Twentieth Century History of Findlay and Hancock County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, Part 149

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 149

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

While he never gave way to sentimentality, his invariable kindliness where he had bestowed confidence withstood every strain of daily intercourse. On one occasion he loaned me overnight the manuscript of an important public address which was to be published. Next morning the roll was missing and apparently lost beyond repair, but the delinquent was the only one ruffled by the accident. To his great joy the papers were found to have been left on the counter of a friendly shopkeeper. For one of his public lectures before a fashionable, and chiefly feminine, audience plans had been devised for the demonstra- tion on the projection screen of familiar physiological activities such as muscular contraction, reflex action and the heart beat in the frog

business was to prepare the tissues and make

them work. Unfortunately the apparatus was not TL for proper rehearsal and when the fateful hour came nerves and muscles rebelled at the "lime light." }- would graphically describe a function and then call for de. stration. Again and again I failed him and things loste. perate, when he asked in the gloom of turned down ligt with accents between a sob and a groan, "Sewall, is you: going? " Humiliation was relieved by the titter that res .; the humor of that fair audience.

A lecturer might well feel murderous towards an ass who so failed him, but if Martin felt that way he gave ti .

Leading women of that day seemed more interested it . eral culture than in politics. For a considerable period !.- made weekly visits to New York to talk biology N2: woman's club of exclusive personnel. In this and similar not only was scientific instruction of the right sort . diffused but individual sympathy with scientific ains methods was infused into social and civic leaders of re: communities. It may easily be surmised that the preser .. noying agitation against animal experimentation mich: at least the co-operation of the sane and truthful elem-t society were scientific teachers generally in the habit of - parting by viva voce methods and colloquial intercourse :: technical thoughts and aims.

One marvels at the wisdom of those early directors a : University policy. No effort was spared, apparently, to c". uplift and fulfill the higher ambitions of the people of more. This people of peculiar sensitiveness, with unmes. potential power, could have easily been irritated into an &r . onistic force against the infant university. But eren the doors were opened and beginning with the public inat. address by Professor Huxley, the people of Baltimore : taught that this institution was primarily for them and t children. They were made to feel at home in its lecture be- its class rooms and its laboratories. In this social knittit .: fellowship between the University and the community fessor Martin took a leading part. Endowed with social: stinct and a cultivated savoir faire he was welcomed inti : exclusive social circles of the community and early numb- warm friends in the admirable upper stratum of the mei. profession of the city. Not until many years after we medical school of the University opened, and I cannot ih but that the preliminary moulding of local medical sentir. by Martin was a powerful stimulus to that valuable and be. co-operation given by the best element of the profession to : medical school in its early days. The University of Mart's was at that time in fact and tradition the only medical & in Baltimore. Curiously enough, since the establishmet: the Johns Hopkins medical department with its unequi." standards, the medical schools of the city have multiplie! the number of eight, few of which have attained qualifica: endorsed by the investigating committee of the Carnegie F dation. Though Martin's special training had been in ar." physiology the title of his position was that of Profess" Biology and the first course offered in the laboratory wit'

Google

Digitized by

SE 1 in le

ir in f P

" PANUMUVI VI WHIG HIDL CIASS was drawn ly from the more ambitious students of the University of vland and younger graduates of that school. The precious .ence of those early days of halting development is attested he careers of many who there first tested the exultant lom of scientific thought. Councilman was one of those ils and often has he eagerly acknowledged his debt to tin for kindling and shaping his early ambitions. There ser laboriously laid the foundation for the admirable work iter did. Rivers, now of Denver, was in that earliest class. er, Sternberg, just winning his spurs in bacteriology, was ially given the run of the laboratory and there developed e of the essential researches on which his scientific repu- on rests. And, incidentally, it may be remarked that, in belief, the vast uplift which the medical and hygienic stand- of the government medical service has witnessed in the quarter century has been chiefly due to the influence of biological departments of the Johns Hopkins University, through the stimulus given by Martin and later by the ious association enjoyed by workers with Welch. There illustrated the very ideal of pedagogy in which the soul of teacher combined with the soul of the pupil and charged ith a force which irresistibly impelled to the search for lation in Nature. It may well be doubted whether without teaching there would have been as we know them in person memory, a Reed, a Carroll, a Gorgas or a Lazear. With- :his teaching it is probable that yellow fever would have re- ned a mysterious miasm and the attempt to trench the inent at Panama would have been a disastrous failure. 1 the second or third year of the laboratory young men 1 from college, and with vastly better preliminary train- than those from the medical school, began to seek post- uate instruction. Among these one quiet boy, by virtue of lear judgment and competent grasp of the problems pre- ed, soon became singled out from the rest of the class as boon to the teacher, a sort of intellectual reagent by which fficiency of the instruction might be tested. None of us ned that this lad, W. H. Howell, was in training to take ne task which Martin was to relinquish and to keep the ological laboratory of Johns Hopkins in the forefront of friendly rivals for whose existence it was largely re- ible.

oking back over the history of those days one must marvel e felicity with which Martin made and then developed tunities in the unbroken field before him. Courses in ical biology and practical physiology formed the routine oratory work. But soon there were established accessory s in demonstration and practice. A selected number of achers of Baltimore were offered a course of study on day mornings. Listening first to a brief descriptive e by the professor, they then adjourned to the laboratory ith their own hands and eyes carried on for two or three such a nature study as had not been conceived in those It was a duty of the writer to prepare material for that

time of the preceding week. The physicians of the community were invited to a course of physiological demonstrations and many eagerly availed themselves of the opportunity. Martin's unselfish and impelling nature sought the utmost development of all about him. The present writer had no sooner attained a defensible grasp of histological material and technique than he was induced to offer a private course in histology to medical students and was allowed to retain the fees therefor.

Martin soon came to be looked upon as the scientific ex- ponent of the medical profession and through lectures and practical demonstrations he illuminated the minds and raised the ideals of the more ambitious members of the cult. With infinite tact he made abstruse subjects so plain and practical that his hearers often volunteered as real students and helpers. He beguiled a medical audience into a feeling of familiarity with profound subjects and at the end the listeners had actu- ally acquired something.

W. K. Brooks was originally appointed Fellow in the De- partment of Biology, but at the outset it became apparent that his acquirements and capacity were preeminent and he gradu- ally took over the distinctly zoological side of the instruction. Brooks was one of the very few men I have known who seemed to me to be born philosophers. What I understand to be the philosophic method was to him not like a suit of clothes to be left in the class room but was his very skin and indispensable. His viewpoint of all phenomena was such as one might imagine actuated the Genius of Nature itself. A fireside talk with him was almost an intellectual carousal but, withal, leaving one fresher and better satisfied.

After we had been going some four years, the writer having moved on to a Fellowship and then to the post of Associate in Biology, W. T. Sedgwick, newly from Yale, was put in charge of practical instruction. We made a most harmonious team. He confided to me at the outset that he didn't know anything about the subject. I confessed to being in much the same fix but that we wouldn't say anything about it. Sedgwick was gifted with that precious influence, which is the most valuable faculty of the physician in the sick room, the power of diffusing confidence. His calm, critical yet kindly partner- ship was distinctly to the good of the department. I can hardly doubt that in return, the training he received in Balti- more was the corner stone to that brilliant career upon which he was soon to enter at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology.

Most teachers, perhaps, on leaving the class room or labora- tory are glad to shun the faces that duty makes familiar throughout the day, but Professor Martin after his marriage invited pupils to a weekly informal conference at his home where with his talented wife he supplemented the impersonal relations of the laboratory with the ties of social intercourse. The high grade associations which Martin had enjoyed, es- pecially at Cambridge, no less put their stamp on his character than did the unique training in nature study under Huxley and Foster direct the current of his abilities. The absolute

Digitized by

Google

332

JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL BULLETIN.

unselfish singleness of purpose of the man to seek the truth in Nature and to be honest with his friends shone clear in every act, though he refrained from ostensibly preaching ethics. We hedge round with a wall of respect the slender group of those who have no private working legend, " What is there in it for me?"

No adequate estimate of the specific educational forces at work in the late seventies can fail to take into account the influence on the youth of that period of the intellectual at- mosphere emanating from the doctrine of evolution. The " Descent of Man " appeared in 1871 and soon a strife was on between a protesting and enraged orthodoxy on the one hand and the, often iconoclastic, forces of thought-liberty on the other. Professor Huxley, known affectionately by those near him as the " General," as the commander of a ship is dubbed " the old man," was the splendid and aggressive leader of the Anglo-Saxon believers in evolution. It is not surprising that the internal tempest bred by thoughts of the supernatural in the mind of every thinking youth should have often found its outlet along the channels of reason as suggested by evolution when intolerant of the traditions of mysticism. To be frank, the popular notion that the prevailing spirit of the Johns Hopkins staff in those days, at least as regards the biological department, was " agnostic " was sufficiently correct. A corol- lary to this attitude could not but occur to me when, with something like a shock, I once heard Martin say in effect, " I am thirty years old today and am ready to quit; have had enough." The corollary is that something more than nature study is necessary to satisfy some of the affinities of man.

To my mind the most useful teaching of Martin's career is found in an analysis of the elements of his success. It was clear in his case, as has often been established in others, that his success depended on careful preparation for every effort made. I was very much impressed when, after two years special study of gastric digestion and he had appointed me to make my maiden lecture on the subject, he asked me a full month before the time whether I had prepared my lecture yet. 'The thought sprang to mind " It may be that this ultra- preparedness has something to do with Martin's success."

Again, once when we were giving parallel courses to the same class, he in the morning and I in the afternoon, he one day evidently ran out of prepared material and to my horror, being one of the audience, he deliberately appropriated the most harmonious thunder I had laboriously stored for the after- noon. I hastened to privately reproach him on the subject but he only replied " It doesn't matter; it will do them more good to hear it a second time." This reminds one of the summing up which a great teacher, Michael Foster, I think, made of his pedagogic experience : " Every year I put less into my lectures and say it over oftener." I can recall but two personal criti- cisms Martin ever made to me, one was because of a tendency to neglect to expound familiar and obvious details in making a physiological demonstration and the other was for a proneness to proer 'e the preparation for a remote exposition. Mar- tin 1880 to write an excellent textbook of physi-

ology, " The Human Body," which became very popcd's colleges; and in a short time a separate, condensed ecz " The Briefer Course," was prepared for use in sevid. schools.

Nothing that I have said predicates for the Johns Heit University or its biological department a position of per. preeminence among American institutions of learning. I: is now a matter of history that to the University was. ceded a unique position as an educational leader almos: " the opening of its doors. With phenomenal wisdom th. . ministrators of the University chose for the heads of ie partments men who were not merely good lecturers bu: s investigators and sources of inspiration in their respe." fields. The three departments of natural science estasin were all under the direction of men still far short of c. age. In those days the young men gathered there were . votaries of what Huxley called "the divine dipsomat. original research." Of inexpressible value to us, ofter ! informed but earnest students, were the precepts an? amples of leaders trained in the ways of making know ?. Martin's achievements inculcated the encouraging lesson : the prime requisite of a successful investigator is not " gez. or even great talent, but above all, a faithful, unerring. . satiable desire for Truth as a point of view; to which mes: added a working energy of indomitable persistence and goi. by a faith that nothing happens without a reason.

Martin was not a voluminous writer. In his seventeen of service in Baltimore there were produced by him but i. papers covering the results of original researches. Some c .: work that Martin accomplished was truly epoch-makit; reason of the fact that it led to methods which have been fruitful in physiological discovery. Yet Martin's narz seldom mentioned in the literature thereof. Verily, in Kcal as in commercial life, the promoter is not without a furr. to him who would reap from his sowing. Martin knew t. ing of mathematics, yet his clear mind grasped the essenfi mathematical method of dealing with the complex pret of biology; for he realized the necessity of attacking phenomena not in toto, as the clinical observer is forcel t but through a study of the separate variables which (or. to produce them. He frequently said, " We know a good : about the skeletal muscle because we can isolate it and c. frog's heart for the same reason," and his mind erik: kept in view the importance of studying the various functions in disassociated organs.

I very well remember one morning, I think it was it Fall of 1880, Martin said to me, in effect, "I could not :- last night and the thought came to me that the problem lating the mammalian heart might be solved by getti :. return circulation through the coronary vessels." The seemed reasonable and at the close of the day's work w. æsthetized a dog, prepared him for artificial respiratica. then Professor Martin opened the chest and ligatured .r. one the vena cava and the aorta in such a way as ter sufficient amount of blood in the heart itself. The heart.

Digitized by Google

de and back through the coronary vessels in the heart wall to te right auricle again. Thus heart and lungs were completely olated from the rest of the body and could be studied un- fected by the interference of factors foreign to itself. Mar- n grasped the full significance of his discovery and elaborated ith infinite patience the practical details involved in sub- itting the isolated organ to experimental conditions. It was ought necessary to furnish the heart with an artificial supply : blood and accordingly defibrinated calf's blood was used id fed to the heart from a Mariotte's flask. The body of the g and all the materials used in the experiment were inclosed ithin a glass walled hood of ample dimensions movable by pes and pulleys over a shallow pan of zinc in which water as kept heated at a body temperature. In such an apparatus e isolated heart could be kept beating in a fairly normal shion for upwards of five hours. The prosecution of such an periment was exhausting to body and mind, yet for several ars Martin lost no opportunity to press his work to a finish. othing could be a surer index of the clarity of mind in this vestigator than the simple and fundamental data he sought establish by his new method. We find his first paper en- ;led, "The Influence on the Pulse Rate of Variations of rterial Pressure, of Venous Pressure and of Temperature." gain we have " The Direct Influence of Gradual Variations Temperature upon the Rate of Beat of the Dog's Heart." Iso, " The Action of Ethyl Alcohol upon the Dog's Heart," id so on through a series of some nine researches .* The per upon the effect of temperature upon the heart beat was e subject of the Croonian lecture for 1883, and about this ne the author was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. The great strides which have been made towards a complete owledge of cardiac physiology and, as an outcome, of clinical

Vid. Memorial Volume, " Physiological Papers," by H. Newell irtin. The Johns Hopkins Press, 1895.

made along the path first cleared by Martin. It was not until 1895, fourteen years after Martin's discovery, that Langendorff introduced his admirable and simple method of sustaining the isolated heart by a nutrient stream directed into the coronary vessels alone through a canula tied in the stump of the aorta. It seems little to the credit of physiologists that so long a time should have elapsed before so obvious a modification of Mar- tin's procedure should have suggested itself. Isolation of the mammalian heart by the " Method of Langendorff " is now a common laboratory procedure. Probably few are aware of the real discoverer of the idea.

It is interesting to note the character of the problems with which Martin busied himself, and his persistent search for an experimentum crucis. Assisted by Sedgwick he apparently settled experimentally the disputed function of the internal intercostal muscles. They also succeeded in putting a canula in a coronary artery of the living dog's heart and directly measuring the blood pressure and pulse wave in the coronary system, though the great Cohnheim had laid down the dictum that occlusion of a main coronary artery was immediately fatal to the physiological action of the heart.

When one considers the prevision manifested in these re- searches of a quarter century back one cannot but deplore the loss to science of Martin's mind and wonder whether, with the richer material facts and profounder views of their meaning now current, he might not, if living today, be the acknowledged master in his chosen field. Perhaps, after all, it is only another of Nature's compensations that the story of life should be prone to end in anticlimax. It makes it easier to close the book. Failing in health and energy of application for some years, Martin resigned his professorship in 1893, at an age when he should have been in his prime-45 years. In a letter to me written from a sick room at that time his thought was all for the destiny of that Pure Physiology which he had labored so faithfully to nurture on American soil.

EDICAL NOTES ON THE DIVINE COMEDY OF DANTE ALIGHIERI .*

By P. H. DERNEHL, M. D., Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

As a physician one cannot, in reading the Divine Comedy, ape being attracted by the frequent medical allusions it itains. It may appear of subordinate interest to attempt draw from and present by itself its medical lore, and per- ›s also imprudent in a physician to express an opinion on ntean questions which in truth fall not within his sphere. e latter is in no wise my purpose. I have endeavored merely All the quotations are taken from Longfellow's translation of Divine Comedy. I have given it preference over the many ers, first, because of the English translations, I believe it Je the one with which the American reader is most familiar, , second, because, accepting the opinion of those best quali- to judge, his version is recognized as among the best in tongue, and the most faithful and scholarly which the ;lish language possesses.

to present in collected form, making no pretense at complete- ness, such references as I believed might prove of interest in portraying something of the state of medical science in Dante's age and as might serve to shed some light upon his knowledge of medicine. I trust this may have been to no idle purpose.

To secure a finished picture of medicine, especially of an- cient and medieval medicine, we are pressed to call upon the historian, philosopher and poet to supply that which the purely medical writers have withheld from us. Thus Homer reveals a wealth of medical information in the Iliad and Odyssey. Plato, the philosopher, wrote also of medical problems. To the historian, Thucydides, we owe the best account we possess of the plague of Athens. The medicine in Shakespeare has been made a subject by many writers. Molière has preserved for us

Digitized by

Google

334

JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL BULLETIN.

[No .:

phases of the medical life of the seventeenth century. How frequently we find in accounts of the plague of England (1663-65) quotations, describing its ravages, taken from Pepys' Diary. Choosing at random from among more recent writers, let us select George Eliot, who in Middlemarch, seeks to incorporate in Doctor Lydgate the struggles and aspirations of the profession in the nineteenth century, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, in whose purely literary writings, we are given so much of interest and worth drawn from a physician's daily life in his community. But where today can we find the old family doctor he depicts? We would seek in vain through the medical journals for an account of him. In like manner the Divine Comedy-the Mirror of the Middle Ages, as it has been termed-reveals much of medical interest, which deserves recognition, the more so because the medical literature of the Dantean period leaves much to be desired.

The Divine Comedy is an expression of all that the great genius of Dante was master. It is more than a medieval com- prehension of dreams of the hereafter, abounding with legends and visions of the world to come. It is the one epic which embodies as no other has done the past and present, time and eternity. One cannot read it carefully without observing how closely, almost exclusively, Dante fixes his observation on human nature. Humanity itself with its faith and erudi- tion, with its presentiments, with its joys and sorrows, peace and repose, with its strifes and toils, and with its virtues and vices is the fertile source of his theme. For that vast gathering of spirits which is introduced to discourse on such varied topics we glean that which the Divine Comedy contains of medical interest. What it portrays of medicine is as Dante and his time knew it.

Whether, if at all, Dante was schooled in the science of medi- cine remains conjecture. The opinions of his numerous com- mentators are at variance regarding this, and Dante in his writings has left no positive evidence. The consensus of opinion among his commentators appears to be that in large part his learning was acquired autodidactically and that later in life his eagerness for the acquisition of knowledge led him to pursue university study. His early training was gained in the schools of Florence. In these were taught the trivium and quadrivium, the first including grammar, logic and rhetoric; the second, music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. Among the universities, Padua, Bologna, Paris and even Ox- ford are accredited with having had him enrolled. Be that as it may, we are in total darkness whether or not while in at- tendance at any one of these institutions, Dante devoted any of his time to the study of medicine. We know that in 1297 he enrolled himself in the guild of physicians and apothe- caries, being there qualified with the title " Poeta." His en- rolling as a member of a guild was probably done as a neces- sary preliminary requisite to his entering upon active politics. But why choose the mentioned guild in preference to others? Because among his ancestors were druggists; because Dante intended eventually to pursue medicine as a calling; because apothecaries, in his time, dealt also in books, and Dante was a lover of these : because to this guild belonged also artists, and

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

Twentieth Century History of Findlay and Hancock County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, Part 149

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

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