History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio; their past and present, Part 34

Author: Nelson, S.B., Cincinnati
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Cincinnati : S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1592

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The crematory has not yet been self-supporting, but has been kept up by volun- tary assessments on the stock, and voluntary contributions by the members and friends of the cause. There are about four hundred members, composed of all nationalities and religious beliefs. The officers for 1893 were: President, G. A. . Merryweather; secretary, A. T. Roever; treasurer, Fred. A. Meiser; attorney, C. M. Lotze. Directors: Herman Husemann, Henry Lowenstein, P. H. Hartmann, Dr. E. W. Walker, Henry Littinger, Adolph Sander, and L. A. Strobel.

Any person can visit the place. The crematory is always open and in charge of the superintendent, who will admit visitors and explain everything to them. It was built for the purpose of exhibiting the process of cremation to the public free of charge, in order to reform the method of disposing of the dead for the benefit of the living. No member of the Society is required to bind himself to have his body cremated. This process of disposing of the dead, it is believed, will become almost universal, because it is demanded by the laws of sanitation as population increases. Thoughtfully considered, there is nothing repugnant or barbarous in this method of disposing of the human tabernacle. When looked at through the mica window in the retort, "a beautiful rosy light envelopes the body, and it seems to be trans- figured in an aurora of benignant splendor. The pallid cheek of death is made to blush, and grief gathers color, and hope stands dressed with ruby light to prophesy the radiant life beyond. The relic ash, pure as powdered pearl, may be more senti- mentally preserved in the columbarium, or crypt of churches, than in the cold, dark grave or tomb. In this ash, that has survived the heated retort, may linger that human seed, unabsorbed by the elements, undevoured by the hunger of plants and animals from which the glorified may spring when the reveille of the Resurrection is sounded by the trumpet of the Archangel of Immortality."

CHAPTER XII.

MEDICAL.

[BY P. S. CONNER, M. D.]

PIONEER PHYSICIANS -- THE FIRST FACULTY OF CINCINNATI-DANIEL DRAKE AND OTHERS -- LATER ARRIVALS-SANITARY ORDINANCES-BOARDS OF HEALTH-MEDICAL COLLEGES- DENTAL SCHOOLS-HOSPITALS-ASYLUMS-CINCINNATI TRAINING SCHOOL FOR NURSES- MEDICAL SOCIETIES-MEDICAL JOURNALS-MEDICAL LIBRARIES-BRIEF SKETCHES OF SOME EMINENT PHYSICIANS.

A MONG the early settlers of the "Miami Purchase " was Dr. William Burnet, of New Jersey; and with his arrival, and that of Dr. John Hole and of Dr. Richard Allison, of the Army, who accompanied the first detachment of troops sent to garrison Fort Washington, begins the medical history of Cincinnati and Hamil- ton county. Dr. Burnet's stay in the West was a brief one (less than two years), and for ten years the settlements on the Ohio and the lower Miamis were largely compelled to look for medical aid to the army surgeons. These were here in un- usual numbers, since for "seven years the young village became the headquarters for all the armies which fought against the Indians under Harmar in 1790, St. Clair in 1791, and Wayne in 1794." Among them were Allison, Carmichael, Phillips, Sellman, Elliot and Strong, and Gen. Harrison, whose early professional training then and later "enabled him frequently to afford relief to those who could not at the moment command the services of a physician." Sellman and Allison resigning from the service, the former in 1797, the latter in 1798, became permanent residents of this county.

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Richard Allison, born near Goshen, N. Y., in 1757, had been a medical officer during the Revolution. On the re-organization of the army in 1789, he was appointed surgeon of the regiment of infantry (there was but one), and as such became the ranking medical officer of the army up to the time of his resignation. Living for a few years on his farm "on the east fork of the Little Miami," he returned to the city in 1805, and continued in practice until his death, March 22, 1816. Drake called him the "Father of our local profession," and wrote of him that, " though not profound in science, he was sagacious, unassuming, amiable and kind."

John Sellman, a native of Annapolis, Md., was in active and reputable practice for more than ten years longer, dying in 1827 at the age of sixty-three years. The doctors unconnected with the army, and settling here prior to 1800, were Hole, Mor- rel, McClure, Cranmer and Goforth.

John Hole who was here early enough to take part in the second assignment of town lots, in May, 1789, could not have produced much impression upon the people during the five years that he lived in Cincinnati, notwithstanding the fact that he practiced inoculation at the time of the first outbreak of smallpox in the winter of 1792-93, since Drake was unable to learn where he was born, or where and when he died. It is quite likely that he moved to Franklin county, as the name appears on the list of those from that county selected to serve as members of the Medical So- ciety organized by Act of Legislature February 8, 1812.

Calvin Morrel, who organized the first Masonic Lodge in Ohio, soon left the county, and spent the later years of his life with the Shakers at Union Village.

John Cranmer coming here in 1798, " attained to a position of considerable per- sonal and some professional respectability; supporting his family by his practice, and continuing to advance in reputation up to the time of his death, which occurred from cholera in 1832." [Drake. ]

William Goforth, with Sellman and Cranmer, " constituted the whole Faculty of Cincinnati in the first year of this century." . A native of New York City, at the age of twenty-two he came to Maysville, Ky., and, after eleven years of successful prac- tice there, in 1799 removed to Columbia, where his father, Judge Goforth, was liv- ing. The next year found him in Cincinnati, and for eight years he was a most popular and peculiar physician, "having," as Drake says, "the most winning man- ners of any physician I ever knew, and the most of them." First in the West, he in 1801 secured through Dr. Waterhouse, of Boston, someof the " Jennerian lymph," and began vaccinating the people of the town and neighborhood. "Fond of schemes and novelties, in the spring of the year 1803, at a great expense, he dug up at Big Bone Lick, in Kentucky, and brought away the largest, most diversified and re- markable mass of huge fossil bones that was ever disinterred at one time or place in the United States; the whole he put into the possession of that swindling English- man, Thomas Ashe, alias Arville, who sold them in Europe and embezzled the pro- ceeds." [Drake.] He was much occupied with the business of collecting ginseng and shipping it to China, and the preparation of what he thought to be the columbo root. All the glittering specks that were found in the country about, and believed to be gold, were brought to him for examination, the finders generally contriving to " quarter themselves on his family," at the Peach Grove House that Dr. Allison had built just east of Fort Washington, and near the present corner of Fourth and Lawrence streets. Too restless to long remain in any one place, he had serious thoughts of moving to the upper Mad River country, but finally decided to go to Louisiana, that had recently become United States territory; and in 1807 he took up his residence there. Nine years later, after having been prominently connected with the political affairs of the new State, he returned to Cincinnati, and again be- gan the practice of his profession. He had continued it, however, but a few months when in the spring of 1817 death brought to a close his checkered career. Medi-

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cally, the most important fact in his history was that he was the preceptor of Dan- iel Drake, the first medical student in the West, the first of such students to receive the degree of Doctor of Medicine, the earliest of our medical writers and teachers, and professionally and socially the most influential physician who has ever lived in our city, county, State or section.

Daniel Drake, coming to Cincinnati December 18, 1800, a boy fifteen years old, for fifty-two years was a leader in all professional, educational, literary and scien- tific movements in Cincinnati and the West. After three years of association with Dr. Goforth as " medical student or apothecary's boy and lad of all work," he was taken into partnership, an arrangement yielding little comfort, and less money. A year later he received from his preceptor "Surgeon General of the first division of Ohio militia " an " autograph diploma setting forth his ample attainments in all the branches of the profession, the first medical diploma ever granted in the interior valley of North America." The following winter was spent in attendance upon lec- tures at the University of Pennsylvania, he returning to Cincinnati in April, 1806. After practicing for a time at his old home at Mayslick, Ky., on April 10, 1807, he established himself permanently in our city, in succession to Dr. Goforth, who had left for Louisiana. He busied himself for a number of years not only in professional work, but in careful study of the botany and geology of the country, and of its archeological remains, in observing and recording the direction of the winds and the state of the weather, and in preparing his "Notices of Cincinnati," published in 1810, and his " Picture of Cincinnati and the Miami Country," issued in 1815. In 1814 he reports himself as " much employed in the business of the Lancaster Semi- nary (the original foundation of the Cincinnati College), and in that of the Library Society," of which he was president.

In the winter of 1815-16 he was again a student in Philadelphia, graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in the spring of 1816, receiving "the first medical degree ever conferred on a citizen of Cincinnati." The following year he became a member of the first Faculty of the Medical Department of Transylvania University at Lexington, Ky., the pioneer medical school of the West. Having, as he always had, a strong attachment to Cincinnati, he felt that this city, not Lex- ington, should be the medical center, and after much delay, and in spite of great opposition, he secured in 1819 the passage of an Act of the State Legislature estab- lishing the Medical College of Ohio, having previously, in the autumn of 1818 and the following winter, carried on, in association with Dr. Coleman Rogers, a pre- paratory school of medical instruction. In 1822 his connection with the Medical College of Ohio was abruptly terminated, to be temporarily renewed in 1831, in 1849 and in 1852. In 1824 he was a second time appointed professor in Transyl- vania. Two years later he was back again in Cincinnati, where the following year he established an eye infirmary, and assumed editorial charge of the Western Medi- cal and Physical Journal. During the winter of 1830-31, he was in the Faculty of the Jefferson Medical College, in Philadelphia, and in 1835 organized the medical department of the Cincinnati College, in which he held the chair of Theory and Practice, a school which four years later suspended for want of proper endowment. In 1840 he went to the University of Louisville, remaining there until 1849, return- ing a year later after a winter's connection with the Medical College of Ohio. Two years after, he was once more elected to a professorship in the Medical College of Ohio, but his death (on November 5, 1852) occurred before he was able to enter upon its duties. "He had resigned more professorships, and been oftener expelled, than any other medical teacher in the United States. His appointments amounted to not less than ten, and he was connected with five schools, two of which were of his own projecting."

His professional writing began as early as 1809, and his great work, which is his real monument, a "Treatise on the principal diseases of the interior Valley of

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North America," was published in part two years before and in part two years after his death. Its preparation occupied much of his time for thirty years, and in col- lecting materials for it he traveled from the lakes to the Gulf, from the Alleghanies to the Rockies. His literary, historical and scientific publications were numerous and of great value. To him was largely due the credit of the establishment of the earliest Collegiate institution in Hamilton county, and of the first Museum in this section of the country. As far back as 1815 he "pointed out distinctly all the canals which have since been made in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, connecting the waters of the lakes and the Ohio," and in 1835 " became specially interested in the construction of a great railway which should connect the Ohio Valley at Cincinnati with the Atlantic at Charleston." From an early date he was prominently con- nected with the politics of the West, and was the friend of many of the leading statesmen of the day. As physician, writer, teacher and citizen, he was the most influential medical man who has ever lived here. His life was in many respects a stormy one; his antagonisms and antagonists were many. But with it all, his genius, his industry, his high moral principle and his devotion to duty earned him, what he will always have, the respect, esteem and kind remembrance of those familiar with our medical history during the first half of the century.

Another of Dr. Goforth's students, who was long in practice in the county, was Dr. Edward Young Kemper. Born in Fauquier county, Va., January 11, 1783, he came to Cincinnati with his father, Rev. James Kemper, in 1790. He probably never graduated in medicine, though it is believed that he attended one course of lectures at the University of Pennsylvania. It is likely that he practiced on a certificate given him by Dr. Goforth similar to the one given to Dr. Drake, or perhaps a license re- ceived from the District Medical Society. As a medical officer of volunteers he was at Hull's surrender at Detroit. For many years he was in practice at Montgomery, in this county, but the latter part of his life was spent at the old Kemper home- stead on Walnut Hills, where he died June 10, 1863, aged eighty; probably the last survivor of the little band of medical students gathered in Cincinnati prior to the establishment of the Medical College of Ohio.

Beginning with the opening of the School of Preparatory Instruction in 1818, the after medical history of Cincinnati and Hamilton county is mainly that of its colleges, its hospitals, its societies and its journals; and its physicians of eminence have been, with but few exceptions, those connected therewith.

The number of practitioners increased but slowly for many years; in 1821 there were but twenty-one in the city; in 1827, as appears by the records of the Common Pleas Court, where they were registered for taxation, but twenty-six in the county; in 1831 the Medical Society had a membership roll of forty-seven. To-day the number can not be less than six hundred and fifty, nearly or quite six hundred of them being in the city and the adjacent villages.

Very few of the practitioners, prior to 1840, were of foreign birth and education. Dr. John Moorhead was born in Ireland and was a graduate of Edinburgh, as was his brother Robert, who after some years of service in the British army settled here in 1830, and died February 9, 1845. A third brother, Thomas, was for a time a practicing physician here, but later became an attorney at law. The Doctors Bon- ner, Hugh and Stephen, were also natives of Ireland, but they came to America as boys, and received their medical degrees at Transylvania, the one in 1825, the other in 1834. The earliest physician here of German birth and education, was Dr. Mund- henk, who came in 1815 and left a few years later, removing, probably, to Mont- gomery county; little is known about him. Following him was Dr. F. J. C. Oberdorf, who settled here in 1819, at the age of forty-three. Born near Heidel- berg, he commenced his medical studies at Montpellier but soon entered the medical service of the French army, serving under Napoleon in Italy, Egypt, Germany and Russia, leaving the army in 1815. After thirty seven years residence in Cincinnati,

Engraved by J R.Rice & Sons. Philada.

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he removed to Kentucky, where he died November 21, 1860, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. So far as can be learned, he was, after Dr. Mundhenk had left, the only German physician in the city or county until 1827, when Dr. Frederick Bunte, who had been educated at Marburg and Würzburg, came to Cincinnati. Not succeeding well in practice, he in a few years turned his attention to teaching. In 1860 he went to Brookville, Ind., where he died.

During the ten years after 1830 there were settled in the city Drs. Schneider, Tellkampf, Huber, Paul, Topp, Wilhelmi, Wocher, Emmert and Homburg. Of these Dr. Schneider after an unusually long professional life retired from practice only a few years ago, and is still living in the city. Dr. Theodore A. Tellkampf removed to New York City in 1845, returned to Germany in 1881, and died at Hann- over in 1883. He was a man of much learning and influence, and an extensive writer on medical and scientific subjects, especially upon the effect upon health of prison and asylum life. Drs. Wilhelmi and Homburg were residents here but a few years.

Our section has never been a very unhealthy one, and now has an annual mor- tality rate of about twenty per thousand; but few cases of yellow fever have ever occurred here; cholera prevailed, epidemically, in 1832, 1849, 1850, 1866 and 1873.

As far back as 1802 sanitary regulations began to be established, an ordinance passed by the select council on July 17 of that year requiring the speedy removal from the streets, lanes, alleys and commons of the town, of all dead animals, and forbidding any one exercising the trade of butcher within certain portions of the town, except in a slaughter-house already established. On December 10, 1804, inocu- lation for smallpox was forbidden under penalty of not less than $20 nor more than $100, to such penalty being liable not only the inoculator but the one inoculated, if knowingly and willfully receiving it; and a fine of from $2 to $10 was imposed on any one who having been in a room or house where there was smallpox should within twenty-four hours thereafter go into any house where there were persons who had not had the disease; the owner or occupant of an infected house being required to display before it a red flag. This ordinance was repealed two weeks later because of a want of vaccine virus. An ordinance of date May 10, 1813, re- quired physicians to prepare, in every case of death, a certificate showing the name, age, sex, and cause of death, and made it the duty of the master or mistress of the house to file such certificate within five days with the president or recorder of the Council to be permanently retained by the clerk for general inspection.

An ordinance of date of March 26, 1816, made it the duty of the mayor to pre- pare a " pesthouse," and to cause the removal thereto of cases of smallpox. The office of health officer was created by ordinance of May 10, 1821, such officer being required to make inspection of the streets, lanes and alleys, at least once a week from April 1 to October 1, and as often as might be expedient during the rest of the year, and to cause the removal of everything prejudicial to health. On November 26, 1823, the city Council forbade the excavating, as in brick making, of any holes or ponds which might become reservoirs of stagnant water, and directed the health officer to see to it that any such existing holes be filled up by the owner, or, if he did not do it, by the city, the expense becoming a lien on the property.

A smallpox scare, in 1826, caused the establishment of a Board of Health by ordinances passed April 26 and 29; such board being composed of five members, the mayor being one, and ex-officio president of the board. This board was required to weekly report in the newspapers the number of cases of smallpox in the city. By June, 1827, the membership of the board had been increased to seven, and its duties and powers much enlarged; the first being to prevent the introduction into the city of smallpox, yellow fever and other contagious, malignant or infectious diseases, and to recommend to council such measures as might be deemed necessary to promote and secure the health of the city. In 1831 was passed the first ordinance regu- lating the care of dogs. Since the organization of the original Board of Health,

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many similar ones have been in turn created and abolished, according to the apparent necessities of the time and the demands of party. For twenty-seven years last past the " Department of Health " has had a continuous existence; and now has charge of the collection of vital statistics, the abatement of nuisances, the inspection of milk, dairies, meats and live-stock, the regulation of public markets, the medical care of the outdoor poor, and the official oversight of contagious and infectious diseases. Its working force is made up of a health officer (Dr. J. W. Prendergast), one reg- istrar, six clerks, thirty physicians, thirty druggists, one chemist, one legal clerk, three superintendents, twelve inspectors, seventeen sanitary policemen, eight market masters and four market watchmen. The total expenditure for the year 1892 was seventy two thousand seven hundred and thirty-three dollars and forty cents.

MEDICAL COLLEGES.

Cincinnati for three-quarters of a century has been a center of medical instruc- tion. As early as 1818, Dr. Drake, who had been a lecturer at Transylvania during the previous winter, had in association with Dr. Coleman Rogers conducted a reci- tation and lecture course. In the following year a charter was obtained for the Med- ical College of Ohio. At the present time there are in the city seven institutions conferring the degree of M. D., two of which are for the instruction of women.

The Medical College of Ohio was incorporated by Act of the Legislature January 19, 1819, and organized a year later. In the circular (written by Dr. Drake) an- nouncing a prospective session of the second medical school established west of the Alleghanies -- Transylvania had been started at Lexington, Ky., three years earlier -it is stated that "the considerations which originally suggested the establishment of a medical college, and which doubtless induced the General Assembly to give its sanction were, first, the obvious and increasing necessity for such an institution in the western country; and, secondly, the peculiar fitness and advantages of this city for the successful execution of the project. These are its central situation, its northern latitude, its easy water communications with most parts of the western country, and, above all, the comparatively numerous population. This already ex- ceeds ten thousand, more than double the number of any other inland town in the new States; and, from the facility of emigrating to it by water, the proportion of indigent emigrants is unusually great. The professors placed on this ample theatre will, therefore, have numerous opportunities of treating a great variety of diseases, and thus be able to impart those principles and rules of practice which are framed from daily observations on the peculiar maladies which the student, after the ter- mination of his collegiate course, will have to encounter." The Faculty at the open- ing`of the first session was composed of Daniel Drake, M. D., professor of the Insti- tutes and Practice of Medicine, including Obstetrics, and the Diseases, of Women and Children; Jesse Smith, M. D., professor of Anatomy and Surgery; Elijah Slack, A. M., professor of Chemistry.

Alone of the Medical Colleges of the country, its course was of five-months dur- ation, and, to stimulate students to secure a higher preliminary education, a prize inedal was offered for the best inaugural thesis written in Latin.

The class numbered twenty-five, and the graduates in the spring of 1821, seven. The next year the class was slightly larger, thirty students being in attendance, and the school seemed to be on a fair road to success. But with the close of this second session trouble arose in the Faculty, and Dr. Drake was summarily ejected by the abolition of his chair. For fifteen years thereafter the history of the college was one of internal dissensions and outside opposition. The Faculty underwent frequent changes, some of its members were of very ordinary ability, though some, as God- man and Eberle, were of high professional standing; the classes were generally small; and the college in no proper degree commanded the respect and had the con- fidence and support of the profession of the State and neighborhood. Its charter

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History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio; their past and present, Part 34

Author: Nelson, S.B., Cincinnati Publication date: 1894 Publisher: Cincinnati : S. B. Nelson Number of Pages: 1592

Author: Nelson, S.B., Cincinnati
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Cincinnati : S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1592