Civil, political, professional and ecclesiastical history, and commercial and industrial record of the County of Kings and the City of Brooklyn, N. Y., Part 65

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909.
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: New York : Munsell
Number of Pages: 1360

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Another communication, contributed by him to that jour- nal appeared in the September number, entitled, “ An im- proved Method of obtaining Support for Fractured Bones of the Extremities."

In January, 1875, there appeared in the New York Medical Journal an able and thoughtful article from the pen of Dr. Wackerhagen on "Free Incisions, with Drainage-Tube, vs. Paracentesis, in the Treatment of Pyothorax." Many cases are referred to in this article which came under the doctor's own observation.

In November, 1880, he wrote an article entitled, “A Convenient and Rapid Method of Removing Plaster of Paris, when applied in the Form of a Continuous Roller," for the same journal. In April, 1881, he read a paper before the Kings County Medical Society entitled " A Case of Plastic Surgery; Ligation of Femoral Artery for Popliteal Aneur- ism ; Re-section of the Hip-Joint." This production was highly commended.

Space will not permit us to mention all the productions of his pen. In October, 1872, Dr. Wackerhagen invented an in- strument which has afforded much satisfaction to the medi- cal profession. This was a vaginal speculum. He is also the inventor of other appliances and instruments used in surgical operations, which have met with the unqualified approbation of the profession.

902

HISTORY OF KINGS COUNTY.

Dr. Wackerhagen is a member of the Kings County Medi- cal Society; of the Brooklyn Pathological Society, and of the New York City Pathological Society. Ile is Consulting Sur- geon to the Southern Dispensary and Hospital, to which place he was appointed May 2, 1881. He was united by marriage to Miss Elizabeth B. Hazlett, of Brooklyn. October 25, 1875. It will be seen that Dr. Wackerhagen is a man of unwearied industry, extensive mental resources, and ardently attached to his profession, which he adorns in practice, in theory, and with his pen.

GEORGE RYERSON FOWLER.

GEORGE RYERSON FOWLER was born in the city of New York on the twenty-fifth day of December. 1848. His father, Thomas W. Fowler, a carpenter by trade, and his mother, Sarah Jane Carman, were both born on Long Island, their ancestors being among the earliest settlers of the island. When eight years of age his parents removed to Jamaica, L. I., where his father became a master mechanic of the Long Island Railroad. The cirenmstances of the parents were such as to allow their son only a public school ednca- tion, of which he availed himself at the town school.

It was the early desire of the father that his son George should become versed in all technical knowledge pertaining to railroad management. With this end in view, when the boy had passed the different grades tanght at the town pub- lic school at the age of thirteen, he placed him in the local office of the company by which he was himself employed to learn telegraphy, and to become familiar with the general duties of a station agent. Here he remained for upwards of a year, at the end of which time he was entered as an ap- prentice in the machine shop of the company. Loug prior to this the boy had evinced a taste for anatomical study, but agreeable to his father's wishes he served a regular appren- ticeship with the company; and when "out of his time," as it was then called, at the age of eighteen, he left its employ to follow his own plans for life. About this time he made the acquaintance of Mr. Clarence Sterling, of Bridgeport, Conn .. an amateur astronomer and earnest scientific worker, then engaged in a manufacturing business. He succeeded in making an arrangement with the latter gentleman whereby the knowledge previously acquired in the machine shop conld be made available for the furtherance of Mr. Sterling's business, at the same time allowing him opportunities for scientific study. In this latter he found an encouraging friend in Mr. Sterling.

After a year of hard work he found himself in possession of sufficient funds, saved from his own earnings, to enable him to matriculate at the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York, and begin a course in medicine. In the meanwhile his parents had removed to Brooklyn, and with them he made his home during his student life.

In the late Dr. John W. Hamilton, who had served during the War of the Rebellion as an Assistant Surgeon in the United States Navy, he found a warm friend, who thoroughly appreciated the aspirations of the young student. and who encouraged him in every way.

At the close of the college season, he found himself again without funds. Here his mechanical education and knowledge of telegraphy both proved of incalculable value to him; for he was offered, and at once accepted, a position with William Pitt Phelps, a manufacturer of improved printing telegraph instruments, in the Eastern District of Brooklyn.

from which institution he graduated with the degree o Doctor in Medicine, in February, 1871.

Immediately upon receiving his diploma, Dr. Fowler e tered upon the duties of his profession in the Eighteenti Ward, a comparatively new portion of the city of Brooklyn He subsequently removed to the Twenty-first Ward. Hi mechanical knowledge led him into a fondness for the sur gical portion of his profession, and ample opportunity wa soon afforded him for following out his desire to devote himself as much as possible to the practice of that branch In the year following his graduation he was appointed upo the staff of the Central Dispensary, which position he hek for two years; and then only resigned on account of the dis tance from his office to the Dispensary, and his consequen inability to do justice to the work of the institution.

In 1878, he was commissioned as one of the medica officers of the 14th Regiment, N. G. S. N. Y., upon the staff of Col. James McLeer. In the same year the Brook lyn Anatomical and Surgical Society was organized. of which society he was one of the founders. He was elected its first Secretary, and two years afterwards became it! President.

As the society grew, a journal for the publication of its scientific work was established, with the title, " Annals of the Anatomical and Surgical Society." Of this he was associate editor; and when, a year later, a wider scope was planned for the journal-it being purposed to make it an exponent of work in its special field wherever done-Dr. L. S. Pilcher and Dr. Fowler became its editors; the name of the journal being changed to the " Annals of Anatomy and Surgery."

Upon the organization of the Bushwick and East Brook- lyn Dispensary, in 1878, he was appointed its first visiting surgeon; and, upon the complete organization of its medical staff, he was chosen by the latter body as its presiding officer. In 1880, he was elected a delegate to the American Medical Association from the Medical Society of the County of Kings: in the same year he became a permanent member of the former.

In 1882, by a unanimous vote, he was appointed by the Board of Commissioners of Charities and Correction of Kings County, Consulting Surgeon to the Kings County IIospital at Flatbush. As a part of the resolution by which this appointment was made, a clause was inserted directing a reorganization of the consulting staff, and a conversion of the same into a visiting staff, which the latter hospital lacked. The latter measure met with some opposition on the part of certain members of the consulting staff, as at first constituted, and in the following year, by a majority of one, the Board rescinded the resolution.

In 1883, he was appointed Surgeon-in-Chief to the Depart- ment of Fractures and Dislocations of St. Mary's General IIospital, Brooklyn. One-third of the general surgery of this institution was also assigned to his care. During the same year he served as one of the Board of Censors of the Medical Society of the County of Kings; and, in 1554, he was elected a delegate from the same body to the New York State Medical Society.

In 1823, he married Lonise R. Wells, the youngest daughter of the late James Wells, a prominent and highly respected citizen of Norristown, Penn., and for a number of years Sheriff of Montgomery county. Of this union, four chil- dren were born : Russell S., George R., Florence G., and Royal H .; the second son dying in infancy.

He became a communicant of the Protestant Episcopal church in 1872, and for several years served upon the vestry

What with this engagement and a short period subse- quently with Mr. Sterling at Bridgeport, he managed to earn the money needed to complete his course at Bellevue, [ of St. Matthew's church of that denomination.

Large R. Fowler M.D.

Very Sincerely yours Edward C. mann

THE MEDICAL PROFESSION.

903ª

EDWARD C. MANN, M. D.

This gentleman, who, though still young, has achieved a very enviable position in his profession, especially in the department of Psychology, is a native of Braintree, Mass., where he was born April 21, 1850. He traees his descent, in a direct line, from Riehard Man, one of the original " Mayflower pilgrims " of 1620; and who lived near "Mann Hill," in Seituate, Mass., early in 1655. Dr. Mann's grandfather, the Rev. Cyrus Mann, was, during a long and useful life, a Puritan elergyman; and was settled in the pastorate of Westminster, Mass., for a period of twenty-six years. His father, Dr. Cyrus S. Mann, is a physician of over forty years' prae- tice, sixteen of which have been spent in Brooklyn.

It may be said, with pardonable pride, of the Mann family in England that various individuals of the name were honored with the royal favor on several occasions, and in successive reigns. They filled important offiees under government, and secured the public confidence by their fidelity to the trusts imposed upon them, their steady loyalty and firm attachment to civil order, in op- position to insurrection and revolution. For many years the king's private secretary was selected from this family.

Dr. Edward C. Mann, the subject of our sketeh, was educated mostly under private tutors; and gained his professional education at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York city, and Long Island College Hospital, in this eity, graduating from the latter as Doctor of Medieine in June, 1870. After some years of hospital praetiee in New York, mostly in the field of Mental and Nervous Diseases, he located in that city, pursuing his specialty with much energy and devotion.

In 1876, he eommeneed the preparation of a work on this subject, entitled A Manual of Psychological Medi- cine, which fully oeeupied all the leisure allowed him by his professional duties, until 1883, when it was issued from the press of P. Blakiston & Son, medical publishers, of Philadelphia. Believing that Psycho- logical, or Mental Medicine, should oceupy a position as an authoritative seience, Dr. Mann, in this work, has bent all his energies to its elaboration; and, in the opinion of sueli judges as Profs. Skene and Armor of this city; Prof. Da Costa, of Philadelphia; Prof. Flint, of New York, and many other eminent physicians who tendered him their congratulations on the completion of his work, he has achieved a decided snecess. In a letter from one of these gentlemen, which we have seen, it is said: " Your book seems to me of great value, and well ealeulated not only to bring deserved honor

to yourself, but also to the name of American medi- eine."

In addition to this work, Dr. Mann has contributed to various medieal journals the following valuable papers, viz .: to the London Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology, "The Brain, in Health and Disease;" "The Psychological Aspect of the Guiteau Case " (1878); "Codifieation of the Com- mon Law as to Insanity " (1877); " State Medieine and its Relation to Intemperanee and the Inebriate;" " Psychologieal Aspect of the Laros Case, on the trial of Allan C. Laros, at Easton, Pa., for the murder of his father by poison ; the defence being based upon the allegation of Epileptic Insanity;" "On the Treat- ment of Blindness and Deafness resulting from Cerebro-Spinal Meningitis, by the constant current of Electricity " (1881); " Intemperance and Dipsomania as related to Insanity " (1876); in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, "The Pathology and Morbid Histology of Chronic Insanity " (1877); in the Alienist and Neurologist (1882), " A Case of Multiple Abscess of the Brain, etc .; " in the Medico-Legal Journal (1883), " A Plea for Lunaey Reform; " in the Quar- terly Journal of Inebriety, " A Plea for a Medical Ju- risprudenee of Inebriety to keep paee with the eon- elusions of seienee respecting this disease" (1884); " The Pathology of Inebriety " (1883), and "Some Praetieal Points relating to the Treatment of Ine- briety " (1883); in the Am. Psychol. Journal, 1884, "The Psychological Aspects of the Rowell Trial;" and other papers upon Inebriety, the Nature and Effeets of Opium, the Opium Habit, on Brain-tissue Degeneration and Mental Disease as a result of over- stimulation of the brain in school-ehildren ; and on various diseases of the eentric nervous system.

Dr. Mann holds views in regard to the mueh mooted subjeet of inebriety, which are in advance of those generally accepted by the publie and by the profession.

In a work recently completed, but not yet published, on Disease of Inebriety, he presents a phase new to literature, and of the greatest practical and seientific importanee, viz., its medico-legal relations. A modi- fied responsibility is claimed, in this work, for those whose inebriety depends upon a neurotie constitution inherited from their aneestors ; and a careful medical examination is elaimed for those who commit overt acts during the continuanee of this disease, whichi affeets the intelleet, manners, temper, disposition, habits and eharacter. Dr. Mann, as a elose student of

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HISTORY OF KINGS COUNTY.

mental seience and inebriety, expresses himself most energetically as to the necessity for a co-operative public sentiment, as a practical aid in stemming the great and growing tide of these diseases. Ile insists upon the necessity of the early recognition and repres- sion of the first signs of these diseases, which threaten family deterioration.

Upon the important topies that have occupied the attention of those interested in the welfare of the insane, Dr. Mann has taken an advanced po- sition ; and, in concert with a few of his medico-legal friends, has been endeavoring to bring about some radi- cal changes in the condition of our laws relating to those mentally diseased. His professional labors are earnest and enthusiastic in his chosen specialty. Al- though the field of his labors is more particularly in New York, his home is in Brooklyn, and his family reside here.

Dr. Mann is a member of the N. Y. County Medical Society; the N. Y. Medico- Legal Society, where his clear and ineisive papers frequently elicit sharp diseus- sion from both the doctors and lawyers there assem- bled; the Am. Association for the Cure of Inebriates; the National Association for the Protection of the In- sane and Prevention of Insanity; of the Am. Numis- matic and Archeological Societies, and a Fellow of the Am. Geographical Society.

Dr. Mann was married, November 10, 1870, to Miss B. Bustced, of New York, neice of Hon. Richard Kelly, President Fifth National Bank, of that city ; and they have three children. Himself and family are connected with the P. E. Church of the Reformation.

CYRUS S. MANN, M. D.

CYRUS S. MANN, M. D., was born in Worcester county, Mass .; was a member of the Class of '41 at Dartmouth College, but was obliged to terminate his course of study on account of ill-health. He received his degree of M. D. at Harvard University, in 1843 ; and, in 1858, was a member of the Massachusetts Leg- islature. In 1863 he went from Newton, Mass., to Louisiana, as one of the surgeons of the 31st Mass. Volunteers. In 1868 he located in Brooklyn, where, for a time, he was connected with the Board of Health as Sanitary Inspector, and where he now resides in the enjoyment of a good practice.

RICHARD M. WYCKOFF.

RICHARD M. WYCKOFF, born in Brooklyn, N. Y., February 14, 1839, was educated in part in that city, and in part in Marietta, Ohio; graduated from Amherst College, in 1859; studied medicine and graduated from Bellevne Hospital Medical College in 1864; was

appointed interne at Charity and Bellevue Hospitals, and was among those who, while on duty at the latter institution, contracted typhus fever; was Acting As- sistant. Surgeon on the hospital transport steamer S. R. Spaulding in 1865. Shortly after the end of the war lie located in Brooklyn for the practice of his profession. In 1870, he was elected Secretary of the Medieal Society of the County of Kings, in which position he remained until January, 1884. He was one of the attending physicians at St. Peter's Hospital in 1875, and Secretary of the Medical Council of that hospital. He was made a permanent member of the Medieal Society of the State of New York in 1650, after due service as delegate; was elected Vice-Presi- dent N. Y. Med. Ilist. Society in 1882. In sanitary matters of Brooklyn, he has been attached to several healthi administrations, beginning with the Metropolitan Department in 1868, Sanitary Inspector in 1872, Register of Vital Statistics in 1878, Secretary and Deputy Commissioner of Health in 1882.

ARTHUR MATHEWSON, M. D.

ARTHUR MATHEWSON, M.D., a native of Connecticut. graduated at Yale in 1858, and from the Medical De- partment of the University of New York in 1861; en- tered the United States Navy as Assistant Surgeen immediately after, and served during the war in naval hospitals and in the squadrons of Farragut and Porter, being present at the engagements of New Orleans, Vicksburg, and others. Having attained the rank of Surgeon in the regular service, he resigned, and in 1867 settled in Brooklyn, devoting himself from that time to the specialties of diseases of the eye and rar, and spending a year in Europe in the study of these branches ; was one of the founders of the Brooklyn Eye and Ear Hospital in 1868, and has ever since been one of its surgeons; is also Surgeon to St. Mary's Hos- pital, and Surgeon of Long Island College Hospital, and has been Lecturer on Diseases of the Ear in that college, and on Diseases of the Eye and Ear in the Yale Medical School.

JOHN D. RUSHMORE.

JOHN D. RUSHMORE, graduate of College of Physi- cians and Surgeons, New York, 1870; Attending Phy- sieian to Brooklyn Hospital, St. Peter's Hospital, and Eye and Ear Hospital; Professor of Surgery, Long Island College Hospital ; Member of the New York and of the American Ophthalmological and Otological Societies ; of the American Otologieal Society, Now York State Medical Association, and American Surgi- eal Association ; Permanent Member of New York State Medical Society, and American Medical Associ- ation.

903

THE MEDICAL PROFESSION.

EDWARD SEAMAN BUNKER, M.D.

EDWARD SEAMAN BUNKER, the elder of the two sons of Alexander Coffin Bunker and Mary Powell Seaman, was born in Jerusalem, Long Island, August 16, 1840, at the old Seaman homestead, the spot where the first white man's house in that township was built by Captain John Seaman, just two hundred years before ; Dr. Bunker being eighth in descent from that settler, of Anglo-Danish blood. Two other founders of the family, in this country, were George Bunker (the son of a Huguenot refugee, in England, whose name of Boncoeur became Anglicized into its familiar form) and John Howland, who came over in the Mayflower, with Gov- ernor Carver. Howland came very near putting an end to his line on the voyage, as he is mentioned in Bradford's His- tory as "being with a seele of ye ship, thrown into the sea but was hald up by ye top-saile halliards, which hung over- board and with a boat hooke and other means got into ye ship," and his life saved to become, according to Bradford, " a profitable member both of ye church and comonewealthe," being, for some years, Governor's Assistant. He married Eliza- beth Tillie, a maiden who was his fellow passenger in the Mayflower, and who was left an orphan by the death of both father and mother soon after the eventful landing at Ply- mouth. The legend on the modern tombstone of John How- land, on Burial Hill, at Plymouth, to the effect that his wife was Governor Carver's daughter, was believed by his descend- ants, until Governor Bradford's book (which records also the Tillie marriage) informed us that Governor Carver brought no children to America. Some of John Howland's (ten) children went to Nantucket, and from there to Long Island.

Among the noted members of the doctor's family, in early days, were Thomas Macy, the first white man who lived in Nantucket; and whose exit from Salisbury and residence on that Indian-inhabited island, are explained and celebrated by Whittier in the poem of "The Exiles." He fled for his life in an open boat, for the odious crime of har- boring Quakers.

"Far round the bleak and stormy cape, The venturous Macy passed, And on Nantucket's naked isle, Drew up his boat at last."

It may be of interest to say that Thomas Macy's grand- son was the first Quaker in Nantucket.

Otlier well-known ancestral names are Tristam Coffin, one of the original purchasers of Nantucket ; Captain Seaman, patentee of the town of Hempstead, Long Island ; Adrian Onderdonk, author of several Dutch books on the Early Con- dition of the Settlers ; Robert Williams, patentee of Oyster Bay ; Thomas Powell, of the Bethpage purchase, prominent in government councils, until he refused to take the neces- sary oath of office, "having scruples ;" Edmund Titus, and Mary Willets, widely known as a preacher among Friends, and nearer our own time, Ardon Seaman, his maternal grandfather, is well remembered on Long Island as a noted Quaker preacher and vivacious guest at the " Monthly Meet- ing" dinner table.

In fact, the doctor has every claim to the distinction of "birthright Quaker ; " numbering among his ancestry most of the prominent early Friends of Long Island and Nantucket.

He was educated at home, under the loving and intelligent care of the most devoted of parents, until the age of fifteen. The judicious training of the family circle laid the founda- tion of those systematic habits of study which have made him an accomplished scholar.

At fifteen he entered advanced classes in the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute, from which he

graduated in 1857, and where he remained for ten years as teacher of Latin and Greek. During the years of his devo- tion to school work, Dr. Bunker founded the Adelphi Acad- emy.

He was induc d, however, to abandon the narrower limits of teaching for the study of medicine, graduating with high honor as valedictorian of the class of 1871, at Bellevue, under the immediate instruction of his father's carly friend and mother's relation, the late James R. Wood, M.D. He was appointed, soon after, Physician to the Central Dispensary and Clinical Assistant to the Professor of Gynecology in Long Island College Hospital, where he was afterward Lecturer on Midwifery, and in 1875 called to the chair of Obstetrics. In 1879 he was made Professor of Pathology and Histology, a position for which he was admirably fitted by a severe course of study in 1876, under the greatest living pathologist, Vir- chow, in Berlin; where, as an enthusiastic American student, he won the notice and friendship of his chief, as well as of such men as Küster, Senator, Gravitz and Von Langenbeck. His observations and experiences abroad prompted him on his return to work vigorously to secure the permanent establishment of a chair of pathology in the medical institu- tions of this country ; and it is due, in a great measure, to his earnest efforts, that the teachings of that special depart- ment are to-day obligatory upon the medical student.

Dr. Bunker has been a frequent and able contributor to the various periodicals of the day, and has served on the editorial staff of both literary and scientific publications. Among numerous dissertations on subjects of interest in his pro- fession may be mentioned, "Eartlı Dressings in Small-pox," " Perineoraphy," " Veratrum Viride in Puerperal Eclamp- sia," and "The Touchstone of Professional Worth," a brilliant address delivered before the college faculty and their friends. His most notable contribution to medical literature, how- ever, was an original theory of the "Genesis of Inflamma- tion," a paper which attracted wide attention.

Varied contributions in prose and verse, to more popular journals, show great originality of thought and fancy, and justify the strong leaning which the doctor had at one time to the profession of literature.

He has occupied many positions of trust since engaging in the practice of medicine in Brooklyn; Surgeon to St. Mary's Hospital, to the Sheltering Arms Nursery, to the Lucretia Mott Dispensary, etc. For several years he has been Assistant Surgeon to the Twenty-third Regiment of the National Guard.

His only brother, Robert, a lad of uncommon promise, died at the age of fifteen. He married, in 1860, Alice Loines, daughter of John Loines, Esq., of Brooklyn. Of their four children, three are living; the eldest, Lucy, having died in infancy. Phobe was born in 1863, Harold in 1869, and Alice in 1879.

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Civil, political, professional and ecclesiastical history, and commercial and industrial record of the County of Kings and the City of Brooklyn, N. Y., Part 65

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909. Publication date: 1884 Publisher: New York : Munsell Number of Pages: 1360

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909.
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: New York : Munsell
Number of Pages: 1360