USA > New York > Old New York : or, Reminiscences of the past sixty years > Part 2
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The city was not then connected with the interior of the State and the vast West, by that great system of canal navigation whereby its commercial importance and growth
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were so wonderfully increased; neither was it accessible from the islands by incessant steam ferriage. Not then did each evening's journal contain fresh news from the most distant parts of the continent through telegraphic communication. The large and sumptuous hotels, now so prominent a feature, were unknown ; cheap journalism and a complete system of public instruction, ranging from the elementary schools to the higher course of the Free Acad- emy, were not established. Nor had New York become tlie cosmopolitan metropolis it is now ; a large colony of Italian organists and image-venders, bowed figures of patient Chinamen at street corners, crowds of newly- arrived German peasants, long processions of Irish, a marvellous Firemen's organization, cafés after the French model, beir-gardens like those of Frankfort or Vienna, foreign book-stores and print-shops, opera troupes, a Parisian company of actors, and other signs of Oriental and European civilization, had not made the Island of Manhattan an epitome of the world; nor had the enter- prising and intelligent New Englanders so prominently encroached upon Knickerbocker repose and economies. It is a pleasing evidence of the liberal tone of the Doctor's mind, and the comprehensiveness of his sympathies, that these exotic elements awakencd no jealous comment, not- withstanding his local partialities. A younger member of the St. Nicholas Society remonstrated, with a natural sensitiveness to the neglected claims of his birthplace, against the overshadowing record of the Puritan invaders, and sturdily maintained his ancestral superiority in the hospitable amenities of life: "Our graceless Knickerbock- ers," he observed, " danced round a May-pole in the Bow- erie, while the Puritan Anglo-Saxons burned witches at Salem. The Norman refugees to this Huguenot asylum, and the planters of this Holland colony, whose commingled blood flows in the veins of the children of St. Nicholas,
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have left the creoles of New York no claim to the glories which we cheerfully accord to other sections of the colonial stock of America on the score of genuine Anglo-Saxon and Puritan descent."* But so large was the tolerance and so vivid the humanity of Dr. Francis, that while he was justly considered a thoroughi representative of the Knick- erbocker character,-to whom the New Year's festival, as characteristic of his father's Nuremberg home as of Dutch hospitality, and his old friend Clement Moore's household rhymes of Santa Claus, with the annual schnapps and pipes of this local saint, brought such genial inspiration,-he yet thoroughly enjoyed the thrifty and intellectual example of the Yankee, welcomed the persecuted foreigner, and found delight in the spectacle of variety of race and customs, of excitements and phenomena which transformed, before his eyes, the town, where every one he met was an acquaint- ance, into the kaleidoscope of modern New York. Indeed, he recognized this expansive destiny in the natural advan- tages of the island, whose bay and climate Verazzano eulogized centuries ago, and whose noble river Hudson laid open to the Dutch West India Company, whence dates her commercial development. These divers associations only knit the bond of nativity in and identity with New York more strongly. To him, the Jay homestead at Bed- ford was as endeared because of its Huguenot as the Stuveysant estate for its Dutch traditions ; the Tory families of Westchester, the old Episcopal exclusiveness, the wise Rabbis of the Synagogue, and the proscribed Unitarian from Boston, found their due historical and social consideration in his retrospective thought ; and the arrival of a Japanese embassy or the Prince of Wales made him a holiday as well as the festivals of St. Nicholas; and loyal as he was to old New York, and
* Address before the St. Nicholas Society, by C. F. Hoffman.
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proud of Motley's splendid vindication of tho Dutch character, he none the less cheerfully grew cosmopolitan with tho modern city ; and only protested, with a magnetic zeal, alike individual and persuasive, that her Past should not be forgotten amid tho absorbing claims of her Present, and the expanding promise of her Future.
To some of us, indeed, accustomed to regard New York as a place of sojourn rather than a home, where the float- ing population, the mixed society, and the absence of local public spirit, make the changeful and crowded city appear more like a vast bivouac than a permanent centre of municipal life,-it was a memorable experience to walk at night through Broadway, sail about tho bay, or ride in tho suburbs, with Dr. Francis ; so reminiscent a cicerone made tho familiar scene grow mellow with the light of the Past, and assume a new and contemplativo interest. At tho Battery he would speak of his first recollection of the spot as that where he waited and watched, with a kind of solemn impatience, as an expectant urchin, for the funeral procession in honor of Washington; and glancing at tho range of adjacent dwellings, recall tho families, once ex- elusive representatives of society, and the eminent indi- viduals who had here dispensed hospitality. Now it was a breakfast at Burr's suburban mansion at Richmond Hill, tho sito of Varick and Laight streets, by the river-side ; and now the mansion of Madame Jumel, on Washington Heights, that he caused to reappear, with their long de- parted habitués, in the magic glass of Memory. At Trinity churchyard, he would relate characteristic anecdotes of Alexander Hamilton and George Frederic Cooke, as ho designated their tombs. Where once stood the City Hotel, famous balls, concerts, club-dinners, and naval achieve- ments there celebrated, were vivaciously discussed, with the renowned personages who lent dignity and attraction to the scene. Here ho would invoke the hero of ono of
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Halleck's Croaker lyries, and quote a jest or deseribe a earieature ; there he had chatted with Baron Steuben ; by St. Paul's, the monuments of Lawrenee, Montgomery, and Emmet, suggested minute remembranees of gallantry, post- humous honors, and Irish eloquence ; in St. John's Park he celebrated the various trees distributed aeeording to the counsels of Simond, the Swiss traveller; in Washington Square, moralized over the vietories of Pestilenee there buried, when the umbrageous spot was used as a Potter's Field. Where Kip's Garden onee flourished, he delighted to reeall the first speeimen of the Rosa Gallica, presented as a botanie trophy to Washington; Weehawken revived the name of Sands; and the portrait of Perry, in the Governor's Room, brought baek the piquant narrations of Jarvis; at Staten Island, the bequest whereby that noble charity, the Sailor's Snug Harbor, is maintained, inspired wonderful contrasts between the past and present value of land; the belfry of the old church, now used as a post- office, became a shrine as he deseanted on Franklin's eleetrie experiments therein ; where onee stood a printer's offiee of the olden time, he told of the early editions of the Federalist and the first numbers of Salmagundi, and their eager readers ; and where Cobbett lived, he dwelt upon agricultural enterprise and political radiealism, deseribing his eabbages, virulenee, and newspaper squibs.
Next to the educational, the Doetor rejoieed in the sanitary progress of his native eity. If he was never weary in laudations of the Historical Society edifiee and the liberal endowment and efficiency of the Cooper Institute, no eitizen was more enthusiastie over what he deemed the most precious blessings afforded by the metropolis to her vast population, by the Croton Aqueduet and the Central Park ; while few cherished more pensive yet grateful memories of Greenwood than he who had beheld the origin and growth of this beautiful eity of the dead,
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as a result of years of protest against intermural inter- ments, and advocacy of commemorative sepulture-a spot too soon hallowed as the last resting-place of his first-born, and where his own mortal remains now repose. No evi- dence of the fitness of rural cemeteries, as adapted to soften the pangs of bereavement, is more striking than the facility with which the contemplative mind is thus enabled to blend the sentiment of Nature with the thought of mortality. "The rays of a vernal sun," said the affectionate profes- sional eulogist of Dr. Francis, " are already falling upon his tomb ; they will call forth to renewed life the flowers that the hand of affection have planted there, but they can never reanimate his lifeless form. The amaranth will grow above him, and mingle its regal flowers with the deep green of the graphalium. Mosses and lichens, emblems of im- mortality, will find root there, clothing the mound with ever-living green, And yet he who, during life, was always so quick to appreciate the attentions of his friends, will ever sleep on in senseless apathy beneath. The foot- falls of the living will be frequent above his head, but they will not disturb his slumber. The birds of spring will warble, the winds will sigh, the waves of the bay will break upon the shore with heavy beat, and slow rain-drops will patter upon leaves, and all the rural sounds to which he once delighted to listen will go on as ever in the world above, but all will be silence in his world below. His noble heart, which was always moved in sympathy by the woes of others, is forever at rest. The hand that dispensed so many charities is palsied forever."*
* Dr. Valentine Mott .- Discourse before the N. Y. Academy of Medicine.
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V.
An unprofessional estimate of medical skill and methods is rarely deserving of much consideration, as the success of quaekery and the fanatical devotion of patients to cer- tain physicians and systems, prove; and yet there is no little truth in the proverb which asserts that every man who is not his own physician at forty, is a fool. It is only an extravagant way of saying that experience and com- mon sense arc of infinite valuc in the treatment of disease and the eare of health; and if these are safe guides in adapting alleviating means to the individual constitution, they are no less authentic standards of judgment as to the character and processes of medical practitioners. Proba- bly no American physician was ever regarded from more extreme points of partiality and prejudice than Dr. Fran- eis ; the fact, to those familiar with the philosophy of local reputation and of character, is the best evidence of original merit : only those who have the intelleet to conceive and the courage to follow vigorous and intelligent principles, are subject to such diversity of opinion ; the devotee of precedent, the theoretical bigot, and the compromising and conciliating votary of any and all the liberal profes- sions, enjoys a certain mediocre respectability, and there- fore excites neither warm commendation nor severe eriti- cism ; he is like the negative characters whom Dante's guide refused to discuss, and disposed of with a passing look. There are two noteworthy faets in the earccr of Dr. Franeis which attest his fidelity to the honest convic- tions he had derived from long and patient observation of disease : no member of the profession was so often called upon in an exigeney, when the ordinary resources of the healing art had failed ; and no one longer retained the confidenee of patients whose existence depended on watch-
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ful and wise ministrations. It is a trick of the trade, where this noble art is degraded thereto, to countenance, and often to originate, popular notions of some exelusive and dangerous method whereby successful physicians make their way. Usually there is but slender foundation for a charge so detrimental to a rational practice-when investigated, it often proves a slander; yet it is one that requires no little ability and patience to counteract; for onee let the belief prevail that a medieal man has but one idea-that he swabs the throat of every one who consults him, with nitrate of silver-that he has no faith in any remedy but emetics, or counter-irritation, or calomel, or hydropathy-and forthwith a large number ostracize him as incompetent or irrational. The well-known resort to depletion in the practice of Dr. Franeis, after fashion and new systems liad caused that onee-recognized resource to be comparatively abandoned, caused him to be regarded by many as the Sangrado of the profession; whereas, those intimately acquainted with his opinions and habits, are well aware that to very few old-school physicians was the laneet a more judicious resource-that few used it with so elear and cautious an insight, with greater refer- enee to constitutional peculiarities, or were more firm in resisting its application against the dietates of sound judgment. He postponed bleeding, except in critical emergencies, until other means had failed to produce the desired result; and the number of instances wherein his professional brethren acknowledged that this seasonable though sometimes hazardous remedy had saved human life, he having taken the responsibility of the experiment, evidenee the truth and wisdom of his course. But a more striking indication thereof is the still greater number of instances where, having urged this measure in vain, he foretold, with an accuracy that seemed prophetic, the in- evitable consequence of its neglect. The excitement born
DR. JOHN W. FRANCIS. XXV
of climate, social competition, political and financial fe- vers, the luxurious living, neglect of exercise, and lack of reposc and self-denial, which are normal traits of Amer- ican life, especially in our large cities, increase, year by year, the class of diseases which arise from superabundant or abnormal fluids ; a system of local and temporary alle- viations by means of small but continuous narcotic doses had encroached upon the old practice, which undoubtedly crred in the other extreme of excessive mercurial drugs, until the number of deathis ascribed to the convenient and and indefinite " disease of the heart," became a feature in our statistics of mortality ; that this result was, in a great measure, owing to the neglect of active treatment, is ap- parent to every candid observer, and is also demonstrated by the frequency of inflammation and subsequent cffusion whereby acute attacks of a congestive nature, susceptible of immediate relief by judicious depletion, assume a chronic character, until the vital powers succumb to dropsy or paralysis. Such is the evidence of medical records during thirty years in the sphere of Dr. Francis's professional toil ; and it should be duly considered, when uninformed critics of his practice ascribe to it an unduc reliance on the lancet. To those acquainted with his pa- tients, or who have had personal experience of his skill and devotion, no such argument is requisite. Dr. Bedford remarks : "Hc was a man of impulse, and yet that im- pulse was under the control of a matured and well-balanced intellect. His convictions of truth were not arrived at without great deliberation, and hence he was slow to sur- render opinions once formed. He belonged to what may emphatically be termed the antiphlogistic school of medi- cine. While perfectly familiar, through his habits of in- dustry, with the mutations which the minds of many scien- tific men had undergone within the last twenty years touch- ing the therapeutics of disease, yet he was steadfast in
B
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his original faith, and repudiated, as altogether untenable, the modern stimulating and expectant method. In conver- sation on the subject, his cyc would sparkle, and his tongue articulate with that marked emphasis always the offspring of the conviction of right : ' Sir,' he would say, ' I respect Nature, and her conservative powers -- no one has a more solid faith in the vis medicatrix naturæ than myself; but when she is oppressed by serious pathological derange- ments, and the issue is life or death, then should the con- scientious physician strike a timely and effective blow.' As a practitioner of medicine, he enjoyed the confidence of the community, and was rewarded for his labors by ample patronage. To many of his professional brethren, his death will prove a serious loss; he was the common centre around which they were accustomed to revolve ; and in cases of anxiety and doubt, his experience and counsel were eagerly invoked."*
Perhaps the branch of medical science which insures to a faithful and capable practitioner the richest harvest of affection and gratitude, is Obstetrics ; and no name is more endeared to some of the oldest New York families-in some instances to the third generation-than that of Dr. Francis, for his eminent skill and humanity in this branch of his profession. Another field of medieal usefulness in which he acquired peculiar confidence was the care of those advanced in life ; he succeeded, in innumerable cascs, in calling into action recuperative powers, and in making less intolerable the decay of nature in many venerable and some illustrious patients, whose attachment for the man testified their obligations to the physician. Dr. Francis believed in cheering his patients, and sometimes wounded the self-love of valetudinarians by conversing gayly on
* Address before the New York County Medical Society, by Gunning S. Bedford, M. D.
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things in general, instead of their case in particular. He was, indeed, too comprehensive and too much in earnest, to flatter the morbid self-consciousness of the victims of a sickly fancy rather than of positive disease; it required the latter to arouse his kecn attention and enlist his most intelligent sympathy. It was for a real conflict, not a sham battle, that he buckled on his armor ; and then no physician excelled him in vigilance, caution, care, and humanity. The late President Duer used to relate, with much unction, the impression he received of these traits, when lying speechless, but conscious, under a stroke of paralysis so alarming that, when Dr. Francis was called in, little hope was entertained by the other physicians, previously in attendance, of his recovery. "Hour after hour," said his patient, " through days and nights, I saw his eye watching every symptom ; my pulse was constantly under his finger, and it seemed to me as if he intuitively adapted each mcans and measure to my precise condition at the moment, so as to encourage to the utmost extent vital reaction, and tax to the least the prostrate bodily energies. I can only compare his vigilance over the flickering flame, to a cat watching a mouse." This intui- tive cognizance of the laws of life and of disease, accord- ing to the testimony of one of his most intelligent medical friends, was as characteristic of his mind as of his prac- tice ; and in one instance he distinctly stated, as a con- jecture, what three years after was established as a dis- covery in physiological science.
Dr. Francis was a great advocate of cheerfulness and sympathetic vivacity in a practitioner; few physicians have better exemplified the wisdom of Dr. Brown's profes- sional advice : " Let me tell you, my young doctor-friends, that a cheerful face and step, and neckcloth, and button- hole, and an occasional licarty and kindly joke, a power of executing and setting a going a good laugh, are stock in our
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trade not to be despised. The merry heart does good, like a medicinc. Your pompous man and your selfish man don't laugh mueh or care for laughter ; it discomposes the fixed grandeur of the one, and has little room in the heart of the other, who is literally self-contained. My Edinburgh readers will recall many cxeellent jokes of their doctors-' Lang Sandie Wood,' Dr. Henry David- son, our Guy Patin, etc."*
To the novice it is, indeed, one of the anomalies of the medical profession, and a circumstance that, more than any other, seems to justify that growing incredulity which refuses to accept it as a strictly scientific and reduce it to an experimental vocation-that such a discrepancy, both of theory and practice, should prevail in regard to some of the most effective processes, whether good or evil, to which physicians resort. Thetreatment of Cavour is condemned to-day, as was that of Washington years ago. It is certainly a significant fact that three of the best-known medical men in New Englandt have published very sensible and read- able works, the perusal of which leaves upon cvery can- did mind a strong impression of the inadequate and lim- ited resources of the healing art ; while one demonstrates that disease is self-limited, and advocates the least possi- ble interference therewith, another discusses the efficacy of the most prominent remedial agents in order to indicate how often the remedy is worse than the disease ; while a third expresses the deliberate conviction that if all drugs, with two or three exceptions, were thrown into the sea, tlc health of mankind would be vastly promoted. But this apparent skepticism-the result of experience and the lessons it imparts to honest and judicious minds-instead of invalidating, confirms the claims of the profession, as
* Hora Subsecivæ, by John Brown, M. D.
t James Jackson, Jacob Bigelow, and O. W. Holmes.
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such, by proving that hygienic means and a knowledge of nature in disease, are essential; and that the counsel and eare of a good physician are among the best safeguards and sanctions of social life. And this inferenee only makes the character and ability of the practitioner of more vital interest. In estimating these, we must take eognizanee of the state of medieal knowledge and the means of attaining it. Dr. Franeis was edueated, in the teehnieal sense of the term, before the wonderful triumphs of modern chem- istry had added so many specifies to the materia medica ; in his youth, scientific diagnosis had not reached the pre- cision which every student at the Hôtel Dieu may now learn to use and value. But, on the other hand, he en- joyed the advantages of a grand transition era in the his- tory of medieine, felt its inspiration, and profited by its lessons. No American physician better appreciated ti:e anatomieal triumphs of Hunter and Bell, the cerebral dis- coveries of Gall, the physiological investigations of Cu- vier, the surgical achievements of Dupuytren, or the eom- mon sense applied to medical practice that made John Abernethy so famous. It is a striking evidence of the praetieal ardor and the eagerness for knowledge that dis- tinguished the youth of Dr. Franeis, that the latter phy- sieian, then at the height of his renown in London, offered his American visitor a share of his praetice ; while Dr. Valentine Mott recently stated, to an audience gathered to do honor to the memory of Dr. Franeis, that his long friendship with him originated in the observation of his intentness and zeal when a student attending his own lec- tures. Unprofessional friends of Dr. Franeis learned from his conversation the most interesting illustrations of medieal praetiee ; for while loyal to the uttermost in respeet- ing the obligations of the Hippocratic oath, he repudi- ated all affeetation of mystery as an obsolete and unworthy concomitant of the big wig, gold-headed cane, and solemn
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dignity of the doctors who practised before the school- master was abroad in the world. His memory was stored with professional aneedotes and remarkable eases ; of the career and elaims of American physicians he was thor- oughly cognizant, and could deseribe their physique and manner, as well as practice, to the life ; he eould report the last illness of illustrious men, and the treatment adopted, with singular minuteness; and diseussed the last days of Napoleon and Byron, or the insanity of George the Third, with the vividness of personal observation. It may be safely deelared that no member of the profession, in this eountry, ever attended so many eminent individuals ; and no celebrated man or public benefactor passed away, within his sphere of observation or intereourse, without his utmost investigation of their peeuliar ailment, and an examination of their physicians, almost judicial in its thoroughness. He delighted in literary doctors, and talked of Akenside and Garth, Armstrong and Beattie, Radcliffe and Smollet, with the zest of a boon eompanion.
Dr. Mott is of opinion that the medieal life of Dr. Franeis "took its prineipal aim and main direction" from his first teacher and subsequent partner, Dr. Hosaek ; and that not a few of the more superficial traits of his profes- sional manners and address were derived from the personal magnetism and example of Abernethy. Of the former celebrated physician the same competent authority thus speaks, in reference to the period of that intimaey of work and social life to which he aseribes such permanent influ- enee : " That celebrated man was, at this time, at the height of his fame, doing a large business, enjoying a prineely revenue, and living in corresponding style. He was, in truth, among the most eminent medieal men, and one of the most able at the bedside, that his country has ever produced, comparing favorably witli Dunean and Home, of Edinburgh. In manner he was somewhat harsh
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