USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV > Part 72
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
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 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97
-
565
MEDICINE IN BOSTON.
good stirring remedies that meant business, but left a flavor behind them which embittered the recollections of childhood. This was the kind of practice many patients preferred in those days; they liked to know they had taken something energetic and active, - of which fact they were soon satisfied after one of Dr. Gamage's prescriptions.
While Dr. Waterhouse was airing his erudition on foot and Dr. Gamage was jogging round on horseback with his saddlebags, Dr. Timothy L. Jen- nison was driving about in an ancient chaise drawn by a venerable nag, chiefly, it may be suspected, to exercise the quadruped and get the benefit of the fresh air for himself, - for his practice could hardly have been con- siderable, though I do remember hearing that he was employed by one family. I believe he was the safest practitioner of the three, for he was accused of over fondness for old womens' harmless vegetable prescriptions, - which means that he gave Nature a fairer chance than she is apt to have in the hands of learned theorists and heroic routinists.
The young man whom Dr. Danforth found it hard to get along with was his successor in public esteem as a practitioner. Family connection gave me the opportunity of knowing him well. He was my revered friend as well as my instructor, and my longer and fuller acquaintance with him ena- bles me to confirm all that Dr. Green says in his praise.
Dr. James Jackson was one of three brothers who became eminent, each in his several pursuit. Charles, the eldest, as a lawyer; Patrick, the young- est, as a manufacturer and man of business; and James, as a physician. He was long recognized as the head of the profession in its medical depart- ment, - as his friend and contemporary, Dr. John Collins Warren, was the first among Boston surgeons. Dr. Jackson studied with Dr. Holyoke in Sa- lem, and afterward attended the hospitals in London. The name of Mr. Cline, the distinguished surgeon, is the one I have oftenest heard him mention among those of the teachers he followed through the wards of their hospitals? He soon found that it was best to restrict himself to medical practice, leav- ing surgery to his friend and contemporary Dr. Warren. Side by side, in a city of moderate dimension, they labored during their long lives, without any jar or collision to disturb their friendly relations.
Dr. Jackson had the happy union of mental and moral qualities which was seen in his " old master," as he always called him, - the venerable and well remembered centenarian, Dr. Edward Augustus Holyoke. Of serenely cheerful aspect, pleasant, inspiriting manner, always neatly and plainly dressed, exact in all his habits, punctual as the morning sun, searching in his inquiries and examinations, precise to minuteness in his directions, full of the sober wisdom of experience, but always open to new conviction, incapable of any unworthy effort to obtain public favor, it came to him in virtue of his talents, his entire devotion to his profession, and the confi- dence inspired by a pure and noble character. It was not only the public which looked up to him as an honor to his calling, but he was reverenced by his professional brethren as a model as near perfection for sound mental
566
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
and exalted moral qualities as human nature was like to furnish, -something in the way that Hermann Boerhaave was regarded in his day and generation, and has been since remembered. A sounder nature to the very heart of its being it would be hard to find in life or in books. What his relations with his fellow-practitioners were may be judged by the " Prefatory and Dedica- tory " Epistle to Dr. John C. Warren prefixed to his " Letters to a young Physician." Medical theories and medical practice may change, but the spirit which animates that dedication to his old rival and friend cannot lose its virtue with the lapse of years. It is not unworthy of taking a place on the next page to that which holds the Oath of Hippocrates. The medical profession in Boston has long felt and still feels the influence of a man above all jealousies, whose whole life was an illustration of what the physi- cian should be as a student of nature, as a helper by his art, as a fellow- worker with others in his beneficent occupation.
Dr. John Collins Warren, the great Boston surgeon of his time, has. just been referred to as the most prominent contemporary of Dr. Jackson. In the Dedication above cited Dr. Jackson says to him : -
" You and I began our active lives in this city nearly at the same time. . .. We were so circumstanced as to be peculiarly rivals. Our business led us across each other's paths every day for a long series of years. What one gained the other seemed to lose. . . . We do not resemble each other in temperament, and cannot see all things alike. From this cause, and not always looking at objects from the same point of view, we often differed in opinion. But we have always agreed to differ. . . . And thus it is, that being now, as regards age, in the front rank in our profession, we have con- tinued to this day on terms of intimacy and friendship. This is something to rejoice in, and something for which we may properly thank God ; and I know you will join me in giving thanks reverently."
Dr. John Collins Warren was indeed very different in temperament from Dr. James Jackson. A spare man, with strongly marked features, of austere expression, authoritative manners, sometimes careless, occasionally aiming at elegance in personal presentment, devout, but far from deficient in that wisdom which belongs to the children of this world in their generation, - he commanded allegiance and obedience where Dr. Jackson inspired love and confidence. As a surgeon he was supreme among his fellows, and deserv- edly so. He was one of the best educated medical men of his generation among us. He had a good intellect, a sure hand, an imperturbable spirit, a strenuous ambition, a persevering industry, and an entire surrender of all his faculties to his professional duties. He performed a great number of diffi- cult operations ; always deliberate, always cool, with a grim smile in sudden emergencies where weaker men would have looked perplexed and wiped their foreheads,-for he had the stuff in him which carried his uncle Joseph Warren to Bunker Hill and left him there, slain among the last in retreat. He was for more than forty years a teacher of anatomy, physiology, and surgery in the medical department of Harvard University, to which he be-
567
MEDICINE IN BOSTON.
queathed his large collection of anatomical and pathological specimens, with a handsome provision for its preservation and increase. He left one valuable work as his record, A Treatise on Tumors, and many papers on practical and scientific subjects. He took part with Dr. James Jackson in the measures which led to the founding of the Massachusetts General Hospital. He will be long remembered in the annals of American sur- gery, as well as in our local medical history; but he was one of those men who by the force of their personality exercise an influence on their own generation not wholly to be explained by what they leave after them for posterity.
Dr. Jacob Bigelow came into practice some ten years later than Drs. Warren and Jackson. A man of great natural endowments and varied ac- quisitions, he was prominent for more than half a century before our com- munity, and was recognized as the head of the profession in Boston after Dr. Jackson had ceased from his labors. Dr. Jackson once said to me: "If there is one grain of wheat in a bushel of chaff, nobody will find it so quick as Dr. Bigelow." Sagacity,-an instinct for the pith of a question like that of the ferret for the spinal cord of its victim, -this was one of Dr. Bigelow's remarkable characteristics, but one among many. He was more widely ac- complished than any member of the medical profession we have had in Boston, probably than any medical man we have had in this country. Grave of aspect, he was yet a man of infinite humor. A busy practitioner, he found time for a wide range of studies and important services to the community. He was one of the earliest of our native botanists, and published two valua- ble works on the subject, - the American Medical Botany and the Florula Bostoniensis. He studied the useful and ornamental arts and lectured in Harvard University upon them, under the general name "Technology," which he first used, and applied to the work he published on these arts. He also published a brief, perspicuous, sensible work on Materia Medica. In 1835 he delivered a lecture on self-limited diseases, which has probably had more influence than any single medical essay ever published in New England, to say the least. He was an ardent lover of the classics and an excellent Latin scholar. He gave much time to the study of architecture, and made with his own hands beautiful models of some of the most famous edifices of antiquity. In his later years he entered with great interest into the question of the place which the classics ought to hold in education. His essays on this and various other subjects were published in two vol- umes. Besides these he published, anonymously, a volume of pleasant verse, in which some of his friends found themselves ingeniously parodied without being aggrieved by harsh handling. But of all his extra-profes- sional services the most important was the leading part which he took in the creation of rural cemeteries. Mount Auburn owes its inception as a cemetery more to him than to any other man; and this was the first of numerous attractive suburban burial-places which have sprung up all over the land.
568
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Dr. Bigelow was a man of very quiet and unassuming manners, grave in counsel, lively in conversation, patient in waiting until others had had their say, and then expressing his own opinion with judicial precision and sententiousness. Calm, cool, cheerful, always busy, yet never seeming hur- ried, his very long and useful life was also a singularly happy one. Nothing could subdue his equanimity. He became blind in his later years ; but as the loss of sight gradually stole upon him, he seemed to take the pleasure of a child in teaching his hands to work without the aid of vision. At last, hardly able to distinguish light from darkness, his hearing much im- paired, his limbs disabled so that he was confined to his bed, he still kept his pleasant smile and hearty welcome for his friends, delighted in telling of the noted persons and scenes he remembered, tasked his memory for passages from the classics and from English poetry,-oftenest perhaps from Byron, especially Childe Harold, -and after long lingering in painless but utterly helpless dependence upon the kind ministration of others, at the age of ninety-two, faded away from a life which had come to be but the name of living.
Dr. John Ware deserves to be named with the best of those I have men- tioned. His name was almost of itself a guarantee of excellence; but his personal merits would have commended him to the confidence of any com- munity where he might have appeared as a stranger. Very gentle, very amiable, very conscientious, his natural modesty kept him from challenging public attention as emphatically as his ability and knowledge might have entitled him to do. Two essays, however, the results of close observation and careful study, gave him a high reputation, - his papers on Croup and Delirium Tremens. He followed Dr. James Jackson in the chair of Theory and Practice in the medical school of Harvard University, and proved himself a worthy successor of that admirable and revered teacher.
A few years only have elapsed since the death of Dr. John Barnard Swett Jackson, nephew of Dr. James Jackson, and in his own sphere not less entitled to honorable remembrance. He was never in large practice, and was comparatively little known to the general public; but his labors in the field of pathological anatomy made an era in the medical history of Boston. Never before had the effects of disease upon the organs been so · patiently and faithfully studied in this part of the country, at least, as after he began his labors in connection with the Society for Medical Improve- ment. He was the life of that society for a whole generation, laying before its members the results of the examinations which for many years he made for his professional brethren, almost to the exclusion of others who were thankful to commit a delicate and often repulsive task to his always willing hands. He it was chiefly who built up the select but most valuable patho- logical museum of that society. . As Professor of Pathological Anatomy in the medical school of Harvard University, and Curator of the Warren Anatomical Museum, he classified and arranged the specimens in that collection, and greatly increased its value by his own constant additions.
569
MEDICINE IN BOSTON.
His two catalogues, large octavo volumes, are of far more significance than the name catalogue would imply, being not merely a guide to the speci- mens, but containing a great amount of important practical information, - brief histories of the essential symptoms of cases, often of rare diseases, with a lucid and entirely trustworthy account of the organic changes observed after death. Dr. John B. S. Jackson was too sensitive for eminent success as a practitioner. He followed the wise guidance of instinct in choosing the scientific rather than the immediately practical part of medicine. He served the profession, and through that the public. His professional broth- ers repaid him with their gratitude and respect. It was at the request of many among them that he sat for the portrait painted by Mr. William Hunt, which at the present time is deposited in the hall of the Boston Medical Library Association.
All these of whom I have spoken lived to be old men, and thus im- printed their personal qualities deeply on their fellow-townsmen. Many others of our deceased practitioners are held in well defined remembrance, and would receive their due tribute in a more extended memoir. Several family names have become associated with eminence and success in the practice of medicine; and where the names have been lost, the blood has asserted its hereditary predilections for the medical profession. There has hardly been a year for more than a century in which " Dr. Warren " or " Dr. Jeffries" could not be called upon by his Boston fellow-citizens for his services as surgeon or physician. Dr. Jackson is represented by his grand- children and other blood relations; Dr. Bigelow, Dr. Hayward, Dr. Chan- ning, Dr. Putnam, Dr. Shattuck, Dr. Homans, are names as familiar to the young people of to-day as they were to their parents and grandparents. The memories of the past yet survive in our two honored medical brethren, - the venerable Dr. Edward Reynolds, and the indefatigable Dr. David Humphreys Storer, who still attends to his professional duties as he did in the youthful period of the century.
The true value of a good physician is not to be measured by the fame he acquires or the name he bequeaths to posterity. Many men have become known all over the world, and received the honors of stately biographies, who have really done less good to mankind than the faithful practitioners who have lived unknown beyond their own narrow circle, and died unre- membered beyond their own generation. The most famous of American physicians is undoubtedly the excellent and versatile Dr. Benjamin Rush. A biographer says of him: "His name is a brilliant star in the galaxy of American worthies. His fame associates with the renown of How- ard, Sydenham, Cullen, Boyle, Davies, and Washington. His memory, like their memories, will endure until time shall be immersed in the ocean of eternity." After language like this, and much more like it, let the reader turn to the judgment passed upon one of his legacies to the profession by Dr. Elisha Bartlett : " Dr. Rush had also a special doctrine or theory of fever, to which he seems to have attached much importance, and which he seems to
VOL. IV. - 72.
570
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
have regarded as very sound, logical, and philosophical. It may be safely said, I think, that in the whole compass of medical literature there cannot be found an equal number of pages containing a greater amount and variety of utter nonsense and unqualified absurdity, a more heterogeneous and ill-ad- justed an assemblage, not merely of unsupported, but of unintelligible and preposterous assertions, than are embodied in his exposition of this theory." Compare this severe judgment with the same writer's estimate of Dr. Rush's brother physican, Dr. William Currie: " Dr. Currie was a contemporary of Dr. Rush, and a practitioner in the same city. His general descriptions of disease are quite as good, to say the least, as those of his distinguished fellow-citizen, and his medical philosophy infinitely sounder and more ra- tional." Yet in the same biographical dictionaries where we find the flam- ing praises of Dr. Rush, the name of Dr. William Currie is not even men- tioned. A medical theorist, with a gift of fluent expression, will go down to posterity in a triumphal chariot of eulogy, while a quiet, sensible practi- tioner, whose life has been spent in useful service, is hardly remembered at all by the generation which comes after him.
Many such men as this have lived and labored and died among us, - too many to be mentioned in this brief article. They did not seek for fame in the broad highway of ambition, but were content to follow the narrow path of duty. If there were a Day of all Saints for the departed worthies of the Medical Profession, for every name that I have spoken of there would be a score to claim a place upon the roll of memory. I have thought that the few shadowy reminiscences I have given might gather interest by the lapse of years, when the personages to whom they relate shall be to our descendants but vague and indistinct images, as William Douglass and Zabdiel Boylston and William Aspinwall are to us of the present generation.
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
CHAPTER XI.
THE BENCH AND BAR IN BOSTON.
BY JOHN T. MORSE, JR., Editor of the International Review.
W HEREVER Englishmen inhabit, courts and litigation prevail. Even the New England fathers, whose chief object in life was the cultiva- tion of virtue, sinned, quarrelled, and over-reached each other sufficiently to render tribunals of justice a necessity at a very early day. Indeed, they indulged in such a multiplicity of courts and magistrates as now appears quite confusing; and how so many judges, justices, and commissioners could find occupation in a small and poor community is a very perplexing question. One forum, however, they had which has since disappeared, and which might have been well worth preserving. This was the strangers' or merchants' court, established for the speedy determination of questions in which temporary sojourners in our seaports were interested, who could thus obtain justice without over costly delay. In 1651, also, another special court of seven Commissioners was found necessary for Boston, as was said, by reason of the concourse of people and the increase of crime in the Puri- tan town; but some jealousy of this tribunal was manifested, and at the end of the year, for which it was first established, it was not continued.
Yet though there was thus early not only a Bench, but many Benches, and divers supplementary and inferior courts besides, it was long before there was any Bar.1 For many years there was no distinct class of attor- neys; and when, in 1701, attorneys were recognized as officers of the court, and were required to take an oath before practising, still no term of study was required, and apparently no examination was had, so that the way was broad enough for any one to enter. Occasionally some one who had had a professional education in England found his way to
1 [Thomas Lechford seems to have been the earliest Boston lawyer. See Vol. I., p. 503. - ED.]
et mei Aho · Beckford / cryptoris Frejus
2
572
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
the colony; but, as may be imagined, the sparse wanderers failed to have much influence upon the general customs and practice. As a rule every one was supposed, alike by himself and by others, to be abun- dantly able to plead his own cause; and even so late as 1746 it was ob- served that the people were especially " addicted to quirks of the law, ... " so that a very ordinary countryman in New England is almost qualified for a country attorney in England." Even when it naturally befell that some individuals, gifted beyond their fellows in art or eloquence, were occasionally engaged to represent their' less shrewd and eloquent neigh- bors, we find them for a long time to have had other regular callings in life. For example, one favorite attorney was by customary occupation a tailor; others were merchants. Bullivant, whose " knowledge of the laws fitted him for the office of attorney-general," which he filled apparently with credit to himself, was an apothecary and medical practitioner, and withal an active politician.1 It was rarely that even the judges had had the advantages of a legal education. Judge Lynde 2 took his seat on the Bench of the Superior Court in 1712, and was the first judge of that court who had been regularly trained to the profession. Afterward came also Chief-Justice Joseph Dudley,3 son of the first Governor Dudley, and himself the father of Paul Dudley, who was likewise Chief-Justice of Massachusetts from 1748 to 1751. But a very short list of incumbents really trained in the calling fills the rather uninteresting professional record of the eighteenth century.
For a long time the governors were ex officio judges presiding in the Court of Assistants, the assistants being officers of the corporation chosen annually by the freemen at the meeting of the General Court in Easter Term. It might sometimes happen that there was not an educated lawyer among them; though some of the governors were not ill-qualified for the judicial function. John Winthrop, for example, had been educated for the Bar in England; so also had Governor Bellingham, who, however, it may be supposed, was more willing to enforce the observance of the laws by others than to abide by them at all times himself. . A droll story is told of his courtship, a foil to the popular tale concerning Miles Standish and John Alden. A friend of his, who lodged at his house, was engaged to be mar- ried, and the wedding-day was at hand; when the governor, upon a sud- den finding himself enamored of the lady, " treated with her, and obtained her for himself." The affair was speedily brought to a conclusion " by the governor's marrying himself, without first publishing the banns, as required by law." A Puritan grand jury, however, could not be expected to be a respecter of persons, and the governor was accordingly presented for his unlawful action. The secretary summoned him " to answer the prosecu- tion ;" but in his singular combination of characters, - governor, chief- justice, and culprit, - he dodged justice with admirable skill. He declined
8 [See his portrait in Vol. II., p. 334. - ED.]
1 [See Vol. II., ch. i .- ED.]
2 [See his portrait in Vol. II., p. 558. - ED.]
573
THE BENCH AND BAR IN BOSTON.
to leave his place on the bench in order to take a position in the dock, and thus " escaped both trial and punishment."1 The outsiders, however, who meddled most with the law's administration were clergymen; nor was their interference always creditable to their sense of justice. Thus an action, ap- parently in the nature of slander, brought by a minister against a layman, was about to come on for trial, when the Rev. Mr. Barnard, sitting at dinner with the judges, stated to them that, when the cause should be tried, he would like to make a few remarks. Accordingly so soon as the plaintiff's counsel had opened the case, the reverend gentleman began interrogating the plaintiff. Not until he had concluded were the more regular proceed- ings continued. But at the close of the argument for the defendant, which was larded-rather ungratefully, as it appears-with "many fleers upon the ministry and our churches," the chief-justice gave the clergyman another chance ; and he thereupon "paid his respects to the court and delivered his speech," and begged the magistrates to dismiss the action, which they forth- with did, glad to " get rid of so dirty an affair."
This is only a specimen of the prevailing condition of practice. Thus we hear of an instance where one juror, who was standing out against the eleven others, was called out by the attorney-general and obligingly directed as to what he should do. But when the refractory wretch refused to yield his opinion under such civil entreatment, he was starved into compliance, while his fellows received meat and drink; it being properly enough remarked that it was better that one man should be destroyed than eleven. Verdicts were sometimes rendered to the effect that there were strong grounds of suspicion, though falling short of proof; whereupon the court would sen- tence the defendant for such crime as it appeared probable that he had committed, though it had not been alleged in the indictment, nor perhaps even found by the jury. For example, a defendant indicted for forgery, which could not be proved, was reported by the jury to be a " cheat," and had to stand upon the court-house steps for half an hour at midday, having pinned upon his breast the forged bond and the label " cheat" in large let- ters. It was a rough but substantial justice, and had its advantages over more technical and less efficient systems. Appropriate to such crude and rough-hewn notions were also the manners of the judges, which are repre- sented as execrably bad. They bullied and browbeat the counsel after the old-time English fashion, and promoted their own views rather than impar- tial justice. But, on the other hand, they themselves were liable to be treated with singular disrespect by members of the Bar who felt able to ven- ture on such behavior. For example, one day when a miserable old woman came hobbling into court and could find no seat, the lawyer who had sum- moned her told her to go up on the judges' bench, which the old crone at once innocently proceeded to do. The wrath of the court was aroused : "How came you to do this?" said the judge, angrily addressing the lawyer. "I-I-really thought the place was made for old women," stammered the
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.