Health Board, the record of the half-dozen Indiana physicians who served in the Mexican War, and the long lists of those who served as soldiers or surgeons in the Civil War, in the Spanish-American War, and in the regular Army and Navy, are features which will add to the value of Dr. Kemper's work as the years go on.
Dr. Kemper has silently, persistently and almost unconsciously in these sketches built him- self a monument more durable than tablets of brass or kingly pyramids of stone. We may say in words of the fullest assurance that his work reflects accurately the whole span of his profes- sion in the best half century of medical progress, and that as a simple and truthful tale of his own work and that of his associates, this book will often be referred to in the future. Later histo- rians of our Indiana profession will find in these sketches perennial youth and freshness and a uni- versal appeal. They have local color and are busied with local concerns, but at the same time reflect so many of the great features of medical progress that they will take an honored place with allied books in the history of our profession. Gibbons' "Decline and Fall of the Roman
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INTRODUCTION.
Empire" was characterized by Carlyle in a chance remark to Emerson as a splendid bridge from the old world to the new. And so these sketches of Dr. Kemper's may be regarded as a section of the great arch which unites the medicine of the early fathers with that of the present century.
ALEMBERT W. BRAYTON, M.D.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I Introductory to the Medical History of Indiana, p. 1. CHAPTER II Early Medical History of Vincennes, p. 4.
CHAPTER III Medicine in the Northwestern Territory; A Contribution to the Early Medical History of Indiana, p. 18.
CHAPTER IV Early Medical History of Allen County, p. 24. CHAPTER V Medical Men in the Early Days of Indianapolis, p. 31. Early Medical History of Eastern Indiana, p. 33.
CHAPTER VI Medical Reminiscences of Madison, p. 42. Early State Medical Society, p. 42. Early Surgery of Indiana, p. 45.
CHAPTER VII Early State Medical Society, p. 48. Historical Notes of Indianapolis, p. 50. The Medical College at Laporte, p. 52.
CHAPTER VIII
Early Medical History of Terre Haute, p. 56. Proceed- ings of the First Medical District Society (Vincen- nes), p. 59. Medical Societies: Copy from Original Proceedings of the First Medical District Society, p. 63. False Joint, by D. L. S. Shuler, p. 66.
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