USA > Indiana > Johnson County > History of Johnson County, Indiana > Part 49
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ceaseless ministry and loving words and soothing touch of the beloved hand and patient vigils that outwatched the stars.
Thus lavishing so profusely upon their sick the riches of their own sympathy, they exacted much of their physicians and bestowed their respect and confidence only upon those that they deemed to have the most striking and admirable qualities as practitioners of the healing art. So all physicians were subjected to a searching test, and in the ordeal of gaining popular favor men that lacked moral. and intellectual force lost that ease of temperament that is the finest attribute of medical men. They became rough, uncouth and irritable, cultivated various eccentricities, assumed an unwonted harshness of demeanor, indulged in alcoholic intoxication and emphasized their conversa- tion with broad profanity. Both laity and profession half believed that dis- ease was a physical entity, possessing the patient like an evil spirit or a devil, which must needs be scourged out with maledictions and lancets and actual cauteries. So the man that could be the most rough and terrible, the most strenuous and bizarre, the most arrogant and self assertive, soonest gained the popular faith in his magic power to exorcise the demon of disease. But not -all doctors of that day were made of such fantastic stuff. "There were giants in the earth in those days" that loomed above their fellow men and still shine amid that dreary waste of half-forgotten times like mountain peaks that hold the light of fading day when all beneath is buried in the shadows. Of such glorious company were Drs. McCaulay, Murphy, Kegley, Donnell and William H. Wishard. The story of their trials and sacrifices and their life of devotion to suffering humanity forms one of the most inspiring themes in the whole history of our profession.
The books to which they were compelled to refer were not the repositories of medical knowledge that the modern text-books are. The medical works that were published before the appearance of Eberle's Practice in 1845 were so crude that one may well believe their authors had not yet outgrown the dark traditions of the middle ages. All the medicines in use at the time were · administered in a crude and bulky form. There was not only a lack of cap- sules, of pills and tablets, with their coatings of sugar and chocolate. of palatable liquids, medicinal elixirs, alkaloids, dosimetric granules and all such convenient forms for the administration of medicines then in use, but an entire absence from the materia medica of many of the most potent agents now known to medicine. There were then no antipyrine. acetanilid, phe- nacetine, nor any of those preparations known as coal-tar derivatives, no chloral hydrate, veratrum viride, cocaine, chloroform, ether, chloretone, ad-
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renalin, strychnia, antitoxic serums, nor a thousand other remedies since ob- tained from vegetable and animal sources, or synthetically elaborated from the deep hidden elements of the inorganic world. There were no hyper- dermic syringes nor clinical thermometers, and an almost entire absence of . the myriad forms of surgical instruments of almost perfect construction that now are such a boon to the practicing surgeon. Anaesthesia and antisepsis, .two priceless gifts to suffering humanity, by which the surgeon yearly saves thousands of precious lives, were then but unrealized hopes of visionary dreamers.
Meagre was the pioneer's knowledge of disease and meagre his thera- peutic weapons of attack, but such weapons as he had were potent and he used them with the skill and courage of a master. Calomel was given in enormous quantities, sometimes as much as sixty grains at a dose. A favor- ite prescription for use in remittent fevers was "ten and ten," i. e., ten. grains of calomel and ten grains of jalap, repeated every six hours till free purga- tion resulted. Then the dose was lessened, but its administration was con- tinued until mild salivation was induced. If there was a high grade of in- flammation, nauseating doses of tartar emetic were given to reduce the fever. If it produced watery stools, the bowels were restrained with laudanum or opium. Sometimes sweet spirits of nitre or nitrate of potash were given to reduce fever. The use of cold water was absolutely forbidden at all times. When the fever was finally broken, but never before, such tonics as Peruvian bark, Huxham's tincture of bark, or an infusion of quassia: were adminis- tered. When quinine was first used, it was considered an unsafe and un- certain remedy. Dr. William H. Wishard says: "I remember well the first time that it was used in my father's family. We were suffering with malarial fever and had used about half a pound of Peruvian bark and bitters of every kind and quality known, yet the chills would return every seventh or four- teenth day. My father sent me to Indianapolis to a physician to get medicine to prevent the relapse of the chills. The prescription consisted of thirty grains of quinine, ten drops of sulphuric acid, and six ounces of water : dose, one teaspoonful three or four times a day, to be taken with great care." But if there was caution in the use of quinine, such cannot be said of many other things, for the old physician, meagrely equipped as he was, often displayed a boldness and courage of which we can scarcely conceive. He used calomel in inconceivable massive doses; he abstracted blood until the patient. was at the point of fainting from weakness, and he amputated thighs and performed .other formidable, surgical operations, without the use of chloroform or anaes- thetics.
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In the year 1830 Dr. Murphy had a patient suffering with abdominal dropsy. He called Dr. Smith of Edinburg in consultation. They had neither local nor general anaesthetics, no antiseptics and no trocar. But they took a small joint of an elder, cleared out the pith, scraped off the bark and thus fashioned it into a hollow tube. Then with a thumb lancet they made an incision through the abdominal wall, inserted the elder tube into the peritoneal cavity, and drew off the dropsical fluid, greatly to the patient's satisfaction and relief.
It is related of Dr. Fitch that he once visited a lonely cabin far in the inaccessible wilds of the forest of that day. The people were very poor, the room was ill-furnished and but dimly lighted by the fitful firelight and a glimmering candle's feeble ray. He found three small children delirious with fever and with heads drawn back and rigid limbs. They were in the rigid stage of cerebro-spinal meningitis, a disease that was then very rarely seen. He lost no time, but, with rare self-confidence, quickly applied heroic meas- ures of relief. He administered as best he could an enormous dose of calo- mel to each. Then, with his ever-ready lancet, he abstracted blood from each until they were all relaxed and on the verge of fainting. An iron poker by the spacious fire place he first plunged into the glowing coals and then drew its dull red tip along their naked backs from neck to hips. Unfortunately the result of this procedure is not known, but the incident is given here to show the lofty self-reliance of physicians of that time.
Grave conditions and emergencies arose, and sudden and frightful peril to life and limb occurred ofttimes at night in the fierce cold of winter, far in the dim woods beyond the swamps. There were no telephones in those days outrunning the winds with the sick man's message of distress; no broad, firm highways, bearing to any place within an hour the kindly welcome help of professional brother, so grateful in the time of peril. It mattered not how grave the danger nor how great the need of haste, there were only the blazed trails through the forest and the lone messenger on horseback, slow laboring through swamps and mire.
Thus the doctor, when he reached his suffering patient, was alone in the forest, far from other help, and he must needs be bold and heroic, relying wholly upon his own resources to alleviate his patient's ills. So he tried at all times to be prepared as hest he could and in his practice he dispensed the most potent remedial agents at his command with high and conscious cour- age. When with saddle bags'of jalap, rhubarb and opium, and pockets full of castor oil, epsom salts and senna leaves, he sallied forth on horseback like
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a knight of old, armed with lancet sharp, to help his friend and battle with his dreaded foe, the dragon of disease, like a mighty giant, wielding a two- edged sword, he sometimes killed both friend and foe.
The remuneration of physicians for their services in those days was most meagre and precarious. There was the greatest scarcity of money and the people all were poor. The meagre charges that were made for services are full of interest to us now. On one page of Dr. Kegley's ledger, dated Janu- ary 1, 1837, are found the following items :
John Surface, Jr., dr. to I vial oil spike. $0.121/2
John Moore, dr. to I vial Batem drops .121/2
Stephen Kink, dr. to I vial opodeldoc .183/4
Joseph Keesling, dr. to Quinine drops .621/2
William Woodford, dr. to Epsom Salts and Olive Oil .4334
Daniel Etter, dr. to Physic and Ointment. .75
Nathaniel Tracey, dr. to Puke for child .063/4
Nathaniel Doty, dr. to Salve and Br. oil .371/4
Jas. Stewart, Jr., dr. to Puke for wife. .121/2
Physicians rode five or ten miles and attended cases of labor for three dollars and waited for the money. Pay was taken in work, in wood, corn, live stock, poultry, linsey woolsey and other products of the loom, pumpkins, ginseng, raccoon skins, and every conceivable object that could be palmed off on the patient medical man in lieu of money. People were so utterly poverty stricken in those times that much of the doctor's work. was done for charity and the love of suffering humanity.
To illustrate the barren poverty of that time, I shall describe the home of a family that felt the grinding indigence not uncommon in a new and undeveloped land. Nearly sixty-five years ago a man by the name of Hyatt, with his wife and children, lived in the remote southwestern part of the county in an isolated region among the hills of Indian creek. He lived in a little round log house, fourteen by sixteen feet in size, with a stick-and-clay chimney and a dirt floor. When he finished his house he took forked sticks and drove into the ground in the corner of the house; two poles were cut, one end of which was laid in the forks of the upright sticks and the other end was stuck into a crack between the round logs of the house. Oak boards were split and laid upon these poles. When this was finished it served the man and wife for bed. Large wooden troughs were hollowed out and filled with leaves. In each of these a child was cradled. At night these rude
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troughs were propped up at one end, so that the fire on the hearth could shed. its light and warmth upon the sleeping children.
How sad and gloomy and how inexpressibly hopeless the struggle for existence must have seemed to this man, with but the strength of his brawny arm between his wife, with her sweet little ones, and all the outer darkness of that savage world. Malevolent wolves in the lonely solitudes of night howled about his cabin or sniffed at his frail doorway. Sickness and hunger, with threatening visage, like gaunt specters, were ever standing near robbing of its happiness his simple life. But when sickness came this man was not forgotten. Then the neighbors, the ministering angels of the land, came in and all that human hands could do was done.
Once upon a time Dr. McCauley was called ten miles from home to see a woman sick with child-bed fever. She had been attended by a midwife and was much exhausted. Dr. McCauley examined the poor woman care- fully and calling the husband said: "Your wife is very sick; she needs a stimulant. You must get a quart of whiskey." In those days whiskey was only twelve and one-half cents a quart, but the man sorrowfully informed the doctor that he had not so much as a penny. The doctor pondered over the situation for awhile and then said, "As I was coming down here through the woods my dog followed me. About two miles up the road yonder he found a 'coon' (raccoon) and killed it. You will find it up there by the side of the path. Go find it, skin it, and take the pelt to town and with it you can get your whiskey." The man started joyfully on his errand and in due time re- turned with the much-needed stimulant. Such cases of suffering want were found every day, but the charity of ministers of the healing art "suffereth long and is kind."
Sad and full of pathos is the story of those early days, when the land was buried in the swamps and woods primeval. Nature frowned with dark and threatening face upon the white man in his efforts to disturb the silence of her long repose. She stopped his footsteps with a dreary waste of wild and savage forests, where tangled foliage and fallen limbs and prostrate trunks of mighty girth cumbered the swampy earth: with broad streams of muddy water spreading far over the level woods, dragging their foul and sluggish currents lazily over beds of slimy ooze. She deluged the soft. spongy earth with floods of rain and rent the summer foliage with storms of rattling hail; she clothed the wintry woods in coats of icy mail and heaped high the drifted snow in every sheltered nook. And when, with long toil. the pioneer had drained those swamps and carved a narrow clearing in the
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woods, black clouds of cawing crows descended, and troops of chattering squirrels from the tree tops came, devouring the slender products of his husbandry; ravenous wolves ranged the woods, ravaging his meagre flocks, while vapors and noxious exhalations came up like evil spirits from the forest dells where gray fogs hung in the lazy air, poisoning his life-blood with. burning fevers.
But in the southwestern part of the county the face of nature wore a smile. There the crystal waters of Indian creek sparkled over golden gravel, as it danced between grassy banks, all fringed with ivy and rushes, babbling merrily beneath the sycamores. On all sides rose great hills, crowned with leafy trees. On their slopes and crests the hand of providence had lingered with a caressing touch, shaping them into forms of picturesque beauty, While. yet the winter woods were sad and dim, and scarce the sap had stirred within the trees, delicate wild flowers bloomed on all the hill-sides, and, responsive to the spring's first promise, slender dog-woods, sweetly decked and gar- landed in white, stood forth in modest beauty, like brides, awaiting the first caresses of that ardent lover, the sun. In summer great oaks and lordly poplars cast afar their cooling shade; in autumn the sumach and the maple clothed the hillsides with the glows and splendors of the rainbow's hues. Un- dimmed by any stifling smoke of cities, the bright skies smiled in pristine. clearness over all the hills. Summer breezes played beneath the trees, and from those hills and forest dells all the bird-songs of spring went up to heaven in the sweet sunshine of every golden dawn. It was a beautiful region this, among the Hensley township hills where Indian creek flowed on its jocund way, babbling merrily beneath the sycamores.
Soon after the advent of the white men, a fine type of pioneers, nearly all of whom were primarily of Scotch-Irish stock, came into the county and claimed this lovely region as their own. Little clearings were carved in the primal woods and log houses sprang up on the hill tops or on the slopes hard by some bubbling spring. Neighborly paths were beaten through the woods and pleasant home lights twinkled at night between the trees across the snowy hills of winter.
The neighbors visited each other to while away the lonely hours of winter evenings, helped each other in their work, nursed each other in their trials of sickness, and stood by each other in their misfortunes; in every form of mutual helpfulness and neighborly kindness the great Celtic heart sent forth its sunshine.
Soon a younger generation grew up; the youths, strong limbed, broad
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shouldered and full of lusty life; the maidens, perfect types of lovely woman- hood, in their eyes the sunshine, on their lips the red wine that said, "Come, drink me."
The pioneers had ever been stimulated to the greatest efforts by the heartfelt wish that their children should have a better bringing up than theirs had been; so that even in the earliest years of the new community, when as yet the land but inhospitably yielded the bare necessities of food and raiment and the struggle for existence was acute, the intellectual and spiritual welfare of those that were to be its future citizens was given thoughtful care. Log school houses, with greased paper windows, were built in the barren woods. Here the children came yearly for a few brief weeks, learning to read from the pages of the Testament and copying proverbs with goose-quill pens, dipped in blood-red pokeberry juice. Little log churches, too, were built within the forest shades like Druidic sanctuaries of old among the oaks. Here, on sunny Sabbath morns the rosy maidens came, walking barefoot down the shady forest paths, dressed in their gayest home-spun frocks.
The irrespressible social instincts of the young found expression in the singing schools, the husking bees, the spelling bees, the quiltings and the many country dances held of winter evenings in every neighborhood. Miles and miles the lads and lasses went on horseback over the hills, across the creeks, through woods and mire, to dance all night with sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks in jolly measure to the music of the Hoosier fiddle, on whose strings wild airs were played that had been piped a hundred years before by kilted pipers on the mountain heights of Scotland.
But such happy thoughts, recalling an idyllic life of Arcadian simplicity and rustic joy, can no longer be indulged. These threads of gold were woven in the story of those times, that in its gloomy shadows there might be one ray of light.
We must now resume the burden of our theme, must quit the sunshine and those mirthful scenes where lovers, arm in arm, danced through the mid- night hours till the stars were dim and rosy dawn appeared. Henceforth we must keep in the sad light of the sick room where anxious friends and kindly neighbors and grizzled doctors, worn with toil, watch through the nights in grim contests with the insidious forces of disease.
The physicians of that day dressed ordinarily in the homespun gar- ments of the time, that were sometimes "cold-dyed." Physicians of some means often dressed in "Kentucky jeans," and when thus arrayed were con- sidered quite well dressed. The invariable mode of travel was on horseback
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and on account of the swamps and mud physicians always wore leggings but- toned up the side of the legs and tied above the knee. They wore long great- coats, reaching almost to their feet. Their saddles, in which they spent most of their time, were often cushioned with sheep skins. Sometimes the saddle was covered with a buffalo robe, which was taken as a certain indication that the owner enjoyed financial ease and more than usual professional ability.
Physicians had no end of trouble with the ignorance and superstition of their patients, the sad depths of which is almost past believing now. One ineradicable fallacy in regard to bleeding was to the effect that a person should always be bled in the arm of whichever side his pain or ailment chanced to be in. If bled in the right arm, when his pain was in the left side, or vice versa, it was believed that the pain would cross the body through the heart and death would almost surely follow. The physician that risked his patient's life by such a rash and unnecessary procedure, immediately for- feited all right to consideration as a wise and prudent man.
An amusing instance of the ignorance of the time in the use of domestic remedies was experienced by Dr. W. H. Wishard when a young man. One day he chanced to be in a distant part of the country calling upon a patient when a neighbor woman came in with a small child that was comely and in- teresting with the exception that its head was a mass of festering ulcers, cov- ered with the horrible incrustations of scald-head. Its hair was matted and disheveled and was still further befouled by a liberal application of some oily substance that had been applied for curative purposes, but that was evidently utterly powerless to effect a cure. Dr. Wishard became interested in the poor afflicted creature and asked the mother what was the matter with her child. She informed him and he asked her what remedy she was using. She told him that she was using goose grease. She said that she had used it for quite a while, as it was the best remedy to be had for such diesases, but that it seemed to be of no avail in this case. The doctor looked very grave and said that perhaps the goose had not been killed in the right time of the moon. The woman said, with some little hesitation, that she thought it had been killed at the proper time. The doctor then said, "Are you sure it was a goose, per- haps you killed a gander by mistake." The woman, with a worried look upon her face, said she didn't know that made any difference. The doctor sug- gested that it might, at any rate that something had been lacking in the art of preparation of this oil, so that it was entirely inert, that this case was very severe and other remedies would be required. To this the woman readily assented, and from that time the poor child had the best of treatment. A
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doctor, who while yet young, had the rare ease of temperament that can thus humor the whim of an ignorant woman and yet treat the case with scientific exactness is blessed by the gods indeed, and is predestined to high success.
In these days of comfortable and rapid transit, we can scarcely form even a feeble idea of the vast effort necessary in those days to get from one part of the country to another. The roads were mere blazed trails, or were rudely built of corduroy cut from the neighboring woods, or were wholly lost in bottomless mud and stagnant ponds. All travel was most laborious and slow. A man.that once obtained a practice in those days, of necessity bade adieu to the genial glow of his own fireside, to the nuptial smiles of wife and the sweet companionship of children. Often in the sickly season he found it necessary to station horses in different neighborhoods and sometimes thirty- six and even forty-eight hours were required to make the rounds and reach again his own home. Once in the town of Franklin, of five physicians, all but two were disabled. Doctors. Donnell and Ritchey stood the strain of constant work and cared for all they could, riding in a gallop from place to place and traveling every day a distance of more than fifty miles.
In those long solitary journeys along bridal paths in the trackless wilder- ness, the howling wolves often kept the doctor company, but his nerves were steady and his courage high and he did not mind their threats half so much as being dragged from his horse at night by the over-hanging branches of some tree. His life was one of constant self-denial for the good of man. There was never any peace nor quietude for him. In his long journeys through the night, his drowsy senses sometimes failed and, dozing in his saddle, he had dreams of home and rest. But such bright dreams vanished like a mirage in the boundless gloom, and rousing up, he found again the chilling winds, the trackless woods, and suffering ones yet calling for his help.
In springtime, when the dogwoods blossomed and the maples were a blur of green; in summer, when the roses bloomed and bare-foot maidens tripped to church; in autumn, when the fiery sun blazed into the putrid swamps, and pestilence, with scorching breath, stalked boldly through the land; in winter, when the frozen world lay dead in shrouds of snow and watching stars turned pale with cold and shivered in the icy air, he was. abroad on deeds of mercy bent, thinking not of self nor gain nor praise of men, nor faltered blessings of the poor; but only of the duty and his work and praying, Ajax-like, for light and strength to bear his portion of the weight of care,
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"That crushes into dumb despair One-half the human race."
..
The pathos and the tragedy of life beat into his soul. Humanity all around him was crying piteously for help, for light, for life. In heroic strength he stood upon the shore lines of a troubled sea of sickness and despair, and, like a great light-house, he sent afar a beam of courage to those that beat against the winds.
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