USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of Cleveland, Ohio, Volume I > Part 23
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And this was the last authentic appearance of poor O'Mic!
The earliest colleague of Dr. Long in Cleveland was Dr. Donald McIntosh, a physician of Scotch descent, who arrived in the village in 1814. Born in the state of New York about 1779, Dr. McIntosh is said to have received his medical edu- cation in Quebec, and to have been a really skillful physician and surgeon. Un-
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fortunately a convivial disposition, some skill in playing the violin and a fondness for fast horses, fine dogs and good whiskey interfered seriously with his success as a physician, however much they may have contributed to the popularity of the Navy house, a hotel which he also kept on the corner of St. Clair and Water streets. 1 In spite of all these disadvantages, however, Dr. McIntosh seems to have enjoyed the esteem of his medical colleagues in the counties of Cuyahoga and Medina, by whom he was elected in 1828, the president of their district medi- cal society. It is even possible that the vivacious doctor might have descended to posterity with the reputation of one who survived, repented and redeemed the follies of youth by a maturity of honorable and sober effort. But, alas, the poor fellow in 1834 broke his neck in a moonlight horserace on the Buffalo road (Euclid avenue), and the "deep damnation of his taking off" was so accentuated by the refusal of an uncharitable parson of the village to officiate at his-obsequies, that I fear his reputation is irreparably ruined.
In the year 1818 The Cleveland Gazette and Commercial Register contains the advertisement of Dr. Israel Town, who calls the attention of the public to his "druggist store," and offers his professional services to the community. Dr. Town seems to have been in some way associated with Dr. Long (perhaps as an assistant), but did not remain long in Cleveland, removing to Hudson, where I believe he practiced successfully for many years.
Two years later (1820) the adjacent town of Euclid welcomed a physician, whose name has been in that locality a household word for almost a century. This was Dr. Elijah Burton ( 1794-1854), a native of Manchester, Vermont, and an alumnus in 1818 of the Castleton Medical Academy, whose son and grandson have followed in the steps, and maintained the reputation of a worthy ancestor for the last sixty years.
In 1825 we read in the Cleaveland Herald the professional advertisements of Dr. Spencer Wood and Dr. Alexander M. White, and in the following year the similar announcements of Dr. Richard Angell and Dr. Lewis F. W. Andrews. Most of these physicians also maintained drug stores, and, indeed, Dr. Andrews is complaisant enough to announce that professional advice will be furnished gratis to patients who purchase their drugs from his store-a curious reversal of the usually accepted valuation of the advice and the prescription.
A regular drug store is also advertised at the same time by Duckworth and Bayly, and an itinerant dentist, S. Hardyear by name, likewise announces his skill and his wares in the village paper.
The veil of obscurity which shrouds most of the medical economy of these early days is partially lifted in 1824 by the organization of the District Medical society of the Nineteenth Medical district, a term which comprised the counties of Cuyahoga and Medina. In order to comprehend clearly the organization and functions of this society we must review very briefly the medical legislation of an earlier period.
1 In the "Annals of the Early Settlers Association" (Vol. V, No. V, p. 442) Hon. O. G. Hodge deelares that in 1820 Dr. MeIntosh purchased, for the consideration of $1,500, Morey's Tavern, on the site of the present Forest City House, and changed the name of this place of entertainment to the Cleveland Hotel. This hotel was burned down February 10, 1845, and rebuilt in 1848 as the Dunham House. A few years later the building was en- larged and remodeled, and assumed its present title of Forest City House.
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On January 14, 18II, the legislature of Ohio passed "An act regulating the practice of physic and surgery," by which the state was divided into five medical districts. To each of these districts were appointed three censors, whose duties were to examine and license all persons desirous of practicing medicine or surgery in their respective districts, and to exercise general supervision of medical affairs within the same limits.
In 1812 this act was repealed, and a corporation, entitled "The President and Fellows of the Medical Society of the State of Ohio," was constituted, while the state was again divided into seven medical districts. The sixth district com- prised the counties of Trumbull, Ashtabula, Geauga, Portage, Cuyahoga and Huron, and the physicians of this district were directed to meet in Warren on the first Monday in June, for organization as a society and the election of officers and delegates to a convention to be held at Chilicothe in the following November.
This rather ambitious programme seems in some way to have failed of ac- complishment, and in 1813 the legislature reverted to the original system, re- taining, however, the seven medical districts, with censors or examiners for each.
No change was made until 1817, when the number of medical districts was increased to eight, and boards of censors were appointed by the legislature for each. Cleveland remained in the sixth medical district, whose board was con- stituted as follows: Jeremiah Wilcox, John W. Seeley, Peter Allen, of Trumbull county ; Joseph D. Woolf, of Portage county; Lyman Fay, of Huron county ; David Long, of Cuyahoga county ; Orestes K. Hawley, of Ashtabula county.
These seven censors were required to organize a district medical society by the association with themselves of other qualified physicians, and this society was to formulate regulations for its own administration and to elect from its members seven censors-apparently as successors to the original appointees.
In 1821, however, the number of medical districts was made to correspond with the number of circuits of the court of common pleas in the state, and it was directed that each medical district should have five censors. Cleveland now found itself in the third district, the censors of which were: David Long, of Cuyahoga county ; Dr. Gardener, of Huron county ; Henry Manning, of Trumbull county ; Orestes K. Hawley, of Ashtabula county; Isaac Swift, of Portage county.
Finally, on February 26, 1824, the state was again divided into twenty medical districts, for the organization of district medical societies. The counties of Cuy- ahoga and Medina constituted the nineteenth medical district, and Drs. David Long, N. H. Manter, George W. Card, Bela B. Clark, John M. Henderson and Dan. (Donald) McIntosh, were empowered to associate with themselves other qualified physicians, and to organize a district medical society by the election of officers and the formulation of regulations for the administration of the same. It was also provided that each society should elect three to five censors, as examiners or licensers, and certain delegates to the Medical Society of the State of Ohio, to meet in Columbus on the second Monday in December, 1827.
Accordingly. Dr. Long promptly called a meeting of the qualified physicians of the nineteenth district, who met at the hotel of Gaius Boughton 2 in the village
2 The hotel of Gaius Boughton was situated on the corner of Water and St. Clair streets, and its proprietor seems to have been something of a wag, if we may judge from his advertisement, "Ladies and gents can at all times be accommodated with separate rooms."
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of Cleveland on May 24, 1824, and organized the District Medical society of the Nineteenth Medical district by the election of the following officers: President, Dr. David Long; vice president, Dr. Bela B. Clark; secretary, Dr. William Bald- win ; treasurer, Dr. John M. Henderson; censors, Dr. George W. Card, Dr. John Harris and Dr. William Baldwin.
Two regular meetings were to be held annually, the first or annual meeting on the last Tuesday in May; the "midyear meeting" on the last Tuesday in October. At the annual meeting of 1826, which was held at the house (hotel) of Salmon Oviatt, in Richfield, Medina county, a resolution was adopted authorizing the organization of a society library, and appointing a committee, consisting of Drs. Long, Clark and Alexander M. White, to purchase suitable books for the same. Dr. Lewis F. W. Andrews was also elected librarian of the proposed library, which was to be located in the village of Cleveland. At the same meeting the sec- retary was directed to publish for three successive weeks in the Cleveland Herald the names of all members of the society, and his compliance with this resolution happily furnishes us with a complete roll of the members of the organization in 1826. It reads as follows: * David Long, John M. Henderson, Elijah DeWitt, *L. F. W. Andrews, Samuel Austin, Havilla Farnsworth, Asahel Brainard, Seth S. Handerson, *Alexander M. White, George R. Pardee, Secretary Rawson, Eli- jah Burton, *Richard Angell, George W. Card, Bela B. Clark, *Donald McIn- tosh, William Baldwin, John Turner, Henry Hudson, Ezra Graves, John N. Gates, and Nathan H. Palmer.
The names marked with an asterisk are those of Cleveland physicians. Bela B. Clark was from Medina, Elijah Burton from Euclid and Seth S. Handerson from Newburg. The others the, writer is unable to locate with certainty.
The activity of this district society can be followed through the files of the Cleveland Herald until 1832, and the following roster of its presiding officers during this period is compiled from this source : Dr. David Long, 1824-26; Dr. Bela B. Clark, 1826-28; Dr. Donald McIntosh, 1828-9; Dr. Elijah DeWitt, 1829- 31; Dr. Joshua Mills, 1831-32.
After 1832 the available files of the Herald become very defective, and it has been impracticable to trace further the history of this interesting organization. It must not, however, be hastily inferred that the society ceased to exist at this time, though perhaps the advent of the cholera interrupted for a season the succession of its usual meetings. Possibly a more systematic search of the newspapers of Cleveland from 1832 to 1840 may result in further development of its career and reveal its ultimate fate.
The meetings of the District Medical society of the Nineteenth Medical district were held at various places within the district, e. g., "the house of John S. Strong in Strongsville," "the house of Mr. William Root in Brunswick, Medina county," "the house of Salmon Oviatt in Richfield," etc., but we soon observe the tendency to gravitate towards the village of Cleveland, where the taverns of Dr. McIntosh, Gaius Boughton, James Belden and especially that popular Boniface, Philo Sco- ville, offered better accommodations and more attractive surroundings. As Cleve- land increased in size and relative importance the results of this tendency are well displayed in the history of the later Cuyahoga County Medical society, which be- came practically a city society.
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The inauguration in 1825, of the Ohio canal, designed to connect the waters of Lake Erie with the Ohio river, was the harbinger of future greatness, and its completion in 1832 opened the way for the commercial supremacy of our city.
A severe epidemic of typhoid fever which ravaged the village in 1827 was ascribed by the physicians to the effects of malaria, occasioned by the disturbance of the soil in this process of excavation of the canal. A mortality of seventeen in a population less than one thousand, and in a period of less than two months, indicates a severe type of disease, and justified the depression of spirits ascribed to our citizens by a writer of that day. He says :
"A terrible depression of spirits and stagnation of business ensued. The whole corporation could have been bought for what one lot would now cost on Superior street. For two months I gave up all business; went from house to house to look after the sick and their uncared for business. People were gener- ally discouraged and anxious to leave."
The advent of the Asiatic cholera in 1832 occasioned still more terror and mental depression. This oriental scourge, heralded by exaggerated reports of its horrors, reached Quebec on an emigrant vessel, June 8, 1832. Promptly on June 24 of the same year the president of the village of Cleveland called a meet- ing of the trustees, Dr. David Long, T. P. May and Sheldon Pease, to devise plans for the protection of the citizens from the dangers of the expected epidemic. A board of health was appointed and empowered to inspect all vessels arriving from an infected port, to examine all suspicious cases of disease, to superintend the removal from the village of all nuisances, and to procure a suitable building for the isolation and treatment of all persons suffering from the Asiatic cholera.
The constitution of this board is worthy of notice in these modern days, when the presence of physicians upon boards of health is regarded with so much jeal- ousy and suspicion. It consisted of three physicians, Drs. E. W. Cowles, Joshua Mills and Oran St. John, and two laymen, Messrs. Silas Belden and Ch. Denison. To these were subsequently added Dr. S. J. Weldon and Mr. Daniel Worley. The cholera hospital on this occasion seems to have been located upon Whiskey is- land, the tongue of low land intervening between the old river bed and the lake.
John W. Allen, the president of the village at this period, has left us an ac- count of the epidemic in Cleveland sufficiently interesting to justify its quotation in full. He says :
"The famous Black Hawk war was then raging in the territory which is now called Wisconsin, and in adjacent parts of Illinois, clear through to the Mis- sissippi river. The Indians were all on the war path. The garrison at what is now Chicago had been massacred, and every white man, woman and child they could hunt out had been murdered. With a horrible pestilence threatened in the East and at home too, and a war of extermination in progress in the West, it may well be inferred the popular mind was in a high state of excitement. About June, General Scott was ordered to gather all the troops he could find in the eastern forts at Buffalo, and start them off in a steamboat, in all haste, for Chicago. He embarked with a full load on board the "Henry Clay," Captain Norton command- ing, a most discreet and competent man and officer. Incipient indications of cholera soon appeared, and some died, and by the time the boat arrived at Fort Gratiot, at the foot of Lake Huron, it became apparent that the effort to reach
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Chicago by water would prove abortive. General Scott therefore landed his men, and prepared to make the march through the wilderness, three hundred miles or more to Chicago, and sent the "Clay" back to Buffalo. Captain Norton started down the river, having on board a number of sick soldiers. All were worn out with labor and anxiety. They hoped, at Detroit, to get food, medicines and small stores, but when they got there every dock was covered with armed men and cannon, and they were ordered to move on without a moment's delay, even in the middle of the river, and did so, heading for Buffalo. Before the "Clay" got off Cleveland, half a dozen men had died and were thrown overboard, and others were sick. All believed there would not be men enough left to work the vessel into Buffalo, and Captain Norton steamed for Cleveland as his only alternative. Early in the morning of the tenth of June, we found the "Clay" lying fast to the west bank of the river, with a flag of distress flying, and we know the hour of trial had come upon us thus unheralded. The trustees met immediately, and it was determined at once that everything should be done to aid the sufferers, and pro- tect our citizens, so far as in us lay. I was deputed to visit Captain Norton and find what he most needed, and how it could be done. A short conversation was held with him across the river, and plans suggested for relieving them. The result was that the men were removed to comfortable barracks on the west side, and needed appliances and physicians were furnished. Captain Norton came ashore and went into retirement with a friend for a day or two, and the "Clay" was thoroughly fumigated, and in three or four days she left for Buffalo. Some of the men having died, they were buried on a bluff point on the west side. But, in the interim, the disease showed itself among our citizens in various localities, among those who had not been exposed at all from proximity to the boat, or to those of us who had been most connected with the work that had been done. The faces of men were blanched, and they spoke with bated breath, and all got away from here who could. How many persons were attacked is unknown now, but in the course of a fortnight the disease became less virulent and ended within a month, about fifty having died. About the middle of October following, a cold rainstorm occurred, and weeks, perhaps months, after the last case had ceased of the previous visitation, fourteen men were seized with cholera, and all died within three days. No explanation could be given as to the origin, no others being affected, and that was the last appearance of it for two years. In 1834 we had another visitation, and some deaths occurred, but the people were not so much scared." 3
The role of hero of this occasion is assigned by tradition to Dr. Edwin W. Cowles, who is said to have accompanied the "Henry Clay" and its surviving pas- sengers and crew to Detroit (Buffalo?), and to have returned in a few days in safety, greatly to the astonishment of his friends, who looked upon the Doctor as elected to certain death.
Dr. Cowles was born in Bristol, Connecticut, in 1794, and came with his father to Austinburg, Ohio, in 1811. Here he studied medicine with Dr. O. K.
3 The epidemic of 11834 is said to have continued for about three weeks and to have carried off about one hundred of the villagers. As the population of Cleveland at this time scarcely exceeded 4,300, the rate of mortality exceeded 23 per thousand-certainly a serious epidemic. The disease is reported to have been most virulent among the residents "under the hill," and no less than fifty-five of its victims were buried at the expense of the village.
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Hawley, and subsequently settled in Mantua. He came to Cleveland in 1832, re- moved to Detroit in 1834, but returned to Cleveland in 1838, and is said to have died in this city in 1861. He is also said in 1845 to have embraced the homeo- pathic heresy which made its debut in Cleveland about that period.
Dr. Joshua Mills, another member of this early board of health, came to Cleve- land in 1831, and speedily became one of the most valued citizens of the growing village. A highly esteemed physician, he also had a drug store on Superior street, was one of our first aldermen in 1836, president of the city council in 1837, and mayor of the city for two successive terms in 1838 and 1839. He died April 29, 1843, and his loss was formally lamented by resolutions of the city council and of his medical colleagues.
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In this same cholera year, 1832, there arrived in the village of Cleveland an English lad, who developed through our private schools into a compositor and paper carrier of the Cleveland Advertiser, and thereafter into a student of Dr. John Delamater and an alumnus of the Cleveland Medical college. This was the venerable and eminent Dr. John C. Reeve, M. D., LL. D., of Dayton, Ohio, to whose reminiscences we are indebted for many interesting details of the medical economy of this early period.
In 1833 we notice the professional card of Dr. D. G. Branch, and in 1834 those of Dr. T. M. Moore and Dr. Robert Hicks. The latter physician, we are told by Dr. Reeve, was the medical adviser of his father's family.
The following year, 1835, was distinguished by the arrival of two medical men, destined in after life to attain considerable eminence. These were Dr. Erastus Cushing (1802-1893), an alumnus of the Berkshire Medical college, Massachu- setts, whose familiar form appeared upon our streets for more than fifty years, and whose name and reputation have been preserved to our own day by a son and grandson, equally staunch and able representatives of scientific medicine; and Dr. George Mendenhall (d. 1874), who began his medical career in Cleveland, but was compelled by failure of his health to remove to Cincinnati, where he subse- quently developed into an eminent practitioner and teacher.
The course of our narrative has brought us now to the important epoch when the little village of Cleveland assumed the dignity and responsibilities of a city, and began that rapid development, which, in the course of half a century, has made her the metropolis of the great state of Ohio.
At this point, therefore, it may be interesting and profitable to pause for a mo- ment in our story, to review very briefly the condition of medical art during the period already considered.
Comparatively few physicians of this early day enjoyed the advantages of a collegiate education and acquired the degree of doctor of medicine. No medical college existed west of the Alleghenies until the year 1817, and the time, labor and expense required to visit the schools of the East rendered such a course so difficult as to be generally impracticable. During the first quarter of the nineteenth cen- tury, therefore, the youthful applicant for medical honors was usually apprenticed to some neighboring physician of reputation, in whose family he resided, and en- joyed the advantages of his master's scanty library. In return he was expected to care for his preceptor's horse, to sweep his office, clean his instruments, pulverize drugs, make pills, tinctures, plasters, etc., and to deliver the necessary prescrip-
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tions to his suffering patients. As he advanced in years and experience, he as- sisted his preceptor in the care of office patients and accompanied him upon his rides, during which he stored up in his inquiring mind the medical precepts which fell from his master's lips. At the expiration of his term of apprenticeship (usu- ally five to seven years), the student received from his preceptor a certificate of study, with, perhaps, some instrument of surgery and launched his bark upon - the stormy sea of independent practice, to learn by personal experience the im- portant secrets of medical art. Even after medical colleges were provided in the west, many students, after listening to a single course of lectures, began at once their practice, unable or unwilling to endure the delay and the expense of securing a regular degree.
And the practice itself was difficult and dangerous. Long rides on horseback over roads rough and bottomless, or through mere trails of the unbroken forests, with rivers to be forded or crossed upon a single log, guided only by the "blazing" of trees or the position of the stars, watched by packs of hungry wolves,4 the doctor arrived at his destination to find, perhaps, a patient prostrated by pneu- monia or suffering a compound fracture, a strangulated hernia or a gunshot wound, and demanding immediate attention. No time was offered for prolonged observation ; no opportunity for consultation and division of responsibility. What was to be done must be done quickly. Such a school of practice created keen observers, ingenious in the adaptation of means to ends and ready for any emer- gency. And these pioneer physicians and surgeons, rough in dress and uncouth in manners, have received, I fear, from the profession scarcely the honor which their character merits. Many of them were true heroes in disguise.
At a later period, when the advance of civilization had created passable roads and bridges, the doctor's gig or the "one hoss shay," immortalized by Holmes, was a familiar object on every country road, hastening upon its errand of mercy, in sunshine or in storm, earning and winning for its sturdy occupant the hearty respect and affection of the rough settlers of the country districts.
The pathology of the west has always followed pari passu the doctrines of the east, and the schools of the latter section have equally adopted the medical theories of Europe. Most of the early medical coryphaei of the eastern schools were pupils of Edinburgh, London or Leyden, and accordingly it was the path- ology of these European schools (more or less modified by circumstances) that prevailed among the early practitioners of the west. The popular textbooks in medicine as late as 1825, were Cullen, Rush and Mason Good, and the standard authorities in surgery, Pott, the Bells, Desault, the Coopers, Abernethy, Cline, Home, Latta and Hey, and the American surgeons, Physick, Dorsey, Post, Mott, and the Warrens of Boston. In 1833 the druggists, Handerson and Punderson, advertise stethoscopes for sale, unquestionable evidence that the teachings of Laënnec had already reached the far west and were bearing practical fruit, and soon after the rising tide of French surgery invaded all the medical schools and
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