USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume II > Part 37
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume II > Part 37
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them for medicinal purposes quite naturally led to recommending and in time selling them to ailing acquaintances with instructions as how best to use them to attain the desired results. Should a cure or marked improvement ensue, another medical career had been launched.
Very gradually did the colonists come to realize the inadequacy of this system, the final awakening being due not so much to the shortcomings of conscientious resident physicians as to the irrespon- sibility of itinerants who, besides shoeing horses or mending wagons on their rounds of the countryside, peddled pills, powders and liquids of their own concoction. There was also the traveling "medicine show" which moved from village to village, announcing its arrival with a free exhibition of physical feats and, when a suitable crowd had assembled, dispensing its magic cure-alls by high-pressure sales- manship. As late as 1773 the province of Connecticut found it neces- sary to prohibit this sort of thing.
Among the more efficient doctors of early colonial times on Long Island were the local ministers and school teachers whose professional training they supplemented along medical lines by home study, hoping thus to more fully serve the needs of their communities. Similarly, laymen of good standing and education, actuated by honorable mo- tives, assumed the role of physician, thereby undoubtedly helping to safeguard the health of their neighbors. The province of New York in 1648 passed a law prohibiting the use of "force, violence, or cruelty upon or towards the Body of neither young or old without the advice and consent of such as are skillful in the said Arts (if such may be had) or at least some of ye wisest and Bravest then present and Consent of the Patient or Patients if they be Mentis Compotes."
Dr. Samuel Martin, the proprietor of Rock Hall in Hempstead Town from 1778 to his death in 1800, was among the highly regarded physicians of that period. Richard Moore, Adam Seabury and Ben- jamin Tredwell, likewise residents of Queens (now Nassau) County, practised throughout that area. In 1677 a Huntington farmer, Jonas Wood, was granted a license by the court of assizes to practice medi- cine on the grounds that he had already worked "divers considerable Cures in Chirurgery" on some of his neighbors. Nevertheless, many colonial housewives scorned the professional healers in favor of their own homemade remedies. Long Island's first resident English author, Daniel Denton, son of Hempstead's leading founder, paid a glowing tribute in his "Brief Description" to the curative powers of certain native plants including sassafras.
Not alone to plants did the colonists turn for their remedies. Fish grease, beaver oil, raccoon and eel skins were used as cures for aches, pains and bruises. The slimy skin of the eel bound tightly about the wrist was supposed to drive away the pangs of rheumatism. The use of whale oil for certain ills had its origin with the Indians as did that of poultices made from snakes. Live toads were roasted and pulverized to be taken internally with "vehiculum" to produce artificial fever. Snail-water and later tar-water, both calculated to cure consumption, smallpox, ulcers and dysentery by thinning the blood, were commonly used. There was such demand for tar and turpentine for medicinal and other purposes that in 1715 the town
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of Brookhaven, in whose pine belt a large natural supply was being gathered, placed a tax of one shilling per barrel on tar and ten shillings on turpentine.
The sanitary standards of Long Island were far below those of the urban centers. Philadelphia founded the country's first hospital in 1725 and seven years later its first medical college. Among the earliest graduates of the latter was a Long Islander, Samuel Kissam of Great Neck, who received his degree in 1770. "Priest" David Rose prepared for medicine at Yale before coming in 1767 to serve as minister of the Southaven Presbyterian Church. During his pastorate,
Mercy Hospital, Rockville Centre
which lasted 32 years, broken only by active service with the American forces in the Revolutionary War, "Priest" Rose served his parish as physician as well as pastor.
Some Americans of that era who aspired to a medical degree studied abroad and upon their return to America chose to practice in the larger centers. Before 1700 New York City had a number of physicians, many of them graduates of medical colleges in England, Scotland and other European countries. In 1691, when Governor Slaughter died from unknown causes, a group of local physicians performed an autopsy the findings of which demonstrated both knowl- edge and skill.
On the other hand, plagues were not uncommon throughout the colonial period. Recurrent epidemics of smallpox, the most dreaded of diseases, spared few generations. Oyster Bay suffered a smallpox scourge in 1771 and Hempstead six years later. One of New York's worst epidemics was in 1751, ten years after inoculations had been introduced at Boston by Dr. Zabdiel Boylston whose experiments were at first roundly condemned by most other physicians and by
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the clergy. Not until its preventative reactions had had time to become generally known from repeated demonstrations did the public accept inoculations. It then became the vogue to undergo treatment in small groups augmented by a certain number of those who, having had the disease, could supply serum for the others. As it was neces- sary for the group to be isolated for a time in one another's company, those of social standing often issued invitations to insure themselves desirable companions during the process. The outbreak of the Revolu- tion brought a halt to group inoculations for fear of mass infection in the armed forces. Eventually vaccination proved more effective.
That the need of special medical care in certain cases was recog- nized in East Hampton Town as early as 1698 is shown by the town having paid £10 to a physician in Flatbush for treating one Sarah Whitehair, an East Hampton pauper, whose traveling expenses of £3 6d were likewise paid by the town. Six years later further treat- ment of this patient cost the town an additional £19, a staggering public expenditure for one ailing pauper at a time when, between 1696 and 1714, 200 deatlıs were recorded in that thinly populated town.
The first resident physician in the Hamptons, according to James Truslow Adams' history of Southampton, was Dr. Nathaniel Wade of Bridgehampton who is mentioned in the town records of 1701, following his treatment of a woman prisoner, as follows: "Dr. Wade administered physic, and let her blood, and we found she was never better, so we bade him forbear to meddle with her any more."
Other early physicians of Southampton Town were: John Mackie who died in 1758, Rev. William Reeve, William Smith, a native of Moriches, who died in 1775 and was succeeded by his son, John Smith; Samuel H. Rose and Samuel Latham.
According to a paper presented at East Hampton in 1934 by Mrs. Everett J. Edwards: "The first person mentioned in the records as a doctor in East Hampton is Jacob Baillergeau in 1703 and for a number of years after that as being a merchant, also a 'French Doctor.' He must have kept a store for the sale of general merchandise, for there is a record of the town having bought nails from him."
Dr. Edward Huntting, a graduate of Harvard in 1725 and the son of Rev. Nathaniel Huntting of East Hampton, practised there for several years until his death at the age of 40. His son Edward, like- wise a physician, practised at Fishkill, N. Y. Dr. Silas Halsey, a native of Southampton, also practised locally from 1764 up to the Revolution when he removed to Seneca County to become its first physician and a prominent statesman.
An East Hampton town record of March 24, 1761, states : "Agreed to pay Dr. Elihu Howell £4 10d for curing Elisha Wicks' hand when he shot it." Other East Hampton physicians of that era were Samuel Hutchinson, a native of Southold, who died in 1790 at the age of 57; Ebenezer Sage, Yale 1778, Congressman from Suffolk County from 1809 to 1817, who later lived at Sag Harbor; Aaron T. Gardner and Nathaniel Gardner, 1756 to 1804.
To again quote Mrs. Edwards: "Dr. Henry White, who was a doctor in Southampton at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, left an account book which is still in existence, and
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some of the entries are very interesting. A visit, with paregoric, cost Squire Harrick, a near neighbor, 2 shillings; for three visits, with spirits of nitre, he charged 3s 6d. A visit to Wickapogue in the night with castor oil and paregoric, was 10s. His fee for extracting a tooth was 1s. A purge was 1s 4d, an emetic the same. A visit to North Sea with bleeding thrown in was 4s."
According to Dr. Frank Overton, one time historian of the Suffolk County Medical Society: "The first practicing physician in Suffolk County of whom we have a record was the Rev. Joshua Hobart, second pastor of the Southold Presbyterian Church," who served in that capacity from 1674 to 1717. For more than four decades Pastor Hobart ministered to the bodily as well as the spiritual ailments of the people of his town, and following his death the town placed a large stone slab above his grave in the old churchyard bearing an inscription which read in part: "He was a faithful minister, a skillful physician, a general scholar, a courageous patriot, and to crown it all, an emi- nent Christian." Included also, according to Whitaker's History of Southold, were the lines:
"No more his healing hand shall health restore; Elude the grave and baffle death no more."
Unfortunately, the inscription was cast in lead and was appropriated, probably for ammunition, during the Revolution.
In the old cemetery at Cutchogue, a few miles from Southold, may be seen the gravestone of Dr. Thomas Paine who, following graduation from Yale in 1748, served the Cutchogue parish from 1750 to 1766. His inscription reads :
"In memory of Ye Rev. Mr. Thomas Paine, late pastor in this place, who lived desired by many (a distinguished Preacher of Righteousness and a successful healer of the sick) and died lamented by Most on the 15th of Oct. 1766, in ve 43d year of his age.
"Oh, cruel death, why didst thou take so quick That Guide of souls and Healer of ye sick ? Not Death but God the Author of ye Breach Thereby to give such useful men doth teach."
Dr. John Barber, a Yale classmate of Dr. Paine and who in 1782 completed a medical course at Dartmouth, preached and practiced at Mattituck and Aquebogue during the latter part of the 18th century.
Before and during the Revolutionary period, Huntington Town had a number of physicians, graduate and otherwise, including Ben- jamin Y. Prime, Gilbert Smith, James Sanford, Daniel Wiggins, Zophar Platt and Oliver Brown. Of another Huntington practitioner whose life extended from 1769 to 1828, Romanah Sammis, Huntington Town Historian, wrote: "It is probable that Moses Blachly qualified as a physician after the study of books on the subject of medicine and work with some experienced physician, as this was an early custom." Blachly, be it known, was also postmaster and town clerk.
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But by far Huntington's best known physician of the Revolution was Dr. Gilbert Potter who, following the outbreak of hostilities on Long Island in 1776, joined Washington's forces as a surgeon, leaving his wife, Elizabeth Williams Potter, to attend to his Huntington pa- tients. This she did between sessions of the private school which she operated in her home. Later, when the British arrived and established a military hospital, Elizabeth Potter assumed the role of visiting nurse, ministering to friend and foe with equal care. It was in the pest house which the British set up for contagious cases that she performed her most heroic. tasks. Here among the smallpox sufferers she found a young English ensign, who had been removed from a
Southside Hospital, Bay Shore
British warship in Huntington Harbor. Her constant care alone saved his life and during convalescence she had him taken to her home for further attention.
Years later, during the War of 1812, Sir Admiral Hardy, com- manding a British fleet in Gardiner's Bay at the easterly end of Long Island, found among the American prisoners one Henry Williams who, upon questioning, proved to be the nephew of Hardy's bene- factress of Revolutionary days when the Admiral was a very sick young ensign. Needless to say, Williams was released and returned to his Huntington home.
Among Suffolk County's other medical men of the colonial era were Richard Udall of Islip, Joshua Clark of Southold, Jonathan Havens and Zephaniah Platt of Smithtown, and in Brookhaven Town, Dr. Reed, George Muirson, Benjamin Smith, Samuel Thompson, and Cyrus Penderson, who had studied with Dr. Muirson, married his daughter and served during the Revolution. Samuel Thompson, the father of Benjamin F. Thompson, Island historian, was not only Setauket's village physician prior to the Revolution, but during the war he became a captain of the First Company in Col. Floyd's Long Island Regiment.
Although better known today for his achievements as a historian, son Benjamin also became a physician after studying at Clinton and
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Huntington academies, briefly at Yale and Columbia and for a time with Dr. Ebenezer Sage at Sag Harbor. Following ten years of prac- tice at Setauket, however, he turned to law and attained a greater success in that field. While still a physician Benjamin Thompson, according to Kate W. Strong, Setauket historian, shared his home there with a young medical aspirant, Joel Griffing by name, whom he charged $7.81 for three months' "use of bed, furniture and wash- room," $3 for a year's use of Thompson's library and an equal sum for the privilege of reading the Doctor's Shakespeare.
Joel Griffing launched forth as a doctor on his own in 1817 and thereafter received 50 cents for an office call and 75 cents for a home visit. For a night call lasting two hours he charged $1.85, for dressing a cut finger 25 cents, and for extracting a tooth 371/2 cents. A more munificent fee was $5 for setting a broken leg, while for attending one Oakley Clark on the south side of the island, which entailed a 21-mile drive, his charge was $6. Dr. Griffing left Setauket in 1820 to start anew at Guilford, Connecticut, where he died five years later.
A respected Long Island physician of a much earlier era was Dr. A. Rodman of Flushing whose skill and knowledge, attained in his native Germany, were such as to bring patients to him from all parts of the island. In 1709 he was called upon to treat, by corres- pondence, Col. William Smith, a prominent resident of Suffolk, whom he advised to take a concoction consisting of a half an ounce of nutmeg, cloves, mace and cinnamon beaten together and mixed with two quarts of rum.
Some years before Dr. Rodman, a number of Flushing's leading residents depended for medical advice and attendance upon Dr. Simon Cooper of Oyster Bay among whose patients was John Bowne, Quaker preacher, whose homestead still stands in Flushing as a public shrine. Dr. Cooper was one of his town's earliest settlers and by the time of his death in 1691 had become one of its largest landowners. Cooper's Bluff overlooking Oyster Bay harbor is named for him.
In Cooper's and Rodman's day obstetrics was not a matter for the family doctor but rather for duly recognized midwives and women neighbors. No Long Island community before 1750 was without its midwife. They were a very busy lot and were held in high esteem. Elizabeth King of Southold, before her death at 81, is said to have helped with more than a thousand births. Catnip, motherwort, hore- hound and boneset comprised the midwife's materia medica, but far more important were her experience and common sense.
What with midwives and, for ordinary ills, one's own assortment of homemade remedies, the doctor was called mostly for the more serious diseases and for bodily injuries, which, it seems, were of common occurrence among the hard-toiling colonists of Long Island. Poor roads and sidepaths, crudely built platforms and boat landings, unlighted streets, homemade tools and implements, the common use of guns, all contributed to accidents. Even a minor wound from a "muzzle-loader" could be serious. Onderdonk's "Revolutionary In- cidents" tells of the wounding at Rockville Centre in 1776 of one George Smith who "was attended by Dr. James Searing from June 22 to 29, whose charge for dressing the wound, bleeding, basilicon
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ointment, a plaster, cathartics, ivory tube to suck out the blood, and nine visits was £1.17.6". In this case, "he recovered from the wound." Not so fortunate was Daniel B. Sweezey, a sturdy Yaphank farmer in his thirty-third year, who "died from a broken leg."
In spite of accidents, however, and a dearth of professionally trained doctors, a goodly proportion of the Long Island colonists lived to a ripe old age. Writing in the Long Island Forum of Hunt- ington's Presbyterian minister from 1793 to 1817, Dr. E. J. Humeston, Huntington Historian, states: "Of 564 persons buried by Mr. Schenk in 25 years, 133, or 21.8 per cent, had passed the age of seventy; 46
Nurses' Home, Southside Hospital, Bay Shore
were eighty or more; 13 were over ninety; and 2 were said to have been 104."
It can be readily seen that during the period from 1607 to the conclusion of the Revolution and the establishment of the United States much knowledge had been gained along medical lines. Some of our physicians had gone abroad and studied in European schools and enough knowledge had been gained to put medicine on a sound basis.
Most of the men now devoting themselves to the practice were of honest intent and, as before stated, the charlatan was looked upon with disfavor. As a result of this feeling the legislature at Albany in 1796 passed a law making it a misdemeanor for anyone to practice medicine and chirurgery without registration with the state of New York. In order to be qualified to register, a physician had to show that he had practiced a certain number of years, or to be certified by a qualified physician with whom he had practiced, as to his ability. This was definitely in accord with the wishes of the sincere men practicing at that time.
It was probably as a direct result of this enactment that the first county medical society was formed in Westchester in 1797. The
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history of this society has been preserved as far as possible where the early records could be obtained.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Suffolk County would soon organize a society of its own, being as close to Westchester as it is and so in 1806 a society was formed on July 22.
Nassau County was early associated with the County of Queens and so its earliest society was the Queens-Nassau Medical Society. It was not until 1921 that Nassau formed its own county society and this has rapidly developed into one of the most outstanding in the country.
Although the Suffolk County Medical Society was founded July 22, 1806, the minutes of its meetings up to 1854 were not preserved. Its first officers were: David Conklin of Riverhead, president; John Howard, vice president; Moses Blachly, secretary; David Woodhull, treasurer; John Howard, Moses Blachly and Oliver Brown, censors; John Gardiner of Southold, a native of Cutchogue, delegate to the New York Medical Society.
The chief function of the county society during its earliest years, it seems, was to pass on the qualifications of applicants to practice medicine, but only one license so issued before 1854 has come to light. Printed on parchment, which would suggest that a number of these forms were on hand, this license, duly filled in and signed, was issued in 1807 to Dr. Nathaniel Miller, a native of East Hampton, who prac- ticed in Brookhaven up to his death in 1863 and who himself was president of the Society in 1832. The secretary at that time was Joshua Fanning.
Only since 1870 have the minutes of the society been regularly kept and preserved. These minutes, during the 1870's and '80's, show a new interest by physicians generally and from them may be traced the progressive developments of modern medicine over these formative years. Declared Dr. Frank Overton, writing for the "Long Island Forum" 1940:
"For over a quarter of a century the Suffolk County Medical Society has practiced administrative medicine by ad- vising official bodies and welfare organizations regarding their duties to the sick and to the community in the care and the prevention of disease. The success of this leadership is plainly evident along at least six lines :
"1. Medical Centers. Making each public hospital a medi- cal center for the post-graduate education of the physicians of the community.
"2. The Tuberculosis Hospital. The establishment of the County Tuberculosis Hospital in 1916 after a campaign of education beginning in 1912, and conducted almost entirely by the Medical Society.
"3. Public Health. The enactment of the Public Health law of 1914 reorganizing the State Health Department on a modern basis was the result of the promotion of the plan by the Suffolk County Medical Society, whose influence was a deciding factor in convincing the legislators of the need for the law.
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"4. County Health Department. One of the most important features of the law of 1914 was the establishment of a system of Deputy State Health Officers for local public health work, in which Suffolk and Nassau counties constituted one district. The system enabled any community on Long Island to obtain the benefits of all the resources of the State Department of Health on a few hours' notice. The system was expanded later to centralize local health departments under a County Health unit.
"5. The Monthly News Letter. An outstanding activity of the Suffolk County Medical Society is the publication of a Monthly News Letter, of eight pages, containing news of all public health activities in the County. It is published at the expense of the Medical Society, and copies are sent free to a selected list of over five hundred prominent citizens. This is one of the pioneer publications of its kind in New York State.
"6. Welfare and Relief. The Suffolk County Medical So- ciety is now actively engaged in solving the nation-wide prob- lem of relief and welfare, particularly in regard to sickness. For ten years the Society has had a committee to audit the bills submitted by physicians for their services to the poor. The system is recognized as essential in maintaining a high stand- ard of medical services, and a reasonable remuneration to the physicians."
The foregoing paragraphs, it must be understood, were written during the nation-wide depression which preceded World War Two. But quite as appropriate today as then are Dr. Overton's further words: "In all matters relating to sickness and health it (the Society) is the leader, the public adviser, and the authority in whom the people of the county are placing their confidence."
Thus it can readily be seen that in all medical advances Long Island takes an active part.
Owing to a closer and closer association of physicians in the counties whose village boundaries were rapidly nearing each other it was felt that a closer cooperation of physicians in Kings, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk was desirable to further the knowledge and ad- vancement of medicine. As a result, the Associated Physicians of Long Island was formed and is still in existence today.
Long Island has, since early colonial times, been associated with all the advances in medical science. From the few practicing phy- sicians of colonial times the number now totals some 4000 on Long Island and the incidence of illness is nowhere better controlled or the ill no better cared for than they are here.
Hospitals have been and are being erected at strategic points and constant improvement in all branches of medical care is noted.
Keeping always abreast with the times the medical societies are constantly placing themselves in the front rank of those organizations furthering Public Health and Preventative Medicine. The role of these two branches of medical science assumes a more and more im- portant position as time goes on and although a Utopia has not yet been realized, we feel that the day is not far off when maximum care for the ill, aged and infirm will have been attained on Long Island.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
The Fisheries of Long Island M. C. OLD and E. P. CREASER Hofstra College
E ARLY and balanced personal use of marine products by the aboriginals was followed by rapid development of fisheries for commercial uses by the replacement settlers. This commercial use, or, better, misuse, inevitably led to depletion. Depletion demanded improved gear or larger boats and resulted in greater depletion over a wider area. This secondary loss in profits by the industry caused many of the persons engaged in fisheries enterprises to seek other employment. The decreased fishing load which resulted afforded an opportunity for partial recovery of numbers among a few species.
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