USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume II > Part 27
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648
WORCESTER COUNTY
Another Worcester man who has had a large share in the building up of the New England Power system is Carl S. Herrmann. Born in Worcester in 1890, he was educated in the Worcester schools and as a young man began work in the accounting division of the American Steel & Wire Company. In 1912 Mr. Herrmann went to work for the newly formed Connecticut River Power Company. He so quickly demonstrated executive qualities of the highest order and as a result of a series of steady promotions he was made treasurer of New England Power Association when it was formed in 1926. He is at present the treasurer and chief accounting executive of more than one hundred electric light and power companies.
In fact, the organization which was to become the New England Power system was so exclusively a Worcester activity in its formative years that a great many of its important executive places are today filled with men from Worcester County.
WORCESTER COUNTY TOWNS SUPPLIED WITH ELECTRICITY.
CODE A .- Companies owned, operated or managed by N. E. P. Association. B .- Companies not owned, operated or managed by N. E. P. Association. -1. Total requirements supplied by N. E. P. Association. -2. Part of requirements supplied by N. E. P. Association. -3. None of requirements supplied by N. E. P. Association.
Munici-
Popu-
pality
lation
Company
Source of Electricity
Ashburnham .. . 2,079
Gardner Electric Light Co.
A-I
Athol
10,677
Athol Gas and Electric Co.
A-2 (Small amount of hydro generated lo- cally.)
Auburn
6,147
Worcester Suburban Electric Co.
Barre
3,510
Gardner Electric Light Co.
Berlin
1,075 Marlborough Electric Co.
Blackstone 4,674 Blackstone Electric Co ..
Bolton
764 Marlborough Electric Co.
Boylston
1,097
Municipal
Brookfield
1,352
Central Mass. Electric Co.
Spencer Gas Co.
A-3 (Gas plant at Spen- cer.)
Charlton
2,154
Webster & Southbridge Gas & Electric
A-2 (Local steam standby Gas plant at Web- ster. )
Clinton 12,817
Clinton Gas Light Co.
A-I (Gas plant at Clin- ton.)
Dana
505
Gardner Electric Light Co ..
A-I A-I
Douglas
2,195
Worcester Suburban Electric Co.
Dudley
4,265
Webster & Southbridge Gas & Electric
A-2 (Local steam standby Gas plant at Web- ster.)
E. Brookfield .. 926
Central Mass. Electric Co.
Spencer Gas Co ..
A-2 A-3
Fitchburg 40,692
Fitchburg Gas & Electric Co.
A-2 (Local steam standby Local gas plant.)
Gardner 19,399
Gardner Electric Light Co.
Grafton
7,030 Worcester Suburban Electric Co. .. Hardwick 2,460
Central Mass. Electric Co.
A-I A-I A-2
A-I A-I A-I A-I A-I B-I New Eng. Power Co. A-2 (Hydro plant at Pal- mer.)
649
THE ERA OF ELECTRIC POWER
Munici-
Popu- lation
Company
Harvard
987
Harvard Electric Co.
A-I
Holden
3,871
Municipal
Hopedale 2,973 Milford Electric Light & Power Co ...
Hubbardston 1,010 Gardner Electric Light Co.
Lancaster
2,897
Clinton Gas Light Co.
Leicester
4,445
Worcester Electric Light Co.
Leominster 21,810
Leominster Electric Co .. Leominster Gas Light Co.
A-I
A-3 (Gas plant at Leo- minster.) A-2 (Steam standby.)
Lunenburg 1,923
Fitchburg Gas and Electric Co.
Leominster Gas Light Co ..
Mendon
1,107
Worcester Suburban Electric Co ..
Milford
14,74I
Milford Electric Light & Power Co ... Milford Gas Light Co ..
Millbury 6,957
Worcester Suburban Electric Co ..
Millville 2,III
Blackstone Electric Co.
New Braintree 407
Gardner Electric Light Co.
Northboro
1,946
Marlborough Electric Co ..
A-I
Northbridge ..
9,715
Worcester Suburban Electric Co.
A-I
N. Brookfield .
3,013
Central Mass. Electric Co.
A-2 A-3 A-I
Oakham
502
Gardner Electric Light Co ..
Oxford
3,943
Paxton
672
Webster & Southbridge Gas & Electric Municipal
Petersham 660
Gardner Electric Light Co.
Phillipston 357
Gardner Electric Light Co.
Princeton
717
Municipal
Royalston
744
Gardner Electric Light Co.
Rutland
2,442
Gardner Electric Light Co.
Shrewsbury
6,910
Municipal
Southboro
2,166
Marlborough Electric Co ..
Marlborough-Hudson Gas Co.
Southbridge
14,264
Webster & Southbridge Gas & Electric Spencer Gas Co.
Sterling
1,502
Municipal
Sturbridge 1,772
Sutton
2,147
Worcester Suburban Electric Co ..
Templeton
4,159
Municipal
Upton
2,026
Worcester Suburban Electric Co.
Uxbridge
6,285
Worcester Suburban Electric Co.
Warren 3,765
Spencer Gas Co.
Webster
12,992
Webster & Southbridge Gas & Electric Marlborough Electric Co. Municipal
West Boylston 2,114 W. Brookfield. 1,255
Westminster
1,925
Central Mass. Electric Co. Spencer Gas Co. Gardner Electric Light Co .. Winchendon Electric Light Co.
Winchendon 6,202
Worcester ... 195,3II
Worcester Electric Light Co.
Source of Electricity
B-I New Eng. Power Co.
A-I A-I A-I
A-2 (Generates steam power for system during part of year.)
A-3 A-I A-I A-3 A-I A-I A-I
A-2 (Steam standby.) B-I Worcester Elec. Lt. Co.
A- A-I B-I Gardner Electric Lt. Co.
A-I A-I B-I Worcester Elec. Lt. Co.
A-I A-3 (Gas plant at Marl- borough.)
A-2 A-I (Electricity.) A-3 (Gas.) B-I New Eng. Power Co.
A-2 A-I B-I Gardner Elec. Light Co.
A-I A-I A-2 A-3 A-2 (Steam standby.) A-I
Westboro 6,409
B-I New Eng. Power Co.
A-2 A-3 A-I A-2 (Small local hydro plant.) A-2 (Generates steanı power part of year.)
pality
Spencer
6,272
Webster & Southbridge Gas & Electric
Central Mass. Electric Co.
Spencer Gas Co. .
CHAPTER XLVII
Medical Annals
There are many unique features in the history of medicine and medical men in Massachusetts. Assuredly the Commonwealth has been the home of many pioneers in the development of medical lore and science in the United States. Probably the first physician in New England was "Deacon" Samuel Fuller, of the Mayflower, citizen of Plymouth and Charlestown; his wife Bridget was an accomplished midwife. The first doctor, State-sustained, was John Pratt, of Cambridge, who was sent with the Winthrop Colony and paid by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Anne Hutchinson, 1636, was the first woman to practice medicine in the Massachusetts Colony. Governor Win- throp, according to the Elder Cotton Mather, had been a "Help for our Bodies by Physick." Many of the early high officials of the Colony and par- ticularly the religious leaders, practiced medicine of a sort, being jacks of all trades. John Eliot, Apostle to the Indians, in 1647, complained that "we never had but one anotomy in the Countrey, which Giles Firman did make and read very well." By an "anotomy" or anatomy, the Apostle meant a skeleton. Giles Firman was the "instigator of the first anatomical clinic," and also of one of the first Colonial medical laws, for the General Court replied to John Eliot's complaint : "we conceive it very necessary that such as studies phisick, or chirurgery, may have the liberty to read anotomy & to anotomize once in fouree yeares some malefactor in case there be such as the Court will alow of." It was not until almost two centuries later (1830) that another anatomy act was passed. In 1647, also, the first quarantine law estab- lished in the New World, was passed to shut out the yellow fever. Two years later the first American law attempting to control the practice of medicine was passed. It was based on the idea, as stated in the introduction that, "Forasmuch as the Law of God allowes no man to impaire the Life and Limbs of any person, but in a judicial way" none but skilled "Chirugeons, Midwives and Physitians," must "presume to exercise or put forth an act contrary to the known approved Rules of Art."
NEW WORCESTER COUNTY SANITORIUM FOR TUBERCULAR PATIENTS, IN BOYLSTON ON THE EDGE OF WORCESTER
651
MEDICAL ANNALS
The earliest treatise upon a medical subject in America was written by Thomas Thacher, first minister of Old South Church, Boston, and published in 1677, and was entitled : A Brief Rule to Guide the Common People of New England how to order themselves and theirs in the Small Pocks or Measles. The oldest American medical society of unbroken record is the Massachusetts Medical Society, founded in 1781. The first chemist's shop was set up in Boston. The first recorded epidemic of yellow fever attacking the whites, occurred in 1693. Possibly the first outbreak of mob hysteria was that at Salem over witchcraft, and the first autopsy made in this country, was performed in this connection, in 1675. It is described in the records of the Roxbury Church. Among other "firsts" might be named smallpox vac- cine and inoculation, the introduction of which brought the younger Cotton Mather, Zabdiel Boylston, William Douglas, Benjamin Waterhouse and others of the late eighteenth century medics into trouble, even as did the first experiments with anaesthetics. Both were important discoveries but long in becoming popular.
Dr. Walter L. Burrage, M. D., has written: "The medical profession of Massachusetts can claim that it has given to the world the discovery of the cause of puerperal fever, the supreme blessing of surgical anesthesia, the discovery of appendicitis and its proper treatment. The physicians of the Commonwealth brought about the establishment of the first State Board of Health and the first sanatorium for the care of tuberculosis in the United States, not to mention the medical examiner system in place of incompetent coroners. Moreover they were pioneers in social service and hospital standardization, they improved the established treatment of diabetes and made a previously fatal disease, pernicious anemia, curable by a liver diet. During three centuries it has been the glory of the profession that it has been ever ready to learn new methods, to develop fresh lines of investigation and above all to perceive, through the agency of an adequate medical library, and to apply the discoveries from all over the medical world. Massachusetts medicine has been progressive, it has been national and it has been world- wide." (Hart's Commonwealth History of Massachusetts, Vol. V. p. 567.)
Worcester County's share in the glories of Massachusetts medical tri- umphs, is that of a part to the whole. If it did nothing more than give Dr. Morton, of Charlton, to surgical anesthesia in the world; Dorothea Dix, of Worcester, and Clara Barton, to medical reform and the Red Cross, it has contributed well to the making of medical history in the State and Nation. To its larger neighbor, Boston, and to the Nation at large, the county has always given many of its best men. Dr. Koch discovered the tubercle bacil- lus, in 1882. The laboratories of Massachusetts confirmed his work, and Dr. Albert Worcester joined with Dr. William Sullivan in persuading the
652
WORCESTER COUNTY
Legislature to establish a State tuberculosis sanatorium. This, the first in the United States, was opened in Rutland, Worcester County, in 1898. It might well be noted that "inoculating the smallpox," a practice which, not only met with opposition but was a half century in becoming established, was used in several parts of Worcester County, comparatively early and especially so in 1776. It is reputed that the State Lunatic Hospital, as it was then called, established in Worcester in the year 1832, was the first institution of its kind founded by any State in the Union. The claim is made that Dr. Hervey G. Wilbur, opened in Barre in 1848, the first private hospital for mentally defective children. Worcester County physicians were among the incorporators of the Massachusetts Medical Society, in 1781, and is believed that there was a county medical society as early as 1784. Enough has been said to indicate that this part of the Commonwealth has never lagged behind other sections in medicine and medical leaders. If certain individuals of international fame have been named only, it is because their lives have been reviewed adequately in the early chapters of this work.
To the medical profession of Worcester County, particularly of the pio- neer days and the years of the last century, the writer wishes to pay deserved tribute if only by compiling a roster of its devoted and useful practitioners. Of the physicians of the past little has been recorded. Writers have immor- talized soldiers, ministers, lawyers, merchants, industrialists, but seldom have they given their pens to the personalities of the doctors and surgeons. "His- tory has been written about all sorts of men and women, even fools, scoun- drels and busybodies, but medical men and women have been forgotten." Excuse is made that the earliest physicians are better known for other than medical activities. The John Winthrops, senior and junior, are remembered as statesmen. Many of the religious leaders for the first century evidently were of greater service to their people as doctors, although not so recorded in history. There was a lack of physicians in the Massachusetts Colony. James Gregory Mumford narrows the list of well known doctors of the seventeenth century to eighteen, but oddly enough, ten of the eighteen are better known for their avocations than for their vocations. The pioneer physician of even a hundred years ago, knew little medicine compared with the present day ; if he operated it was without the benefit of good instruments, anasthesia, and under septic conditions. It was difficult for him to get about over his extensive field of labor ; his wage was small, he had numerous lay competitors, while "home remedies" were countless. Unlike most profes- sions or businesses, the pioneer, like every medical man since, worked his hardest to destroy his own business-he must cure illness and prevent every- one from becoming ill. In addition to his professional practice he was often the family counsellor, the community information bureau, and often the
653
MEDICAL ANNALS
social, religious and political leader of the community. To a considerable degree he moulded public opinion and determined the future welfare of his town.
To illustrate: John Brigham, a pioneer of Westborough, in 1672, was "doctor, surveyor, commissioner to the General Court." Dr. Zachariah Harvey, Worcester, 1736, and other places in the county, was variously town clerk, moderator, chairman of selectmen, agent and assessor of the General Court, and a physician. The first settled minister of Shrewsbury, Rev. Ebenezer Morse, was a "master of all the learned professions-law and medicine as well as divinity." The first Baptist preacher of Leicester is described as "the leading physician of the county for thirty-five years." The proprietor of the plantation which became Athol, Joseph Lord, was clerk, exhorter, doctor and general handyman. William Douglas, founder of the town of Douglas, had several trades and was an all 'round business man and captain of industry. Many of the first medical men in the various settle- ments were agriculturists, carpenters and the like, often from necessity. It is a matter of record that one of the members of the Green family who were largely represented in the medical profession of Worcester County, Dr. Thomas Green, then of Auburn, a minister and farmer, made six profes- sional calls upon a patient in West Millbury, for which he charged thirty- seven cents. This large bill probably included medicine costs. If Dr. Green received anything on account, it was probably in farm or forest products.
The name is not known of the first physician to visit what is now Worces- ter County. It may have been Giles Firman, apothecary, doctor, teacher of anatomy, the colleague of John Eliot with whom he probably visited some of the "Praying Indians" in this section. There were also several ministers who practiced medicine among the settlers of the first plantations in the region in the seventeenth century. Of the four only towns, of that period, Mendon, Brookfield, and Quinsigamond (Worcester) had been put to the torch by the aborigines in 1675, and the largest, Lancaster, had been blotted out. Settlement was recommenced within three years, but Worcester County history really begins with the first quarter of the eighteenth century, and it is doubtful whether the whole large county sheltered much above four thousand white people at the date of its establishment, July 10, 1731. Lan- caster was then the most important town; Mendon, Sutton and Brookfield had larger populations than Worcester, and, with the exception of Sutton, were older.
Lancaster with all its early population, prestige and power, had no annalist sufficiently interested in its pioneer doctors to do more than name them. A recent writer sums up its medical history: Mary Whitcomb; Daniel Green- leaf, who died in 1735; John Dunsmoor, who died in 1745; Stanton Pren-
654
WORCESTER COUNTY
tice, who died in 1769; Phinehas Phelps, Enoch Dole, William Dunsmoor, Josiah Wilder, Cephas Prentice, all of whom died before the close of the eighteenth century; Israel Atherton, James Carter, Samuel Manning, Nathaniel Peabody, Calvin Carter, George Baker, Right Cummings, Edward T. Tremaine, Henry Lincoln, J. L. S. Thompson, George W. Symonds, George W. Burdett, George M. Morse, S. S. Lyon, Reuben Barron, Henry H. Fuller, F. H. Thompson, Walter P. Bowers, and George L. Tobey, were nineteenth century physicians; some of them are of record in other towns also. Mary Whitcomb was a highly respected midwife.
The roster of Mendon's pioneer medical men is equally small, judging from what has been printed concerning them. Numbered among its first settlers, in 1662, was Rev. John Rayner, of Weymouth, who seems to have had some knowledge of simple remedies, besides being "an able minister." Mendon, however, was the first to suffer in King Philip's War, and while pro- vision was made for religion and education in later resettlements, we know of none being made for a doctor. An epidemic of dysentery hit the town in 1726, but the town fathers fought it in a characteristic way by letting "the swine run at large the remainder of the year." Mendon also had a smallpox epidemic, in 1792. In the movement that forced Worcester County, in 1776, to take preventative measures against the smallpox, the erecting of isolation hospitals (?) for variolous inoculation, Mendon refused to "allow" such a hospital, but the return of the disease in 1792 brought about a change of attitude. Such a hospital was permitted and Dr. Joseph Adams was placed in control. Dr. John George Metcalf, president of the Worcester District Medical Society (1849-50), town historian in 1839 and again in 1879, con- tributes very little to our knowledge of its medical men. Among his con- temporaries were Dr. Alexander Thayer, Jr., to 1830; Dr. Abel Wilder, 1827 to 1862. Mendon, originally a part of Suffolk County, was "The Mother of Towns," and among her offspring were Uxbridge, Upton, Milford, Hope- dale, Blackstone, Northbridge, whose annals are a richer source of medical material.
Brookfield and Sutton were larger and richer than Worcester until almost the end of the eighteenth century. Their pioneer physicians seem to have been more numerous than in the settlements of later foundation, and no better in the history that has come down to us, possibly for the reason that what they did as citizens was considered more important than as doctors. Dr. James H. Armsby and Dr. Alden March, stand out in the field of medi- cine of the nineteenth century, but both as professors in medical schools. Dr. March, born 1795, was the founder and the first president of the Albany, New York, Medical College ; Dr. Armsby, born 1809, was a professor at the Albany Medical College and the Vermont Academy of Medicine. Other
655
MEDICAL ANNALS
early Sutton physicians were David S. C. H. Smith ( 1839-59). N. Quincy Tirrell, from 1842; William Terry, from 1847, and A. L. Stickney, from 1866. The annals of the Brookfields for a hundred years are replete with the names of ministers, churches and town meetings, but it remained for Dr. Snell, who settled there in 1798, to record the name of Dr. Jacob Kit- tridge, who through his fame as a surgeon and healer, made North Brookfield the Mecca of the "sickly and palsied, those afflicted with swellings, disjointed bones, broken limbs and the diseased of every sort." Dr. Kittridge died in 1813. Other of the first physicians of the Brookfields, were Dr. Henry Gil- man, Drs. Green and Spooner; Drs. H. T. and H. P. Bates, Drs. Jesse Den- niman, Tilly Rice, Seth Field, Thomas Babbitt, and John Homans. The last three and Dr. Spencer, were members of the Worcester Medical Society, in 1804, Dr. Babbitt being president from 1807 to his death in 1813.
Before quitting a chronological order of towns, mention will be made of those other towns incorporated prior to the setting up of a county govern- ment in 1731-Oxford, Rutland, Westborough, Uxbridge, Southborough, Shrewsbury and Lunenburg, reducing Crane's account in his History of Worcester County.
Oxford had Dr. Paine. Dr. Addison Knight was in practice in Oxford in 1834, Dr. Jonathan Nichols, 1854, and Dr. Charles L. Clarke and William B. Cushman in the 1830's.
Rutland's earliest physician was Dr. Hezekiah Fletcher, who died in 1754. His son, Alpheus, succeeded to the practice, dying in 1766. Dr. John Frink was next ; he and his son, John, practiced in Rutland for more than eighty years. Dr. John Frink was the only Worcester County physician among those who incorporated the first medical association, the Massachusetts Medi- cal Society, in 1781. Dr. John Frink, Jr., died in 1811. Dr. John Field, who practiced for many years, died in Rutland in 1815, Dr. James McFarland, Jr., died in 1823, Dr. Charles G. Safford died in 1848. Other physicians in Rutland during the middle decades of the last century include Drs. Clapp, Saltmarsh, Ordway, Warren, Newell, Rood, Herbert, Slocum, Fellows, and Shannon.
The first settler in the original territory of Westborough was John Brig- ham, known as Dr. Brigham. He is described as "doctor, surveyor, com- missioner to the General Court," and in 1672 he built a sawmill on Howard Brook, "and lived among the savages until their hostility drove him away." Dr. James Hawes settled in Westborough in 1763. He came into prominence during the Revolution, attending the Provincial Congress in 1775. Dr. Ben- jamin Pond, Jr., was president of the Worcester District Medical Society in 1851-53, and Dr. Edwin B. Harvey, of Westborough, held the same office in 1882-84. Other Westborough physicians of the nineteenth century include
656
WORCESTER COUNTY
Drs. Samuel Griggs, Henry H. Rising, F. E. Corey, Charles S. Bradley, and Daniel P. Cilley.
Upton's early physicians were John Starkweather, Henry Carpenter, George W. Ward, and Jerome Wilmarth. Uxbridge had for its first medical man, Dr. Wood. Later physicians were Drs. Samuel Willard, George Wil- lard, Augustus C. Taft, Dr. Smith, Dr. A. W. Bennett, J. W. Robbins, J. M. Macomber, Chauncey A. Wilcox, William L. Johnson, L. D. White, W. L. Sanders, Benjamin Joslyn. Dr. Samuel Willard died in 1811. Dr. George Willard died in 1846. Dr. Robbins was in practice for more than thirty years ; he died in 1879. Dr. Bennett practiced for more than forty years, ending in 1888. Dr. Chauncey A. Wilcox was president of the Worcester District Medical Society 1870-72; he practiced for more than thirty years from about 1854.
Southborough was the native place of Dr. Joel Burnett, who died in 1845; he practiced for many years. His son, Dr. Joseph Burnett, of Boston, was a noteworthy benefactor of his native town. Dr. Samuel C. Hartwell was in the town from 1839. Dr. J. Henry Robinson began to practice about 1860.
The first Shrewsbury physician was Dr. Joshua Smith, who practiced in the town from about 1740 until his death in 1756. Dr. Zachariah Harvey practiced in Shrewsbury between 1740 and 1750, when he removed to Prince- ton. The Rev. Ebenezer Morse, who became the minister of the Second Parish when that was established in 1742, was also a physician, having grad- uated from Harvard College in 1737. His son, Dr. Eliakim Morse, prac- ticed medicine in the same parish, which became part of Boylston and West Boylston. Dr. Edward Flint's practice in the town began in 1756 and ended in 1818; he was chief chirurgeon of the regiment commanded by Colonel Timothy Ruggles, during the Expedition against Crown Point in 1758. His son, Dr. Austin Flint was born in Shrewsbury in 1760, and served during the Revolution. Other Shrewsbury physicians include: Dr. Amariah Bigelow, born in 1757; Dr. Samuel Crosby, who was an army surgeon, and removed to Winchendon after the Revolutionary War; Dr. Paul Dean, who opened a smallpox hospital in Shrewsbury in 1792; Dr. Silas Wheelock, 1800-17; Dr. Seth Knowlton, who practiced for thirty years, ending in 1832; Dr. William Workman, 1826-30; Dr. Azor R. Phelps, 1835-43; Dr. Adolphus Brigham, from 1827 to 1859; Dr. Alonzo Smith, for a few years from 1834; Dr. Dean Towne, for ten years from 1840; Dr. John Heard, 1847; Dr. Joel B. Fay, 1850-60; Dr. Frederick A. Jewett, 1859-70; Dr. John T. Wetherbee, 1869- 1873; Dr. Emerson Warner, 1863-65; Dr. Franklin W. Brigham, for several decades from 1865; Dr. Jeremiah C. Foster, 1867-73; Dr. J. C. Coburn,
NEW PUTNAM WARD FOR TUBERCULAR PATIENTS, BELMONT ISOLATION HOSPITAL, WORCESTER
Photo by Paul W. Savage
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