History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio; their past and present, Part 36

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

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

Christ's Hospital. - Through the liberality of the late James Gamble and his family, there was established in September, 1889, a hospital under the management of the Deaconesses Home Association to be known as Christ's Hospital. Located for several years in a row of private houses on York street, it was removed February 21, 1893, to the Female Institute Building on Mt. Auburn, which had been pur- chased, altered and properly equipped for hospital use by the Messrs. Gamble. Up to the time of writing 744 patients have been under treatment, the present capacity of the house being eighty beds. The medical staff numbers twenty-nine: one direc- tor, nine consultants, nineteen active physicians and surgeons.

ASYLUMS.

Lunatic Asylum .- The original Act of the Legislature January 22, 1821, estab- lishing the Commercial Hospital and Lunatic Asylum of Ohio was the first official recognition in the West of the duty of the State to care for its lunatics. For thirty years after the opening of the hospital, the insane of Hamilton county, if cared for at all, were chiefly so in the "crazy wards" in the rear of the hospital building proper on Twelfth street. The provision was very inadequate, and little or nothing could be done for other than the safe keeping of the patients. The over-crowding became so great and the conditions so bad that professional and popular clamor com- pelled the county commissioners in 1854 (June 10) to remove the insane from the wards of the Commercial Hospital, and place them by themselves in a building on Lick run, now, and for many years past, known as the " Woolen Mill." This place proving for many reasons unfit, a tract of land was purchased near Carthage, build- ings were erected, and in March, 1860, "Longview Asylum " was occupied. Its original cost was over a half million dollars, and its entire cost to November 1, 1892, has been but a trifle less than one million two hundred thousand dollars, "all of which has been paid by the county of Hamilton." "The frontage of the building," says Dr. Harmon in his last report, " measures 1,0103 lineal feet, while the north and south wings have a depth of 283 feet, and 3747, feet, respectively. It was originally built to accommodate 400 patients. With the additions now completed, 955 patients can be comfortably cared for." In all, 6, 706 patients have been admitted, of whom 2,616 have been discharged recovered, and 1,562 have died. The asylum is under the charge of a board of directors, five in number, appointed by the Governor of the State. While at Lick run it was under the charge of Drs. J. J. Quinn, William Mount and O. M. Langdon in succession, and since the removal has had five super- intendents: Dr. O. M. Langdon, 1860-1870; Dr. J. T. Webb, 1871-75; Dr. W. H. Bunker, 1874-77; Dr. C. A. Miller, 1878-90; Dr. F. W. Harmon, 1891 to date. The asylum is well administered, though the medical staff is altogether too small for the number of patients under treatment, the superintendent having only two medical assistants; and because of such number of patients comparatively little can be done except to provide for their care and protection.

Private Asylums. - Of these there have been at least two-the Cincinnati Retreat for the Insane and the Cincinnati Sanitarium. The former, located beyond College Hill at a distance of about seven miles from the city, was established in 1852 by Dr. Edward Mead, a native of England, who graduated at the Medical College of Ohio in 1841. For ten years afterward he had charge of a private asylum at Chicago, coming to our city in 1852 and continuing in residence here until 1869. At one time he was a lecturer in the Cincinnati College of Medicine and Surgery, and dur- ing the year 1853 edited the American Psychological Journal. The later years of his life were spent in Boston, his death June 28, 1893, being caused by shipwreck in the Azores while on a vacation trip.

The Cincinnati Sanitarium was opened in 1873 under the superintendency of Dr. E. C. Beckwith, followed later by Dr. Peck. previously at the Columbus (Ohio) asylum, and yet later by Dr. W. S. Chipley, of Lexington, Ky., who died February

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10, 1880, and was succeeded by Dr. Orpheus Everts, still in charge of the insti- tution. The original building at College Hill, previously occupied as a female col- lege, has been at various times enlarged, and at present a new building is in process of erection to take the place of the one burned on April 6 last. The capacity of the Sanitarium has of late years been about seventy, and its patients have been not only lunatics, but also inebriates, and those having the morphia, chloral or cocaine habit. Up to the date of the last annual report, November 30, 1892, 2,296 patients have been under treatment, 223 during the year ending at the time stated.

CINCINNATI TRAINING SCHOOL FOR NURSES.

In the spring of 1889 a number of ladies in the city, recognizing the value of trained nursing, organized a society, under the direction of which a training school was established, with Miss Annie Murray as superintendent. On January 1, 1889, the nursing in a ward in the Cincinnati Hospital was entrusted to their care, the working force being the superintendent, a head nurse and five pupil nurses. In the following May four other wards were opened to the school ; in December four others, and in October, 1890, all the wards of the hospital, with two exceptions. Though the nursing done was excellent and to the entire satisfaction of the medical staff. circumstances rendered it advisable for the school to retire from the hospital in January, 1893. The National military homes at Dayton, Ohio, and Marion, Ind., have been supplied with nurses by the Society, the former since April, 1891, the latter since April, 1892. Up to the present time sixty-one pupils have been gradu- ated, and are now employed in private or public nursing. Since August, 1891, the Society has maintained a "Directory for nurses," which has been found of great. value.

MEDICAL SOCIETIES.

By legislative enactment of date of February 8, 1812, seven District Medical Societies were organized in the State, the first district embracing the counties of Hamilton, Butler, Clermont, Warren and Clinton. This society. which was a Board of Medical Examiners for the counties named, first met in June, 1813. But that it was something more than an examining board is shown by the fact that the act of establishment directed that "it shall be the duty of the several members of the Medical Society aforesaid, according to their abilities, to communicate useful infor- mation to each other in their respective district meetings ; and said district meet- ings shall from time to time transmit to the convention aforesaid such curious cases and observations as may come to their knowledge ; and it shall be the duty of the said convention to cause to be published such extraordinary cases and such observa- tions on the state of the air and on epidemical and other diseases as they may think proper for the benefit of the society and of citizens in general."

Early in 1819 the Cincinnati Medical Society was organized, Elijah Slack being its president. It did not outlive the year of its formation, and on January 3, 1820, was succeeded by the Cincinnati Medical Society. At the time of its organiza- tion it adopted an elaborate "Code of Medical Police and Rules and Regulations," which had originally been prepared by Dr. Jesse Smith, professor of Anatomy and Surgery in the Medical College of Ohio, together with a "fee bill." The list of names appended to this code is eighteen in number.

In 1824 the First District Medical Society was revived, and maintained a more or less active existence for ten years when, in common with all the other District Soci- eties of the State, it ceased to exist. Again, under the name of the Cincinnati Medical Society, a society was organized in 1831, which survived until 1858, its members at that time or soon after joining the recently organized Academy of Medicine. During the following year, 1832, the Ohio Medical Lyceum was founded, meeting once a week to listen to a lecture delivered by some one of its.

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members. Its life was a short one. In 1837 the Hamilton County Medical Associ- ation was organized, and in 1850 the Hamilton County Branch of the Ohio State Medical Society, neither of which long continued in active existence.

The Miami Medical Society, in the membership of which are to be found many physicians of Hamilton, Clermont and Warren counties living in or near the valley of the Little Miami river, dates from March 26, 1853.

On March 5, 1857, the Academy of Medicine was organized, largely through the efforts of Dr. R. R. McIlvaine, and it soon absorbed all the other societies of the city. In 1874, after a long, acrimonious, ethical controversy, a number of its members seceded and organized The Cincinnati Medical Society (the third of that name), which continued in active operation until the present year, when it was reunited with the Academy of Medicine, now the only regular general Medical Society here, with the exception of the Walnut Hills Society. The present mem- bership is 301, and its meetings are held weekly.

The Cincinnati Obstetrical Society has been in existence seventeen years (since December 23, 1876), holding monthly meetings and having a membership roll of twenty-three, with a maximum limit of thirty.

The Walnut Hills Medical Society was organized in 1886, and, as its name indi- cates, is a local organization of those regular physicians residing in the northeastern portion of the city. It now has a membership of thirty-five, and its meetings are held semi-monthly.

MEDICAL JOURNALS.

Of the journals that have been published in this city the first (the first as well in the West) was the Western Quarterly Reporter, which appeared in March, 1822, under the editorship of Dr. John D. Godman. But six numbers appeared. "Three years later, in the spring of 1826," writes Dr. Drake, "Dr. Guy W. Wright and Dr. James M. Mason, western graduates, commenced a semi-monthly under the title of the Ohio Medical Repository. At the end of the first volume I became connected with it in place of Dr. Mason. The title was changed to Western Medical and Physical Journal, and it was published monthly. At the end of the first volume it came into my exclusive proprietary and editorial charge, and was continued under the title of the Western Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences, with the motto, at that time not inappropriate, of 'E sylvis nuncius.' My editorial associate was Dr. James C. Finley ; then next was Dr. William Wood ; then Drs. Gross and Harrison. After the dissolution of the Medi- cal Department of the Cincinnati College in 1839 it was transferred to Louisville.

"In the autumn of 1832 the Faculty of the Medical College of Ohio projected a semi-monthly journal under the title of the Western Medical Gazette. It was edited by Profs. John Eberle, Thomas D. Mitchell and Alban G. Smith. At the end of nine months it was suspended. Five months afterward Silas Reed revived it as a monthly, and Dr. Samuel D. Gross, then demonstrator of Anatomy in that school, was added to the editorial corps. It was continued to the completion of the second volume from the beginning; then in April, 1835, the editors withdrew, and Dr. Reed united it with the Western Journal, the history of which has just been given. In the following autumn, September, 1835, Dr. James M. Mason, already men- tioned, recommenced a new publication, to which he gave the name Ohio Medical Repository, the same with that of which he was one of the editors and publishers in 1826. Like that, also, it was issued semi-monthly. It did not, I believe, continue through its first year."

In 1842 Dr. L. M. Lawson began the publication of the Western Lancet, a jour- nal which under various names has regularly appeared until the present time. In January, 1858, it absorbed the Cincinnati Medical Observer, for twenty years after- ward being known as the Lancet and Observer ; then it was united with the Clinic

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in July, 1878, and its title was the Lancet and Clinic, later the Lancet-Clinic, its present name.

The Clinic, the issue of which began in August, 1871, was the first weekly medi- cal journal in the West, and up to the time of its union with the Lancet and Observer was under the control of the Faculty of the Medical College of Ohio.

Since 1847 there has been regular publication of the Dental Register (Dental Register of the West prior to 1866), and since 1843 of the Eclectic Medical Journal, which for seven years before had been published at Worthington, Ohio. The Cin- cinnati Medical Journal, originally known as the Cincinnati Medical and Dental Journal, has been in existence since 1885, and the Ohio Medical Journal (for two years known as the Journal of the Medical College of Ohio) since 1890.

A number of journals, general and special, have from time to time appeared in our city, and after awhile suspended publication. Among these may be named the Obstetric Gazette, the Cincinnati Journal of Health, the American Psychological Journal, the Cincinnati Journal of Medicine, the American Medical Journal, the Cincinnati Medical Recorder, the Cincinnati Medical News, the Cincinnati Medical Repertory, the Journal of Rational Medicine, the Physio Medical Recorder, the Cincinnati Medical Gazette and Recorder, and the Cincinnati Medical Advance. The last named, a Homeopathic journal, first appeared in 1873; in 1880 its title was changed to The Medical Advance, and in 1888 its publication was suspended.

MEDICAL LIBRARIES.

Though there have been small libraries, chiefly of current journals, in connection with several of the Medical Societies in existence at various times, beginning with the Cincinnati Medical Society of 1819, there have been but three collections of books and journals of any considerable size open to the profession at large-that of the Medical College of Ohio, that of the Drs. Mussey, and that of the Cincin- nati Hospital. The first composed of about two thousand volumes was for nearly fifty years locked np in the library room of the college, and could not be readily consulted, though it contained many rare and valuable books. Since 1875 it has been on deposit at the Public Library. The second, also a part of the medical col- lection of the Public Library, through the generosity of the late Dr. William H. Mussey, contains at the present time 6,008 volumes, and 3,769 pamphlets. The third, which has year by year been supported by the fees paid in by students for clinical instruction, is at the Cincinnati Hospital in a commodious room opened on May 11, 1892. Its collection now numbers 8,087 volumes, and about 1,500 pamphlets, any of which may be consulted by any physician during eight hours of each week day. This library was created by Act of the State Legislature March 1, 1870, and owes its establishment to the long-continued efforts of the late Dr. John H. Tate.

BRIEF SKETCHES OF SOME EMINENT PHYSICIANS.

Of the many eminent physicians whose home has been in our county, special notice can be taken of but a very few in addition to those already mentioned; and selection has been made of representative men in the several departments of med- ical practice: Mussey and Blackman in surgery, Graham and Woodward in medi- cine, Wright and Mendenhall in obstetrics, and Williams in ophthalmology.

R. D. Mussey .- Born in Pelham, N. H., June 23, 1780, and a graduate of Dart- mouth College in 1803, Dr. Mussey began his medical studies under the preceptor- ship of Dr. Nathan Smith, graduated as Bachelor of Medicine at Dartmouth in 1805, and as Doctor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1809. After a few years of private practice in Massachusetts, he was, in 1814, appointed a professor in the Dartmouth Medical School, and for twenty-four years resided at Hanover, N. H.,

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holding at one time or another every chair in the medical school. For four years he was also a professor of anatomy and surgery at Bowdoin, Maine, and for two years lectured on surgery at Fairfield, N. Y. In 1838 he accepted the chair of Surgery in the Medical College of Ohio, and continued to hold it until 1852, at which time he passed over to the newly organized Miami Medical College. In 1859 he retired from active work, and spent the remainder of his life with his daughters in Boston, in which city he died June 21, 1866, aged eighty-six years. He was elected presi- dent of the American Medical Association in 1850, and was made an LL.D. by Dartmouth in 1854. As practitioner, teacher and citizen Dr. Massey exercised a strong influence upon the communities in which he lived, and that always for good. As a surgeon he was well and very favorably known on both sides of the Atlantic, and in the execution of several operations of magnitude he was the pioneer.

George C. Blackman .- Born in Newtown, Conn., April 21, 1819, and graduating in medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, in 1840, Dr. Blackman came into the Medical College of Ohio as professor of Surgery-in 1855, and continued in that position until his death July 19, 1871. The years after gradua- tion, and prior to coming to Cincinnati, had been spent in private practice in New York City and in Newburgh, N. Y., in study in London and Paris, and as surgeon of an Atlantic liner, in which latter capacity he crossed the ocean thirty-six times. During these fifteen years, as indeed throughout his whole life, he was an inde- fatigable student, and entered upon his professorial career with an extraordinary acquaintance with the literature of his profession, which passing years only served to increase. As an operator he was bold and brilliant, second to none in the land. As early as 1842 he began writing on medical subjects, and his published reviews, reports and lectures were very many. He edited Mott's Velpeau's "Operative Surgery," translated " Vidal on Venereal," and together with his friend, Dr. Trip- ler of the army, brought out a hand-book of military surgery. A long-time student in England and France, and counting among his personal friends the ablest surgeons of those countries, he "vindicated the honor of American surgery on all occasions, and wrested from foreign pretenders claims to priority which justly belonged to American surgeons." As early as 1847 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Med- ico-Chirurgical Society of London.

James Graham .- As a teacher of medicine (in contradistinction to surgery), especially at the bedside, the superior of James Graham has never been in our city. A native of Ohio, and a graduate of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Graham was for thirty years in practice here, dying October 6, 1879, aged sixty-one. Possessed in a high degree of a clear analytical mind, almost intuitive in his perception of the nature of a disease coming under observation, imparting information in language at once plain and forcible, for more than a quar- ter of a century he was respected and followed by medical students, and looked to for counsel by his fellow practitioners. Whatever peculiarities there may have been of life and manner, whatever may have been lacking of scholarship and study, his twenty years of active work in the Medical College of Ohio were recognized by all as productive of great good to the profession and the community at large, and for a long time he was a citizen of wide influence.

Charles Woodward .- During nearly fifty years Dr. Woodward was one of the leading family physicians here, and his geniality, his faithfulness and his skill endeared him to a large number of our citizens. Born in Philadelphia, September 9, 1802, a graduate of Princeton in 1822, he came to Cincinnati very soon after receiving his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1825. Well read in his profession and fond of its practice he from the start devoted himself to family work, neither seeking nor accepting any college position, nor busying himself in writing. For many years bis practice was large and lucrative, and his popularity within and without the profession certainly as great as that of any of his associates.

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The last years of his life were spent in ease and comfort; and, possessed of troops of friends, he quietly passed away on August 16, 1874, leaving behind him the remembrance of a long life of usefulness.

Dr. M. B. Wright. - At the opening of the session of 1838-39 there came into the Faculty of the Medical College of Ohio, as professor of materia medica and therapeutics, Dr. M. B. Wright, of Columbus, who for forty years thereafter was one of the most active, influential and distinguished of our medical citizens. A native of Pemberton, N. J., where he was born November 15, 1803, and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania in 1823, he began his active life at Columbus; soon becom- ing as well known politically as professionally. In 1840 he was transferred to the chair of Obstetrics in the college, and for ten years afterward was a leader in the school. Put out in 1850, he was brought back ten years later, and continued his teaching until 1868, when he resigned. His active connection with the Cincinnati Hospital, which began with his entrance into the college, was continued until 1876. He died August 15, 1879, in his seventy-sixth year. All through life a man of great activity, a leader in everything with which he was connected, a born controversialist, he was at the time he retired by far the most widely known physician in the city. As a lecturer he was able and instructive, and his practice was for years all that he could desire. His writings aside from addresses of more or less miscellaneous character were not numerous, but his paper on "cephalic version," for which he received the gold medal of the State Medical Society, gave him a world-wide repu- tation.

George Mendenhall .- A native of Beaver county, Penn., where he was born May 5, 1814, and a graduate of the Medical Department of the University of Penn- sylvania in 1835, Dr. Mendenhall came to Cincinnati in 1843, and remained a resi- dent of the city up to the time of his death June 4, 1874. Very soon after settling here he became one of the physicians of the Cincinnati Dispensary, and shortly afterward was a lecturer in a summer school of medicine which was carried on for several years. In 1852 he was one of the organizers of the Miami Medical College, taking the chair of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children. In 1857, upon the consolidation of the school with the Medical College of Ohio, he was appointed to a like professorship, and held it until the union of the colleges was dissolved in 1860. Five years later, upon the reorganization of the Miami Medical College, he resumed his former chair, which he continued to fill up to the time of his death. In 1869 he was elected president of the American Medical Association, and in 1872 was honored by election to the Fellowship of the Obstetrical Society of London. For two years (1850-52) he was an associate editor of the Western Jour- nal, and early published a " Vade Mecum " for students which ran through many editions.

Elkanah Williams .- As the first physician in our country to strictly confine his practice to that of diseases of the eye and ear, and the first professor of Ophthal- mology on this side of the Atlantic (at the Miami Medical College in 1865), Dr. Williams deserves to be kept in remembrance. A native of Lawrence county, Ind., and a graduate of the Medical Department of the University of Louisville in 1850, he began the practice of medicine in his native State, but two years later came to Cincinnati. In a few months (November, 1852) he left for Europe, where for two and a half years he was a diligent student, returning in May, 1855, to begin his life work as an ophthalmologist, a work continued for thirty-one years. In 1886 ill health compelled him to retire, and death came to his relief October 6, 1888. Accomplished in his specialty, an earnest worker, a pleasing instructor, and a voluminous writer, Dr. Williams enjoyed through many years the respect and esteem of the medical profession, and the confidence of a very large number of patients. The Medical Society of Athens (Greece) elected him an honorary member in 1880, the Ophthal- mological Society of Great Britain, one of its three honorary members in 1884; he

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was president of the Ophthalmological Congress in 1876, and held the same office in the American Ophthalmological Society (of which he was one of the founders), and the Ohio State Medical Society.

Of a number of physicians at various times resident here, who have achieved distinction in the scientific rather than the medical world, the two most eminent are John Locke and Daniel Vaughan.

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History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio; their past and present, Part 36

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