Twentieth Century History of Findlay and Hancock County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, Part 148

Author: Jacob Anthony Kimmell
Publication date: 1910
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1189

USA > Ohio > Hancock County > Findlay > Twentieth Century History of Findlay and Hancock County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens > Part 148

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The following is the text of the manuscript letter 4 : Reverend Benjamin Colman in the possession of the B- Medical Library which seems to have served as the origin: that published in the Boston Gazette of July 27, 121: signed by Increase Mather, Cotton Mather, Benjamin Cit- Thomas Prince, John Webb and William Cooper. To the Reverend Mr. of Boston.

Sir, It was a pleasure to me yesterday to hear you erpres. Sense you have of the unworthy Treatment which Dr. Boy has received this week in the Boston News-Letter. The ang: contemptuous Letter there is below the Learning & Worth c! Gentleman who is said to write it. It breathes nothing ef native Modesty & Meekness which adorns Dr. Douglass. Det : covers that purity of Style & Diction which one wd expect his Erudition. Besides, He has met with so kind & cordia" Esteem in the Town, as were enof to subdue the heart ( rough & unpolished Stranger (the Reverse whereof he is) ! most humane & placid treatment of every body belonging we Entirely dismiss ye tho't therefore that one of his Silex Civility is capable of this sudden & angry Effort against : " of the Town, whom Heaven (he knows & we all know! adorn'd with some very peculiar Gifts for the Service of country, & has signally own'd in the Success which he has hi!

If Dr. Boylston was too suddenly giving into a new pract, dangerous Experiment & and also was too confidant of the le cence & Safety of ye Method & of the benefit wch the Public .. reap thereby; altho' in that case we are highly obliged to learned & judicious Person who kindly informs us of the ba & warns against the Practice; yet what need is there a: : jurious words, or mean detracting from the known worth c.

"" Selectmen's Minutes, July 7, 1737.

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mar honour to him & felicity to his Country? I mean those ds in the Letter-a certain Cutter for the Stone. Yes, thanks :o God that we have such a One among us, & that so many r Miserables have already found the benefit of his gentle & trous Hand. We that have stood by & seen his tenderness, 'age & skill in that hazardous Operation cannot enof value Man & give praise to God. And I could easily speak of other es of equal hazard, wherein the Doctor has served with such cesses, as must render him Inestimable to them yt. have been :ch'd from the jaws of Death by his happy hand.

blame the Letter for gross partiality wch treats Dr. Boylston I so severe a Surmise as to say, that he understood the matter noculating without a serious tho't; when at ye same time it the goodness to suppose of another Doctor, a Divine among 'who push'd on ye Attempt & openly rejoiced in it) that he d out of a pious & charitable design of doing good. I verily eve Dr. Mather did so, & why should I not hope the same of Boylston? Is it that a Dr. in Physic or a Master in Surgery ot capable of the like pious & charitable design with a Dr. divinity? I am sure I ought to judge ye best of my Nei'bours, gns, & who art thou to forget another? Well, but this Boylston is erate, says the Letter; that is to say, He has not had ye Ad- :ages of a Liberal Education, which Dr. Clark, Dr. Williams r. Douglass have had. He ought to vail to them therefore on account & congratulate them their Advantage. But must he be efore called ignorant & quack? as the Letter rudely calls him: ild ye Town bear that Dr. Cutler & Dr. Davis should be so ted? No more can it endure to see Boylston thus spit at. le Town knows & so does ye Country how long & with what :ess Dr. Boylston has practis'd both in Physic & Surgery; & he has not ye Letters of some Physicians in the Town, yet he been so happy as to have had more practice it may be than one, Dr. Clark excepted: Nor has it been without considerable ly, expence in Travel, a good Genius, diligent application & a t deal of observation, that he has attain'd unto that knowl- & successful practice wch he has to give thanks unto God & wherein I pray God that he may improve & grow with all ility. Then he would not fear want of Business, nor I trust sefulness & Esteem: for there are but too many likely to need even in Cases wherein none beside him can as yet equally

is I have said in Justice & friendship, as to Dr. Boylston & umerous Family to whom I ought to wish well, as likewise Others among us who have gone into favourable opinion

DeIL to be one. But If it be an evil @ dangerous Method, as the other Physicians of ye Town (to whom we owe great honour & regard) have declared it to be in their Judgment, They have done well to warn the people ag't. running into it: & for my own part I now give the Gentlemen my Thanks for the Resolve which they have lately published for this end.

The meanwhile I heartily wish Men would treat one another with decency & charity, meekness & humility, as becomes fallible Creatures & hearty friends to one another & to their Country; that so our prayers may be more united in this Day of common distress to ye. God of our Health, who is ye. God of love & peace.

Postscript

As to the Case of Conscience referred to the Divines in the Letter wch I have been Animadverting on, I suppose there never was the like put before to any. Wt. heathens must they be to whom this can be a question. Whether the trusting more the extra groundless Machinations of men than our Preserver in the ordinary course of Nature, may be consistent with that Devotion & Subjection we owe to the Alwise Providence of God almighty, who knows not the profanity & impiety of trusting in Men or Means more than in GOD; be they the most learned men, or ye most proper means? But I will suppose Men of piety & learning too, (for Instance Such as Dr. Mather & Mr. Webb, who are oppo- site Names in the present case) after much curious Tho't come into an opinion of the Safety of the saulted method of Inoculat- ing the Smal Pox; & being persuaded yt. it may be a means of preserving a multitude of lives, they accept it with all Thankful- ness & Joy as the gracious Discovery of a kind Providence to Mankind for that end; And then I ask-cannot they give into the method or practice without having their Devotion & Subjection to ye all-wise Providence of GOD Almighty call'd in question? Must they needs trust more in men than in their Great Preserver in the use of this means than in using other means? What wild kind of Supposition is this? Do we not in the use of any Means depend on GOD's blessing? & live by that alone? & can't a devout heart depend on GOD in the use of this means, with infinite grati- tude, being in the full Esteem thereof? What hand or art of Man is there in this Operation, more than in bleeding, blistering, & a score more things in Medical use, which are all well consistent with a humble Trust in our great Preserver, & a due Subjection to his all-wise Providence?

Benjamin Colman.

Boston, July, 25, 1721.

HENRY NEWELL MARTIN, Professor of Biology in Johns Hopkins University, 1876-1893 .*

By HENRY SEWALL, M. D., Denver, Col.

e name I wish to introduce to you is that of Henry Newell in, M. A., M. D., D. Sc., F. R. S., Professor of Biology ins Hopkins University from its foundation in 1876 to the of his resignation in 1893, a period of seventeen years. ty fairly be inquired why, with the exhaustless material disposal, I have settled on this one life for exposition. Martin never for one moment was included by any who him within that eerie group possessing attributes we minate " genius." He was simply an upright, high- ed man with human foibles; he had sound common sense ad before the Denver Medical-History Club, Feb. 16, 1911.

and much tact at his disposal. He possessed no very extraor- dinary talent or learning. Trained under Sharpey and Huxley and Michael Foster, the truths of nature were the canons of his religion and this education was not only assimilated in the development of his own character but was through him an efficient epoch-making force in the scientific development of our country. It is, I think, worth while enquiring how a young man entering at the age of twenty-eight, without the foundation of experience, upon an academic position whose ideals from the outset departed radically from any that had been hitherto aimed at in the pedagogic history of America,

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had, as I believe, come to deserve the foremost niche in the temple of American physiology which, I venture to hold, is the fountain head of American medicine. In 1876 there was no real profession of either physiology or pathology in the United States. Ambitious young medical graduates got their first hold on medical faculties by undertaking the instruction of students in the perfunctory study of the merely tolerated, if not despised, unpractical or " scientific " bases of clinical diagnosis and treatment-physiology and pathology. Splendid and brilliant men there were scattered about the country and associated with institutions of learning, medical and academic, but their pedagogic relations were limited to the teaching of students. In those days knowledge in America was chiefly founded on authority, not on individual research. True enough, certain original spirits, like Weir Mitchell, H. C. Wood, O. W. Holmes, the Bowditches and many others known to fame, broke through the restraints of convention and lifted here and there a torch to inflame the mind. But the prosecu- tion of original research requires a devoted union of aggress- iveness, patience, courage and self-denial which rarely thrives in isolation. It must be surmised that in those days and long preceding, countless pregnant thoughts had sprung up in fer- tile minds to bloom and fade and die without bearing fruit.

What the Johns Hopkins University did for science and what its Biological Departments did for Medicine was to offer a culture medium and an incubator for scientific ambitions and ideas. Here young men were invited to study and engage in original research under the direction of those who them- selves were skilled investigators and amid the stimulating companionship of contemporaries whose talents had already marked them as leaders for the future.

The progress of biological science and art for the past quar- ter century in this country has sufficiently attested the extraor- dinary potential energy of the conceptions put in operation at the Johns Hopkins University in 1876. Today there is an American medical science which in my opinion has been made possible only through that massed play of endeavor which in another field Napoleon used to win his victories and a con- ception of which led Bismarck to make a nation out of futile single states. In short, to employ the vernacular, Newell Martin was the pioneer professional coach in scientific medical team work in America.

Let it be noted that I use the word " Medical " in its pro- found, most modern significance as that which indicates a con- ception of vital processes per se and which takes it altogether away from that narrow view whose vista was limited by a pill and bound on either side by a saw and an amputating knife. In Martin's time the leaders of thought in physiology felt themselves confronted with a calamity which endangered the autonomy of their science. Physiology in this country did not exist as a profession. Its reason for existence in the mind of even the educated public rested on its relation to medical instruction and it held somewhat the same position in the tech- nical curriculum as grammar does in the academic course. Mart Mowing the lead of his scientific forebears, insisted

that physiology should be regarded as the benefactor x: handmaid of Medicine and that it should be cultivated : pure science absolutely independent of any so-called pr. affiliation. Possibly this question has not yet burned : out and certainly it is not expedient here to rake the en x but I must vent the impression that the course of erelt: has ordered it that whereas physiology was then the depalz runt of the medical family it is today the eldest son in a su system of primogeniture. As with a noble jewel whose bec. depends upon the cutting, we may name one facet Pattes another Pharmacology, another Bio-chemistry, another !- chology, and so on, the jewel itself remains and ever ri Physiology.

I will quote bodily from an obituary notice of Martin : tributed by Sir Michael Foster to Volume 60 of the Pris ings of the Royal Society. It is as follows:

Henry Newell Martin was born on July 1, 1848, at NET County Down, Ireland. He was the eldest of a family of tve? his father being at the time a Congregational minister .. afterwards becoming a schoolmaster. Both his parents ve Irish, his father coming from the South of Ireland and !! mother from the North. He received his early education che at home, for though he went to several schools, his stay wait long at any one of them. Having matriculated at the Univer of London before he was fully sixteen years of age (an eren;) as to age being made in his favor), he became apprentice to. McDonagh, in the Hampstead Road, London, in the neighbortx of University College, on the understanding that the perte ance of the services which might be required of him 23 5 prentice should not prevent his attending the teaching s .: Medical School of the College and the practice in the Host- During his career at University College he greatly distinguise himself, taking several medals and prizes, in spite of his = for study being, on account of the above-mentioned duties = than that of his fellow students. In 1870 he obtained a schi ship at Christ's College, Cambridge; he had in the summe: that year conducted at Cambridge a class of Histology for : late Sir G. Humphrey. The writer of this notice had at ax. the same time been appointed Prælector of Physiology at Tr: College, and the two went up to Cambridge together in October of that year. He at once undertook to act as the de. strator of the Trinity Prælector, whose right hand he conti":" to be in every way during the whole of his stay at Cambrian His energy and talents, and especially his personal qualities : much to advance and render popular the then growing Schon! . Natural Science in the University.

At that time there was, perhaps, a tendency on the part of= undergraduate to depreciate natural and, especially, bioloc : science and to regard it as something not quite acader. Martin by his bright ways won among his fellows sympathy " his line of study, and showed them, by entering into all pursuits (he became, for instance, President of the Union Captain of the Volunteers) that the Natural Science student Fa in no respect inferior to the others. In Cambridge, as in Loc. his career was distinguished. He gained the first place in Natural Science Tripos in 1873, the second place being taken:" Francis M. Balfour. At that time the position in the TE?" was determined by the aggregate of marks in all subjects. W. at Cambridge he took the B. Sc., and M. B., London, gaining the former the scholarship in Zoology. He proceeded later it : D. Sc., being the first to take that degree in Physiology. So :. .. as, or even before, he had taken his degree, he began to der some time to research, though that time, owing to the news

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actory Membrane which appeared in the Journal of Anatomy I Physiology for 1873. In the summer of 1874 he assisted the nity Prælector in introducing into Cambridge the course of nentary Biology, which the late Professor Huxley had initi- i at the Royal College of Science during the preceding year. subsequently acted as Assistant in the same course to Pro- sor Huxley himself. One result of this was that he prepared, ler Huxley's supervision, a text-book of the course, which ler their names, appeared with the title Practical Biology and ch has since been so largely used. In 1874 he was made low of his College, and giving himself up with enthusiasm to development of natural and especially of biologic science at University, was looking forward to a Scientific career in gland, if not at Cambridge. About that time, however, the ns Hopkins University at Baltimore was being established, such was the impression made by Martin upon those with om he came in contact, among others, Dr. Gilman of Balti- 'e, that in 1876 he was invited to become the first occupant of Chair of Biology which had been founded in the Johns ›kins University.

[artin married in 1879 Mrs. Pegram, the widow of an officer in Confederate Army, but there was no issue, and in 1892 his e died. Even before his wife's death his health had begun to way, and after that he became so increasingly unfitted for duties, which his own previous exertions had raised to a very at importance, that in 1893 he resigned his post. After his gnation he returned to this country, for he had never become American citizen, and was looking forward to being able, 1 improved health, to labor in physiological investigations, er at his old University or elsewhere in England. But it was to be. Though he seemed at times to be improving, he had 'e than one severe attack of illness and never regained suffi- it strength to set really to work. During the past summer visibly failed, and while he was striving to recover his ngth by a stay in the quiet dales of Yorkshire, a sudden orrhage carried him off on October 27, at Burley-in-Wharfe- , Yorkshire.

do not fear to make my sketch redundant by quotation of er less formal words of the same writer. When in Septem- 1900, on his return journey after delivering the course ane lectures in San Francisco, Sir Michael Foster stopped a few days in Denver, and the Medical Department of University of Denver enjoyed the unique privilege of hear- from his own lips an extemporaneous and colloquial review len and events as recalled from his own scientific career. ve ventured to insist at the outset of this narrative that establishment of physiology as a profession in the United es was due chiefly to the stimulus given to physiological rch and diffusion of physiological instruction by Professor in at the Johns Hopkins. And as Martin's knowledge, ods and inspiration were all developed in England it will teresting to get a glimpse of the status of physiology in country just antecedent to the time of which I write. lote from Foster's Denver address :*

irpey was the only man at that time (1850) who devoted his life to physiology. In all the other schools physiology was t by practicing physicians and surgeons. . ... Now Sharpey it the time I am speaking of the greatest physiologist in nd, the only person who devoted his whole time to science,

nad no physiological laboratory. He had no physiological appa- ratus whatever. All he did in the way of practical teaching at that time was to show us under the microscope preparations of the various tissues. There was no attempt whatever at any prac- tical teaching of physiology. I remember very well when he was lecturing on blood pressure, and was describing to us the then new results of Ludwig, endeavoring to explain to us the blood pressure curve, all he had to help him was his cylinder hat, which he put upon the lecture table before him and with his finger traced upon the hat the course of the curve. That was the way that phys- iology was taught by Sharpey in England in 1854. . ... Nobody else in England then was teaching physiology as Sharpey taught it and, as I tell you, he used his hat, and a very old hat it was, as a kymographion for blood pressure. I very well remember going to him one day after his lecture, in which he had been speaking of the functions of the liver (by that time he had recognized that I had a special interest in physiology), and he said to me: " Well," he said, " I didn't like to say anything about it in my lecture, but Claude Bernard in Paris has just sent me a paper which he has read before the Academy of Sciences at Paris and in that paper he has proved that there is present in the liver a substance resembling starch, which is easily converted into sugar."

Foster then stated that, having taken his qualifications, he practiced medicine in the country for six years but was then called back to London to teach practical physiology in Univer- sity College where a subordinate lectureship in that subject had been established under the influence of Sharpey.

That was in the early sixties, in about sixty-four or sixty-five. But what could be done then was very, very little. I had a very small room. I had a few microscopes. But I began to carry out the instruction in a more systematic manner than had been done before. For instance, I made the men prepare the tissues for themselves. That was a new thing in histology. And I also made them do for themselves simple experiments on muscles and nerves and other tissues on live animals. That, I may say, was the beginning of the teaching of practical physiology in England. . . . . These lectures on physiology were absolutely voluntary, and only the better students were willing to give up the time needed to get a more thorough grasp of physiology. Well, I appointed a time to see the few who wished to spend some time in this new study, this study of luxury, and there came to me a boy nothing more than a boy, who said: "I am very sorry, sir; I should like to take your course if I could, but you see my parents are not very well off, and I get my board and lodging by living with a doctor close by. . . . . I have, in return for my board, to dispense all the doctor's medicines, and that dispensing takes me from two to five; now your lectures begin at four. I cannot come for the first hour; I will work hard and will try to make up the lost time." I said " certainly, certainly." So he came in, came in regularly late. He came in regularly at five o'clock, and he worked with such purpose that in the ex- amination which I had at the end of the course I awarded him the prize. Well, his name was Henry Newell Martin, and I was so much struck with him that I asked him to assist me in my course, and he became my demonstrator. After we had been at University College together I think two or three years, Martin carrying on his studies and at the same time helping me, he came one day to me in great trouble because he could not make up his mind. He obtained what they call a scholarship at Christ College at Cambridge and he could not make up his mind to accept it and go there. He said he didn't want to leave me. But I was able to tell him what nobody else knew at that time, that in the October in which his scholarship would take him to

d. Colorado Medical Journal, Oct., 1900.

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Cambridge I was going to Cambridge too, having been invited to lecture there. . .. And after a career of considerable brilliancy of some years at Cambridge there came to him an invitation to the Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore. So if I have done nothing more, at all events I sent Henry Newell Martin to America.

It was one of those chances which determine the course of human life by which it happened that the writer of this article, a native of Baltimore, graduated at the age of twenty-one from a New England College some three months before the in- auguration of Johns Hopkins University. Through the kindly offices of that sweet and gentle character, Dr. James Carey Thomas, a member of the original Board of Trustees of the University, an introduction was secured to Professor Martin, whose sufficient distinction it was to have been an associate of Huxley, that grand Napoleon of biologie science, who had already enthralled the youth of two continents. I called on Professor Martin at his rooms and my spirits were lightened when I saw a very young man, he was then twenty-eight and looked younger, who treated me at once something like a com- panion. He was scarcely of medium height, of slight but well- developed frame. His head was rather small, the eyes blue and wide open, nose thin and fine, complexion fair and mustache blond. His dress was always strikingly neat without being foppish. I cannot but fancy that Martin then was homesick and keen to relish the devotion of one not far from his own age. Martin accepted me as his assistant in the biological laboratory at a stipend of $250 for the first six months. Not for many months did I suspect that this was at first a private and not a University appointment.

Martin's ability as a teacher is attested by the eminence of many pupils; his talent as an investigator is recorded in the literature of physiology; but the personality of the man, the kindly tact, the sincerity, the loyalty to truth and the inde- finable emanation that reaches from man to man, the memory of these is apt to fail with the heartbeats of his companions. I well remember the first week of preparation for class work. There was as yet no laboratory " Diener " and a hundred tasks of household preparation were to be completed in advance. Martin was kinder than he could have known when he stood beside his assistant washing bottles for reagents; and in this, as in every other field, what would have sorely hurt as a menial service he turned into the routine of technical manipulation.

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Twentieth Century History of Findlay and Hancock County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, Part 148

Author: Jacob Anthony Kimmell Publication date: 1910 Publisher: Number of Pages: 1189

Author: Jacob Anthony Kimmell
Publication date: 1910
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1189