History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Part 180

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

USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Philadelphia > History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884 > Part 180

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).

A pupil of Dr. Thomas T. Hewson was Dr. Wil- liam Pepper, who was born in Philadelphia, Jan. 21, 1810, and in October, 1828, graduated with the highest honors at Princeton College. In the autumn of 1829 he entered the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating March 29, 1832, and spend- ing the summer of the latter year at the Bush Hill Hospital, during the prevalence of the cholera. He ocenpied the ensuing two years in study in Paris and travel through Southern Europe. In 1834 he returned to Philadelphia and took charge of one of the dis- triets under the care of the Philadelphia Dispensary, being also resident physician at the Pennsylvania Hospital. In 1832 he became a member of the Phil- adelphia Medical Society, in 1837 a member of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, and in 1839 Fellow of the College of Physicians, as well as one of the physicians at the Wills Hospital. In 1841-42 he was chosen physician to the Institution for the Instruction of the Blind and visiting physician

1615

MEDICAL PROFESSION.

to the Pennsylvania Hospital. In April, 1851, he entered into membership of the American Philo- sophical Society, and on June 5, 1860, he succeeded Professor Wood as professor of the Theory and Prac- tice of Medicine in the University of Pennsylvania, where he remained until his death, which occurred Oct. 15, 1865. In June, 1840, he was married to Miss Sarah Platt, of Philadelphia, and left seven children, one of whom, Dr. William Pepper, is now (1884) the distinguished provost of the University of Pennsyl- vania, and professor in the medical department.

Dr. Charles Caldwell, who held the chair of Natu- ral History in the University, was the son of an Irish officer who had emigrated to North Carolina. He was born in what is now Caswell County, . of that State, May 14, 1772, and in 1792 arrived in Philadelphia, where he entered the medical classes of the University and studied under Shippen, Wistar, and Rush. On the breaking out of the Whiskey In- surrection he was appointed surgeon of a brigade and proceeded with the forces to the neighborhood, when the difficulty was declared to be terminated and the troops retired. In the military banquet which followed, the management of the affair was assigned to Dr. Caldwell, whose address drew forth a liberal compliment from Alexander Hamilton. In 1795 he began his literary career by translating Blu- menbach's "Elements of Physiology," and he was thereafter the author or translator of many other medical works. In 1814 he succeeded Nicholas Bid- dle as editor of the Portfolio, writing articles that were chiefly biographical, or reviews of the promi- nent books of poetry of the day. He was, as we have stated, professor of Natural History in the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania, but in 1819 removed to Ken- tucky, where he took charge of the chair of the In- stitutes of Medicine and Clinical Practice in the Transylvania University, at Lexington. He had to create a prestige for medical education throughout the whole region, and he managed to secure funds from the Kentucky Legislature. In 1820 he went to Europe for the purpose of getting books and materials for the University, from which he withdrew in 1837 to establish the Medical Institute in Louisville, where he died July 9, 1853.

Dr. Isaac Cathrall was a native of Philadelphia, and, after studying in London, Edinburgh, and Paris, he returned home in 1793. In the yellow fever epi- demic that ran through the years up to 1799 he was remarkable for his attention to the victims and his close investigation of the disease, concerning which be issued three treatises, one of them being a " Me- moir on the Analysis of the Black Vomit," contend- ing that the vomit might be safely tasted. He died Feb. 22, 1819, aged fifty-five years.

On the death of Dr. Wistar, in 1818, the chair of Anatomy was given to Dr. John Syng Dorsey, a nephew of Dr. Physick. He was born in Philadel- phia, Dec. 22, 1783, son of Leonard Dorsey, and

grandson of Edmund Physick, and, after studying with his uncle, became an M.D. at the age of eighteen. He visited France and England, and returned home in 1804. In 1807 he was elected adjunct professor of Surgery, and succeeded Dr. Wistar as professor of Anatomy. On the evening of the day when he pro- nounced his eloquent introductory lecture he was at- tacked with fever, and in a week died, Nov. 12, 1818. As a surgeon he was scarcely rivaled. Besides papers for the periodical journals, and an edition of Cooper's "Surgery" with notes, he published "Elements of Surgery," two volumes, 1818. His death devolved anatomy upon Dr. Physick, with Dr. William E. Horner as adjunct, when Dr. Gibson became professor of Surgery.

The career of Dr. William Gibson is one of the most distinguished in the history of medicine. He was born in Baltimore, March 14, 1788, and was edu- cated at St. John's College, Annapolis, and Princeton College, taking up the study of his profession under Dr. Owen, of Baltimore, in 1803. After a preliminary course at the University of Pennsylvania he became another of the American alumni of Edinburgh, and in London sat under the teachings of Sir Astley Cooper and Mr. Abernethy. In 1812 he was ap- pointed to the chair of Surgery in the University of Maryland, removing to Philadelphia in 1819 to fill the corresponding position in the University of Penn- sylvania, which had been vacated by the transfer of Professor Physick. He published in 1824 his "Institutes and Practice of Surgery," of which six editions were issued between that year and 1841. In 1847 he again visited Europe, and died at Savan- nah, Ga., March 2, 1868.

In the same year that Dr. Dorsey was appointed to the chair of Anatomy, Dr. John Redman Coxe was made professor of Materia Medica and Chemistry ; that left by him in the University was bestowed upon Dr. Robert Hare, who filled this chair from 1818 to 1847, and during his long course of research and experimenting accumulated a vast store of in- struments and materials. IIe devoted great labor and skill to the construction of new and improved forms of the voltaic pile, and he invented the deflagra- tor that was of so much value before the discovery of the constant battery, which has superseded for practi- cal use the old voltaic pile forms. He formulated a theory of whirlwinds and storms upon an electrical hypothesis that since his death has been broadened into the scientific explanation of the causation of cyclones. He was one of the few life-members in his day of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, to which he gave all his chemical and physical appa- ratus, which thus became the property of the nation.

Dr. Hare was born in Philadelphia, Jan. 17, 1781, and was associated with Professor Silliman in the in- vention of the oxyhydrogen blowpipe, which was the earliest and one of the most remarkable of his con- tributions to science. Iu later years lie constructed

1616

HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA.

the apparatus on a gigantic scale, with large vessels of wrought iron capable of sustaining the pressure of the Fairmount Water-Works, and with this powerful combination he was able, in May, 1858, to fuse at one operation fifty-three ounces of platinum. The employ- ment of Dr. Hare's jet to illuminate light-houses and signal-reflectors, under the names of the Drummond or calcium light, is only another mode of ignoring the name of the real discoverer or inventor, of which the history of science presents so many parallels. He died May 15, 1858.

Dr. Samuel Jackson, born at New Garden, Chester Co., Pa., Ang. 27, 1788, was the fourth in descent from the Isaac Jackson who came from England in 1725. Dr. Jackson passed through the Friends' Latin Academy in Philadelphia, and on May 12, 1812, was graduated from the medical department of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania. After practicing in Phila- delphia a year, and being appointed a physician in the Pennsylvania Hospital, he removed to North- umberland County, where he remained until 1837. In that year he returned to Philadelphia and was elected a member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, in which he was censor for some years. He was a most prolific writer on medical and general topics, and was the author of the life of Dr. Rush, at whose advice he had gone to Northumberland, and also the memoirs of several others of his brother-phy- sicians. In 1852-53 he was president of the Phila- delphia County Medical Society, and on retiring delivered, by request, an address on medical educa- tion. He died at his home, Pine Street, Philadelphia, Dec. 17, 1869.

Dr. Joseph G. Nancrede, a contemporary of Dr. Gibson, was born in Boston in 1793, and lived with the family in Paris until 1808, when they fled to America to escape Napoleon's conscription. In 1816 he opened an office in Philadelphia, and became the popular physician among the French families. Jo- seph Bonaparte, the ex-king of Spain, was his patient during his residence in this country. Dr. Nancrede was the first to perform in this country the Cæsarean section, which was so happy in its results that both the mother and child survived. He married a daugh- ter of Commodore Truxton, and died in 1856.

Dr. Franklin Bache, ex-president of the American Philosophical Society, vice-president of the College of Physicians, professor of Chemistry in the Jefferson College, and one of the authors of the "United States Dispensatory," was born in Philadelphia, Oct. 25, 1792, and died March 19, 1864. He graduated as Bachelor of Arts and as M.D. from the University of Pennsyl- vania, and, after spending three years in the army as surgeon, went into practice in Philadelphia.

lege of Pharmacy ; and in 1841 was appointed pro- fessor of Chemistry in the Jefferson Medical College, a position held by him during the remainder of his life.

Professor Bache contributed largely to the medical literature of the country. He wrote a number of works on medicine and chemistry, of which the "United States Dispensatory," under the joint au- thorship of Dr. George B. Wood and himself, has a world-wide reputation. As a member of the pub- lishing committee of the " United States Pharmaco- pœia," he also contributed much of the most valuable matter contained in that work. Besides being a most active Fellow of the College of Physicians of Phila- delphia, he was a vice-president of the Medical So- ciety of the State of Pennsylvania, of which he was a permanent member. He assisted in organizing the American Medical Association, of which body he continued a member up to the period of his death, and strongly urged its resuscitation by sending dele- gates to its proposed meeting at Chicago. He was also a member of the Philadelphia County Medical Society from April, 1849, and was much interested in the promotion of its objects. At the time of his death he was president of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum. He was the eldest son of the eldest grand- child of Benjamin Franklin, a brother of Col. Hart- man Bache, of the United States Engineer Corps, and a first cousin of Professor A. D. Bache, superintend- ent of the coast survey. A daughter and four sons survive him, three of the latter being in the govern- ment service.

Dr. Antoine Bournonville, born in Lyons, France, Aug. 6, 1797, was a graduate at Copenhagen, in 1818, of the Royal College of Denmark in medicine. He practiced his profession in that city, and was a sur- geon in the Danish navy for several years. After traveling in Siberia and the north of Europe, he re- mained for a short time in the island of St. Thomas, West Indies, and crossed to Philadelphia in 1825, where he married Charlotte Abadie. He then located himself in Norfolk, but after the birth of his eldest son, Dr. A. C. Bournonville, he took up a permanent residence in Philadelphia. Desirous of having the de- gree of M.D. conferred upon him by a Philadelphia medical school, he graduated at the Jefferson Medical College in 1848. He was a member of the Philadel- phia County Medical Society and of the College of Physicians, consulting physician to the French and German benevolent societies, and one of the trustees of the Girard bequest to the Masons, of which order he was a prominent member, and for two years Grand Master. He was a member also of the order of Odd- Fellows, and belonged to numerous charitable insti- tutions. Notwithstanding Dr. Bonrnonville had so extensive and varied a knowledge of disease in all its forms, and, from close observation, having great ex- perience, he never left to the profession a record of his opinions or a monograph on any medical subject.

From 1824 to 1836 he was physician to the Walnut Street Prison ; from 1826 to 1832, professor of Chem- istry in the Franklin Institute; from 1829 to 1839, physician to the Eastern Penitentiary ; from 1831 to 1841, professor of Chemistry in the Philadelphia Col- . Dr. Bournonville was the first (about the year 1859)

1617

MEDICAL PROFESSION.

to prescribe as an antiseptic and caustic the perman- ganate of potassium. He retired from professional work in October, 1862, and died Feb. 27, 1863.

Dr. Samuel Henry Dickson, born in Charleston, S. C., in September, 1798, graduated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1819, and forty years later was summoned to Philadelphia to take the chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Jefferson Medical College, which he filled until his death, in 1872. Of him it has been truly said that "his name is identi- fied with the history of medicine in America." "His culture was many-sided : he was scholar, poet, historian, philosopher, as well as physician; and more than one literary journal has spoken of him as remarkable among the authors of the day for his graceful diction. Attracting them by his intelli- gence and refinement, he had formed warm friend- ships with many of the most distinguished men of his time; and such was the charm of his society and the pleasing character of his manners that to have been his friend once was to remain his friend. His influence over young men was remarkable; and no teacher influenced his classes more, did more to edu- cate them by his example, was more solicitous of their welfare than was Dr. Dickson. Partly for these reasons, partly from the singular ease of de- livery and fluency natural to him, and which he began to exhibit when a young man, he became one of the most celebrated and popular teachers in the United States; and whether as professor in the med- ical college of Charleston, at the University of New York, or at the Jefferson Medical College in Phila- delphia, aided largely in the success of any school to which he was attached, drawing to his lectures many eager listeners. Nor was Dr. Dickson simply the brilliant teacher and accomplished writer. While in Charleston, and before his health began to give way, he enjoyed a large practice, possessing in a remark- able degree the confidence both of the public and his professional brethren. In his many medical writings much of the experience thus gained is referred to, and, as was his wont, commented upon with the acuteness and breadth of view which distinguished him. Whether we regard him as physician or as man, he was an ornament to his country."

Dr. Wilson Jewell was born Nov. 12, 1800, and when the University of Pennsylvania graduated him, in 1824, he made a voyage to China as medical officer of the ship " New Jersey." Thence he sailed to Cal- cutta and London, and spent a year in travel. In 1828 he located in his native city of Philadelphia, having in 1825 married Miss Rachel Lyon. He was a member of the commission of three that, in 1832, visited Quebec to learn something of the pathology and treatment of the cholera. In 1837 he was in- duced to go to Illinois in an enterprise that termi- nated most disastrously for him, and after his return to Philadelphia, in 1839, he was quite satisfied to re- main. He held such offices as president of the Board

of Health, and in 1857 president of the Quarantine and Sanitary Commission that met in this city; in 1864 president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, and in 1862 vice-president of the American Medical Association. It was mainly due to his efforts that the law was passed for the collection of vital statis- tics. His first wife died in May, 1865, and in 1867 he married Miss Charlotte McMullen. While they were traveling in Europe symptoms of disease ap- peared on him, and he died soon after his return home, Nov. 14, 1867.

Dr. Jonas Preston, a Welshman, who settled in Delaware County, Pa., had a son who was born in that county in 1764, and died in 1836. The son was the second Dr. Jonas Preston, and he amassed the very large fortune-as financial accumulations were considered fifty years ago-of four hundred thousand dollars. He endowed, with a quarter of a million dollars, the Preston Retreat, but a large part of the fund was lost in the collapsed banks of 1857 and in the Schuylkill Navigation Company.

Dr. Adam Seybert, for eight years a member of Congress from Philadelphia, died in Paris May 2, 1825, bequeathing one thousand dollars for educating the deaf and dumb, and five hundred dollars for the Orphan Asylum of Philadelphia. He was particu- larly skillful as a chemist and mineralogist, and was the author of the "Statistical Annals of the United States from 1789 to 1818."

As early as 1816 pharmacy received a distinct rec- ognition at the hands of the trustees in the person of Dr. James Mease. Dr. Mease was the first vice- president of the Philadelphia Athenaeum, and a man of great wealth. He did not largely engage in the practice of his profession. He was a member of the Philosophical Society, and contributed by his writ- ings to many other institutions, scientific and literary. He died May 15, 1846, in the seventy-fifth year of his age.

In 1825, Dr. James, in the chair of Midwifery at the University, finding it necessary to have assistance on account of his age and infirmities, Dr. William P. Dewees was made his adjunct. Two years after- ward the University was yet further distinguished by the election of Dr. Samuel Jackson as adjunct in the chair of the Theory and Practice of Medicine.

Dr. Samuel Jackson, born in Philadelphia, March 22, 1787, was the son of Dr. David Jackson, of Chester County, who was one of the first class of graduates upon whom the degree of Bachelor of Medicine was conferred by the College of Philadel- phia in 1768, and subsequently became one of the trustees of that institution. The younger Dr. Jack- son had the benefit of studies in the othces of Dr. Thomas Hutchinson, Jr., and Professor Wistar, and took his degree of M.D. at the Pennsylvania Uni- versity in 1808. When war was declared between Great Britain and the United States, in 1812, he en- listed in the First Troop of Philadelphia Cavalry,

1618

HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA.

and took part in the advanced movements for the protection of the city from invasion. The autumn and early part of the winter of 1814 were spent at Mount Bull, Md., in observing the movements of the enemy, then in the waters of the Chesapeake, or in hiding as a scout between that post and Philadel- phia. He was elected president of the Board of Health March 10, 1820, and when Philadelphia was scourged by the yellow fever he exhausted himself in the service of the sorely-stricken community. He has left a graphic and important record of the epi- demic which he read before the Academy of Medi- cine in 1820, and which was a highly valuable scien- tific investigation of the causes, progress, and cure of the disease. In 1821 he was appointed professor of Materia Medica in the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, having been chairman of the committee which presented the plan for its foundation. He was also one of the first trustees of the college. The next year be was elected an attending physician of the Philadelphia Almshouse, where he was deeply interested in developing the practical usefulness of auscultation, then a new feature of practice. He lectured weekly at the almshouse from 1822 to 1845, when more pressing duties forced him to retire. He was chosen, in 1827, by Professor Chapman as his assistant in the chair of Theory and Practice of Medi- cine, Clinical Medicine, and the Institutes of Medicine in the University of Pennsylvania. The delivery of the lectures upon the last-named subject was the espe- cial duty of Professor Jackson. The winter of 1830-31 was remarkable for the interest awakened by the public discussions before the Medical Society of Phil- adelphia, and the champions of opposing views were frequently Professor Jackson and Dr. Daniel Drake, who, for a season held the chair of Institutes and Practice of Medicine in the Jefferson Medical Col- lege. In 1832, Dr. Jackson was a member of the commission of those delegated by City Councils to investigate the Asiatic cholera then prevailing at Quebec and Montreal, and concerning which he pub- lished several papers. In 1835 he was made pro- fessor of Materia Medica in the University of Pennsyl- vania, which he resigned in 1863. He died April 4, 1872.

The two Parrishes, Joseph and Isaac, father and son, are prominent figures in the medical history of Philadelphia. Dr. Joseph Parrish, born in this city, Sept. 2, 1779, graduated from the University of Penn- sylvania in 1806, and in the beginning of his prac- tice was appointed resident physician in the Yellow Fever Hospital. He was subsequently consulting physician to the Philadelphia Dispensary, surgeon to the Philadelphia Almshouse, and surgeon to the Pennsylvania Hospital. He died March 18, 1840, just after having published his last work upon hernia. Itis son, Dr. Isaac Parrish, studied under him, and also graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. The younger Parrish spent the last year of his pupil-

age in the Blockley Hospital, and his experience therein suggested to him the subject of his thesis upon spinal irritation. In 1834 he was elected one of the surgeons of Wills Hospital, to which he was ardently devoted until his death, July 31, 1852.

In 1830, Dr. Horner, by the resignation of Dr. Physick, became full professor of Anatomy. So, in 1834, on the retirement of Dr. James, Dr. Dewees became full professor of Obstetrics. The importance that obstetrics gained under Dr. James was greatly enhanced under Dr. Dewees. He had settled, upon his graduation, at Abington, but the prevalence of yellow fever brought him, in 1793, to Philadelphia, where he remained ever afterward. Having been early devoted to obstetrics, he made that branch of science his special study in the leisure he could find from professional duties. Like Shippen and James, he had had a world of prejudice to encounter, yet he persevered, and he was said to have been the first physician who had ever delivered a full course of lec- tures, and that upon his own responsibility. He had applied for the professorship in the University when it was first created, but failing in this, became adjunct in 1825, with the reversion that came on afterward. He died in 1841.1

The men who came on after the great lights we have sketched were fully up to the standard. Hare had studied chemistry under Woodhouse. His in- ventions and discoveries in chemistry, and the appa- ratus needed for its experiments, are known to the whole world. At his death, in 1858, he was succeeded by Dr. James B. Rogers.

Dr. Rogers was born in this city, Feb. 22, 1803, and studied at the University of Pennsylvania, Wil- liam and Mary College, at Williamsburg, Va., and the University of Maryland, at Baltimore. In 1819 he was appointed professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry at William and Mary College, and in 1840 he returned to his native city, where in the next year he succeeded Professor John Kearsley Mitchell as lecturer in the Philadelphia Medical Institute. He was connected with the Franklin Col- lege, and when, in 1847, the chair of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania became vacant by the resignation of Professor Hare, he became the successor of the same eminent teacher to whom his father had succeeded twenty-eight years previously. Dr. Rogers died June 15, 1852.

When Dr. Hare was brought from William and Mary to the University of Pennsylvania, he was suc- ceeded at the former by Dr. Patrick Kerr Rogers, father of Dr. James B. The latter received his col- legiate education at William and Mary, and for some time after his graduation practiced medicine in the

" The medical faculty stood thus in 1835: Nathaniel Chapman, Prac- tice of Medicine and Clinical Medicine; Robert Hare, Chemistry; Wil- liam Gibson, Surgery ; William E. Horner, Anatomy ; Samuel Jackson, Institutes of Medicine; George B. Wood, Materia Medica aud Pharmacy ; Hugh L. Hodge, Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children.

1619

MEDICAL PROFESSION.

State of Maryland. In 1841 he took charge of the Medical Institute of Philadelphia, a summer school in connection with the University, that had been es- tablished by Dr. Chapman. Like that of Dorsey, his career, so full of promise, was cut off by death in 1852, when he was succeeded by his brother, Dr. Robert E. Rogers.

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.

History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Part 180

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