USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 15
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 15
USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 15
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70
1. Dr. Paul L. Nichols, Kingston, 1851-67.
2. Dr. Asa Millet, East Bridgewater, 1868-69.
3. Dr. Josiah Sturtevant Hammond, Plympton, 1870-71.
4. Dr. Benjamin Hubbard, Plymouth, 1872-73.
5. Dr. Nelson Briggs Tanner, North Abington, 1874-75.
6. Dr. Henry Newell Jones, Kingston, 1876-77.
7. Dr. Henry Watson Dudley, Abington, 1878-79.
8. Dr. Woodbridge Ruggles Howes, Hanover, 1880-81.
9. Dr. Benjamin Franklin Hastings, Whitman, 1882-83.
10. Dr. Henry Francis Borden, Bridgewater, 1884-86-87.
11. Dr. Francis Collamore, Pembroke, 1885.
12. Dr. James Bartlett Brewster, Plymouth, 1888-89.
13. Dr. Jubal Converse Gleason, Rockland, 1890.
14. Dr. Amasa Elliot Paine, Brockton, 1891-93.
15. Dr. Eli Ayer Chase, Brockton, 1893-95.
16. Dr. Jonas Edward Bacon, Brockton, 1895-97.
17. Dr. Horatio Franklin Copeland, Whitman, 1897-99.
18. Dr. Edgar Dwight Hill, Plymouth, 1899-1900.
19. Dr. Alfred Atwater MacKeen, Whitman, 1900-1902.
20. Dr. Jesse Howes Averhill, Brockton, 1902-1904.
21. Dr. William Palmer Chisholm, Brockton, 1904-1906.
22. Dr. Frank George Wheatley, North Abington, 1906-1908.
23. Dr. Fred Jerome Ripley, Brockton, 1908-1910.
24. Dr. Wallace Cushing Keith, Brockton, 1911.
25. Dr. Wilfred G. Brown, Plymouth, 1912.
26. Dr. Charles Edward Lovell, Whitman, 1913.
27. Dr. Charles Edward Lovell, Whitman, 1914.
28. Dr. Nathaniel Clark King, Brockton, 1915.
Plym-9
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29. Dr. Nathaniel K. Noyes, Duxbury, 1916.
30. Dr. Nathaniel K. Noyes, Duxbury, 1917.
31. Dr. Gilman Osgood, Rockland, 1918.
32. Dr. Joseph Frame, Rockland, 1919.
33. Dr. Francis J. Hanley, Whitman, 1920.
34. Dr. Richard Baxter Rand, Whitman, 1921.
35. Dr. Arthur Loring Beals, Brockton, 1922.
36. Dr. Frank H. Burnett, Brockton, 1923.
37. Dr. Joseph Henry Lawrence, Brockton, 1924.
38. Dr. James Henry Drohan, Brockton, 1925.
39. Dr. Alfred Charles Smith, Brockton, 1926.
40. Dr. John P. Shaw, Brockton, 1927.
Dr. Frank George Wheatley of Abington, an honored member of the society, passed away in 1926. The annal town report of that year was printed with a good likeness of the doctor as a frontispiece, inas- much as every family in Abington wanted a picture of their friend and townsman. He had acted as moderator at the town meetings since 1891. In the same town report the library trustees had a memorial tribute printed as a part of their report. It was as follows:
"In the passing of Frank G. Wheatley, chairman since 1911 and mem- ber from 1896, the Board of Library Trustees met the heaviest loss it could sustain. For thirty years, during a public life of exceptional dis- tinction, he gave generously of his time and interest to the library. The Trustees desire to place on record their deep appreciation of the value of this service, to do honor to the qualities that made Dr. Wheat- ley a great figure in this community, and to offer to his memory the tribute of their lasting gratitude."
Dr. Wheatley was born in Woodbury, Vermont, in 1851. He was educated at the Vermont Seminary, Dartmouth College, and at the Vermont State Normal School. He was employed for a time as a teacher, but took his degree of Doctor of Medicine from Dartmouth in 1883. He practiced in Norwich, Vermont, before coming to North Abington. He had served as a trustee of the Massachusetts School for Feeble Minded, as a United States Pensioner Examiner, as associate medical examiner of the Second Plymouth District, professor of ma- teria medica at Tufts College Medical School; was a member of the American Medical Association, Massachusetts Medical Society, Ameri- can Therapeutic Society, Massachusetts Association of Boards of Health, John Cutler Lodge, Free and Accepted Masons; Pilgrim Royal Arch Chapter, Old Colony Commandery, Knights Templar; Winthrop Lodge, Independent Order of Odd Fellows; member of the Abington School Committee; served in the Massachusetts General Court as a representative in 1904 and 1905 and in the Senate in 1907 and 1908.
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Death of Dr. Wallace C. Keith-The society lost one of its most popular and devoted members in June, 1927, by the death of Dr. Wal- lace C. Keith, of Brockton, after a long illness. He had held several positions in the community life of Brockton, having served on the school committee with especial distinction several terms.
Dr. Wallace Cushing Keith was born in West Bridgewater Novem- ber 25, 1858. He married Helen Richmond Ford, of Brockton, January 14, 1885. He was educated at the North Bridgewater High School, Adams Academy, Quincy; Amherst College; and Harvard Medical School. He had practiced in Brockton since 1885 and was associated with the staffs of the Boston City Hospital and Brockton Hospital. He was a member of the Boylston Medical Society, Massachusetts Medical Society since 1884, Brockton Medical Society, Brockton Board of United States Pension Examining Surgeons, Association State Inspectors of Health, Loyal Legion, Masonic bodies of Brockton and Scottish Rite bodies of Boston.
Dr. Keith was president of the Plymouth District Medical Society at the time it observed its sixtieth anniversary in 1911. In his address of introduction, on that occasion, he said : "I find that Dr. Samuel Fuller, one of the company who landed in Plymouth in 1620, was the first physician in New England. History tells us that for twelve years he went in and out among the people, like a guardian angel, making all happy with whom he was associated." The same words, uttered by Dr. Keith, might truthfully be said of Dr. Keith, "he went in and out among the people, like a guardian angel, making all happy with whom he was associated."
Medical Society Officers-The officers of the society in 1927 were: President, Dr. John F. Shaw, of Plymouth ; vice-president, Dr. Thomas H. McCarthy, Brockton; secretary-treasurer, Dr. Loring B. Packard, Brockton; councillors, Dr. Nathaniel K. Noyes, Duxbury, nominating ; Dr. Alfred C. Smith, alternate, Brockton; Dr. John J. McNamara, Brock- ton; Dr. George A. Moore, Brockton; Dr. C. H. Colgate, Rockland ; Dr. James H. Drohan, Brockton ; censors, Dr. Nathaniel K. Noyes, super- visor; Dr. Walter H. Pulsifer, Whitman; Dr. W. G. Brown, Plymouth; Dr. David B. Tuholski, Brockton; Dr. R. B. Rand, North Abington ; orator, Dr. David Bridgewood, for 1928, Brockton; librarian, Dr. John H. Weller, State Farm, Bridgewater; commissioner of trials, Dr. Lau- rence B. Reed, Plymouth.
Medical Examiner Nearly Fifty Years-Dr. A. Elliot Paine of Brock- ton in March, 1926, tendered his resignation as medical examiner in the Brockton district, after serving in that capacity more than forty-nine years. He had hoped to hold the position an even half century but failing health made it desirable that he tender his resignation to Gover-
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nor Fuller who accepted the same. Undoubtedly he served longer as medical examiner in Plymouth County than any other man ever had or ever will. So far as known he was the oldest medical examiner in the country in both age and service. He was at that time eighty-two years of age and had served since his appointment in 1877 by Governor Rice. During that time he handled many cases which became nationally known. He had qualified in courts as an expert on medical investigations and his opinions were always regarded highly by judges, juries and attor- neys. He was succeeded as medical examiner by Dr. Walter W. Fuller- ton, also of Brockton, who had served as assistant medical examiner seven years.
Dr. Paine was a native of Truro, Cape Cod. He entered Harvard Medical School in 1862, but the same year enlisted for service in the Civil War, and was assigned to Company E, Forty-third Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers, and became assistant to the surgeon. As a medical practitioner following the war he was located at Wellfleet, Taun- ton and North Bridgewater. He was president of the Massachusetts Medical Association in 1891 and 1892 and for several years was treasurer of the Massachusetts Medico-Legal Society. He is a member of the American Medical Society and the Plymouth District Medical Society. He was vice-president of the Brockton Hospital Association in its early years and was for several years a member of the consulting staff of that institution. For more than forty years he had charge of the emergency hospital at the Brockton Fair Grounds during successive Brockton Fairs.
The first autopsy performed by Dr. Paine in his capacity as medical examiner of the First Plymouth District was on the body of Barney McMennihan, whose body was found near the railroad between West Bridgewater and Matfield. Foul play was suspected but no one was ever apprehended for the deed.
Dr. Paine's first murder case was that of Justin L. Gunn of Bridge- water, killed by gunshot. His son was arrested, tried and convicted, sen- tenced, pardoned, and finally met his fate by jumping in front of a train in New Jersey, meeting death by suicide.
There were several unusual and unsolved murder cases within the experience of Dr. Paine. On April 27, 1892, Collin Leaman, a Brockton barber, was murdered by having his skull crushed by an unknown as- sailant as he was walking home from his shop in Montello in the even- ing. A man was arrested in Rhode Island in whose pocket was found a wallet, said to have belonged to Leaman, but, at the trial, the evidence was conflicting and the witnesses unsatisfactory. The man was not con- victed and no one was ever apprehended as the rightful murderer. The
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deed was done with a sword or a sword fish, one of the strangest weap- ons ever used in committing a crime in Massachusetts.
Another unsolved murder was that of Elijah Godfrey of West Bridge- water, a recluse, living alone, who furnished evidence against a group of people charged with violation of the liquor laws. Before the case against the men came up in court Godfrey's shanty was blown to bits. The verdict at the inquest was: "The man met his death by an ex- plosive thrown into his dwelling by persons unknown," and they are still unknown.
The bodies of Thomas and Grace Ball, small children, were found in the woods off Oak Street in Brockton several years ago. They had been killed and buried by their mother, an insane person, later committed to an asylum in Taunton. For many days and nights following their dis- appearance searching parties scoured the woods, fields and every place where they might be found, dead or alive, but without success. They had disappeared in the winter and it is supposed their mother took them into the woods, strangled them and buried them in leaves and such loose earth as she could get together with her hands, as the ground was frozen. Their bodies were discovered May 29, 1908.
Dr. Paine played an important part in unravelling the evidence in the murder of Admiral Eaton of Norwell several years ago, on account of his knowledge of anatomy.
On March 20, 1909, the R. B. Grover & Company shoe factory in Brockton was demolished by explosion of the engine boiler and fire: It was one of the worst catastrophes in New England, in the number killed and the horrible manner in which the shoe workers were pinned down beneath their machines and roasted to death in the holocaust. Dr. Paine was called upon to work days and nights, as bodies were being discovered and brought out for identification. He refers to this as the worst experience of his life.
There were probably five thousand cases in which Dr. Paine figured officially during his half century as a medical examiner and during all that time he served faithfully and was re-appointed term after term with- out question, until age and failing health made it impossible for him to continue. Dr. Paine said after his retirement that a majority of acci- dental deaths were traceable to drunkenness and things were fully as bad before as since the Volstead act changed liquor laws.
March 24, 1926, Dr. Walter W. Fullerton, a native of Brockton, succeeded Dr. A. Elliot Paine as medical examiner of the Brockton dis- trict. For seven years before that he had been assistant medical ex- aminer and during the latter part of the time had much of the work as- signed to him, owing to failing health of the veteran examiner, who nearly completed fifty years in office before resigning.
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Dr. Fullerton has practiced since 1896, following his graduation the previous year from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Balti- more, Maryland. He took a post-graduate course in medicine and path- ology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. For nine years he was visiting physician and pathologist at the Brockton Hospital. He served as city physician of Brockton three years. He has done post-graduate work in pathology, laboratory and autopsy training at the Massachu- setts General Hospital.
He served with the American medical units in the World War, as captain in the United States Medical Corps.
Progress in Local Medical Practice-Practising physicians of the early days were not highly rewarded for their professional services and most of them had some additional means of livelihood. The knowl- edge which they possessed; in early days, was obtained largely after they had practiced, rather than before, and it was a hardy community which could withstand the experiments. There were no hospitals in which aspiring young men could fit themselves for their profession, under the eyes and orders of experienced and skilled practitioners. The equipment which they possessed to perform an operation would frighten an up-to-date patient to death from the start. Surgery was little short of torture and diagnosis was a joke. It was literally true in those days, at least, that the doctor buried his mistakes.
Practically every household had its stock of herbs for nostrums, some of them learned from the Indians and others having a certain reputation in the old countries. Everlasting was gathered for poultices and for brewing into a tea, the taste of which suggested its name. There was an ointment made of sourdock for the itch. Mullein leaves were bound on the bowels for some complaints and blackberry root was a cure for dysentery.
The delivery of children was largely in the hands of midwives and they occupied a position of importance in the community. Dr. James Floyd returned from London in 1752, aiter taking a course in obstetrics and, so much more in favor were midwives than doctors, he advertised himself as a "man midwife." His recognition came slowly, as it was con- sidered scandalous for a man to engage in such operations.
On the other hand, it was hard for the first women doctors to be recog- nized as eligible to the profession. The first woman to be executed for witchcraft in Massachusetts was Margaret Jones, "a physician and doc- tress."
In 1721 Dr. Zabdiel Boylston vaccinated for smallpox and for this he was made the first American member of the Royal Society of London. Governor John Winthrop practiced medicine as an avocation and used a famous cure-all called "rubila." Dr. John Tennent was awarded one
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hundred pounds by the Virginia Colony in 1739 for curing pleurisy with Seneca rattlesnake root. This was a popular nostrum with itinerant medicine vendors for many years.
Following the line of Dr. Boylston and his recognition by the Royal Society of London, Sylvanus Fancher of Waterbury, Connecticut, wan- dered about from town to town through all this part of New England using a vaccinating instrument which he had invented, consisting of a silver bar carrying a concealed lancet with which the incision was made. According to a description left of him he wore "velvet small clothes, a parti-colored waistcoat from which dangled half a dozen watch chains and trinkets for the amusement of the little folks, and a faded blue coat-all these surmounted by a slouched hat overhanging green goggles." Many of the early physicians wore knee breeches and a cocked hat and in rainy weather an oiled linen hat cover and a shoulder cape or roquelaure, which gave them a distinguished appearance. Later doctors affected beards as a means of giving themeslves a distinc- guished and learned appearance and dressed more like laymen. Physi- cians practiced dentistry, of the only kind then practiced, until about 1830 and even then there were few cities having a resident dentist. False teeth were made of hippopotamus ivory. Men whose teeth were extracted wore "Plumpers," small ivory balls to keep their cheeks filled out. Paul Revere advertised in the "Boston Gazette" that in two years he had "fixed some hundreds of teeth" and would "wait on any gentle- man or lady at their lodging." This was a side line from his casting bells and silver smithy.
Medical practice has had its fads, its superstitions, its contradictions, its experiments and numberless other phases running the gamut of human credulity and nonsense, since Dr. Samuel Fuller was such a busy practitioner during the general sickness following the arrival of the "Mayflower" at Plymouth. How good a practitioner Dr. Fuller may have been we do not know. How meagre his supply of remedies and how lacking his knowledge of what to do with them or with all the other remedies recognized in his day is equally a matter of conjecture. Whether the fact that such a large proportion of the "Mayflower" com- pany died the first winter was owing to his lack of medical attention and skill, or whether the fact that any of those afflicted lived testifies to his excellence as a practitioner is any person's guess. The story that he prescribed or administered to Alexander, the brother of King Philip, in the sickness of the successor to Massasoit, and that the Indians believed that the white man's medicine caused the death of their sachem, and was one of the causes of Philip's War, is another question which has no answer. It is surely not a matter of controversy in the present genera- tion and it is reasonable to suppose that the first physician in the Plym-
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outh Colony was a reputable practitioner in his day and that he, like all other reputable practitioners in the years since, have done the best they could, with the knowledge and skill which they possessed.
There has come down to us from primitive times a semi-superstitious attitude in regard to the healing art, which continues to betray itself in many ways. It is a matter within the memory of middle-aged men when epidemics were entirely mysterious. Medical men have always considered the layman as having no business to even investigate in the field of curative possibilities and this attitude had no exception in the case of Louis Pasteur, a "mere chemist," but probably his "discoveries with regard to disease were to be of greater value than those of all the academies of medicine in the history of the world."
The First Public Administration of Ether was October 16, 1846. There is a monument on the Public Gardens in Boston which has upon it this inscription :
"To commemorate the discovery that the inhaling of ether causes in- sensibility to pain. First proved to the world at the Massachusetts General Hospital, October 16, 1846." The chief credit for the discovery belongs to Dr. W. T. G. Morton. Dr. Crawford W. Long of Georgia had the honor of making the first ether inhalation in surgical operations, and Dr. Horace Wells, a dentist, of Hartford, Connecticut, once a part- ner of Dr. Morton, a few years later administered gas while extracting teeth. The first operation under ether was, however, performed a little over thirty miles from Plymouth Rock, in the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, when Dr. John C. Warren operated upon Gilbert Abbott for tumor of the jaw.
It is even more recent that antiseptic surgery has been practiced. At the time of the Civil War and later hospitals were like charnel houses, when, indeed there were any hospitals, for they were only to be found in the large cities. Every other patient then carried into a hospital for- surgical treatment, was carried out dead from blood poisoning. His wound was an unclean fester, with a very bad smell. There was a young surgeon in Glasgow who slopped carbolic acid on the open wounds of accident cases brought to him and found that "hospital gan- grene" did not develop, as it would have otherwise. His experiment brought about antisepsis, clean surgery. Since that time surgeons have washed their hands before operating. They wear sterilized gloves, caps and aprons, and even gauze masks over their mouths to prevent foul breath contaminating the air in the vicinity of their patients, and the nurses are equally careful, as a matter of course. But taking the pain and the blood poisoning out of surgery dates back less than threescore years and ten by a considerable margin. Previous to that time-previous to the time that Louis Pasteur made researches in bacteria and fermentation ;
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previous to the time that Joseph Lister "killed" the smell of stinking fes- ters by slopping them with carbolic acid; previous to the time that Dr. William Thomas Green Morton of Massachusetts, a dentist, adminis- tered ether as an anesthetic for Dr. Warren to remove a vascular tumor, we cannot realize the dread and apprehension with which even minor surgical operations were regarded, and with good reason.
While unutterable anguish and big chances of blood poisoning were common in all operations, the surgeon applied the knife with a readiness which we now recognize to have been mistaken, lamentable and in- excusable. Needless amputation, common in Civil War times and be- fore, the opprobrium of surgery, is a back number now, almost as much as the treatment of the insane under the brutal belief that the unhappy persons were possessed of devils, and should be, and were, chained, often in darkness, and beaten and starved. By the use of more intelligent methods and remedies, and less of them, a greater respect for cleanliness and more application of hygiene, substituting external soap for internal drugs, and conquering fear by material means, or mental means, ac- cording to the individual receptiveness, and with ultra violet rays as a side line, during the past half century, the life of the individual, on the average, has been extended from forty to fifty-eight years. Medical practice has, perhaps, had something to do with it, and some of the physicians in this vicinity, as elsewhere, are beginning to agree with President Wendell C. Phillips of the American Medical Association, who said, at a conference of voluntary and public health organizations in 1927: "It is time to strike the shackles from the shrinking attitude of the medical profession, not only toward the public espousal of edu- cational programs, but from its attitude toward the lay press, the radio and the great assemblies of truth-seeking people. The physician has no right to conceal from non-medical readers the great body of news of the higher importance which is his to communicate."
A Call for Better Understanding-In this matter of education it is somewhat confusing to the lay mind to give its enthusiastic support to the advice of dietitians to provide food containing plenty of vitamins and iron in the form of greens, spinach, salads and fruits, get aroused to the proper pitch to provide milk for the undernourished, and at the same time be told from a session of the American Medical Association that "propaganda for the proper feeding of children has been overdone, the constant efforts to make them eat what was good for them having a bad mental effect. Mothers are advised to avoid the 'neighborhood baby race' or competition as to which gained weight fastest."
Doctors have always disagreed and presumably always will, unless medicine becomes an exact science and its devotees exact scientists. It has always been said that "a difference of opinion is what makes good
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horse racing," and perhaps the differences of opinion held by supposedly learned physicians may be a stimulating influence to lead to more useful remedial discoveries.
Our erstwhile summer resident at Gray Gables, on Buzzards Bay, the late President Grover Cleveland, in an address to the Medical So- ciety of the State of New York shortly before his death, urged the pro- fession to abandon their outworn policy of mystery and infallibility and treat the public with more frankness and consideration. "We have come to think ourselves as worthy of confidence in the treatment of our ail- ments," he said, "and we believe that if this is accorded to us in greater measure, it would be better for the treatment and better for us. We do not claim that we should be called in consultation in all our illnesses, but we would be glad to have a little more explanation of the things done for us. It should not be considered strange if thousands among us, influenced by a sentiment just now astonishingly prevalent, should allow ourselves to be disturbed by the spectre of a medical trust in mys- tery, and like all who are truly affrighted should cry out for greater publicity between physician and patient."
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