History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 86

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1 H. C. Lodge, Hist. of the Eng. Col. in America, chap. xili.

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quacks. The services rendered to the progress of medical science by the profession in Pennsylvania were as great if not greater than in any other colony, and were in themselves very considerable. Inocula- tion was successfully introduced in 1731, although not without the usual hard contest with existing preju- dices. Three years later, Dr. Thomas Cadwalader, a graduate of the London schools, published an essay upon the "Iliac Passion," the first medical essay pro- duced in Pennsylvania, and one of the earliest which appeared in the colonies. About the middle of the century he began to lecture upon anatomy, and was the pioneer in this branch of medical instruction. He was also one of the first physicians appointed to the hospital founded in Philadelphia in the year 1750. Ten years later, Dr. William Shippen began a course of anatomical lectures in a private house, and by these small beginnings he and his friend, Dr. Morgan, suc- ceeded in starting the medical college which in the year 1765 was ingrafted upon the University of Penn- sylvania. Dr. Shippen subsequently did much to raise the practice of midwifery from the rule of thumb methods of the old women, who had a monopoly of this department. These energetic and able men, among whom Dr. Rush, famous also by his contro- versy with Cobbett, held a leading place, were fair examples of their profession. They were men of family, position, and wealth, were educated abroad, and were adherents of the English school. They not only did much to advance medical science in America, but they helped to break the old tradition of barbers and apothecaries, which even now weighs upon med- icine in England, and to put the profession in its true position, and to render it attractive, honorable, and desirable to men of all ranks and of the highest at- tainments.

The people of Westmoreland were fortunately fa- vored in early having good medical practitioners among them, but these were few, and complaint was made that even then the status of the profession, taken generally, was not high.

In an article prepared for and published in The Greensburg Gazette in June, 1824, entitled "The Medi- cal Character of Westmoreland County," the writer took special occasion to refer to the necessity of legisla- tive action for the protection of the medical profession, and to show at length the evil effects of quackery in the profession at that day. It is probable that the article might have been instigated by personal motives; but even if it was, the character of the contributor, who was evidently a practitioner in good standing and a com- petent authority, entitles it to our observation. We give the latter part of the article entire as a contribu- tion to the medical literature of the county :

" But let us," he says, " proceed to the more imme- diate object of this communication, viz., a review of the medical character of this county, from which it will appear whether a few salutary restrictions on the practice of physic would not procure more whole-

some effects than some of the alterations in our tariff that have called forth so much eloquence and argu- ment from some of the first men of the nation.

"There are about forty persons in this county who follow the practice of medicine for a living. But how few of this number are entitled to the honorable epithet of physician? Not more, I will venture to say, than one-fourth. There are a few gentlemen of that profession who hold a distinguished rank, who have been gifted by nature with comprehensive, vigorous, and penetrating minds, and who have pre- pared themselves for the important duties of their station by a regular and systematic education-men to whose skill and honesty I would cheerfully in- trust myself if in need of their assistance; but the fact is notorious and unanswerable that it is but a small minority that merit this character. Much the greatest number come under a very different descrip- tion, a description easily drawn by reversing that which has just been given.

" Encouraged by the total want of anything in the laws of Pennsylvania regulating the practice of physic, as is customary in all well-regulated govern- ments, and in most of our sister-States, an establish- ment was formed in this county many years since by a notable junto of quacks. Perhaps their history should be more distinctly traced to one individual, whose name is familiar to almost every person in the county, a man who but a short time previous to his settlement here is said to have laid aside the more creditable employment of a blacksmith,-a business certainly not well calculated to fit him for his new profession. With scarely as much knowledge of his mother-tongue as would enable him to read a common English author, and not as much as would enable him to write legibly, without any knowledge of dis- ease or the nature and power of remedies, or of the structure of the human system, he began his career, depending wholly and solely on his cunning, his effrontery, and his ignorance.

"As there are materials in human nature of every grade and description, this man soon found subjects on whom to commence his operation. To those who were of the most ignorant class, and who are always disposed to lend their belief to what is marvelous and incredible, he told the most wondrous tales of cures and opera- tions that he had performed elsewhere. When ap- plied to, even in trifling cases, his first object was to put some terrific name upon the disease, and alarm the patient as much as possible by pointing out the danger of his situation. For instance, a common cold would be called ' catarreous fever,' or ' consumption ;' a disordered stomach would be called 'scurvey of the stomach,' and an innocent wart a 'cancer.' In this way not only the patient himself, but whole neighborhoods were led to believe that cures which were in fact no cures were performed by him, and were to be consid- ered as most astonishing evidences of his skill in the healing art.

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" Another method pursued by this ' mighty mock de- frauder of the tomb' was to follow business wherever he could find it when business did not follow him,-to take patronage, as it were, by storm. For instance, did he hear of a neighbor being sick, under the sem- blance of benevolence and disinterested love, he would take his horse, visit him, and tender his services. If he had children to vaccinate, he would expatiate on the dangers of smallpox and the efficacy of vaccination, and humbly request the privilege of performing the service, waiving altogether for that time the idea of compensation. This, however, would serve for book entry and after-consideration.

"In short, no species of villany, hypocrisy, or de- ception was left unresorted to, and it is truly aston- ishing with what success he employed them, for it is to be confessed, to the disgrace of the good sense of the country, that his business extended far and wide.

" I have been thus particular in describing the char- 'acter of this individual because, as he was the origin of a regular system of quackery in this settlement, be has ever stood the envied sample of imitation for that batch of young adventurers who have passed under his talismanic touch, and issue forth under the im- posing name of ' Yankee Doctors.'

"These creatures he was in the habit of gathering up in dozens from the rejected filth of society, drill- ing them a few weeks in the art and mystery of quackery, and then sending them forth to prey upon the vitals of the community. And of this same fra- ternity are many professors of the healing art at pres- ent in this and the adjoining counties. Their progress can be traced in whatever direction they have gone by the numerous victims to their rashness, ignorance, villany, and seduction. Many a father mourns a promising member of his family nipped by their rude hands in the blossom of life; and many an innocent but senseless girl points to them as the authors of her crime and the murderers of her peace."

Not many fields more congenial to the quack and the empiric could be found than the back country of Western Pennsylvania some three generations ago. It was not until the warm sun of enlightenment had well-nigh reached the noonday height of this cen- tury that the phantoms of a traditionary superstition one by one fled before his penetrating rays from their latest lurking-places in the dusky abodes of credulity and ignorance. At this day, it cannot be gainsaid, traces of the same credulity still exist, but they now exist as the nature of the wolf exists in the habits of the house-dog. This credulity is now covert; it was then open and palpable. And even in districts not accessible to the doctor of the nearest village, or among those who were too poor or too mean to ask the services'of a doctor, there was always some one in the neighborhood who stood ready to cure and heal by virtue of occult mysteries. The flow of blood was stopped by reading a passage from the Scripture; spells of acute forms were traceable to the manifesta-

tion of evil spirits; and even chronic and constitu- tional disease in their worst forms, and for which medical therapeutics to this day has failed to pre- scribe a cure, were brought within the list of curable amictions which such miserable knaves professed to heal

Empiricism and quackery have existed in the hon- orable profession of medicine from time immemorial. It is the peculiarity of quacks that they are as out- spoken against regularly educated physicians as they are forward in professing their own systems and ob- truding their knavery upon a helpless following. 80 it is related of Paracleus, the prince of empirica, that he treated his contemporary physicians with the most scottish insolence and illiberal vanity, and told them that "the very down on his bald pate had more knowledge than all their writers, the backles of his shoes more learning than Galen and Avicenna, and his beard more experience than all their universitica." This man flourished in the fifteenth century, near Zurich, in Switzerland, and under the shadow of a famous seat of learning. But he scarcely professed to greater and more numerous cures than Dr. Ormsby, and had no panaces more efficacions in his dispensary than was to be found in the saddle-bags of the ma- jority of country doctors two generations ago. Blue- mass was to these what the holy ointment of Fierabras was to Don Quixote.

But the land was then cursed not only with quacks but also with knaves. Of the presence of these med- ical impostors-used for want of a better addition- there is abundant evidence. Of one, the most con- spicuous of these, we shall have something to say after, however, dwelling at some length upon one who has been regarded with the greatest veneration in his pro- fession, and who was an ornament to it and a blessing to his race.

JAMES POSTLETHWAITE.

James Postlethwaite, the subject of this memoir, was the seventh son of Samuel and Matilda Postle- thwaite, citizens of Carlisle, Cumberland Co., Pa. He was born in that town on the 12th of January, 1776. His father, Col. Samuel Postlethwaite, was a plain, sensible citizen, who was respected for infiex- ible integrity, and very much liked on account of his mild, friendly, and amiable disposition. He died at an advanced age, in his garden, of an attack of apoplexy. He was born in this country, but was of English descent. Goldthwaite, Cowperthwaite, Thistlethwaite, and Postlethwaite are all names of Teutonic origin, and not uncommon in Yorkshire and the north of England.

. The maiden name of the mother of Dr. Postle- thwaite was Matilda Rose. Her father was a lawyer, distinguished in his profession for unusual ability.

Pre-eminent among the early physicians of West- moreland was Dr. James Postlethwaite.

It is a loss to the little world of Western Pennsyl-

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vania, says his biographer,1 that Dr. Postlethwaite had no fidus Achates to preserve and transmit his col- loquial remarks, for they are certainly more worthy of a place in libraries than a large part of the " Con- versations" and "Recollections," "Ana," "Table- Talk" that have been recorded and preserved for future generations. But all this is somewhat digres- sive, and so revenons a nos moutons.

James Postlethwaite was placed at a very early age at a grammar school, which was under the superin- tendence of the celebrated Ross, a most accurate and learned linguist, whose grammar of the Latin lan- guage was so long the one used in American acade- mies and colleges, and where the accidence of Latin is so simplified and its acquisition so facilitated that it has all the information contained in the Scottish and English classical grammars, without any of their laborious and painful pedantry. With such a pre- ceptor, Teucro auspice et Teucro duce, how could Pos- tlethwaite fail to attain an extensive and critical knowledge of Latinity ?

Dickinson College, at Carlisle, was then regarded as one of the best institutions of learning in the United States. It was then under the control of the Presbyterian denomination, at that time the most wealthy and numerous body of Christians in Penn- sylvania. For more than a score of years it has been in the hands of the Methodists, and, without meaning any disrespect to that religious sect, it may be stated that Dickinson has degenerated from its former high character. It may be that hitherto Methodism has depended too much upon divine assistance, and neg- lected the carnal means for the acquisition of knowl- edge. This neglect or contempt of mere human or secular knowledge is not sustained by the authority or examples of Holy Scripture, for worldly wisdom and useful knowledge are subjects of fine and frequent praise in the sacred writings. Moses was imbued with the profound erudition of the priesthood of Egypt, and the Apostle Paul knew so well the histrionic lit- erature of Greece that he could embellish his dis- courses with extracts from their dramatice writers as readily as an English divine can adorn his sermons with quotations from Shakspeare: for example the following line from Euripides, which, quoted by the apostle, and thus made well known, has passed into a proverb in nearly all Christendom, " Evil communi- cations corrupt good manners."

When Dr. Postlethwaite was a youth a liberal edu- cation was then far more limited than it is at present. For instance, Dr. Postlethwaite was considered to be well educated in his day, and yet, although a first- class Latinist, he knew nothing of Greek beyond the alphabet. For enlarged and liberal education at that time the American people had not the opulence, the books, or the speedy and constant communication

with the old seats of learning in Europe. Often, too, the pressing necessities of existence, limited means, and large families forced men upon the stage of life before they had acquired a complete preparation.

At an early age James Postlethwaite left college, and in June, 1792, commenced the study of medicine in the office of Samuel A. McCoskey, a successful and popular practitioner in Carlisle. The extent of his acquirements at his time of life was a matter of gen- eral astonishment. He was indebted for them in part to himself, and in part to nature. His ardor in pur- suit of knowledge was indefatigable, and the ease with which he unfolded the intricacies and evolved the complications of any subject, no matter how recondite, appeared not like the effect of study, but like acts of intuitive apprehension.

Sir Walter Scott had not yet shown mankind what wonders could be worked in the field of romantic fiction, and the sun of Lord Byron had not arisen to attract and awe the learned world by its lurid splen- dors. The genius, learning, and taste of Robertson, Hume, Goldsmith, Smollett, Gibbon, and Rollin had illuminated and popularized historical researches, and this renascency of this kind of learning in the latter half of the last century, along with a natural inclina- tion of mind on the part of James Postlethwaite, had caused the careful perusal of history to be a daily duty with him, and by the change itself constituted an amusement in the intervals of severe professional study that ultimately tended to the invigoration of his mental powers, while at the same time it fur- nished him with a fund of accurate and .extensive historical information, which armed him cap-a-pie in religious and political controversy. Of all the muses he liked Clio best, the heroic muse of history, and his heart kept time to the grand strain wherewith the poet salutes her, and which bursts upon the car like a full band of martial music,-

" Quem Deum, or Heros lyra, vel acri Tibia ramus celebrare, Olio?"

In 1795 and 1796, James Postlethwaite went to Philadelphia to obtain medical instruction in the University, and its rolls bear evidence of his matricu- lation. He had the rare felicity of listening to the wisdom of those Esculapian sages who first gave the medical school of Philadelphia the high reputation it has since enjoyed. These eminent physicians and lecturers were Drs. Shippen, Wistar, and Benjamin Rush, who were seldom equaled and never surpassed by those who succeeded them ..

In 1794 there had been an insurrection in Western Pennsylvania to resist the payment of a small tax laid upon whiskey by the Federal government. Al- though a youth in years, yet a man in knowledge, James Postlethwaite had accompanied the military expedition west to quell the rebellious rising in the capacity of an assistant surgeon. He so well liked the country west of the mountains that when he had

1 James Johnston, Enq., to whom we are much indebted in this sketch, and for other personal reminiscences.

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finished his medical education he resolved to locate himself in Westmoreland County.

In 1797, mounted on horseback, he directed his course towards the new home of his destination. He did not depart joyously, like a young man full of animal spirits and the love of adventure. It was with a heavy heart, and eyes moistened with tears that he halted on a hill westward of his native place and took a long, mournful, lingering look over it and its beautiful scenery. Nearly all love their native places, but Carlisle had reasons peculiar to herself for the at- tachment of her children. Carlisle was the centre of an intelligent, handsome, and well-mannered popula- tion, in a rich and highly-cultivated agricultural dis- trict. It possessed one of the best institutions of learning in the United States. It had been a British military station before the Revolution; there were re- mains of old-fashioned, old-world manners, and when Dr. Postleth waite migrated there were still reminis- cences of ruffle-shirted, silk-stockinged, periwigged, red-coated officers, who had jigged and jilted, floun- dered, flounced, aud fluttered before the deluge of the Revolution among the fair dames and damsels of the valley of the Cumberland. But though Carlisle be a bonny town, Dr. Postleth waite was forced to leave it, and at length found himself located in the quiet and sequestered village of Greensburg, in the backwoods county of Westmoreland. However, his body only was in Greensburg, for his heart was in the environs of Carlisle, in the safe custody of Miss Elizabeth, daughter of James and Margaret Smith, old and highly-respected citizens of Cumberland County, who resided near Carlisle. To recover joint possession of this important corporeal appurtenance, Dr. Postle- thwaite returned to Cumberland, and was, married on the 11th of April, 1799, to the aforesaid Miss Smith. There are very few couples that ever suited one an- other better than his lady and Dr. Postlethwaite, and they lived in a state of uninterrupted connubial hap- piness until their separation by his death. This mar- riage had been one of affection, not of convenience or interest. They possessed health, quiet, and compe- tence, and were blessed with a family of healthy, handsome children.

When Postlethwaite first established himself as a medical practitioner in Greensburg, being a consci- entious man, he felt the full responsibility of his duties, and so he arduously studied the best authors of the old school of medicine,-Cullen, Sydenham, For- dyce, Rush, Darwin, and Abernethy. In addition to the mental exertion necessary for this professional study, he, in common with other country physicians, was forced to undergo an amount of bodily labor equal to that of a coach-horse. It will be remembered that when Dr. Postleth waite began to practice medicine in Westmoreland, and for a score of years afterwards, there were not even turnpike roads. Travel by steam, both on water and land, was unknown, and convey- ance was slow, laborious, and expensive. Population

was sparse, the country wild and covered with forest, and the roads rough, crooked, billy, and dangerous. The shops of apothecaries and medical prescriptions were rare or unknown, and every village physician was obliged to carry his drug-shop in his saddle-bags. In addition to his ordinary duties, a country physician was expected to pull teeth, bleed, extract wild hairs, and usher children into this world of woe, or, in other words, act as physician, surgeon, optician, dentist, nurse, and man-midwife.

In Scott's story of " The Surgeon's Daughter" there is a description of the rough life of a village doctor in a rural district of Scotland, which is not altogether unsuited for that of a medical practitioner in West- moreland in the beginning of the present century. The Scottish country doctor, like the ghostly lover in Burger's German ballad of Leonore, mounts his horse at midnight, and traverses in the darkness paths which to those unaccustomed to them seem formid- able even in daylight.

"Let the wind bowl through busb and tres, This night he must away ; The steed is wight, the opar in bright, He cannot stay till day.

"And hurry ! hurry ! off be rides As fast as fast might be ; Sparn'd from the coareer's thund'ring heels The fleshing pebbles flee."

For these nocturnal rides through a wild and rough country, at the risk of life and limb, the compensation was very inadequate to the toil and danger. Besides attending to all the cases in his own vicinity, the country physician was at the command of every one within a circuit of forty miles.

The celebrated traveler, Mungo Park, who had ex- perienced both courses of life, gave the preference to traveling as a discoverer in the deserts of Africa to wandering by night and day as a medical practitioner in the wilds of a country district in Scotland.

All this is bad enough, and perhaps the description is too highly colored to suit our country ; but still it was no amusement for ladies to ride in a dark and stormy night, in a matter of life and death, over shocking roads, through the long and dark woods of Westmoreland.

Dr. Postlethwaite soon obtained a good practice, and throughout his life stood at the head of his pro- fession in Westmoreland. But his education, his obscure location in a backwoods village, in absence of suitable incitements to ambitious exertions, and the diversion of his mind to studies outside of his pro- fession prevented Dr. Postlethwaite from attaining the highest medical position, such a status, for ex- ample, as that held by Addison, of Pittsburgh. In addition to what knowledge could be gained in this country, the eminent physician, Addison, had studied surgery in Edinburgh, chemistry in Leyden, and walked the hospitals in London. Moreover, in a city there are more opportunities 'of information than in the country. The rewards and honors of persons

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eminent in the profession are much greater, and as there is more competition the faculties must be con- centrated on professional studies, and not applied to extraneous subjects, or allowed to stand in a state of stagnation. But according to good and sound opinion, the professional standing of Dr. Postlethwaite was highly respectable. He was well versed in the doc- trines of the old and established school of medicine. He had clear perceptions of the nature and seat of morbid action, and great readiness in the application of suitable therapeutical means to relieve pain and remove disease.

In discharging the duties of his profession his de- portment was always extremely kind. He appeared to feel deop sympathy with suffering humanity, and this attracted to him the hearts of his patients. To his professional brethren his conduct was always urbane, and he towered as far above the low back- biting and petty jealousies of his profession as the summit of a snow-clad mountain above the unwhole- some vapors that settle at the foot. In dealing with patients he presented an example of high-toned integrity and charitable feeling now almost unknown in the profession. He was not an avaricious man, yet he asked a fair compensation for his services, and at one time of his life was willing and anxious to accumu- late a competence " for the glorious privilege of being independent."

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History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 86

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor Publication date: Publisher: Number of Pages:

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor
Publication date:
Publisher:
Number of Pages: