USA > Indiana > Johnson County > History of Johnson County, Indiana > Part 48
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Bleeding was universally practiced by the people in the beginning of febrile attacks, followed by a severe emetic and cathartic. As an emetic, lobelia, a plant that grew in the woods and fields, was considered quite the most effective agent to be had. There was a shrub called prickly sumach that, in the opinion of the pioneers. was effective either as an emetic or a cathartic, . according to the manner of its preparation. If an emetic effect was desired the roots were uncovered as they grew and the bark thus gathered was pre- pared and given to the patient, and the results were said to be most prompt and thorough.
Despite the widespread skill in the preparation of these botanic remedies, the malignancy of the malarial fevers showed no abatement. During the sickly season people died by scores, and the land was filled with mourning. "The sick therefore readily fell in with any promised relief. Sappington's pills and
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others with big names, heralded by a long host of curative virtues, found a ready sale. Against the walls of every cabin, suspended from nails, hung two or three dozen small bottles already emptied of their contents, but with little if any realization to the sick of the promised relief.". Charms and amulets and remedies the most absurd were sometimes resorted to as means of arresting the progress of the terrible disease. But the mystic power of charms and amulets, the empiric mixtures of experimenting pioneers, the loudly vaunted nostrums of designing quacks, and the time-tried remedies of honest medical practitioners were alike of no avail. Changeless and hopeless, the pestilence held sway through all the long and weary days of summer. Only when the storms of autumn had swept away, with breezes of delicious freshness, the pestilent air of summer; only when the beneficent genius of the frost had touched the woods with flame, and sealed the pools with ice, could the afflicted people hope for health and life. At last, when the kindly frost had come, bringing the benediction of health; when the sad, despairing season of sickness, like a gloomy nightmare, had passed away, the stricken ones came forth again, bearing the aspect of sorrow for the dead, or with pale faces and forms wasted in their long struggle with disease.
The sick in those days lacked many of the comforts that assuage the suffering of their descendants in affliction. There was then no quiet, restful spare room where the weary sufferer could stretch his aching limbs in peace. Often there was but one room to the house, and the sick were kept where the rest of the family lived and slept, in the room where the meals were cooked before the fire and where the babies played in noisy glee. There were no soft air cushions for the tired back, no ice-caps for the aching head, no cooling drinks nor ice to quench the burning thirst, and no chloral hydrate to woo the sweet forgetfulness of sleep. Chicken broth was a favorite invalid food. Water, when tolerated at all, was carried from some nearby spring and was drunk from a gourd. Some of the remedies used to combat malaria have been given. The remedies used in other diseases were fully as various and interesting. Mullein was one of the favorite remedies of our forefathers. An infusion made of the seeds and leaves was used as an expectorant in coughs and bronchial affections and as a demulcent and astringent in the sum- mer diarrhoeas of children, and in the epidemics of dysentery that were so fatal in those times.
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A salve was made of poplar blossoms for the healing of wounds. The blossoms as they fell were gathered and put into an earthen jar. Over them hot lard was poured and the resulting salve was used to dress cuts and
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wounds that were sometimes inflicted by the woodman's ax. Hemorrhage from such wounds was a serious matter and the pioneers attempted its con- trol in various ways. Sometimes spider's web, gathered from grimy rafters and ceilings, and filled with the accumulated dust of months, was bound over the gaping wound, or it was filled with soot gathered from the black throat of the big chimneys of the time, or sugar or strong soft soap was used for a like purpose. If a "harmless necessary cat" of sable hue chanced to wander near. some sufferer from freshly inflicted wounds he was promptly sacrified to Aesculapius, for the pioneers believed that a libation of black cat's blood poured upon a recent wound was an offering of greatest efficacy, insuring it thenceforth the watchful care of all the powers that heal, and guarding it from all danger of erysipelas or any kindred ill. The ax or edged tool with which the wound had been inflicted was at once annointed with hog's lard and carefully guarded in the chimney corner, for if a bit of rust perchance through carelessness should gather on the blade, dire consequences to the patient's life were almost sure to follow.
Puff balls, a kind of fungus growth found in the woods, were used to staunch bleeding wounds and their contents were sometimes snuffed up the nostrils in cases of obstinate nose-bleed. A metallic door key suspended down the back from a string around the neck was reputed to have stopped cases of nose-bleed when all else had failed.
Buckeyes were carried in the pockets as a safe-guard against rheumatism. If a case of rheumatism assumed a chronic form. an Irish potato was also carried in the pocket in addition to the buckeye. If faithfully carried until it shriveled and turned black in the pocket, it was said that no case of rheuma- tism was ever known to have such idiotic obstinacy as to resist the double charm.
In the good old times babies were in every household in the land. Though sired by lusty manhood and though nourished at maternal bosoms that were blessed with perfect health, yet these tender buds, despite their rich heritage of health, suffered then, even as babies suffer now, with all the trying ills of teething. Young mothers that felt for the first time the divine joy of motherhood, who felt not only its raptures, but its tremulous anxieties and ceaseless cares as well, were at a loss how best to guide the tender feet along the perilous pathway of the first few months of life. But experienced matrons, with their broods of eight or ten, were all aware that if a mole's foot were dried and suspended from a string about the cherub's neck, the teeth- ing age was at once bereft of all its terrors, and in the homes where such'
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potent charms were used the darlings' lives were henceforth happy with the smiles and sleep of perfect health and peace.
Frogs have always suffered at the hands of vivisectors and experimenters for the good of man. Nor did they escape in grandfather's time, for he be- lieved there was no remedy so efficacious to relieve a painful case of quinsy as a bull-frog bound upon the sufferer's throat until the frog was dead. People believed these things with implicit, childish faith. They could not much be blamed in days when there were no books nor schools, and when papers never found their way into the woods.
Letters rarely written traveled slowly by stage or pony, across bridgeless rivers and over roads of bottomless mud. Sometimes a month elapsed before people in the wilds of Indiana heard of the death of relatives only a hundred miles away.
There were but two feeble medical colleges then in existence west of the Alleghany mountains, one at Lexington, Kentucky, and one at Cincinnati, Ohio. They were but sparks of light, whose feeble rays did not far penetrate the boundless gloom. Thus deprived of skilled medical help, the people were compelled to depend upon their own meager skill for relief in sickness. Every neighborhood had its own herb doctor, and its lancet. Bleeding was a uni- versal practice. The people believed that their blood grew foul and sluggish in the dull and sedentary days of winter and that it must needs be shed like a garment when winter was gone, that in its place new blood might course with the life and joy of springtime in its current. People were bled for every ill. If a man had a chill he was bled; if a fever occurred or headache, a spell of biliousness or indigestion, an attack of dizziness, a fainting fit, or even a tooth-ache, the every-ready lancet was applied. Not only people of full and plethoric habit, with plenty of blood and a tendency to congestive troubles were bled, but those that were pale and emaciated with long continued and wasting diseases were subjected to the same ordeal. Finally, if there was nothing whatever the mater, it was still a sacred duty to be bled, that the many ailments of those days might thus be warded off.
In the year 1824, Arthur Bass came from the Carolinas and found a home in Johnson county. With memories fresh in mind of boyhood rambles. among the mountains and pine woods of his native state, he shunned the swampy regions and sought a home among the bold hills bearded with trees, that rose southward of the rapid current of Indian creek. There he lived. far from even the slender thoroughfares of travel of that day, and far from the towns where doctors later came, in a region that was often inaccessible
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from swollen streams that were treacherous with quicksand and filled in winter with floating ice. He early realized the needs of his community and provided himself with a lancet for bleeding and a turnkey for extracting teeth. Every spring, when pilgrims, pale with the ravages of malaria, wended their way over the hills to his home that they might become rid of the thick and stagnant blood that had festered in their veins since the feverish days of autumn. The well also came for their yearly bleeding and the blood that flowed at the touch of his lancet was enough to dye the Indian Creek hills as red as the slippery heights of Cemetery ridge.
Dentists were then unknown, so those that suffered the agonies of tooth- ache sought relief of Arthur Bass and his turnkey. Hervey Vories vividly remembers a visit for relief from toothache over sixty years ago. He says, "Arthur set me in a chair by the side of the house, pushed my head down against the wall and fastened on his turnkey. Then he began to wrench. I saw stars and forked lightning and heard thunder, but he never relaxed until with a great snap the roots gave way and Bass reeled back with the turnkey in his hand. He examined the results carefully and said, 'By gosh, I brung two that time.' "
In the first years of the new country, the practice of obstetrics was in- variably entrusted to the hands of midwives. Physicians at first could not be had and midwives were of necessity employed in such cases. When physi- cians did come they found the pioneer women possessing such unreasoning timidity and prejudice, and objecting so strenuously to their presence at such times, that more than twenty-five years elapsed before they succeeded in win- ning much of the obstetrical practice from the hands of midwives. In those days the woman sanctified to motherhood was an object of solicitude to all the neighborhood. When "the days were accomplished that she should be delivered" there was a gathering of the women, from far and near, regard- less of time of day or night, inclemency of weather, condition of roads, age or number of children, sickness at home, or any other thing whatever. All were asked to come and all most freely came. No social slight of the pres- ent day is half so keenly felt by women as was then failure to receive an invi- tation to the cases of this kind.
It was not an idle nor a morbid curiosity that prompted all this hurrying in haste from far and near to the bedside of a suffering woman. The pioneer women were never nervous nor morbidly curious, so their presence, at such times was due to the genuine, effusive heartiness and robustness of their sympathetic natures that prompted them to come and freely give the rich
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sympathy of their cheerful, healthful presence. Accidents rarely occurred. The women of those times, sturdiest daughters of the Kentucky and Vir- ginia hills, were the very flower of physical perfection. Like the black-eyed daughters of Israel, they were lively in labor and scarce needed even the ministrations of the midwife.
Of many midwives that flourished in the country, two were especially eminent in the Indian Creek neighborhood, Mrs. Roberts and Mrs. Titsworth. Mrs. Roberts came to the county in the earliest days. She was a woman of great energy and force of character and of most commanding presence. Like a great Amazon, she towered six feet high, and she had a face and form of masculine strength and singularity. Neither storm nor darkness, nor wild . animals had any power to daunt her courage. She was always ready for service and went gladly, in rain or snow, night or day, through the bottomless mud of forest roads or over the frozen hills of winter. When she sallied forth on her errands of mercy, mounted astride like a Rough Rider, she dashed so furiously through the woods on starless nights that all the witches of Allowaykirk could not have kept pace with her.
When physicians finally began to receive calls of necessity in such cases as baffled the meagre skill of the midwife, they encountered an air of distrust that unnerved all but the boldest spirits. They had not yet gained the respect and confidence of the people, had not yet learned the open sesame to all homes and were not accorded the cheerful welcome and co-operation that now awaits them everywhere. Instead of that, their every word and act were closely watched, and if their practices in unimportant matters failed to meet the ap- proval of the venerated midwives and old women of the communities into which they happened to be called, their reputations suffered a permanent and hopeless eclipse. Consequently they were called only in the most desperate cases.
Dr. William H. Wishard graphically describes a case that occurred in his practice as follows: "I was summoned (in the year 1843) to the bedside of a woman who had been in labor eighteen hours. The midwife had kept the grave nature of the case concealed from the friends, hoping that something would come about that she might be able to deliver the woman without the help of a physician. At last she was compelled to report the alarming symp- toms of the case, and it soon became known that professional aid was sent for, although the night was cold and a terrific snow storm was prevailing. When I arrived, I found the family living in a log cabin, fourteen by sixteen feet, and there were present to render help and sympathy twelve women, and
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four or five children, with the sick woman and her husband. We had stand- ing room only. It was custom and was considered a conscientious duty to an afflicted neighbor. To have but a half dozen present on such occasions was considered a small and select company." Dr. Wishard further says : "Should the case be one that baffled the skill of the midwife and a physician had to be sent for, the news spread with the rapidity of a prairie fire, and when he arrived the congregation was large enough for a funeral or a quarterly meet- ing. The gathering was not made up of one sex only ; the men were around on the border doing picket duty and ready for emergencies."
In the same year of 1843, Mrs. Titsworth attended the young wife of a farmer in the Indian Creek neighborhood. Mrs. Titsworth was a German woman, very fat and short of stature, with a broad, flat face. She had come to the new country in 1830, and had successfully practiced her calling until the incident we now relate. She had been called to the farmer's home early in the day, but her presence had not been attended with results. The case lingered through the day with no prospect of relief. When night came on, with lowering clouds and portents of a gathering storm, the watchers lost their courage and faith in the fat, old midwife's skill and they requested that a doctor should be summoned without more delay. Hervey Vories, a nearby neighbor, then in the strength and vigor of his first youth and a bold horse- man, was called up and sent through the wild night at break-neck speed for Dr. Ward, a young physician who some three years previously had located in the little town of Williamsburg. The town was reached, the doctor found and soon they both were on their way, riding a wild race through the wild night. They could not see each other as they galloped through the gloom. The road, the woods, the hills, the whole world and sky were swallowed up and lost in blackest night. Momentarily the trees and hills leaped from out the gloom in the dazzling brilliancy of the lightning, only to be lost again the next instant in the utter blackness of the awful night. Soon the storm came on in all its fury. The rain descended in drenching torrents, the thunder rolled, the winds howled in their wrath, and the lightning blazed in a dazzling electrical splen- dor. It seemed that angry Jove was once again abroad with thunderbolts, seeking to destroy this modern son of medicine, as in the olden times on just such night as this he struck down old Aesculapius because of his skill in bring- ing the dead to life again. But at last the house was reached in safety, when it was learned that midwife Titsworth and old midwife Nature had prevailed, and the child lay wrapped in swaddling clothes sleeping in its cradle.
Though success attended her efforts in this case. the midwife had seen
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her day. The magnificent women of the first generation had grown old. In their stead were their daughters of gentler blood and slenderer frame who lingered in the travail of birth. Fear of physicians and confidence in mid- wives alike had passed away. Women of timorous natures, when undergoing the greatest ordeal of their lives, and friends of lively sympathies grew to prefer the presence of the sturdy masculine obstetrician.
During the reign of the midwife no attention was paid to antiseptics or even to ordinary cleanliness. The clothing was changed the third day and the young mother was adjured to remain in bed nine days, but sometimes in three or four days she was up milking the cows.
One of the most extraordinary therapeutic agents of that day was to be found in the poultice that was sometimes applied to inflamed breasts after childbirth. In case of threatened abscess of the breast Mrs. Titsworth ordered a poultice applied, made of earth dug up at the kitchen door where the kitchen slops and dish water were thrown. This was made into a paste with warm water and applied to the breast in the same way that antiphlogistine is now applied. The bare mention of such a poultice made of foul smelling earth, swarming with bacteria, is enough to make Holmes and Semmelweiss and Pasteur turn in their graves ..
The time at last had come when the "herb doctors" and midwives should no longer live in peace, for physicians had begun to come. The very first of all was Dr. Robert McCaulay, a native of Edinburg, Scotland. He came from Scotland in the year 1811, found his way westward to Kentucky, where he married. In October, 1826, he came to Johnson county, Indiana, and lo- cated in the great woods five miles west of the little village of Franklin. Being a man of ability, his efforts to get practice were soon attended with success.
In July, 1827, Dr. Pierson Murphy, of Ohio, after one course of lec- tures at the Ohio Medical College. Cincinnati, Ohio, rode horseback through the woods to Johnson county, and located in Franklin, which was then a little village of six or eight log houses. Later in the same year Dr. James Ritchey came from Greensburg, Indiana, to Johnson county, and found an abiding place in the modest county seat. In the year 1828 Dr. William Woods located ten miles north of Franklin, on the Madison road, where Greenwood after- wards was built. In the year 1830. Dr. Davis located in Franklin, and Dr. Smith located in the little town of Edinburg, on the sickly banks of Blue river. In the year 1832 Dr. Aylesberry located in the wilds of Clark town- ship near the present site of Rocklane, and in the year 1834 the professional ranks in the county were ably strengthened by the arrival of Dr. Christian
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Kegley, an accomplished German scholar and successful young physician who came from Wytheville, Virginia, and located in the swampy bottoms of White River township. In the year 1835 Dr. Benjamin Noble, a brother of Gov- ernor Noah Noble, located in Greenwood, and successfully practiced his art for several years. In the year 1838 the ranks of the medical profession in Franklin were increased by the arrival of Dr. A. D. Sweet and Dr. Mack Smiley.
The year 1840 is important in the medical annals of Johnson county. On the 22nd day of April in that year, Dr. William H. Wishard, then a young man of twenty-four years, began his long and honorable career in the min- istry of the healing art at the little town of Greenwood. He remained there until in the autumn of the same year, when he moved to the now extinct town of Port Royal, or Far West, in White River township, where he remained for two years. . In the year 1840, also, Dr. Daniel Webb sought a home in Franklin for the practice of his profession, and Dr. Ward located in the Will- iamsburg neighborhood for the same purpose.
During the next ten years a large number joined the ranks of the pro- fession, prominent among who were Dr. J. H. Donnell, who came from Greensburg to Franklin January 27, 1841. Dr. J. H. Woodburn, Dr. Sam- uel Thompson, Dr. Winslow, Dr. John McCorkle, Dr. Gill, Dr. Schofield, Dr. Johnson and others of lesser note. It is difficult to conceive of an under- taking more full of terrible obstacles than the practice of the healing art in the early days of Johnson county. The country has been described until we know its dreary and forbidding aspect.
The opportunities for education and equipment for the successful prac- tice of medicine were of the most meagre kind. As we have said, the Tran- sylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky, and the Ohio Medical College, Cincinnati, Ohio, were the only feeble glimmering stars in all the vast night of the Mississippi valley. Far off and inaccessible as they were in those days without roads or bridges, it is to be expected that many of the physi- cians of this time would practice medicine without ever having seen a medi- cal college. The paths of knowledge were all rough and dimly lighted in those early days.
Nor was the lack of preparation the only obstacle in our elder brother's pathway. Every neighborhood had its midwife, who monopolized the ob- stetrical work of those early times, who looked with supercilious contempt upon the interloping medical man and tried with all the force of her influence and prestige to cover him with ridicule and bring him into disrepute. Even
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in the purely medical realms of his calling he was given scant regard and courtesy, for the pioneers were bold and self-reliant in all things and even tried, unaided, to combat the mysterious forces of disease. When a pioneer, either young or old, succumbed to some prevailing or even unknown illness, the lancet was the first resort. Then some strong emetic, like lobelia, was given, to rid the stomach of its contents, followed by some drastic cathartic. Some nauseating infusion was next administered for several days, and only in the event of most serious symptoms was a physician finally called. Thus it happened that a physician's patients were all in desperate straits when first he saw them. If they recovered under his kindly care the friends thanked God, the bestower of life and all its blessings. If they succumbed and death relieved them of their pain, the physician was blamed for the result and judged of meagre skill.
In the face of such obstacles only the sturdiest spirits could succeed. The pioneers were practical, thorough-going men and women. Relying upon their own therapeutic resources until the sick were in the last extreme, they called a doctor in with little faith and yet demanded miracles of him. ยท Consequently, to be successful among them, the physician had to be of force- ful and an imposing personality.
No people in the world's history were ever half so kind and neighborly and sympathetic as were those pioneers. It seemed that the world was peo- pled with great and loving souls. It was well that such people lived in times when sorrow and suffering and the brooding gloom of sickness were in every cabin in the land. In those good old times the people were unselfish and had never felt man's greed for gold and power of place, and all the ills that dwarf the heart and blight the soul had not darkened in the land. Every man was neighbor to his fellowman and neighbor vied with neighbor in deeds of kind- 'ness to the stricken and the weak. The sick were nursed by all alike and no sacrifice was great enough to make for those that were affiliated and cast down. The abodes of suffering were filled with tender nurses, watching through the darkest hours of night, not for hope of gain, but responsive to the generous impulses of loving hearts. They lacked the accurate scientific knowledge of our day, with its manifold helpfulness and power to heal, but they had the great, warm human heart that never errs nor tires and is worth more than all the schools and laboratories and learning of the world. Lack- ing our knowledge of precision, they sought to make amends and satisfy the ceaseless longing of their hearts to serve, by hovering over beds of pain with
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