USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Wilkes-Barre > A history of Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania : from its first beginnings to the present time, including chapters of newly-discovered early Wyoming Valley history, together with many biographical sketches and much genealogical material. Volume V > Part 7
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Dr. Atkins, a Bostonian, who practiced in Kingston for about ten years, from 1825, was notably successful as a surgeon. He "achieved local reputa- tion by cutting for stone in the bladder." taking from a Plymouth patient in one operation a stone "as big as a walnut." Dr. Johnson writes: "Another operation was the incision of portions of the leg bones and the saving of a leg which other physicians had pronounced a case for amputation. The patient . ... had sustained a compound comminuted fracture of the lower third of the small bones of the leg. The surgeon removed the spiculae, sawed off the projecting extremity, made extension, constructed a fracture box and was rewarded with an excellent result. This operation, like that for stone in the bladder, is common enough in our day, but required a boldness that was rare in the country doctor of the first quarter of the nineteenth century."
Dr. Alden I. Bennett was the first physician to settle at Nanticoke. He began practice in 1825. In 1833, Dr. Sidney H. Warner began a practice which continued for fifty years in Huntington. In 1846, Dr. L. C. White set- tled in Shickshinny. In the next year, his brother-in-law, Dr. Charles Parker, became his associate. Dr. White moved to Mississippi, but Dr. Parker was in practice in Shickshinny neighborhood until he was eighty years old.
These were some of the uncomplaining "ministers of the sick," ever at the call of suffering humanity, ever ready day or night to mount a horse and pass through forest or along trails to the homes of the settlers, never expecting much for their service and rarely demanding anything. The wealth of the average country doctor of the pioneer days was largely a matter of record- in his list of uncollectible accounts. One hundred years ago, the region from Pittston to Carbondale was spanned by three physicians ; now "perhaps every square mile will average a disciple of the healing art." Even forty years ago, Luzerne County had a practicing physician for every seven hundred inhabi- tants, and since that time the number of practicing physicians has consider-
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ably increased. With the vast strides forward in medical science, practice has taken different ways. During the twentieth century, the trend has been increasingly toward specialism. Every major department of medicine in every large community is now the special practice of some physician who has for- saken, or never undertaken, general practice, but has centered his study of medical science upon this branch, necessarily becoming more skillful in his specialty than a general practitioner could hope to become. Therefore, the family physician, always seeking to bring to the aid of his patients the most expert medical treatment, is leaning more and more upon his specialist confrere. To name all the living physicians of Luzerne would serve no use- ful purpose in this article, and to single out some for mention would be invidious when all are medical college graduates, some have diplomas for post-graduate courses, and almost all are holding to the noble standards of the profession, in their practice and their observance of its ethics.
While the physician's professional conduct is governed mainly by the extent of his own human interest and fellow-feeling, coming as he does into the closest touch with scenes that influence the heart and bring the nobler human qualities uppermost, the medical societies by their associated strengtli exercise some control over the medical fraternity. Luzerne County has had a medical society for more than sixty years. It was formed on March 4. 1861. a convention of regular physicians of the county being held on that day in the courthouse at Wilkes-Barre. Those who attended this convention were: Drs. P. C. H. Rooney, of Hazleton ; N. P. Moody, of Lehman ; H. Ladd, C. Marr, William Green, B. H. Throop, of Scranton ; G. Urquhart. W. F. Dennis, E. R. Mayer, C. Wagner, E. B. Miner, of Wilkes-Barre; R. H. Tubbs, of Kingston : S. Lawton, of Pittston ; A. L. Cressler and J. R. Casselbury, of Conyngham. The Luzerne County Medical Society was then formed. The original officers were: Dr. Benjamin H. Throop, of Scranton, president ; Drs. E. R. Mayer and A. L. Cressler, vice-presidents; Dr. G. Urquhart, secretary ; and Dr. R. H. Tubbs, treasurer.
The successors of Dr. Throop, as presidents of the Luzerne County Medi- cal Society are named below :
WV. F. Dennis 1862
W. H. Faulds I891
S. W. Lawton, Jr. 1863
John T. Howell 1892
R. H. Tubbs
1864
G. Underwood 893
John Smith 1865
W. S. Stewart 1894
A. L. Cressler
1866
T. A. James 1895
Charles Long 1896
1807
S. Lawton
1869
J. Harris Jones
1898
James B. Lewis
1871
Alexander G. Fell
190I
J. E. Bulkley
1873
Granville T. Matlack
1902
G. Underwood
Walter Lathrop
1903
Charles Burr
1875
Levi I. Shoemaker
190.4
Edward R. Mayer
876
Olin F. Harvey 1905
J. B. Crawford
1877
W. R. Longshore 1906
I. E. Ross 1878
J. I. Roe 1907
Joseph A. Murphy 1879
James W. Geist
1908
Fred. Corss 1880
S. P. Mengel 1009
1910
C. A. Spencer 1882
Charles H. Miner
191I
J. B. Crawford 1883
C. W. Prevost
1912
Reese Davis
1884
E. U. Buckman
1913
Lewis H. Taylor
1885
Delbert Barney
1914
S. W. Trimmer
1886
H. L. Whitney
1915
W. G. Weaver
1887
R. P. Taylor
1916
C. P. Knapp
1888
E. L. Meyers
1917
J. L. Miner (died July, 1899) 1 889
Boyd Dodson 1918
George W. Guthrie 1890
August Trapold
1919
J. B. Crawford
1867
Horace Ladd
1868
John B. Mahon
Edward R. Mayer
1870
Maris Gibson
H. M. Neale 1890
1900
Horace Ladd
1872
1874
A. D. Tewksbury 1881
George A. Clark
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H. B. Gibby 1920
John E. Scheifly 1924
Lewis Edwards
1921
Samuel M. Wolfe
1925
Walter Davis
1922
Peter P. Mayock 1926
N. L. Schappert
1923
George Drake 1927
The Medical Society has a Hazleton branch. In 1916, the physicians of that part of the county met to form a local society, because of their inaccessi- bility to Wilkes-Barre and of the inconvenience they suffered in attending meetings of the county society. They formed the local society, the Associated Physicians of Hazleton. It functioned as such from 1916 until January I, 1924, when its name became the Hazleton Branch of the Luzerne County Medical Society. The Hazleton physicians by this time had fully succeeded in their major purposes; to promote closer professional fellowship, and to eradi- cate "the intolerable system of contract practice" that prevailed in the mining districts. As Dr. M. H. Kudlich described it, in a paper read before the parent society on November 4, 1925, "Contract Practice" was "a system of profes- sional slavery, owing its existence," he believed, "to the elder Dr. George Wentz, of Drifton, whereby a physician was bound by contract to serve entire families for the munificent sum of seventy-five cents per month, which, in 19II, was raised to one dollar per month, under a storm of protest from the indig- nant public." Dr. Kudlich continues: "In fairness let it be understood that extra charges could be levied ; for example, five dollars for confinement, twenty-five cents for vaccination and extraction of teeth (oh yes! a pair of dental forceps was part of our surgical equipment in those days). To add to the humiliation of the system, it was our duty to canvass each family to col- lect our monthly stipend, thus taking our position upon a plane quite equal to the newsboy, the beer man and the collectors for the industrial insurance com- panies." The contract system was finally abolished on January 1, 1925, when it was decreed that any physician who persisted in this form of practice would automatically cease to belong to the county society.
The Hazleton society had done for its district what the parent society had done fifty or sixty years before for the greater part of the county, that is, as Dr. E. R. Mayer said, after twenty-five years of the functioning of the county society, it had been "bringing order out of chaos in all medical matters, in unifying the decent and honorable members of our guild in one harmonious whole, in dignifying its character and in demanding and securing from the public the appreciation and compensation which we, its members, earn and deserve." In the early chaotic days, before the formation of the county society, one physician of Luzerne County, with no professional body to stay his action, had "originated the novel method of hastening delayed labor by incising the scalp of the child with a pair of scissors and inserting the fingers between the scalp and skull, for purpose of traction." But that dark period soon passed.
The Luzerne County Medical Society started in 1861 with fifteen members. Fifty years later, it had one hundred and fifty. Now its membership embraces to all intents all the reputable allopathic physicians of the county. Its meet- ings, in early years, were sometimes held in Scranton, sometimes in Pittston, and sometimes in Wilkes-Barre. They are now all held in the county seat, and in its own magnificent building on Franklin Avenue. The Medical Build- ing was built in 1914, and houses a medical library of 8,000 volumes or more, in modern stacks.
Of the worthy physicians of the latter half of the nineteenth century, Dr. Lewis H. Taylor spoke, at a meeting of the County Medical Society, in 1911. He referred to Dr. Welden F. Dennis (1818-79). who, being a physician "of great ingenuity and resourcefulness," on one occasion, "being in need of an obstetric forceps, . . . . had one forged by a blacksmith in a few moments, which answered his purpose." Dr. Taylor spoke of: Dr. George Urquhart, "a kindly sympathetic elderly man"; of Dr. Edward R. Mayer (1823-91), who
STATE HOSPITAL, HAZLETON
1
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POST OFFICE, HAZLETON
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"was facile princeps among all the good, true, and worthy men that this society has numbered in its long and worthy roll of membership"; of Dr. Melissa A. Bradley, who died in July, 1878, "the first female physician ever elected to membership in a county medical society in Pennsylvania"; of Dr. J. E. Bulk- ley (1825-85) ; Dr. J. B. Crawford ; Dr. Isaac E. Ross, Dr. Gideon Underwood, Civil War surgeons, and subsequently of noteworthy practice in Wilkes-Barre : of Dr. Reese Davis ( 1837-95), who in the last years of his practice was, thought Dr. Taylor, "without doubt the chief surgeon in this part of Pennsylvania"; of Dr. Joseph A. Murphy, also a brilliant surgeon, "the most rapid operator" that Dr. Taylor had ever seen "handle the knife"; also of that "whole-souled companion," Dr. Harry Hakes, who was "by occupation a lawyer" but, to the last. "by inclination, a physician"; also of Drs. Rogers, Corss, Trimmer, Hile- man, Kirwan, Miner, Young, Jones, Shoemaker, Carle, Weiss, Farrell and others, who have passed to the Great Beyond after a lifetime of service to their fellowmen of this planet. Of those who have gone to their last reward after long service in the Hazleton district, Dr. Kudlich names Drs. Hutchison, Casselbury, MacKellar and Doolittle. The physicians of Luzerne County responded nobly to the call for war service in 1917. No less than ninety-four physicians of the county served in military hospitals during the World War. The roll and biographies are given in the Transactions of the Luzerne County Medical Society for 1919 and 1920.
The homeopathic physicians of the county associated in a professional body, for social intercourse and professional and ethical purposes, as early as 1866; and for many years they have maintained an excellent hospital service.
The hospitals of the county are as follows :
Wilkes-Barre General Hospital, which was founded in 1872, and opened as the Wilkes- Barre City Hospital on October 10 of that year. Until 1874 the hospital was maintained wholly by voluntary subscriptions but since then State appropriations have been made. In 1875 a tract of four acres, on River Street near Mill Creek, was donated by John Welles Hollenback, and upon this site during the next year a hospital building, providing accommodation for 75 to 100 patients, was erected. It was opened on April 1, 1876. The hospital has expanded considerably in fifty years. Its capacity in 1926 was 325 beds. Elmer E. Matthews is superintendent.
Wyoming Valley Homeopathic Hospital, at No. 147 Dana Street, Wilkes-Barre, is a general hospital service that has been maintained under homeopathic auspices for fifteen years. Established in 1911, the hospital has grown to a capacity of eighty-five beds. Miss Eva E. Dean R. N., is superintendent.
Mercy Hospital, No. 196 Hanover Street, Wilkes-Barre, is a general hospital conducted by a Roman Catholic order but open to all people, without distinction of class, color or creed. It was founded in 1898, and now has a capacity of 177 beds. Sister Mary Bernard is super- intendent.
Home for Friendless Children, at No. 335 South Franklin Street, Wilkes-Barre, established in 1893 a children's hospital, the capacity of which is now thirty hospital beds. Miss May Blythe is superintendent.
Emergency Contagious Diseases Hospital, East Division Street, Wilkes-Barre, is a municipal service established in 1918, with the city physician, G. A. Clark, in charge.
Nesbitt West Side Hospital, at Kingston, was established in 1912. It is a general hospital of seventy-three beds. Miss May W. Templeton, R. N., is superintendent.
Pittston General Hospital, at Port Griffith, Pittston, was founded in 1892 and now has a capacity of sixty-five beds. Miss Esther J. Tinsley, R. N., is superintendent. A new hospital of seven wards and 140 beds was opened in 1927. Its cost was $300,000.
Hazleton State Hospital was founded in 1889, four-fifths of its original cost being borne by the State. The original hospital plant consisted of two wards of 24 beds each, in "a spacious and elegant building on the hill east of the town." Its present capacity is 131 beds. The medical superintendent is Dr. Walter Lathrop.
Nanticoke State Hospital, situated at Washington Street, Nanticoke, is, like the Hazleton State Hospital, a general hospital service for injured persons of the coalfields in particular.
Nanticoke State Hospital, Washington Street, Nanticoke, was founded in 1908. Like the Hazleton institution, its major purpose when founded was to receive injured persons of the mining district. Neither, however, confines its service to mine-workers. The Nanticoke Hos- pital has a capacity of 95 beds. Dr. E. G. Heyer is surgeon-in-chief and Lillian V. Kilgus is superintendent.
Retreat Mental Hospital, a county institution for nervous and mental cases, was established in 1900, and is under the control of the Central Poor District. Its capacity is 700 beds. Miss Augustine J. Atkinson, R. N., is superintendent.
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Retreat Home and Hospital for Chronic Diseases, is a general hospital of 135 beds. D. A. Mackin is superintendent and the controlling body is also the Central Poor District.
Almost all of the general hospitals have out-patient departments, giving dispensary service to all who need it. The State also has State Clinic No. I at 56 West Union Street. Wilkes-Barre. The Medical Director of Luzerne County is Dr. E. W. Bixby, of Wilkes-Barre, who is also recording secretary of the County Medical Society.
There are several tubercular institutions at Whitehaven. The largest and the oldest is the Whitehaven Sanitarium (Free Hospital for Poor Consump- tives). It was founded in 1895 and has two hundred and forty beds. Miss Anna L. Morris is superintendent. The others are: Sunnyrest Sanitarium, founded in 1901, fifty-five beds ; Fern Cliff Sanitarium, founded in 1894, twenty beds ; Hill Crest Sanitarium, founded 1908, eight beds ; Clair Mont Sanitarium, founded 1910, ten beds.
CHAPTER LI. BANKS AND BANKING.
In the earliest days of white settlement in America, the pioneers, especially in their dealings with the Indians, used wampum as the means of exchange in trading, although where possible the practical and prudent New Englanders preferred to barter product for product. In Virginia bundles of tobacco were the accepted circulating mediums of commerce ; in other settlements stamped wood and leather were taken. Paper money did not come into use in America until the end of the seventeenth century. Massachusetts was the first of the American colonies to issue bills of credit. This experiment was made in 1690, and was thoughtfully followed by at least one interested English financier. William Patterson, then in the colonies, noticed that the Massachusetts bills of credit, payable to bearer on demand and made legal tender in payment of taxes, were confidently accepted by the colonists. He carried the idea to England, and five years later was instrumental in establishing that great banking institution, the Bank of England, which, until after the World War of 1914-18, was to be the banking barometer of the world. Pennsylvania did not follow the example of Massachusetts until 1723, when an emission of $75,000 of paper money was made by the province. All went well until war came. Then it was seen that paper money was not a safe circulating medium. In 1745, the Massachusetts expedition against Louisburg, a Canadian strong- hold of France, shattered Massachusetts credit so appallingly that its paper money could only be exchanged at the rate of eleven dollars for one dollar of silver. Pennsylvania, not having been involved in the military expedition. found its currency almost unshaken. The fall in Massachusetts currency had an indirect effect on Quaker paper, but only to the extent of a fall of the latter to $1.80 of paper for $1 of silver. During the Revolution, however, the case was different. All colonies were involved in the financial chaos that overtook the Confederacy. To meet the extraordinary call for the sinews of war. all the states made emission after emission, and the National body, the Con- tinental Congress, in addition, made stupendous issuances. The intention, of course, was that all should eventually be funded, as the liabilities of the United States of the opening period. The first emission of Continental cur- rency was to the extent of $2,000,000, authorized in May, 1775, and issued in June of that year. Between that month and November, 1779, there were no less than forty emissions of notes, the staggering total being $241,000,000-the liability of a Nation not yet born. In addition, the issuances by the young states, amounted to $209,000,000, backed by nothing more tangible than faith in Congress. The National governing body had repeatedly called upon the State governments, and the states had met the call, without heed to means for redemption. In 1780, the Continental Congress made provision for the accept- ance of paper in place of silver at the rate of forty to one, but "depreciation (of Continental paper) continued until the notes were regarded as worthless," the exchange rate reaching one thousand to one. Ultimately, holders of paper recovered some of their stupendous loss in exchange, for by the Funding Act of 1790, the Continental notes still in circulation were retired at the rate of one hundred to one.
This experience, it may be supposed, was not soon forgotten by the average hard-working citizen. There were no local banks in any colony at that time. and, in their shaken confidence in anything but metallic currency, farmers developed the custom of making produce or merchandise, or something
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equally tangible, serve as the means of exchange in the absence of coin, or specie, as it is termed. There were some private banking houses in Philadel- phia in late colonial times. Wharton and Company was doing business in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, but it was not until 1781 that Robert Morris, in an endeavor to save the National finances from absolute disaster, prevailed upon the Continental Congress to charter the Bank of North America. This National bank was to function from Philadelphia, but it did not come at once into operation. Both Pennsylvania and New York opposed, both doubting the power of Congress to grant the charter. However, in 1782, the State of Pennsylvania incorporated this bank under its own laws. Thus, the first National banking institution of the United States-which indeed were, as yet, all separate distinct independent sovereignties, all watch- ful of State rights and suspicious of control by a National Government- became a State bank of Pennsylvania. The charter of the Bank of North America was revoked in 1785, but again granted in 1787. This pioneer bank- ing house is still in existence, still under the name it was given in 1781.
Robert Morris, Stephen Girard, and some other capitalists conducted pri- vate banking businesses, but no other bank was chartered in Pennsylvania until 1793, when, in granting a charter to the Bank of Pennsylvania, the State subscribed for one-third of its stock. Alexander Hamilton had, of course, by this time overcome popular prejudice and also founded a National bank, the United States Bank, which was to be the strongest financial pillar of the Nation for twenty years, but the Bank of North America and the Bank of Pennsylvania for many years represented the whole of Pennsylvania's effort to encourage banking. Indeed, in most of the former thirteen colonies, finan- ciers were focusing their strength upon the United States Bank, which they sought to destroy. They succeeded in 1810, and for the next five years each State felt itself in full control of its own financial affairs.
The reaction was toward the promotion of State banks. Applications for banking charters were encouraged by most of the State governments. Banks multiplied, and, having wide authority under their charters, currency increased alarmingly. The smallest State banks were authorized to issue paper money, and most of them did so. By 1813, the amount of currency in circulation had increased to $62,000,000. In the next year, in Pennsylvania, specie payments almost wholly ceased and the financial situation went from bad to worse. "The Federal Government had no control over the states, and the states had little over the bankers." In Pennsylvania alone forty-one State banks were incorporated in 1814, some of them destined to have a very short life and to bring embarrassment and bankruptcy to many citizens who had imagined themselves to be well circumstanced.
The Wyoming Valley communities took no part in this era of banking promotions. The settlers were generally substantial in thought and act, if not in purse, and it did not occur to them to seek personal profit in the issu- ance of paper money that they could not support with specie. As a matter of fact, a Philadelphia bank had been stripping the region of its silver for some time. In 1810, the Bank of Pennsylvania, or the Bank of Philadelphia, as its name had become upon renewal of its charter, in 1807, had established a branch in Wilkes-Barre in 1810, on River Street, and for some years had had the confidence of the people, but when, in 1814, a shortage of specie became increasingly apparent to Philadelphia financiers, Wilkes-Barre began to feel it. Stewart Pierce, in his "History of Luzerne County," states that the local branch of the Bank of Philadelphia was closed in 1820. Further, that the effect of its operation "was to drain the county of specie." "At one time," he writes, "Steuben Butler and Col. Bowman, directors of the bank, took $40,000 in silver in wagons to Philadelphia. Philip Reed was the wagoner." This
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drainage occurred in 1814 and 1815 .* In September, 1814, all specie payments were suspended in Pennsylvania, and although "An Act Regulating Banks" which had been passed on March 21, 1814, in Pennsylvania brought forty-one State banks, capitalized at $17,000,000, into operation-or rather into corpo- rate existence, for some of them never functioned-and bound these banks to utter no notes of smaller denomination than five dollars, most of them within a year were issuing notes of one dollar face value and scarcely any true value. They were also showering the country with "bills" of much smaller denomina- tion. Bills of a face value of five or ten cents became commonly circulated. This condition was not local to Pennsylvania. The stringency was felt with equal severity in most states; and in most of them like expedients were resorted to. It was a time of war-protracted campaigns that upset National and State fiscal systems-and the war needs had to be met, whatever might be the resultant financial chaos. It is said that army officers in Wilkes-Barre -which was an important recruiting station-"issued their individual notes for $1 and $2, and these passed as money."
The financial situation did not worry the average citizen. He did not know what bankers knew. Paper money was plentiful. Loans were easy to nego- tiate on doubtful security. Apparently, the country was prosperous. Indeed. realty values began to advance surprisingly, and the absence of specie was not felt. Bankers, however, knew that it was a dangerous artificial prosperity ; and the financial counsellors of the National Government were making desper- ate efforts to stir the United States to action, so that a strong National bank might step into the breach and save both National and State financial systems, by curbing the abnormal issuance of State paper money. These financial counsellors succeeded in reestablishing the United States Bank. The Act of April 3, 1816, rechartered the National bank for twenty years, with an author- ized capital of $35,000,000, of which the United States Government subscribed $7,000,000, also making the institution its agent for negotiating Federal and State loans. The act seated the United States Bank at Philadelphia, with power to establish many branches, each of which would, obviously. be stronger than any local bank. Thus, it is apparent that its establishment boded ill for all unstable State banks. The functioning of the United States Bank brought on a money "panic," by forcing all State banks to resume specie payments in 1817, but undoubtedly the great institution saved National and State credit by forcing to the wall of bankruptcy all State banks that could not resume specie payments. Although the paper emissions of these local banks could not now be redeemed, they were at least prevented from issuing more worthless paper. Of the forty-one Pennsylvania banks chartered for ten years in 1814, six failed to report to the State Auditor-General in 1816, and only twenty-two reported at the end of the ten-year term.
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