History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Part 177

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 992

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In the above list Dr. William Currie was one of the most gifted, and by his writings became most widely known, both in this country and in Europe. His professional studies were conducted under Dr. Kearsley, in Philadelphia, though after his admission to practice he settled in Chester, and there remained, and it was probably about the time of the memorial to Congress that he removed to Philadelphia. He became specially distinguished by his practice and views of yellow fever. He maintained that it was highly contagious. At first he believed that the dis- ease was wholly of foreign origin, but he afterward gave up this opinion, and while he admitted that it might originate from local causes, he never yielded the question of contagion. He discussed the various questions connected with the disease with many of the leading physicians abroad. This correspondence, however, was lost. He published in 1792 his work, " An Historieal Account of the Climate and Diseases of the United States," a most ambitious undertaking for one whose professional engrossments prevented his visitations to the several States whose history in these respects he undertook to give. But he availed him-

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self of all the information he could obtain from every source. His notion appears to have been the collec- tion of all facts possible of ascertainment, with a view some time thereafter to write a more studied and elab- orate account, an intention that was postponed for other work, as his "Treatise on Epidemic Bilious Fevers," his "View of the Diseases Most Preva- lent in the United States," and his "General View of the Principal Theories or Doctrines which have Prevailed at Different Periods up to the Present Time."

The hostility that had been shown in the matter of inoculation was indulged against vaccination, and Dr. Currie was one of those who were specially active in extending the knowledge and blessing of the latter. He was one of the original founders of the College of Physicians, and an active member of the Philosophical Society. His intention had been to publish another more extensive and carefully elab- orated work upon the theory of fever, but his labors had been so arduous, and several domestic afflictions were so grievous, that for several years before his death he was incapacitated for intellectual labor. He died in 1829.

At the death of Dr. James Hutchinson, Dr. John Carson was elected to the chair of Chemistry in the Uni- versity. Heretofore he had been one of the trustees. He accepted the invitation, but died shortly afterward, and without entering upon the duties. Then Dr. | Joseph Priestley was chosen. This is a name quite notable in the history of American literature, though mostly in matters other than those of our present studies. He was an Englishman by birth, educated to the doctrines of the Dissenters, and became one of their leading divines. Several of his sons had gone to America. These he followed, arriving about the year 1794. Soon after his arrival he was offered the professorship, but declined it, and removed to the town of Northumberland, where the rest of his life was spent. He had written quite a number of works be- fore leaving his native country, and many more in this. His publications amounted to more than a hun- dred, on science, politics, philosophy, morals, and re- ligion. Lord Brougham said of him, that of all vol- uminous writers he had the fewest readers, though he pays a high compliment to his genius and personal worth :

" That he was a most able, most industrious, most successful student of nature is clear, aud that his name will forever be held in grateful re- membrance by all who cultivate physical science, and placed among those of its most eminent masters, is unquestionable. That he was a perfectly conscientious man in all the opinions which he embraced, and sincere in all he published respecting other subjects, appears equally beyond dispute. He was also upright and honorable in all his dealings, and justly beloved by his family and friends as a man spotless in all the relations of life."

On the declination of Dr. Priestley, Dr. James Woodhouse was elected, and continued in that pro- fessorship until his death, in 1809. He was a native of Philadelphia, and took his degree of A.B. at the

University in 1787. Afterward he studied medicine with Dr. Rush, taking his degree in 1792, at the first commencement after the union of the college and University. He had borne some part as medical assistant in the army, and had become so distin- guished in chemistry that he was proposed for the chair vacated by Dr. Hutchinson by Dr. Adam Sey- bert, then one of the most eminent physicians in the country. But in this he was defeated. Woodhouse was represented to be a man unusually felicitous, not only in the delivery of lectures, but in the manip- ulation of experiments. Dr. Priestley admired him much, and was fond of expressing high praise of him. He became somewhat of a follower of the doctor's theories, particularly that relating to phlogiston. He was succeeded by Dr. J. Redman Coxe.

Dr. Coxe studied medicine under Dr. Rush, and at London, Paris, and Edinburgh. He was born at Trenton, N. J., in 1773, and settled in Philadelphia in 1796, where he died March 22, 1864. He was port physician in 1798, during the yellow-fever visitation ; was several years a physician of the Pennsylvania Hospital and of the Philadelphia Dispensary ; pro- fessor of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylva- nia in 1809-18, and professor of Materia Medica from 1818 to 1835. He published "On Inflamma- tion," 8vo, 1794; "Importance, Etc., of Medicine," 8vo, 1800; "Vaccination," 8vo, 1800; "Combus- tion," etc., Svo, 1811; " American Dispensatory," 8vo, 1827; "Refutation of Harvey's Claim to the Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood," Svo, 1834; " Female Biography ;" "Recognition of Friends in Another World," 12mo, 1845; edited Philadelphia Medical Museum, 6 vols. Svo, 1805, new series, 1811; Emporium of Arts and Sciences, 5 vols. 8vo, 1813.

He was regarded as one of the most gifted of the medical fraternity of his time, not only in the profes- sion, but in general literature. He gave up the pro- fessorship of Materia Medica in the University in 1835, and was succeeded by Dr. George B. Wood. The same year obstetrics was left by Dr. Dewees, and devolved upon Dr. Hugh L. Hodge.

Dr. George B. Wood was born in Greenwich, N. J., March 13, 1797, and after his graduation at the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania in 1818, was, in 1822, made professor of Chemistry in the Philadelphia Col- lege of Pharmacy, from which he was promoted, in 1831, to the chair of Materia Medica. In 1835 he accepted the chair of Materia Medica and Thera- peutics in the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1850 the position of professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine. In 1860 he resigned this office and retired from professional life. For the preceding twenty-four years he was engaged in medical teach- ing as attending physician to the Pennsylvania Hos- pital. He was a voluminous and successful author. The most famous of his productions, the "United States Dispensatory," survives him, and the latest (the fifteenth) edition has had a very large sale. The

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fourteenth edition, which was published during his lifetime, reached an edition of one hundred and fifty thousand copies. He and Dr. Franklin Bache orig- inally wrote this work for the purpose of creating a uniformity in the practice of pharmacy, and their object was fully accomplished. Dr. Wood's great treatise on the practice of medicine was published in 1847, and rapidly ran through six editions. In 1856 he published a treatise on "Therapeutics and Phar- macology," which reached a third edition. He was also the auther of two volumes of "Memoirs and Addresses and Biographical Memoirs," of the " His- tory of Pennsylvania Hospital," of the "History of the University of Pennsylvania," and of nu- merous scattered papers and reviews. Acquiring a fortune by marriage, and enjoying for many years a large professional income, Dr. Wood was enabled to give great pecuniary aid to various medical institu- tions, and was widely known as a public and private benefactor. Leaving no issue, by his last will and testament about one-fourth of his estate was bestowed upon the University of Pennsylvania and much of the remainder upon various other charities.

Heretofore chemistry had been regarded as a sci- ence not necessarily connected intimately with the profession of medicine, and the trustees of the Uni- versity, putting it in the same category with botany and natural history, had adopted a resolution that it should not be considered as appertaining to the medi- cal department, although, of course, they did not ex- clude physicians from appointment to it. This resolu- tion seemed to the medical faculty to derogate from the repute and the responsibilities of that element of their ! profession. Chief Justice MeKean, a leading mem- ber of the board, to whom complaints had been made in this behalf, requested an opinion in writing from such of the medical faculty as felt most concern upon the subject. At that time Dr. Physick was a member, whom we must mention at some length hereafter. He joined with Wistar, Rush, and Barton in a letter that, concise as it was, put the science on the basis to which it was entitled.1

1 It rone thus, after getting to the subject of discussion, " It is par- licularly expedient that the professor of Chemistry should have a full and extensive knowledge of medicine, becanse very many valuable ar- ticles of the materia medica are derived from chemistry ; and the naturo of these articles can only be understood by a person who has a compe- tent knowledge both of chemistry and medicine. The students, who almost exclusively anpport the professorship of Chemistry, are inducod to do so in consequence of ite application to pharmacy and the different branches of medicine, riz. : physiology, pathology, therapeutics, materin medica, and the practice of physic. No man can teach pharmacy unless be hae had some knowledge of the practice of medicine, and the appli- cation of chemistry to physiology and the other branches of medical science above-mentioned cao ouly be taught by a chemist who under- steods then.

" The teaching of chemistry in this University has hitherto been colt- fined to the professors of medicine, and the success attending this ar- rangement appears to us good reason for continuing it."

After calling attention to the fact that the science was taught by medical professora in all the universities of Europe, except in Sweden, where it was most intimately connected with mineralogy, they sny, in conclusloo,-

Along with anatomy and obstefrie- wa- asociated surgery, and it may well be supposed that Dr. Wil- liam Shippen Junior) had his hands full of other things besides his favorite study. But even in Edin- burgh surgery had not been considered of suficient individual importance to be taught separately from anatomy. The Medical College of Philadelphia hav- ing been founded upon this, the Alma Mater of its first faculty, it was not more than what was to be ex- pected, that the infant might not anticipate the parent institution in new developments. Yet it really did so in this particular. Not that efforts had not been made in Edinburgh to assign a separate chair to surgery. But this was at a time when Dr. MInnro was professor of Anatomy there, and he regarded the movement as an interference with his province, and it was many years before a chair of surgery was thought of separately from anatomy. The separation was made sooner in Philadelphia, and mainly through the efforts of one of the most remarkable men that this country has produced in any department of endeavor.

Philip Syng Physick was a native of Philadelphia, born in 1768. His father, Edmund Physick, had emigrated from England some years before, had held office under the provincial government, and was one of the agents for the Penn family. The son received his preliminary education at the Friends' Academy, in Fourth Street, near Chestnut, then kept by Robert Proud, the historian. The family residing out of town, the boy boarded in the family of a Mr. Todd, whose widowed daughter-in-law afterward became the wife of President Madison. He took his degree of Bach- elor of Arts in 1785 at the University of Pennsylva- nia. Within a month afterward he hegan his medical studies under Dr. Adam Kuhn, the professor of Bot- any and Materia Medica ip the medical college. Here he continued three years and a half.

Dr. Physick was one who seemed to have been driven most reluctantly into the career which he was afterward to adorn. A violent shock to his sensibili- ties, received when witnessing surgical operations and the setting up a human skeleton in the college, which was on Fifth Street, opposite to Independence Square, led him to ask, and even to beseech, his father to allow him to relinquish a pursuit for which he felt himself to be wholly unfitted. But the parent was unrelent- ing, and he went back to his work with a diligence that could not have been greater, if he had felt greatest eagerness to learn its principles and practice its beliests.

It has been regarded fortunate for Dr. Physick that in youth he had not thought of becoming a practical surgeon, and so a greater portion of his studies was devoted to principles, instead of learning the facile

" We beg leave to say that our professor of Chemistry has always taken an active part In the business of the meshical faculty, judging if the qualifications of the respective candidates in every bratu h of their profession, and examining inaugural theses on subjects relating to uredi- cine."

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use of surgical instruments. He set out to learn thor- besides attention to the medical lectures, he became habilitated at the Royal Infirmary. In one year he obtained his degree of Doctor of Medicine, and in the fall of 1792, when twenty-four years of age, returned to Philadelphia. oughly whatever was to be learned, not only in what might become his special pursuit, but whatever might be thought cognate or ancillary to it. While in Dr. Kuhn's office he attended the latter's lectures on bot- any and materia medica, and those of the other pro- The rapid suceess of his predecessors was not to be repeated in his case. They were the pioneers who with abundant facilities had gone upon a field ready for their exertions. Philadelphia was now rich in the fame of its physicians and medical institutions. A young man, however gifted and so known, must wait, especially if like Physick, to be above learning the art to talk of his advantages and put forward his claims. He was one of the last to resort to such arts, and so he long remained without practice sufficient for his maintenance. In speaking of his experience in this behalf, he said once, "I walked the pave- ments of Philadelphia, after my return from Europe, for nearly three years without making as much by my practice as put soles on my shoes, and such were my discourage- ments and dissatisfaction that I would have sold the fee simple of my pro- fession for a thousand pounds, and never again have felt a pulse in the capacity of a physician." fessors in the college. He might have obtained his degree here ; but he determined to study much abroad before setting up in his profession. With this view he went abroad in 1789, and became a pupil and friend of Mr. John Hunter, in London. The latter was then surgeon of St. George's Hospital. There was an an- ecdote characteristic of the abruptness of this emi- nent surgeon. When Mr. Physick, the father, asked what text-books it might be necessary for his son to obtain, Hunter, leading both into the dissecting- room, and pointing to the bodies lying ready for the knife, answered, “These are the books your son has to study; the others are fit for very little." The aptness and fidelity evinced by the student led to his being soon taken as assistant in experi- ments, and when a va- cancy occurred in the of- fice of house-surgeon, he was elected to it on the recommendation of his preceptor. This position was of inestimable ser- vice. While under the pupilage of Mr. Hunter he became associated on friendly terms with others eminent, or soon to be, in the profession, as Jenner, Physik Grey, Kingston, Sir Ev- erard Howe, Mr. Lynn, and Sir Anthony Carlisle. He remained with Hunter about two years and a half. His progress had been it was abated. Some days the deaths were more than so prodigious, and he had in other ways so com- one hundred. The mortality amounted to over three mended himself to him, that he was offered a resi- thousand, an enormous figure for a town of less than fifty thousand inhabitants. Most of those that could get away did so. One of the gazettes, published during the epidemic, in an issue of about the 1st of October, said that at that writing there were not more than three thousand persons left in the city. This statement, however, was an under-estimate, as statistics pertaining to the plague prepared afterward and pub- lished showed. Those who may be inclined to know more extensively of this subject than we can give in a chapter thus limited, are referred to a "statement of the number of houses, deaths, etc., in the respective dence in his house and a partnership. He might have obtained a great practice in London, even upon his own separate endeavors, for it had become to be generally said that his action as house-surgeon at St. George's had placed that institution upon a basis quite above what it had rested upon heretofore. But his intention always had been to return to his native city. And yet he desired to qualify himself yet fur- ther for the needs of his profession. So, after taking his degree at the College of Surgeons in London, he immediately thereafter repaired to Edinburgh, where,

The next year was 1793, notable in the history of Philadelphia for the scourge of the yellow fever. It made its ap- pearance in August, and disappeared only with the coming of frost. Such was the terror of its rav- ages that multitudes fled and remained away until

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streets, alleys, and courts in the city of Philadelphia." The number of dead on Market Street and northward was 1178; south of Market Street, 1068; Northern Liberties and Southwark, 541; in all, 2728. Of the inhabitants, 22,929 remained in the city, and 11,906 fled.

Soon after the appearance of the epidemic, the house known as Bush Hill, the property of Wil- liam Hamilton, was taken by the authorities for a hospital, and Dr. Physick, together with Drs. Cath- rall, Leib, and Annan, attended to patients occa- sionally. The services rendered by Dr. Physick in this trying time, his courage and his skill, served to put him on a better footing than that of the year before, when he was said to have been forced to the necessity for support to agree to practice in several families at a fee of twenty dollars each for the year. He was especially commended by Dr. Rush, with whom he frequently had occasion to consult. Rush wrote an account of the fever, in which he often men- tioned the name of the young physician. In the fol- lowing year he was made one of the surgeons of the Pennsylvania Hospital, and assigned a position in the Dispensary of Philadelphia. After this his rise was easy and rapid.

According to the account of Dr. Rush, there were not very many of the physicians of Philadelphia who, from first to last, remained at their posts. The scourge was so terrific and the mortality so appalling that some of these fled along with the multitudes. Several who remained died while faithfully serving the sick of all conditions. Dr. Physick was one who never left the city, and as a result he could not fail to meet with success. He had been seized with the fever himself, and when restored to health went back to his work. The dread pestilence returned in 1797, and, what is of most rare occurrence, he was seized with it again. Dr. Rush spoke of this as one of the three cases he had known in 1793, and two in a brief visitation of the distemper in 1794. The mortality was very great in 1797, but not equal to that of 1793 in the ratio of the population of the city. It was especially great among the physicians, nine of whom perished. Beside Dr. Physick, Drs. Reynolds, Strong, Boys, Benjamin, Duffield, Hay- worth, Church, and Caldwell were stricken, but re- covered. Contemporary records speak in the highest language of praise of the profession during this season. Among those physicians who fell victims to the disease was Dr. Annan, an attendant at the Bush Hill Hospital, in 1793. Another, Dr. Pleasants, had retired to the country, but feeling himself called on to confront danger, he returned to the city and gave his life as an evidence of the sincerity of his benevolence. The case of Dr. Thompson was of a still more start- ling and melancholy nature. "He had been married in the evening, had gone to bed, and within two hours felt the symptoms of the disorder approaching. The family were alarmed. The bridegroom was re-

moved, and died on the third or fourth day, leaving his unfortunate at once a widow and a bride." 1

The history of the yellow fever in Philadelphia is intensely interesting. During the year 1797 the num- ber of physicians was less than twenty-five. We have seen that eight of this number were carried off by the fever, and a goodly number of the rest lay smitten by it for various periods, leaving only seven or eight to administer to the sick. These had to attend at hospitals and private residences. By this time the hospital at Bush Hill had been fitted up and known as the City Hospital. Through the generosity of several of the citizens, at the head of whom was Ste- phen Girard, it had been remodeled after the expe- rience of 1793, and rendered far more efficacious for its purposes.2 It had been only irregularly that Dr. Physick attended there, and it was owing to Girard that it was put in a condition in which it could render greater good.

After all that Stephen Girard did for the poor of his adopted country, this was his noblest work. When he saw the condition of Bush Hill he set to work to reform it. Ready in his assistance was Peter Hilm, another citizen of foreign extraction. They might have fled with the multitudes who were stricken with panic by the dreaded disease, but they remained behind ; and it is simply wonderful to read of the unflagging charities they bestowed, both in work and in money, in every emergency. All the world knows of the great institution which bears his name, and which he established for the education of the poor. But few know that he took in hand Bush Hill Hospital in the midst of its uulimited disorder and filth, and, day by day, traveled to it on foot and waited upon its inmates, serving in every office, even the lowest and most loathsome. Great numbers of the sufferers languished and died in his arms. What- ever may have been the disgust and horror he felt, he would only dispose the putrid cases with whatever decency was possible, and without resting, and even without stopping to cleanse bimself of the excretions that had been voided upon him, repair to another couch to repeat the role of horror.

In the experience of this remarkable man, some things must have occurred of a striking character which led to the hostility which later in life he felt

1 Dr. John Bell's sketch of Dr. Physick.

" The following account of this hospital na it was in the early part of the epidemic, in 1793, is from Mathew Cary's " Account of the Mallg- nant Fever lately Prevalent in Philadelphia." A profigate, aban- doned set of nurses and attendanta-harlly any of good character could at that time be procured-rioted on the provisions and comforts pre- pared for the sick, who, unless at the hours when the doctors attended, were left entirely destituto of every assistance. The sick, the dying, aud the dead were Indiscriminately mingled together. The br lure an 1 other evacuations of the alck were allowed to remain in the mont vhen- sivo state Imaginable. Not the smallent appearance of order or regn- larity existed. It was, In fact, a grent human slaughter-house, where numerous victime were immolated at the altar of riot and intemper- anco. No wonder, then, that a general dread of the place prevailed through the city, and that a removal to, it was considered as the seal of death."

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toward ministers of the gospel and toward physi- cians. There seems to have been some difficulty in obtaining regular attendance of physicians at the hospital, especially that so many of them had gone away from the city, and it must have been that some of the clergymen, when so many of their flocks had fled, persuaded themselves that it was a greater duty to go in pursuit of the wanderers than remain and perish among the poor, and so leave the former to roam without shepherds. At all events Stephen Girard, rich as he was, selfish as he might be sus- pected of being, stayed with the unfortunate, tended them when sick with his own hands, paid for the ser- vices of the few physicians he could employ, and buried the dead with whatever decency was possible.

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History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Part 177

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co. Number of Pages: 992

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 992