The civil, political, professional and ecclesiastical history, and commercial and industrial record of the county of Kings and the city of Brooklyn, N. Y., from 1683 to 1884, Volume II, Part 65

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909, ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: New York, W. W. Munsell & Co
Number of Pages: 1345

USA > New York > Kings County > Brooklyn > The civil, political, professional and ecclesiastical history, and commercial and industrial record of the county of Kings and the city of Brooklyn, N. Y., from 1683 to 1884, Volume II > Part 65

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Upon the important topics 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 incisive papers frequently elicit sharp discus- 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. Busteed, 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 '4] 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 Bellevue 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 he located in Brooklyn for the practice of his profession. In 1870, he was elected Secretary of the Medical 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 Medical Society of the State of New York in 1880, after due service as delegate; was elected Vice-Presi- dent N. Y. Med. Hist. Society in 1882. In sanitary matters of Brooklyn, he has been attached to several health 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 Surgeon 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 ear, 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- sician 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 Otological Society, New York State Medical Association, and American Surgi- cal Association ; Permanent Member of New York State Medical Society, and American Medical Associ- ation.

VAH

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 hecame Anglicized into its familiar form) and John Howland, who came over in the Mayflower, with Gov- ernor Carver. Howland came very near putting au 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 hoat, 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.

Other 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 early 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, "Earth 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. Phoebe was born in 1863, Harold in 1869, and Alice in 1879.

Although widely known as one of the leading physicians of Brooklyn, the doctor is still an eager student, acting on his own statement to the young men who look to him for instruction-"The doctor who has ceased to grow is fit to be buried." He is a cool and skilful operator, with an uncom- mon knowledge of the chemistry of medicine, and of the delicate and complex instruments which later years have brought as aids to diagnosis and treatment. Perhaps the chief factors in his professional success have been, not alone erudition and ready wit, but a faculty for generalization and a broad humanity. "His success," as Dr. Holmes said of a more renowned practitioner, " has been won without special aid at starting, by toil, patience, good sense, pure char- acter and pleasing manners; won in a straight, up-hill ascent, without a breathing space."

904

HISTORY OF KINGS COUNTY.

THOMAS LUDINGTON SMITH, M. D., U. S. N. The ancestry of the subject of this biography were of Scotch origin, and settled in Essex county, N. J., about 1680. His father, Jonas Smith, a well-to-do farmer, was a public-spirited man and an earnest Whig, who took an active part in the af- fairs of his township and county. His mother was a daughter of Col. Thomas Ward, who won his military title in the service of his country. Soon after the close of the Revolutionary War, Jonas Smith and Peninnah Ward were married. Their son Thomas, the subject of this sketch, was born August 3, 1800, at their home in Orange, New Jersey. He received his early education at the Orange Academy and from a private tutor, with a view to engaging in the study of medicine, which was the profession of his early choice; insomuch that, at the age of seventeen, he was regularly entered as a medi- cal student with Dr. Samuel Hayes, of Newark. Three years later, in 1820, he went to New York, studying there with Dr. J. Kearney Rodgers, an eminent physician of that day, one of the founders of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. In the infancy of this institution, Dr. Smith was a student and assistant, and holds its certificate, dated 1823.

He had previously entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons, which was then in Barclay street, and received the degree of M. D. in 1822. Shortly afterwards, he returned to his home in Orange, practicing his profession there for a time; but, in 1824, he returned to New York and opened an office in Greenwich street, near Murray.

Possessing a constitution which was never very strong, his health became somewhat impaired, so that he sought the ad- vantages to he derived from a sea voyage, and applied to the Navy Department for an appointment as surgeon, which was granted January 3, 1828. Meanwhile he was commissioned Surgeon of the 82d Regiment, S. N. Y., by Governor De Witt Clinton, April 16, 1827. His commission as Surgeon's Mate (now called assistant surgeon) bears date March 25, 1828, and is signed by President John Quincy Adams. He was as- signed to duty on board the frigate Hudson, under Comman- der John Ord Creighton, for the Brazil station. In August, 1830, while on that station, he was appointed Acting Surgeon, and ordered to the sloop Vandalia; returned to the United States in December, 1831, and was ordered to the receiving ship Franklin, at New York, and continued on duty three years. During this period occurred the visitation of the Asiatic cholera, which disease, hitherto unknown in this country, Dr. Smith was called on to face for nearly three months ; during a portion of the time he was compelled to be on duty night and day. In September, 1834, he was or- dered to the schooner Boxer, fitting for sea at Norfolk. He sailed from that place early in November, encountering a terrific gale off the coast. Although she received some dam- age, the Boxer continued on her cruise to the Pacific station. Dr. Smith was commissioned Surgeon by President Andrew Jackson, February 7, 1837. In December, 1838, he joined the frigate Macedonian, for the West India station. In the sum- mer of 1840, the squadron sailed north, touching at Boston, Portland aud Eastport ; on the return, the Erie, to which he had been transferred, was put in ordinary at Boston, and the officers detached. In April, 1842, he was ordered to the frigate Congress, and, in July, sailed for the Mediterranean station, where he continued until December, 1843, when the ship was ordered to the Brazils. While there, the Buenos Ayres fleet seized an American merchant vessel which was endeavoring to run the blockade with a cargo of beeves, as a speculation of the famous P. T. Barnum, but the commander of the Congress demanded and secured her release. Dr. Smith returned to the United States in March, 1845. In 1846, was on the receiving ship Pennsylvania, at Norfolk, Va .;

was attached to the Navy Yard, New York, from 1847 to 1849, and on the board for the examination of candidates for promotion and admission into the medical corps of the navy. In August, 1850, he joined the sloop Saratoga and sailed for the coast of China. Commodore Perry arriving and taking command, the Saratoga was made one of the Japan expedi- tion. Surgeon Smith was appointed Fleet Surgeon and or- dered to the flagship Susquehanna, where he continued until March, 1854, when he was detached to joined the Saratoga to return to the United States, where he arrived the first of the following September. He was immediately ordered to the Navy Yard, New York, and continued there on duty until May 1, 1858. On the 9th of April, 1859, he received orders for the Constellation, as Fleet Surgeon of the African squad- ron under Commodore Inman, and sailed in July for Ma- deira and the west coast of Africa ; returned from that squadron-invalided on account of his eyes-to the United States, August 28, 1861; took charge of the Naval Hospital, New York, from January, 1862, until December, 1865; was placed on leave until May 20, 1869, when he was put on duty at the Navy Yard, New York, where he continued until 1870, when, with other retired officers, he was put off duty. In March, 1871, he was commissioned as Medical Director in the Navy, with a relative rank of Commodore.

Since his retirement from active service in the Navy, Dr. Smith has enjoyed his otium cum dignitate in his pleasant home in Brooklyn. Always a persevering, diligent student, the high position which he occupied in his profession for so many years was only the fitting reward of his attainments. His acquirements outside of his profession are varied and ex- tensive, as evidenced by a choice collection of rare and standard authors. Thus, possessed of a well-stored mind, broadened hy travel and keen observation, the Doctor is a most interesting companion, and his home abounds in sou- venirs of his world-wide travels. Naturally modest and re- tiring in disposition, his gifts and graces, his many good qualities as a man, are little known outside his immediate circle of friends, which includes, however, many of the best people of the city. His marriage with Frances Bowen Lathrop was celebrated in April, 1833; her death occurred in March, 1842. In 1846, he married Harriett Bacon, daughter of the late Rohert Bacon, of Winchester, Mass., the issue of which marriage was one daughter, Eleanor F., who died in March, 1877, aged 29 years.

The Doctor and his excellent wife are attendants at Grace Church, on the Heights, and are given to good works and charitable deeds. Though now retired from active life, the Doctor takes a quiet but deep interest in naval, municipal and national affairs. Valuing his privilege as a citizen to assist in securing good government for city and nation, he uses his influence and his hallot in behalf of administrative reform and purity.

FERDINAND W. OSTRANDER, M. D.

FERDINAND W. OSTRANDER, M. D., of No. 95 Clark street, Brooklyn, was born on Cherry street, New York city, June 4, 1804. His father, Dr. Ezekiel O. Ostrander, and mother, Sarah, were then living there, his mother dying during his infancy. When but three years of age, he was taken to live with his maternal grand-parents, William and Sarah Creed, of Jamaica, L. I., with whom he stayed for seven years, return- ing at the end of that time to his father, then residing at Newtown, L. I. He then attended Walsh's Grammar School, Pearl street, New York city, for one and one-half years; returned to Jamaica, and, for a period of five years we find the young man a pupil in the academy of Professor Eightenburgh. After finishing his course at the academy,

The OL brich

905

THE MEDICAL PROFESSION.

he pursued for two years the studies preparatory for admis- sion to a medical college; and, on reaching his twentieth year, entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York, remaining there three years; and then, by the aid of friends, secured his diploma from the New York State Medi- cal Association. The young physician, in the year 1828, started in the work of his profession, locating on Cranberry street, corner of Willow, where he continued bis practice until 1847, when he removed to his present home, 95 Clark street.

Dr. Ostrander was married to Sarah A. Wright, in October, 1833, the issue of their marriage being five children, three daughters and two sons, four of whom are now living. One son, John W., is associated with him in the practice of medi- cine, and the other, Charles, is engaged in business in New York city.

Before the incorporation of Brooklyn as a city, Dr. Ostran- der, for a year er more, was Health Physician of the village. In the unusually long duration of Dr. Ostrander's practice- fifty-six years-he has witnessed many changes in the prac- tice of physic and surgery, and the growth of his city. When he began his life's work, Brooklyn was but a village of 8,000 inhabitants, and the only paved street was Fulton, from the Ferry up to Main. Where the City Hall now stands was a tavern, kept by one Duflon, which was the centre for all

merry-makings. Though a student of the celebrated College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he listened to the teach- ings of the great Alexander Stephens, he has not been bound with iron bands in the treatment of disease. Whatever ex- perience has taught him was wisest and best, he has fol- lowed; and to this exercise of common sense, more than all else, can his success as a healer of disease be ascribed. In his long life as a physician-the longest of any other consecutive practitioner in the county-he has seen most of his cotempo- raries laid in their graves, among which might be mentioned Drs. Ball, Wendell, Vandeveer, Dubois, Edmunds, Cole, Fanning, Garrison and Joseph G. T. Hunt; William G. Hunt, of this city, being the only cotemporary now living.

Dr. Ostrander, when young, fell from a horse, receiving an injury to his right arm, which, in a measure, interfered with the practice of surgery. From this fact, to which may be added a natural bent, he early confined himself to physic and obstetrics. In politics Dr. Ostrander is a Republican, and is a member of Grace Episcopal Church.

Dr. Ostrander is truly a representative of the old school of gentlemen-courteous, affable and dignified, with the neces- sary and invaluable faculty of inspiring the confidence of his patients; and his success, professionally and pecuniarily, is the just result of a life fitly spent.

RISE AND PROGRESS OF HOMEOPATHIC MEDICINE IN KINGS COUNTY.

PO moffatins.

The wonderful growth of the new school of medicine in the United States has no better exemplification than its history in the county of Kings. Its advocates look with laudable pride upon its achievements in forty years; and gladly note the number and standing of its repre- sentative men, the wealth and intelligence of its sup- porters, and the nature, number and variety of its public and semi-public institutions, as compared with the like features of its old and more venerable sister, the old school.

In the year 1825, homeopathic medicine came to America in the person of DOCTOR HANS B. GRAM, who settled in New York. In 1833 the first attempts were made to translate its text-books into English, but not until 1836 and 1838 was this done so as to attract pro- fessional attention to their merits ; whence it is fair to recognize 1840 as the commencement of its almost universal extension.

In that year (1840), Dr. ROBERT ROSMAN, from Hud- son, N. Y., and, a few months later, Dr. DAVID BAKER, from New York city, recent converts and hearty ad- vocates of the new art, located themselves in promi- nent positions in the city of Brooklyn, and commenced

their labor of hope. They were typical men, each well adapted to the rank he selected in the social scale -- Rosman on the Heights, and Baker in Myrtle Avenue, where each drew around him much of the best elements of the class he addressed.

In the following year (1841), Dr. GEORGE COXE, of Williamsburgh (then not incorporated with Brooklyn), a physician of eighteen years' standing, avowed his convictions of the "better way," and boldly faced the consequences, as they might come, from his professional associates and from his patients. They came : hate, contempt and ridicule from the former, of course-it is the lot of all who proclaim and sustain newly dis- covered truth-and fear, then hope, love, admiration and increased confidence, as time went on, from the latter.

In two years more (1843), Drs. Rosman and Baker, in Brooklyn, were joined successively by Drs. A. COOKE HULL and P. P. WELLS, the former in partner- ship with Rosman, the latter preferring to stand alone. To the patient and successful labors of these five gen- tlemen, homeopathy owes much, very much, of the ex- cellent consideration it has since enjoyed ; for, by them

906

HISTORY OF KINGS COUNTY.

were formed the first impressions of the public respect- ing the new mode of treatment ; and of course, in some measure the acceptance of the physicians who followed.

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The civil, political, professional and ecclesiastical history, and commercial and industrial record of the county of Kings and the city of Brooklyn, N. Y., from 1683 to 1884, Volume II, Part 65

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909, ed Publication date: 1884 Publisher: New York, W. W. Munsell & Co Number of Pages: 1345

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909, ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: New York, W. W. Munsell & Co
Number of Pages: 1345