USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume II > Part 29
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The limitation of the membership of the Massachusetts Medical Society to seventy for more than twenty years forced physicians generally to create
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their own local or sectional organizations. In the larger towns and cities of Worcester County it was the custom for such few medical men as were then in practice, to meet fairly regularly in each other's homes. There seems to have been a more formal association started prior to 1785, of which Dr. Samuel Prentiss was the secretary, but practically nothing is known about it. In 1794 the Worcester Medical Society was formed, with Dr. John Frink, of Rutland, as its first president, and Dr. Oliver Fiske, of Worcester, secretary. When in 1803 the State Society changed its membership rules so as to include all reputable physicians, and divided the activities of the society between four district organizations, the Worcester Medical Society changed its name to the Worcester District Medical Society, instead of calling itself the Western District Medical Society, as suggested by the parent body. This probably was done because Worcester County so completely dominated the medical situa- tion in the so-called West. Dr. Oliver Fiske was president of the new district society for the first three years.
As the number of doctors and surgeons increased with the years, other medical associations were formed in the county. On June 9, 1853, the Thur- ber Medical Association was founded at Milford, with a membership of seventeen physicians representing twelve towns. It was named in honor of Dr. Daniel Furber, long a practitioner in Mendon; Dr. George Nelson, of Bellingham, was chosen the first president. Dr. John George Metcalf, of Mendon was the first secretary, and was an official and member for almost forty years. At one time Dr. Metcalf was president of the Worcester Dis- trict Medical Society. The Thurber Association has declined to merge with the State Society, and the president of the older organization once challenged the United States to name a "strictly independent local medical society in the nation, not yielding allegiance to or receiving support from any other society, which had maintained its organization and held regular meetings for as many years." The challenge was never accepted. In 1858 the Worcester North District Medical Society was founded with Fitchburg as its center, and Dr. William Parkhurst of Petersham as the first president.
The Massachusetts Homeopathic Medical Society had its origin in the Homeopathic Fraternity, established in 1840, by physicians of that school, and was incorporated in 1856 under its present name. A number of local societies were formed in later years which affiliated with the parent organi- zation, of which the Worcester County Homeopathic Medical Society was one. This was founded in 1866 with Dr. Lemuel Nichols, who was also a graduate in "regular" medicine, as the original president. Dr. William B. Chamberlain was also one of the first members of the Worcester Society, twice its president, and in 1872, president of the Massachusetts Homeo-
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pathic Medical Society. Medicine has made its greatest progress by rejecting the old truth and practice for the new ; most advances have been made against the severest criticism and opposition. In this the older generation has been neither better or worse than the present. The "regular" or allopath school of medicine utterly rejected the teachings of Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), and of Hans Christian Gram, who in 1825 introduced homeopathy in this country. Dr. John Birnstill, was apparently the first to practice homeopathy in Worcester, 1844, and he became discouraged after three years. Dr. J. K. Clark was a practitioner of this school in Worcester, from 1849 to 1855. Dr. Nichols, using both schools of medicine but preferring homeopathy, came in 1855, as did Dr. J. E. Linnell, associated with Dr. Nichols for a decade. Dr. Daniel B. Whittier introduced homeopathy in Fitchburg in 1864. None of strict followers of Hahnemann were permitted to join the Massachusetts Medical Society until 1877, when a by-law was simplified to read "that they (members) do not practice any exclusive system of medicine, or practice medicine in a manner contrary to the code of the society." Since 1874 the by-law had refused admission to any physician professing adherence to any "exclusive" s"stem. For almost a half century from 1825 the homeopath had been classe i with the "hydropaths, chronothermalists, botanic physicians, also all mesmeric and clairvoyant pretenders to the healing art, and all others who claim peculiar merits for mixed practices not founded on the best system of Europe and America." There are now many homeopaths in the Massachusetts Medical Society. The modern trend is away from "schools" and faith in all of any one man's teachings.
The hospitals and similar medical institutions are the combined results of the devoted efforts of medical men, charitable citizens, for the most part, although the larger institutions are now usually of State or municipal estab- lishment and support. The Worcester Homeopathic Hospital, while by no means one of the oldest hospitals in the city, was founded in 1896 as the Worcester Hahnemann Hospital. It was opened in a private home donated by Mrs. Elizabeth Coburn, a property that was later added to by the Roche estate, given in 1907, by David Hale Fanning. The new hospital was com- pleted in November, 1909, with moneys furnished by public subscription. It has since been supported mainly by Worcester women. Its medical staff consists of twenty-three physicians and surgeons. The Worcester Homeo- pathic Dispensary, dates from 1880 and the initiative of Dr. Lemuel Nichols. It was maintained in part by an endowment by Mrs. L. J. Knowles. In con- nection with homeopathy in the State it is worth recalling that one of the "big four" hospitals in Boston is the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital, incorporated in 1855, which also includes the Homeopathic Dispensary,
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opened in 1856, and the Boston University School of Medicine, established in 1873, "the greatest single factor in the spread of homeopathy in New Eng- land." This was also one of the first medical schools in America to raise the standard of medical education to a high plane, one on a level with other tech- nical institutions. Incidentally the Westborough Hospital for the Insane, founded in 1844, was established by the followers of Hahnemann.
Barre also was named as the site of the first private hospital for mentally defective children. It is but one of a number of county towns having really fine private and public hospitals and sanatoriums. Athol has three hospitals. Ashburnham Township, and its industrial concerns, also has three hospitals. Auburn has two institutions; Bolton, Blackstone, Boylston, and the Brook- fields have each at one time or another had efficient medical establishments. If one were to take the towns alphabetically, more than half would show hos- pitals and similar institutions. Fitchburg, the site of Maccarty's smallpox hospital of Revolutionary times, has now the Burbank Hospital, "one of the best free public hospitals in New England." Gardner S. Burbank, who died in 1888, bequeathed a half million dollar estate, which is the foundation of the institution that bears his name. This sum was not completely available until after the decease of Mrs. Burbank, in 1908, but a fifty-room hospital had been opened for patients a decade earlier. The cottage plan was fol- lowed in construction and practice. Gardner S. Burbank, always notably public-spirited and philanthropic, was one of the leading men in the develop- ment of the paper mill industry so important to Fitchburg. The Heywood name and enterprise is known to students of Gardner history. Nine genera- tions played their important rôles, and the "Henry Heywood Memorial Hos- pital," at Gardner, was created by members of the family. Seth Heywood, of the ninth generation and third of his name is its secretary. The hospital has been expanded along almost every modern line, and serves well the needs of a varied modern community. The Whitinsville Hospital is largely a memorial to the Whitins family, known for its outstanding connections with textiles since Colonel Paul Whitin settled in the town of Northbridge, after years of service in the American Revolution. Leominster started solving its hospitalization problems in 1902 as the result of a meeting of its philanthropic citizens two years earlier. A Hospital Association was formed, but it was some years later before a private house was purchased and used. In 1919 certain residents offered to give a site and $50,000 if not less than $125,000 was subscribed by others toward the erection of a hospital. Success met the drive for the additional funds, and a splendid large and modern institution is the result.
In and around Worcester center many of the largest hospitals, public and private, which represent an investment of possibly $4,000,000. As a village
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it fought vigorously in the late 1770's against Dr. Joseph Lyne and Dr. Elijah Dix when the two worthies wanted to "set up a hospital for inoculat- ing the small pox." It was not until nearly a hundred years later that the city, now grown large, suddenly came to the realization that it was behind the age in provision for hospitals. In 1871 two hospitals were founded, the Memorial and the City institution. Only the Worcester City Hospital actually was established in that year, the original hospital being the Abijah Bigelow mansion, on Front and Church streets. The date was October 31, 1871, and it was a decade later that the present site was utilized, where a plant valued at more than a million dollars has been developed. By the will of George Jacques, who died in 1872, a fund of $250,000 was started, which, while it was used for building and equipment purposes, was also the start of the fairly large endowment the hospital now possesses. It is a municipal institution however, maintained for the most part by public appropriations. It ranks with the highest of its class, and since its inception has treated nearly 200,000 patients. The growth of the City Hospital is as follows: Training School for Nurses established September, 1883; Gill Memorial and Salisbury wards opened in 1886; Knowles Maternity, opened June, 1888; Out-patient Department opened March 17, 1890; Samuel Winslow Surgery, opened July, 1896; Male Surgical Building opened October, 1896; Thayer Memorial Home for Nurses, opened June, 1898; Heat, Light and Power Plant com- pleted in 1900; city buildings costing $300,000 opened in 1904; children's ward, opened in November, 1914. The value of the twenty-six buildings of the City Hospital in 1921 was $983,031.44.
The Memorial Hospital of Worcester, while conceived in 1871, did not function until 1874, and then more as a dispensary, maintained by the bequest of Ichabod Washburn. This dispensary was opened in the Abijah Bigelow mansion, which had been vacated a couple of years earlier by the City Hos- pital. In 1888 it was removed to its present site. The Memorial Hospital, proper, was established in the Samuel Belmont Estate, that same year, with nineteen beds ; it now has two hundred and fifty. The Memorial has gradu- ally devoted more and more attention to the care of women and children. This was made possible by the gifts of Philip L. Moen and the widow of Dr. Henry Clarke, in the latter case as a memorial to Dr. Clarke. The expansion of the hospital plant began in 1892 with the building of the present round wards, ten private rooms. A surgery was added in 1902 by Mrs. Wood. In 1905 a fund of $34,000 was raised by subscription to make the children's ward adequate to the need, Miss Mabel C. Gage having charge of this successful campaign. The good work was continued by other citizens, notably by Charles A. Chase, Dr. Leonard Wheeler. Reginald Washburn, and Dr. Homer Gage and resulted in the opening, in 1909, of the Rebecca A.
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Morgan Maternity Ward; the George L. Newton Building for private patients, and the Children's Building containing forty-eight beds, a large playroom and roof garden.
Belmont Hospital was organized as the Worcester Isolation Hospital, in 1896, on its present site and has always been under the direction of the Worcester Board of Health. The plant then consisted of about one-half of the present Administration Building, and two pavilions, each of twenty-five beds, one pavilion for diphtheria patients, and the other for scarlet fever. Worcester was a pioneer in this respect, and a set of photographs of the institution exhibited in the Paris Exposition won for the city of Worcester a gold medal. In 1900 the capacity was doubled, and another ward for diphtheria was established in 1907. In 1914 the Putnam Tuberculosis Ward was opened, the land being given to the city by Henry Putnam for the pur- pose. The erection of the Belmont Hospital cost the city about $275,000. The capacity is about one hundred and fifty beds.
St. Vincent's Hospital is under the direction of the Sisters of Providence, Catholic, but is non-sectarian. It was opened in September, 1893, with a capacity of one hundred beds, many more therefore than either of the earlier Worcester hospitals began with. Its site is an entire square on Vernon Hill. Its capacity was recently doubled, and St. Vincent's is therefore classed in importance with the City and Memorial hospitals. In addition, St. Vincent's has a branch establishment at Millbury, the branch being a maternity hos- pital, known as Mt. St. Joseph's Hospital. In 1922 a bequest of Rev. Dr. John J. McCoy established a fund for the maintenance of hospital treatment for needy sick girls.
Worcester County has been chosen as the site of a number of State insti- tutions of varied types, and has been either a region in which humanitarian experiments have been tried, or where some of them originated in the Com- monwealth. Incidental to this chapter, mention has been made of the first State sanitorium for tuberculosis in the United States, opened at Rutland, in 1898. This town is also the site of the Rutland State Camp and Hospital, established in West Rutland, in 1904, in order to give outdoor employment to male prisoners. The hospital section was added in 1907 to segregate and care for tubercular prisoners, and the use of the State farm for the confine- ment of convicted inebriates. Crime has come to be considered in many cases a disease, but it was not with this idea that the Lyman School for Boys was started in Westborough as long ago as 1847. At that time the classification of prisoners was being given marked consideration, and the Lyman School was created to receive delinquent boys under fifteen years. A similar school for girls was authorized in 1854, to be located at Lancaster. The first named school received its title in honor of Theodore Lyman, of Brookline, the chief
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advocate of the reform in penology it represented. Westborough is also the site of the Westborough State Hospital, founded in June, 1884, but not opened as a hospital until December, 1886. It is an institution for the men- tally afflicted. Of more recent origin is the Gardner State Colony, also for the insane. A splendid example of the modern attitude toward the psycho- pathic and feeble-minded unfortunates, it was opened on October 22, 1902, on a wooded estate of 1,848 acres not far from Gardner. The large central dormitories and numerous colony cottage system is in force, and every feasi- ble method of work and play is utilized in the treatment of its inmates.
The Worcester State Hospital is the "first such institution to be founded by a State Government in the United States, and was the third asylum for the insane in New England." All of this statement is true whether one means the date of its inception, 1828; the gift by the town to the State of twelve acres, in 1830; its establishment by the State, in 1832, when fifty thousand dollars was appropriated for plant or equipment; or January 19, 1833, when the first patient was received. E. Melvin Williams relates, in part : The place was overcrowded before the end of the first year. One hundred and sixty-three patients were admitted in the first year, most of them being of the criminal insane class, some coming in chains, criminal lunatics with life sentences. Additional wings were built from time to time, and in 1877 the Lunatic Hospital had responsibility for the care of more than four hundred inmates. In the meantime, the new hospital on Belmont Street had been built at a cost to the State of about $1,310,000 for buildings and land. By 1888 the Belmont Street plant had capacity for eight hundred patients ; it is still being conducted. After the transfer of the criminal- insane to the Belmont Street Hospital in 1877, the vacated Summer Street buildings were used to serve as a temporary asylum for the chronic-insane. It was known as the Worcester Insane Asylum, and it was supposed that the inmates would eventually pass to the new plant. This was not done, however, and the Summer Street Asylum is now part of the Grafton State Hospital, which has developed into a large institution.
CHAPTER XLVIII
The Woman's Movement
What, for want of a better title, has been called the woman's movement, has not been treated separately in histories, particularly those of a local char- acter. Women have had a part in everything that has been done, and if one, or a group of them, stand out in historic events, nothing pleases an author better than the recording of the fact. The accusation is made, however, that the male has been given undue prominence in the annals of our country because he seized the control in governmental affairs and offices, suffrage, religion, education, art, literature, industrial development and control, and almost all phases of human activity. The contention is that the women of today no longer play minor rôles in the thrilling drama of the development of the modern State, and therefore the story of the movement which is credited with bringing about the new conditions must now be told as itself a distinc- tive feature of history.
In Colonial days the women did not have a chance to display their abilities so as to win applause and admiration. It was thought that "woman was not created to pour the tide of eloquence into the Senate Chamber, or lead on to victory the brave and historic spirits of the land." She was expected to keep at home and stay out of sight; the place in the spotlight was reserved for the males, and she must shine by reflected radiance. All this is changed now, but was there anything in the heroic ancient days in which the pioneer woman did not share and bear their share and more? The first settlers faced the hardships and dangers together whatever the sex. Even the tilling of the soil was not solely a man's job. In the home woman laid the foundations of industries with her spinning wheel and loom, her making of bread and butter and countless necessities which must be manufactured (made-by-hand). The creation of morality and mind was her task; many of our ancestors had no education other than that secured at their mother's knee. When war came, and it did often and long, most of the care of the farm, home and children
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were placed upon the shoulders of the women who remained behind ; many a father was in the Revolutionary armies for the full eight years. The Civil War brought about similar conditions. Out of the overburdening of the country came the combination of forces and the apportioning of labor which led to the growth of the "old red schoolhouse," of the academy, the lyceum and the library, of factory systems, industrial economies and many other ways of doing things which were novel and wise. The idea might be expanded to great length but, after all, the truth of the business is that the pioneer and still later women, shared what had to be done by those who laid the foundations of what we now have and enjoy, while in addition they attended to the work that they alone could do.
All of which was expressed in poetry years before women's organizations had become such a factor in the life of the community by that brilliant super-woman, Kate Field, who said:
They talk about a woman's sphere As though it had a limit, There's not a place in earth or heaven, There's not a task to mankind given, There's not a blessing or a woe ; There's not a whisper, yes or no, There's not a life, a death, or birth That has a feather's weight of worth Without a woman in it.
In Worcester County, as elsewhere, a profound development of recent years has been the broadening of the interests and activities and powers of women. They have won rights which for ages belonged only to men. They have secured an equality of political and civil rights which men had denied them. They have come increasingly to share with men the burdens of the modern economic machine as wage earners, salaried workers and members of the profession. They have interested themselves particularly in the advocacy of certain humanitarian reforms. The account of the progress of the woman's movement in Worcester may be related under such phases as the intellectual, political, economic and humanitarian.
Intellectual Phase-The educational side of the woman's movement is not only the earliest in origin but probably the most important. It may be said not only to include feminine educators and education with the advance of both, but also the development of woman's clubs and similar organizations, the achievements of the sex in the professions, literary and artistic produc- tions and an almost endless array of accomplishments, as regards history and
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the inception of improvements, but the Commonwealth was slow in giving recognition to the duty of educating girls at public expense and allowing the female teacher her proper place in the educational system. "Despite the long exclusion of girls from public education, intellectual women, women of power, appear all the way down the three centuries." These are the words of Mrs. Frederick P. Bagley, who in this connection points out that the first of the organized leaders of the woman's movement was Mrs. Hutchinson, of Puritan fame, "who did not need to have a man to tell her what to believe." She also instances such positive characters as Ann Bradstreet, the poetess, Mary Dyer, the Quaker, Madame Knight, the traveler, and the "trio of edu- cated and influential Revolutionary figures, Abigail Adams and Mercy War- ren and Hannah Dustin."
Education-Historians are pleased to note that free education in America had its rise in Massachusetts and to quote liberally from the numer- ous pronouncements of the Pilgrim and Puritan fathers. Nine boys gradu- ated from Harvard College, in 1642, "its first specimens of high culture achieved in the woods of America." One of these went to Ipswich and set up the first free school, according to an entry in the town records, "The First day of the 9th, 1642. It is granted that there shal be a free Schole." Only seven free "schollars" could be admitted, however (1643). This was the year in which the first white man's cabin was built in the area of the present Worcester County.
During the following almost ninety years, towns were settled in the Worcester section, and most of them as they grew populous enough made provision for the education of the children, but always under a man teacher with the presence of girl children in the school frowned upon. A school, particularly of the "Latin" or grammar school, was a potential producer of male ministers, which in the minds of the Puritans was the chief end of education. Before the County of Worcester was established in 1731, how- ever, "school dames" were employed to teach the smallest children, at a small or no wage. There probably was no period in Worcester's history when education was so completely in the hands of its women as during that from the beginning of the Revolution until the end of the eighteenth century, and none in which less public provision was made for the education of the female. Not until 1845 was the school committee "convinced that one dollar a week for teachers of the primary schools and a half dollar for teachers of the infant schools is not an inadequate allowance."
During the first half of the nineteenth century the town of Worcester, which was rather ahead of the other towns in the county, created a school system of such excellence as to become the model for school districts in
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Massachusetts. The most notable feature of that half-century was the increase in the number of "academies," privately financed, whose pupils paid tuition and board. Those for girls emphasized the "Ornamentals"-music, drawing, painting and needlework, with "solid subjects," the three R's, next in importance, and "polite learning" for those who were so foolish as to desire to pursue the equivalent of the present high school curriculum. The academy and the seminary decreased greatly after the introduction of genuine public free schools. However notable the Worcester school system it was not until 1844 that leading citizens were converted to the belief that it was "both desir- able and safe to give a classical education to girls." The Female High School, dating from 1831, was a so-called finishing school of high repute for some years; Mrs. A. M. Wells was its principal at first. The Misses Stearns opened a school for girls, early in the 1840's, and there were other "Dames" schools. Strangely enough, small boys were also taken into these schools, but as they grew older the boys were sent to the better high schools. It is notice- able, that all through the twentieth century every new sort of secondary educational school was first established for the boys, and later for girls.
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