History of Saint Louis City and County, from the earliest periods to the present day: including biographical sketches of representative men, Part 117

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts
Number of Pages: 1358

USA > Missouri > St Louis County > St Louis City > History of Saint Louis City and County, from the earliest periods to the present day: including biographical sketches of representative men > Part 117

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speaker, and was possessed of great wit. His voice and manner were like those of John Randolph, of Virginia. He was a natural orator, and possessed a remarkable power of adapting himself to his audience, so that he could entertain any company or society into which he might be thrown. He had an inex- haustible fund of anecdotes. It is said of him that he had a story for every bone, muscle, nerve, and vessel in the whole body, and that he used to enliven his lectures and stimulate the memory of the students by relating these stories, and so fixing the anatomical facts in their minds.

He was proverbially careless and improvident in pecuniary matters, kind and charitable to the poor, but ready to take advantage whenever opportunity afforded of those who had abundant mcans. He was very eccentric in some particulars. In the early years of his residence here he delivered a number of lectures against Jesuitism, his ire being aroused against the order, perhaps, by reason of the fact that the Jesuit fathers of St. Louis University had allowed a rival medical school to be organized under the charter of their college. These lectures created some excitement in the community, and Dr. McDowell was so im- pressed with the belief that his life was in danger that he made and wore a brass breast-plate, and always carried arms. The medical college building was so constructed as to be a formidable fortress, and his residence on the opposite corner was also planned so as to be capable of resisting an assault. He formed a plan to go across the plains and capture Upper Cali- fornia. For this purpose he purchased from the United States government fourteen hundred discarded muskets for two dollars and fifty cents each, which he stored in his house and in the basement of the college building. He also got together quantities of old brass and melted them up, and even took down the large bell of the college and had six cannon cast. All these arms were given by Dr. McDowell to the Southern Confederacy at the outbreak of the late war. It is said that several hundred young men, most of them graduates from the college, had promised to accompany Dr. McDowell on the proposed expedition to tlre Pa- cific coast.

Among other strange fancies which he had were those with reference to the disposal of the remains of deceased friends. Dr. Charles W. Stevens relates that within a day or two after he first came to the city as a medical student he attended the burial of one of Dr. McDowell's little children. The coffin was lined with metal, and after the body of the child had been place in it, was filled with alcohol and scaled tight. The grave was in Mr. Dillon's orchard. One year

I See history of the Missouri Medical College, farther on in this chapter.

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afterward Dr. McDowell had the coffin exhumed, and removed the body of the child to a copper vase of suitable dimensions and shaped just like a diploma- case. This again was filled with alcohol and hermeti- eally sealed. Two or three children died and were thus disposed of. No religious ceremony of any sort was held. The copper vases were taken at night, and a procession being formed by the students and other immediate friends of the doetor, each one carrying a light, were quietly deposited in a vault in the rear of the premises where he resided.

Once when on a hunting excursion he was much struek with a beautiful knoll at the commencement of the high ground just east of Cahokia. He purchased it, constructed a vault there, and when his wife died he placed her remains in a vault which he had had built there, where they remained until after his own death, when their son had them removed to Bellefon- taine. At another time he purchased a cave near Hannibal and had masonry construeted with an iron gate at the entrance. He took a copper vasc contain- ing the body of one of his little children preserved in alcohol to this eavc, and had it suspended from the roof of the cave by means of hooks. The gate at the entrance was broken down and the vase broken open by a company of roughs not long after, and the doctor gave up the idea of having it used as a place of de- posit for the dead.

However, this method of disposal of the dead scems to have taken a firm hold upon his mind, for some time after, when he was quite sick and believed himself to be at the point of death, he called to his bedside his son, Drake McDowell, and his intimate friend and associate in practice, Dr. C. W. Stevens, and made them swear that in case of his death they would have his body placed in a eopper vase with al- eohol, and that they would then take it to the Mam- moth Cave of Kentucky, and have it suspended from the roof of that cave, asserting that he had already made arrangements with the proprictor to allow it to be done.

In erecting the stone octagon building that served so many years for the purposes of the college he caused a foundation to be laid in the centre for a large column which was to extend up to the peak of the roof, and in which niches werc to be prepared for the reception of copper vases containing the bodies of himself and members of his family.

It is said that the plan of the octagon building was suggested to him by the form of a very handsome stove which stood in the amphitheatre of the former eollege building, and which the doctor greatly ad- mired. It was his intention to carry the structure up

eight stories high, and surround the top with ramparts, making it a regular fortress ; and the foundation walls were laid six feet thick with this in view. Laek of means alone prevented him from carrying out the plan.

When the war broke out in 1861, Dr. McDowell was very pronounced in the stand which he took in favor of the cause of the South, and, as already men- tioned, he turned over to the authorities of the South- ern Confederacy the arms which he had purchased and had had manufactured several years previously.

As the result of this his college building was con- fiscated by the United States authorities, and was used for some years as a military prison. Dr. Me- Dowell himself went South and served as surgeon and medical director at different points during the war, after which he returned to the city, reorganized the faculty of the college, and practiced medicine until the year 1868, when he died. His remains are interred in Bellefontaine Cemetery.

Dr. John S. Moore was born in Orange County, N. C., in 1807. He was educated at Cumberland Col- lege, Princeton, Ky., graduating in 1826. He at- tended one course of lectures at Miami University, in Ohio. He then practiced for five years at Mount Ver- non and Carlisle, Ill., having married Miss Morrison, of Princeton, Ky., daughter of one of the professors in the college. He started for Philadelphia to complete his medical education and secure a diploma, but meeting Dr. McDowell in Cincinnati, he was per- suaded by him to enter the first elass of the Cincinnati Medical College, at which he graduated in the spring of 1832. He then practiced in Pulaski, Tenn. He removed to St. Louis in September, 1840, and took part in organizing the Medical Department of Kemper College, with which institution, under its various changes of name, he has been identified to the present time.

In accordance with the usual custom in those days, the various professors gave public lectures as intro- duetory to their several courses. It fell to Dr. Moore, as the youngest member of the faculty, thus to give the first medical lecture delivered west of the Mis- sissippi River.

He was dean of the college faculty and presi- dent of the board of trustees for a number of years. In 1869 he was elected vice-president of the American Medical Association. From 1849 to 1860, and during the war, he had a very large prae- tice, but of late years has withdrawn from aetive business.

Dr. William M. McPhecters, who for more than forty years has been one of the leading medieal prae-

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titioners of St. Louis, was born in Raleigh, N. C., Dec. 3, 1815, and was the second son of the Rev. Wil- liam MePheeters, D.D., a Presbyterian clergyman of great prominenee and ability. William M. MePheeters was educated at the University of North Carolina, and subsequently studied medicine under Professor Hugh L. Hodge, of Philadelphia. In 1840 he graduated from the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, after which he served for one year as resident physician at the Blockley Hospital, Phila- delphia. Upon relinquishing this position in the fall of 1841, he removed to St. Louis, where he arrived October 15th of the same year.

In company with Drs. Charles A. Pope, S. G. Moses, J. B. Johnson, George Johnson, and J. I. Clark, Dr. McPheeters assisted in establishing the first public dispensary west of the Mississippi. River. These gentlemen also inaugurated many important reforms, and brought to the practice of their ehosen profession a devotion and skill which marked a new era in the medical history of St. Louis.

The high esteem in which Dr. McPheeters was held by those most competent to judge of his profes- sional abilities is seen in the fact that he was early chosen Professor of Clinical Medicine and Patho- logical Anatomy, and afterwards of Materia Medica and Therapeuties, in the St. Louis Medical College, in which positions he served faithfully for fourteen years, and until he left home to join the Confederate army. He also occupied the same chair after the war in the Missouri Medical College, from 1866 to 1874, when he retired from the professorship to accept the posi- tion of medieal director of the St. Louis Mutual Life Insurance Company.

From 1856 to 1861 he was surgeon of the United States Marine Hospital at St. Louis, and for a num- ber of ycars was physician in charge of the medical wards of the St. Louis Hospital of the Sisters of Charity.

For eighteen years (from 1843 to 1861) he edited with great ability and sueeess the St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal, in which appeared numerous able articles from his ineisive pen, among them being a history of the cholera epidemic in St. Louis in 1849, which attraeted wide attention, and proved a valuable contribution to medieal seienee. He is a member of the Obstetrieal and Gynecological Society of St. Louis, of the St. Louis Medical Society, and of the Medieal Association of the State of Missouri. Of the two latter societies he has been president.

In 1872, at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association, held in Philadelphia, he was elected vice-president of that body. He is a member

also of the St. Louis Medieo-Chirurgieal Society, and has been elected an honorary member of the State Medical Associations of North Carolina and Arkansas.

During the late war Dr. McPheetcrs' sympathies were with the Southern Confederaey, and for three years he served as surgeon in the Confederate army, filling many important positions, among them that of medical director on Maj .- Gen. Sterling Priee's staff. At the close of the war he returned to St. Louis, and resumed the practice of his profession. He has been twice marricd, the first time to Miss Martha Selden, of Virginia, who died about a year after her marriage ; the second time to Miss Sallie Buchanan, of St. Louis, who is the mother of six children, and who for more than a third of a century has made his home one of great peace and comfort.

Dr. McPheeters is a man of such decided Christian character that a failure to refer to that fact would render this outline of his life conspicuously incom- plete. For many years he has been a ruling elder in the Pine Street (now the Grand Avenue) Presbyterian Church, in which position he has served with marked fidelity. He was the first president of the St. Louis branch of the Western Society for the Suppression of Viee. Dr. MePhecters' learning and skill have won for him a wide reputation and the confidence of the entire medical profession wherever he is known, while his unswerving devotion to the duties of religion has endeared him to thousands who have received at his hands not only remedies for the ills that flesh is heir to, but also spiritual advice and consolation.

Dr. Adolph Wislizenus is a man of note among the physicians in St. Louis, having made for himself a name that is known all through the world of science by reason of his original observations and the careful researches which he has made. He was born in Ru- dolstadt in 1810. He came to St. Louis in 1840, and was associated in practice for five years with Dr. George Engelmann. He then made a tour through the southwestern part of this country, and into Mex- ico, making a thorough exploration of the regions through which he traveled, taking the altitudes of different points, examining the flora, the geological features, and making other observations which en- abled him on his return to prepare a report of such value that it was published by the Senate of the United States in 1846-47. So far as the territory of the United States is concerned, this exploration has been virtually superseded by the more exhaustive re- searches of the government surveys ; but Dr. Wislize- nus' report is still the most complete and reliable with reference to the part of Mexico which he traversed. His original plan was to explore the territory of

N.M. In Chutes nuters

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Arizona and California, but he was taken prisoner at Chihuahua, and after being released he joined the United States army. On his return he spent some time in Washington, and then came back to St. Louis, where he has lived ever since, devoting his time, in the intervals of leisure from the arduous duties of a general practice, to scientific pursuits, being specially interested in botany and meteorology.

Dr. Charles W. Stevens was born June 16, 1817, in Pompey, Onondaga Co., N. Y. He was educated as a civil engineer and surveyor, but having come West, and finding little encouragement for success in that vocation, he com- menced the study of medi- eine with Dr. Rogers, of Rushville, Ill. He gradu- ated in 1842, at the Medi- cal Department of Kemper College (now the Missouri Medical College), and lo- cated for practice in St. Louis. In 1844 he was elected Demonstrator of Anatomy in the Kemper College, which position he held for five years, when he took the same position in the St. Louis Medical College. In 1855 he was elected to the chair of gen- eral, special, and surgical anatomy in the St. Louis Medical College. About this time he went to Eu- rope, and spent several months in professional study. After thirteen years' service he resigned the professorship in order to take the position of super- intendent and physician to the St. Louis County Insane Asylum. This position he left in 1872, and has since then been engaged in practice in St. Louis, giving attention specially to the treatment of diseases of the nervous system. In 1861 he was appointed coroner of St. Louis County, to fill a vacancy caused by the resignation of Dr. Boislinière. He saw several months of military service during the war. In 1879 he was elected president of the St. Louis Medical Society.

Dr. Charles Alexander Pope, one of St. Louis' most distinguished surgeons, was born in the beauti- ful town of Huntsville, Ala., March 15, 1818. His

father, Benjamin S. Pope, a man of rare literary eul- ture himself, was careful that his son should have the advantages of a complete education. After thorough academic instruction in his native town, he entered the University of Alabama, at which institution he gradu- ated at a very early age. Soon thereafter he entered upon the study of medicine with the same zeal and in- dustry which ever characterized his whole professional career. Attracted by the well-deserved reputation of Dr. Daniel Drake, then at the height of his popularity as a teacher and lecturer, he attended his first course of medical lectures in the Cincinnati Medical College. From Cincinnati he went to Philadelphia, and en- tered the University of Pennsylvania, from which institution he received the degree of M.D. in the spring of 1839, when just twenty-one years of age. The French school of medi- cine being at that time the most celebrated in Europe, Dr. Pope immediately after graduation went to Paris, where for two years he de- voted himself with untir- ing industry to the special study of surgery, for which department of medicine he had a strong natural incli- nation, and for which he possessed superior qualifi- cations. After his resi- dence in Paris he also visited the great Conti- nental schools, as well as those of Great Britain and Ireland. On returning from Europe he came to St. Louis, then the most attractive point in the Great West, where in January, 1842, he commenced his pro- fessional career. From the first he devoted himself with industry to the study and practice of surgery, and it was not long before his thorough medical training, studious habits, urbane manner, and high moral qualities brought him permanently before the public as a man of mark in his profession. His career was one of un- interrupted progress. Having already acquired repu- tation as a judicious, skillful, and successful operator, he was in 1843 chosen Professor of Anatomy in the St. Louis Medical College, then the Medical Depart- ment of the St. Louis University. His knowledge of

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anatomy was minute and accurate, and his success as a teacher undisputed. In 1847, in accordance with his cherished desire, he was transferred from the chair of anatomy to that of surgery, which chair he con- tinued to occupy and adorn for many years. In 1846 he was married to Miss Caroline, only daughter of Col. John O'Fallon, who as a tribute to the merit of his distinguished son-in-law erected out of his own ample means the large and handsome building known as the St. Louis Medical College; so that Dr. Pope was not only a distinguished professor in, but also a real benefactor to, this still flourishing medical institu- tion.

In 1854 he had the high honor conferred upon him of being elected president of the American Medi- cal Association, and the year following he presided at the meeting held in Philadelphia with dignity and acceptance. This gave him a national reputation, which he well sustained by his achievements in sur- gery, being constantly called on to perform all the more important and difficult operations, which he always did with eminent skill and success. He con- tinued in the diligent pursuit of his profession until 1865, when, reluctantly yielding to the solicitations of his family, he resigned his professorship and gave up his large and lucrative practice with the view of spend- ing a few years in European travel.

In 1870 he returned to St. Louis on a visit, when such a reception was given him as is rarely accorded to any one. The whole city, as it were, rose up to do him honor, and his entire visit was one continued ovation. He returned, however, to Paris to join his family, but scarce had tidings of his arrival been re- ceived before the whole city was startled by the an- nouncement of his sudden and unexpected death, which occurred in the city of Paris, July 5, 1870, in the fifty-second year of his age.

Dr. Pope was an accomplished and high-toned gentleman and physician. He was not impelled as some men are by strong passions, but the elements were so combined in him as to form a character at 1 once symmetrical and admirable, a character in which urbanity, suavity, candor, and high moral qualities constituted the Corinthian column.

Dr. Moses M. Pallen died in St. Louis, Sept. 25, 1876, at the age of sixty-six. He took his literary degree at the University of Virginia and his medical degree at the University of Maryland, at Baltimore. He practiced medicine for seven years at Vicksburg, Miss., and in 1842 came to St. Louis, where he had a remarkably successful career as a practitioner and teacher of incdicine. He beld the position of Pro- fessor of Obstetrics in the St. Louis Medical College

for over twenty years, resigning about three years before his death on account of failing health. During the Mexican war he held the position of contracting surgeon at the St. Louis arsenal. He also performed the duties of health officer during Mayor Pratte's ad- ministration, and held that position during the preva- lence of the cholera epidemic of 1849. He was one of the founders and earliest presidents of the St. Louis Academy of Science, and he was also president for several years of the St. Louis Medical Society.

Dr. Pallen was a terse and ready writer, and fre- quently contributed articles to the medical journals and newspapers on subjects of scientific and popular interest. He left four sons and two daughters. Of the former, Dr. M. A. Pallen, of New York, is well known in the profession on both sides of the Atlantic.

Dr. M. L. Linton was a native of Kentucky, where he studied his profession, but finished his preparatory course in Paris and Edinburgh. Having practiced with success in his native State, he came to St. Louis in 1843, and was elected to a professorship in the Medical Department of St. Louis University, which position he retained under its re-establishment as the St. Louis Medical College until the day of his death. In his distinguished career as a teacher he was asso- ciated both in friendship and fame with Dr. Pope, whose untimely decease he greatly mourned, their intimacy commencing when students together in Paris, and continuing warm and unbroken until sev- ered by death.

Dr. Linton did not confine himself exclusively to matters pertaining to medical science, occasionally taking active part in the political movements of the day. He was a conspicuous member of the Missouri State Convention in 1861-62, which formed a pro- visional government for the State, with Hamilton R. Gamble as Governor, and he was also a member of the convention of 1865. As a teacher, he stood with the ablest and best. He was also a philosopher and a poet. Dr. Linton wa's an invalid for forty years ; his body moved slowly, and frequently re- quired a long rest ; his mind was restless, resistless, quick, brilliant, and vigorous ; his wit was sharp and his repartee unrivaled. His limited early advantages were only known to the associates of his youth. He had by the force of intellect and untiring mental in- dustry become a polished scholar, learned in the an- cient and modern languages. He died in June, 1872, in the sixty-fifth year of his age.

Dr. George Johnson was born in Georgetown, D. C., Sept. 12, 1817, and in his seventeenth year came to seek his fortune in St. Louis, which was then just beginning to attract attention as a prominent business '

Char Pope

LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WINES.

LIBRARY OF THE UNIVER ITY /HA SIM

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centre. Shortly afterwards he commenced the study of medicine with Dr. Beaumont, and after graduating at the University of Pennsylvania in 1841, became and for many years remained his partner. During the time he was pursuing his studies he received the ap- pointment of assistant paymaster of the United States army at the arsenal in St. Louis, the emoluments of which office greatly facilitated his medical education. In 1846 he was appointed surgeon to the St. Louis Legion, under command of Col. A. R. Easton, and participated in the stirring scenes of the Mexican war. After his return from the war he was ap- pointed surgeon to the United States Marine Hospital at St. Louis, but owing to ill health he resigned in 1853 and went to Texas to recuperate. Repeatedly he was obliged to leave the city on account of ill health, only to return at the earliest possible moment, for he could not endure being long separated from the many friends residing here, whom he loved and who were. devotedly attached to him. Dr. Johnson was, in the highest sense of the term, a true man, brave and chivalrous in his bearing, and one upon whose hearty co-operation in every humane and phil- anthropic enterprise people could always rely. Al- though a man of delicate frame, and frequently a great sufferer from disease, he pursued his profession with a zeal and self-sacrificing devotion which greatly endeared him to his patients. He was the very soul of professional honor. No one had a more profound or outspoken contempt for the tricks of the charlatan, nor did any one ever more truly exemplify the char- acter of the high-toned physician. He dicd in April, 1873.

Dr. Alfred Heacock is now the oldest medical prac- titioner in St. Louis, having graduated in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1825, and hav- ing been engaged in the practice of his profession ever since, a period now of almost fifty-eight years. He was born in Norristown, Pa., May 18, 1804. After his graduation he located in Ohio, where he lived for seven years. He then moved to Terre Haute, Ind., where he practiced for cleven years, after which he removed to St. Louis, and has been here ever since. He chosc a location in what was then the extreme northern part of the city, not far from the upper ferry landing, and he was not infrequently called out to cross the river and visit patients in the Illinois bottom lands and as far over as Collinsville. In 1829 Dr. Heacock received an ad eundem degree from Jef- ferson Medical College, and in 1847 the same honor from the Missouri Medical College. In 1853 he was elected to the Board of Aldermen, and was appointed a member of the Board of Health.

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History of Saint Louis City and County, from the earliest periods to the present day: including biographical sketches of representative men, Part 117

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898 Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts Number of Pages: 1358

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts
Number of Pages: 1358