History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 79

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co.
Number of Pages: 666

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THE TIMES-STAR.

The Times, as already stated, was founded in 1821, and is therefore, except the Gazette, the oldest surviving paper in the city. Upon the death of Mr. Starbuck, it was purchased by Messrs. Eggleston, Sands, Thomas, and others, then proprietors of the Daily Chronicle, and consolidated with their paper under the name of the Times-Chronicle, from which the latter part of the desig- nation was presently dropped. In 1879 the Times was sold to David Sinton, Charles P. Taft, and H. P. Bry- den. The last-named became editor-in-chief, and made great improvements in the paper. By the latter part of June, 1880, the impolicy of maintaining two English evening papers in the city became so manifest that a consolidation of the Times and the Star was effected, the journal, under the new arrangement, taking the name of the Times-Star.

THE CINCINNATI SATURDAY NIGHT.

This is a journal of comparatively recent foundation, but is reported to be the leading secular weekly of the city. It was established July 20, 1872, by Captain L. Barney and Mr. A. Minor Griswold-the latter widely known as "Gris," or "The Fat Contributor." It was originally, indeed, called The Fat Contributor's Saturday Night, and was intended to be devoted almost solely to wit and humor. The change to its present title was made in 1873; and in April of the next year it became

the sole property of Mr. Griswold, who has reaped for it whatever renown and pecuniary success it has attained as a family paper and humorous journal.

EDUCATIONAL JOURNALISM

has had a varied history in Cincinnati, as everywhere else when professional ventures of this kind have been hazarded. So long since as July, 1831, very nearly half a century ago, the Academic Pioneer appeared in this city, the pioneer indeed of all such journals, not only in Cincinnati, but in the State. It was a monthly maga- zine, conducted by a committee under the auspices of the famous Western Academic Institute, or College of Teachers. Unhappily, it did not survive its second num- ber, but then died for want of sustenance. Somebody, nevertheless, had the hardihood to start a Common School Advocate here in 1837, and courageously to maintain it till 1841. The Universal Advocate was also started in the former year; but by whom or how long it kept up the struggle for existence, history saith not. March of the same year, too, strange to say, considering the infancy of educational journalism and the financial pressure of that time, saw the birth of still another school paper here-The Western Academician, edited by the well-known teacher, John W. Picket, and adopted as the organ of the Teachers' College. It lasted for a twelve-month. Then, the next year, in July, came the first number of the Educational Disseminator, published for a time by S. Picket, sen., and Dr. J. W. Picket, but soon discontinued. In : 846, stronger and more hope- ful auspices, at least financially, attended the birth of The School Friend, which was started in October by Messrs. W. B. Smith & Company, the leading school- book publishers of the city. Mr. Hazen White became editor of this in 1848; and at the beginning of 1850 The Ohio School Journal, which had been edited and pub- lished at Kirtland, and afterwards at Columbus, by Dr. Asa D. Lord, was consolidated with it under the title of The School Friend and Ohio School Journal. Dr. Lord was editor, assisted by Principal H. H. Barney, of the Cincinnati Central High school, and Cyrus Knowlton; but they all did not save the magazine from suspension in September, 1851. The Western School Journal, a monthly publication devoted to the cause of education in the Mississippi Valley, was supported by W. H. Moore & Company, a part of the time without any paid sub- scription, from March, 1847, to 1849. Subsequent ven- tures in the same direction were The Ohio Teacher, started in May, 1859, edited by Thomas Rainey, and published at Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland, but not long; the Journal of Progress in Education, Social and Political Economy, and the Useful Arts, published from January, 1860, to August, 1861, by Elias Longley, with Superintendent John Hancock, of the Cincinnati public schools, as editor of the educational matter; The News and Educator, 1864-6, Nelson & Company pub- lishers, Superintendent Hancock and Richard Nelson editors; succeeded in January, 1867, by The Educational Times : An American Monthly Magazine of Literature and Education, of which Superintendent Hancock edited

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

the first number; The National Normal, an organ of the Lebanon Normal school, started October, 1868, with Josiah Holbrook at first and Messrs. George E. Stevens & Company afterwards as publishers, and Mr. R. H. Holbrook and Sarah Porter as editors, the monthly sur- viving, at times quite prosperously, until October, 1874; and The Public School Journal, started in 1870, and now published at Mount Washington by Professor F. E. Wilson, with an editorial and business office at No. 11 East Fourth street, Cincinnati. Meanwhile, con- siderable editorial work has been done by Cincinnati educators upon The Ohio Journal of Education, which was started at Columbus in January, 1852, and still sur- vives in vigor-as by Principal Barney in 1852, Mr. C. Knowlton in 1853, Joseph Ray 1854-5, and Superintend- ent Hancock in 1865. The Mathematical Department in the Journal was for a time in charge of Dr. Ray, then of Professor F. W. Hurtt of the Woodward High school, after the death of Dr. Ray.

CHAPTER XXXI. MEDICINE .*

THE ARMY SURGEONS.

The pioneers of the medical profession in the Queen City were the surgeons of the regular army of the United States. "It was the custom of these gentlemen," says Dr. Drake, "not merely to give gratuitous attendance on the people of the village, for which many of them are still [1852] remembered with gratitude by the aged, but also to furnish medicines from the army hospital chests, through a period when none were imported from the East." The first of these was probably Dr. Richard Alli- son. He was a native of New York State, born near Goshen in 1757, and seems to have entered the profes- sion, as was often done in those days, without the diplo- ma of a medical school. He began in the Continental army at the age of nineteen as a surgeon's mate, and re- mained attached to the medical service till the close of the Revolution. He then practiced as a physician for some years, but re-entered the army as a surgeon when the forces were raised for the Western campaigns, and was out as Surgeon-General with Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne. He was in close quarters with the savages at St. Clair's defeat, being compelled for a time to abandon at- tendance upon the wounded and join in the fight. His horse was here struck with a bullet, which remained im- bedded among the bones of the head; and as the doctor afterwards rode him through Cincinnati, he would jocosely remark that that horse had more in his head than some doctors he had known. He was a general favorite in the village, where he did much gratuitous service and laid the foundation of a good practice when he had resigned and

settled as a regular physician. Between the campaigns of St. Clair and Wayne he was stationed at a fort oppo- site Louisville, and rendered much medical aid to the people of that village. After Wayne's victory he resigned and practiced here, and in 1799 he began the improve- ment of a tract of land on the east fork of the Little Miami, to which he removed. Six years afterwards he returned to Cincinnati; resumed practice, having his resi- dence and office on the southeast corner of Fourth and Sycamore streets; and died here March 22, 1816, aged fifty-nine. He was not accounted a profound scientist, but was modest, kind, suave, and shrewd-a successful pioneer physician, and a worthy man to be regarded, as Dr. Drake calls him, "the father of our profession" in Cincinnati.

Dr. John Carmichael was another of the army surgeons who practiced gratuitously in the hamlet of Cincinnati. Not many particulars are known concerning him; but he is said by old residents to have been in the army so late as 1802, when he was discharged upon its reduction, and personally conducted the baggage and munitions of the garrison at Fort Adams, below Natchez, where he had last been stationed, to New Orleans, whither the troops went to occupy Louisiana after its purchase by the United States. He then bought a cotton plantation in Missis- sippi Territory, became wealthy, and lived long in the land.

Surgeon Joseph Phillips has left very kindly recollec- tions among the old families of Cincinnati. Dr. Drake said in 1852: "The venerable relict of the late General John S. Gano (the intrepid surveyor of the route pursued by St. Clair's army) has, within the last few days, in- formed me that on the suggestion of General Harrison, Dr. Phillips was brought in from Fort Hamilton, to rescue her husband from the hands of a couple of quacks. She remembered him as a physician of skill and a gentleman of much personal presence. From his namesake and distant relative, Mr. H. G. Phillips, of Dayton, I learn that he was a native of Lawrenceville, New Jersey; that he came out with Wayne's army, and, after the treaty of peace, returned to his birthplace. Resuming his practice, he lived much respected both as a physician and citizen till his death, which took place only five or six years since, when he was eighty years old or upward. He probably was the last to die of all the early members of our profession; and one feels a sort of surprise at learning that a physician who practiced in Cincinnati when it was a mere encampment, should have been alive so near the present time."

Dr. John Elliot was one of General St. Clair's surgeons, a New Yorker by birth, and was stationed here several different times, going out of service finally with his regi- ment in 1802, when the army was reduced. He did not remain in Cincinnati, although two daughters were then residing here, the elder of whom married Hon. Joseph H. Crane and removed with him to Dayton, where her father also settled and staid until his death in 1809. Dr. Drake says: "In the summer of 1804 I saw the doctor there, a highly accomplished gentleman, with a purple silk coat, which contrasted strangely with the sur- rounding thickets of brush and hazel bushes."

* The materials of this chapter, so far as it relates to the carly phy- sicians of the city, are derived largely from Dr. Daniel Drake's address on the Early Physicians, Scenery, and Society of Cincinnati.

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

One of Wayne's surgeons, who came with him here in the spring of 1793, was Dr. Joseph Strong. He was at the battle of the Fallen Timbers, and in attendance at the Greenville treaty the next year. He was Connecti- cut-born and a graduate from the literary department of Yale college. After his service here, in the army and the community, he returned east about 1795, settled in Phil- adelphia, obtained a fair practice, and died there in April, 1812, aged forty-three. Mrs. Colonel Bond, long of this city, was a daughter of Dr. Strong.

Dr. John Sellman, another of Wayne's surgeons, com- ing also with the army in the spring of 1793, became a per- manent resident of Cincinnati until his death in 1827, when he had attained the age of sixty-three years. He was born at Annapolis, of an old and reputable Mary- land family, in 1764, received a good elementary ed- ucation, and entered the army while still young as a sur- geon's mate, or, in modern army parlance, assistant sur- geon. After Wayne's victory he resigned and settled in Cincinnati, making his residence on Front street, between Sycamore and Broadway. After the establishment of the government arsenal and barracks at Newport, he served the garrison as citizen-surgeon. Dr. Drake well remarks that "such a recall shows that while in the service he must have discharged his duty faithfully. He was not a graduate, and, without attainments in medicine or the associate sciences above the average of the time at which he was educated, his native good sense and high gentle- manly bearing secured to him a large proportion of the best practice of the town; but, like his contemporary Dr. Allison, he did not leave behind him any record of his experience."

The name of Dr. Adams is traditionally known as that of another of the army surgeons of the early day, who occasionally visited patients in Cincinnati. He was a Massachusetts man; but no other details concerning him are on local record.

It is probably not generally known that William Henry Harrison, who came here a young ensign with the army at Fort Washington, had taken a course in medicine in Virginia and the University of Pennsylvania, and was still engaged upon his studies when his military bent prompted him to enter the army-which he did as an of- ficer of the line rather than, as he might have done, of the medical staff. He never formally entered the ranks of the healing profession; but, as we have seen in the case of General Gano, his advice in cases of sickness was sometimes available, and he occasionally gave personal attention to them, when a physician was not at hand. As a public man he always took an active interest in the welfare and progress of the profession. He was a mem- ber of the Ohio senate at the session of 1818-19, when the bill for establishing the Commercial hospital and Lunatic asylum of Ohio came up. It met considerable opposition, and the medical knowledge of General Har- rison came effectively into play in his advocacy of the bill, as a means of training competent physicians, by the facilities it would afford to the medical schools. He was subsequently, by appointment of the legislature, chairman of the board of trustees of the Medical college of Ohio.

With the honored name of Harrison the list of medi- cal men connected with the army at Fort Washington is closed, so far as it is known at this day.

DOCTOR BURNET.

The first citizen-physician who settled in Cincinnati is believed to have been Dr. William Burnet, brother of Judge Burnet, and who came some years earlier than he. The doctor's arrival, indeed, was almost contemporane- ous with the settlement of Losantiville, since he came in 1789, with a sufficient equipment of books and medi- cines to begin practice at once. The "eleven families and twenty-four bachelors" then at the place, however, fur- nished him but a light business, and he spent much of his time with Judge Symmes at North Bend. In the spring of 1791 he went back to New Jersey, his native State, in- tending to return; and while there, being an ardent and ambitious Free Mason, he procured from the Grand lodge of that State a warrant for the institution of the Nova Casarea New Jersey, Harmony lodge, No. 2, Cincinnati, of which he was named the first Worshipful Master. The death of his father during this visit pre- vented his return, and he remained and died in New Jer- sey. His medical books, however, were left here, and some of them are probably still extant. He was of good classical education; but, like very many practitioners of his time, not a medical graduate. His father was surgeon- general, and he a surgeon's mate, in the army of the Revolution.

DOCTOR MORRELL.

Another Jerseyman, Dr. Calvin Morrell, was associat- ed with Dr. Burnet in the appointments made for the lodge of Free Masons here, and was present when it was organized about three years afterwards, on the twenty- seventh of October, 1794. It is not known just when he came or how long he staid; but he removed to the northward not far from the time designated, and spent the closing years of his life among the Shakers of Union Village, near Lebanon. Dr. Drake says: "From all I have been able to learn, he did not do much business here nor make any lasting impression on the little com- munity."

DOCTOR HOLE.

Before Dr. Morrell was Dr. John Hole, believed to have been an arrival of 1790 or 1791. He had not much culture or social position, and disappeared from the community before the close of 1794. He is mainly remembered for his practice of inoculation here and at Columbia in the winter of 1792-3, when the small-pox first made its appearance among the whites of the Miami country.

A MYSTERIOUS UNKNOWN.

About the same time some timorous doctor put in an appearance here for a little while, whose name Dr. Drake good-naturedly suppresses, "for the honor of the profes- sion." He seems to have been alarmed at the false ru- mor of Indians, started by some wag, and hurriedly removed to the Kentucky shore, from whose bourne he never returned.

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

DR. ROBERT M'CLURE

came from the Redstone Old Fort, or Brownsville, Penn- sylvania, about the year 1792, and took a residence on Sycamore street, between Third and Fourth. His training in the schools was limited, but he obtained a res- pectable practice for the time. His wife did much to coinmend him to the people by her geniality and kind- heartedness. In 1801 he went into the back country and remained some time, thence returning to Browns- ville, where he passed the rest of his life. Dr. Drake records that " our aged people relate that in those days it was customary with the officers of the army to drink bitters in the morning-those of Dr. Stoughton, of Lon- don, being preferred; but as importations were sometimes suspended, Dr. McClure made a tincture, and putting it up in small vials, labeled them 'Best Stoughton's Bitters, prepared in Cincinnati by Dr. Robert McClure.' The solecism seems to have been quite an occasion of merri- ment with the officers of the army. We see from this anecdote that a business which has since been so profit- able to certain persons in our city was begun in the days of its early infancy."

DOCTOR CRAMER.

For about six years after Dr. McClure came, no other physician seems to have located in Cincinnati. In 1798 Dr. John Cramer arrived, and made his home on the north side of Second or Columbia street, between Main and Walnut. He was a native of Pittsburgh, and picked up an elementary knowledge of medicine about the office of Dr. Bedford, a prominent physician of that place. Beginning thus humbly, with small education and no formal study of the medical authorities, he never- theless became a fairly successful physician and a citizen of considerable influence. He made steady advance- ment in reputation and business for thirty-four years, or until his death by cholera in 1832. He was then the last remaining here of all the physicians who practiced in Losantiville or Cincinnati before 1800.

DOCTOR GOFORTH.

The most renowned local physician of the early years · of this century amply deserves the more extended notice which his friend and pupil, Dr. Drake, gives him. We copy the whole of it, assured that the interest of the account will justify the occupation of the space :

Dr. William Goforth, of whom I know more than of all who have been mentioned, was born in the city or town of New York, A. D. 1766. Ilis preparatory education was what may be called tolerably good. His private preceptor was Dr. Joseph Young, of that city, a physician of some eminence, who, in the year 1800, published a small volume on the universal diffusion of electricity, and its agency in astronomy, physiol- ogy, and therapeutics, speculations which his pupil cherished through- out life. But young Goforth also enjoyed the more substantial teach- ings of that distinguished anatomist and surgeon, Dr. Charles Mc- Knight, then a public lecturer in New York. In their midst, however, A. D. 1787-8, he and the other students of the forming school were dispersed by a mob raised against the cultivators of anatomy. lle at once resolved to accompany his brother-in-law, the late General John S. Gano, into the west; and on the tenth of June, 1788, landed at Maysville, Kentucky, then called Limestone. Settling in Washington, four miles from the river, then in population the second town in Ken- tucky, he soon acquired great popularity, and had the chief business of the county for eleven years. Fond of change, he determined then to leave it; and in 1799 reached Columbia, where his father, Judge Go-

forth, one of the earliest and most distinguished pioneers of Ohio, re- sided. In the spring of the next year, 1800, he removed to Cincinnati and occupied the Peach Grove house, vacated by Dr. Allison's removal to the country. Bringing with him a high reputation, having an influ- ential family connection, and being the successor of Dr. Allison, he immediately acquired an extensive practice. But without these ad- vantages he would have gotten business, for on the whole he had the most winning manners of any physician I ever knew, and the most of them. Yet they were all his own, for in deportment he was quite an original. The painstaking and respectful courtesy with which he treated the poorest and humblest people of the village seemed to secure their gratitude, and the more especially as he dressed with precision, and never left his house in the morning till his hair was powdered by our itinerant barber, John Arthurs, and his gold-headed cane was grasped by his gloved hand. His kindness of heart was as much a part of his nature as hair-powder was of his costume; and what might not be given through benevolence could always be extracted by flattery, coupled with professions of friendship, the sincerity of which he never ques- tioned. In conversation he was precise yet fluent, and abounded in anecdotes, which he told in a way that others could not imitate. He took a warm interest in the politics of what was then the Northwestern Territory, being at all times the earnest advocate of popular rights. His devotion to Masonry, then a cherished institution of the village, was such that he always embellished his signature with some of its em- blems. His handwriting was peculiar, but so remarkably plain that his poor patients felt flattered to think he should have taken so much pains in writing for them. In this part of his character many of us might find a useful example.

To Dr. Goforth the people were indebted for the introduction of the cow-pox at an earlier time, I believe, than it was elsewhere naturalized in the west. Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, of Boston, had received infec- tion from England in the year 1800, and early in 1801 Dr. Goforth re- ceived it and commenced vaccination in this place. I was myself one of his first patients, and seeing that it has extended its protecting influ- ence through fifty years, I am often surprised to find medical gentlemen shying off from a case of small-pox.

At the time Dr. Goforth was educated in New York, the writings of Dr. Cullen had not superseded those of Boerhaave, into whose system he had been inducted. Yet the captivating volume of Brown had fallen into his hands, and he was so far a Brunonian as to cherish an exceed- ing hostility to the copious depleting practice of Dr. Rush, which came into vogue in the beginning of this century. In fact, he would neither buy nor read the writings of. that eminent man. Yet his practice was not that of Brown, though it included stimulants and excluded evacu- ants, in many cases in which others might have reversed those terms. In looking back to its results, I may say that, in all except the most acute forms of disease, his success was creditable to his sagacity and tact.

Fond of schemes and novelties, in the spring of the year 1803, at a great expense, he dug up, at Bigbone lick, in Kentucky, and brought away, the largest, most diversified and remarkable mass of huge fossil bones that was ever disinterred at one time or place in the United States ; the whole of which he put into the possession of that swindling Englishman, Thomas Ashe, alias D'Arville, who sold them in Europe and embezzled the proceeds.

Dr. Goforth was the special patron of all who, in our olden time, were engaged in searching for the precious metals in the surrounding wilderness. They brought their specimens of pyrites and blende to him, and generally contrived to quarter themselves on his family, while he got the requisite analyses made by some black or silversmith. In these re- searches Blennerism, or the turning of the forked stick held by its prongs, was regarded as a reliable means of discovering the precious metals, not less than water. There was also in the village a man by the name of Hall, who possessed a glass through which he could see many thousand feet into the earth a feat which I think has not been surpassed by any of those whom our modern Cincinnati has feted for their clairvoyance.

The clarification of ginseng and its shipment to China was at the be- ginning of this century a popular scheme, in which the doctor eagerly · participated, but realized by it much less than those who have since ex- tracted from that root an infallible cure for tubercular consumption.

This failure, however, did not cast him down ; for about the time it occurred the genuine East India Columbo root was supposed to be dis- covered in our surrounding woods, and he immediately lent a hand to the preparation of that article for market. It turned out, however, to be the Frasera verticillata, long known to the botanist and essentially distinct from the oriental bitter.

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History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 79

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co. Number of Pages: 666

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co.
Number of Pages: 666