USA > Pennsylvania > The making of Pennsylvania; an analysis of the elements of the population and the formative influences that created one of the greatest of the American states > Part 15
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Her material development and increase in population were, in colonial times, very rapid, and in this respect she surpassed the other colonies. She was almost the youngest of all, for her founding, in 1681, was more
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than half a century after the beginnings of Virginia and Massachusetts, five years after Bacon's Rebellion in Vir- ginia, and many years after the difficulties of Massachu- setts with Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and the Quakers. In fact, all the other colonies, except Georgia, were firmly established and far advanced on their course before Pennsylvania began.
But in spite of this late beginning, Pennsylvania, within a few years, outranked most of them, and before the time of the Revolution stood third, coming immedi- ately after those two great and leading commonwealths of the colonial period, Virginia and Massachusetts. In the present century, New York, which was far behind in colonial times, has risen to the first place, and Pennsyl- vania now stands second.
Being so far advanced in liberal laws and philanthropy, we naturally find Pennsylvania prominent in that other great result of liberty and the Reformation, science and scientific research. In fact, she was the only one of all the colonies where modern science was at all prominent or pursued with anything like ardor and success.
We do not always realize that what is now known as science is only about three hundred years old. It all dates from the Reformation, and from a rather late stage in the Reformation. It is, of course, impossible to fix an exact time for the beginning of such a great movement of thought, which started in numerous and at first imperceptible roots, and grew by steady accre- tion. But the year 1600 is as convenient a date as any, for it was after that year that Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Harvey made their great discoveries.
Since then have been discovered all those laws of
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heat, light, and electricity which nowadays every school- boy must learn. All that is valuable in chemistry, surgery, and medicine has since then come into exist- ence. Geology is of still later date; and to the same period since 1600 are to be assigned botany, biology, comparative anatomy, and a host of other subjects too numerous to mention. When we come to the inven- tions which are the fruits of these sciences, the steam- engine, telegraph, telephone, and the wonders of mechanical and civil engineering, they are all within the present century, and many of them within the memory of persons now living.
About the year 1730 a climax seems to have been reached in the progress of science. There was a sudden outburst of scientific investigation all over Europe, which has continued unabated and even stronger than ever down to our own day. It was at that time that the rakish, witty, verse-making, play-writing Voltaire sud- denly, at the age of forty-one, turned himself into a man of science, and for four years spent laborious days among drugs, test-tubes, and filters. But when this spirit of inquiry, which was expanding France and England, crossed the Atlantic for new fields of conquest it could effect an entrance at first into only one colony, Pennsylvania.
It is interesting to speculate on what would have been the probable effect on Franklin's mind if, instead of | migrating to Pennsylvania at the age of seventeen, he had remained in Boston, where he was born. It is not likely that he would have become a man of science at all, and the discovery that lightning and thunder and the aurora borealis were forms of electricity would have
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been connected with some other name. We have a complete history of these seventeen years which he spent in Boston, and there is nothing to show that at that time he had any inclination or taste for science, or that there was anything in his surroundings which would draw him in that direction.
During those years from 1706 to 1723, Boston and Massachusetts were still thoroughly theological, and continued so, though with less and less intensity, until after the Revolution. The theology was of the objective, dogmatic type, in which facts must yield to principles. It is true that during Franklin's boyhood there was a small coterie of Deists in the colony who gradually developed the unitarianism which in the next century became the prevailing form of Massachusetts religion. Franklin, though a boy, belonged to this set, and it was by them that his religious opinions were formed. But they were few in numbers and seldom dared to express themselves openly.
Franklin is described by his biographers as always at war with the prevailing tone of thought he found in Boston. If he had remained in Massachusetts he might have helped to force an earlier development of unitarian- ism. But he would never have become a man of science, for his whole energy would have been absorbed in merely clearing the ground for the admission of the scientific method, freedom of thought. In Pennsylvania he found the ground already cleared for him, and in all his numer- ous writings there is not a sentence in which he com- plains of any lack of liberty in his adopted colony. On : the contrary it suited him perfectly, and he flourished Į in it.
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In Pennsylvania, in colonial times, the men who be- came conspicuous in the most advanced science of the age, who made original investigations in it and gained a world-wide reputation, were numerous and quite distin- guished. First among them, of course, was Franklin, who, in 1752, made the wonderful discovery that the thunder and lightning of the summer storms and the aurora of the winter were manifestations of the same mysterious fluid which shows itself when glass or am- ber is rubbed with silk. He proved this by a series of ingenious and dangerous experiments which were re- peated all over Europe, and would alone have made him immortal.
He was thoroughly possessed of the new spirit and method. His mind was free, and his whole life was passed in original research. He could not live or move without making some sort of investigation. He arranged his house with a set of lightning-rods, connected with bells in such a way that the bells would ring whenever the air was unusually charged with electricity, or a thunder-storm passed over, often to the great alarm of his wife.
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He invented the lightning-rod. He discovered the phenomenon of positive and negative electricity. He explained for the first time the action of the Leyden jar. He studied storms and their causes, the wind, rain, atmosphere, water-spouts, and whirlwinds. By careful observations he established the fact that the northeast storms of the Atlantic coast usually move against the wind, and he was the first to call attention to other similar phenomena which are now familiar to every one.
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There is scarcely a single one of the modern sciences
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the elements of which were not more or less developed by him. He was the first man who wrote in English on the modern science of political economy, and he sug- gested some of the principles which are now elementary in it. It was a chance sentence of his that aroused Malthus to develop his peculiar theory of population, and when that theory was attacked some of its oppo- nents thought that the surest way to weaken it was to strike at the original source, and prove not that Malthus, but that Franklin was wrong.
The unrestrained condition of thought in Pennsylvania affected a large part of the community, and aroused other men besides Franklin. He had three intimate friends, Ebenezer Kinnersley, Thomas Hopkinson, and Philip Syng, who experimented in electricity, sometimes in company with the great master, and sometimes by themselves. Indeed, Franklin was at one time accused of having stolen some of his discoveries from Kinnersley. They undoubtedly gave him much assistance, and made many small discoveries, no one of them very important in itself. But science is largely made up of an aggre- gation of trifles. Thus, Hopkinson revealed the power of points to throw off electricity as well as to receive it, and Syng invented a new electrical machine. But the important thing to notice about these men was, that they were entirely devoted to original research and discovery, and cared for past knowledge only as it contributed to progress.
The man who ranked next to Franklin in Pennsylvania science was David Rittenhouse. On his father's side he traced his ancestry to Holland, but his mother was a Welshwoman. He was a mathematical genius, invented
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the metallic thermometer, developed the construction of the compensation pendulum, and made valuable experi- ments on the compressibility of water.
But the most prominent act of his life was the part he took in observing the transit of Venus in 1769. Up to that time this interesting phenomenon of such rare oc- currence, and so important to astronomers, had never been carefully observed, and accuracy in it had become more necessary than ever, because, as had been pointed out, it would afford the best data for calculating the dimensions of the solar system. Elaborate preparations were made in Europe; and the various governments dispatched astronomers to Hudson's Bay, Otaheite, Cal- ifornia, and Pekin.
At the suggestion of Rittenhouse, Pennsylvania alone of all the American colonies decided to take observa- tions of her own; and it is another striking instance of the wide spread of the scientific spirit in the colony that the whole community were interested in the under- taking.
The Legislature, the public institutions, and even the economical proprietor, Thomas Penn, supplied funds and apparatus, and the preparations were in charge of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, the only organiza- tion of its kind in the colonies. Three points of obser- vation were selected,-Cape Henlopen, Philadelphia, and Norriton, the home of Rittenhouse ; and apparatus was obtained for all three. When the reports were sent in, not only from the three Pennsylvania observations, but also from the others in different parts of the world, the practical skill or Rittenhouse as an observer became so apparent, that he at once achieved a world-wide reputa-
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tion. He had constructed with his own hands all the apparatus he used at Norriton, and, not content with that, had, immediately after the emergence of the planet, made the first correct determination of a solar parallax.
He excelled in every undertaking which required the practical application of astronomy. His orrery was an advance on all others, and instead of giving only the apparent movements of the planets, as had formerly been done, it gave their real movements. This achieve- ment added greatly to his fame abroad. His first orrery was bought by Princeton College, and he had to build a second to be bought by the University of Pennsylvania. The Legislature of Pennsylvania then voted him three hundred pounds as a testimony to his mathematical genius, and also appropriated four hundred pounds to buy from him an orrery of double the dimensions of the other two.
Another Pennsylvanian who gained a world-wide repu- tation in science was John Bartram. He was the first botanist who described the plants of the new world, and in this pursuit he explored the whole country from Lake Ontario to Florida. Botany at that time had received an immense impulse and had been turned into a modern science by the classification of plants invented by Linnæus. His classification extended beyond the sphere of botany, and he advanced the whole subject of biology by showing for the first time the true principles for defining genera and species. Linnæus and Bartram were almost exact contemporaries, being born within six years of each other, and dying, Linnæus in 1778 and Bartram in 1777.
On the banks of the Schuylkill, within the present
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limits of Philadelphia, Bartram established the first botanic garden in America, and the remains of it are still to be seen. He was appointed by the crown American botanist to the king, with a small pension, and Linnæus pronounced him the greatest natural botanist in the world.
Bartram's botanic garden was laid out on part of his farm at Gray's Ferry, where the highway from Philadel- phia to the south and west passed over a floating bridge on the Schuylkill. The garden is now preserved as one of the city parks, but is in an unpleasant neighborhood, surrounded by gas-works and factories. In Bartram's time, however, and long afterwards it was an attractive spot and one of the favorite drives from the city. Trav- ellers to and from the Southern States always passed that way. Washington and the other great Virginians often crossed that floating bridge, and were frequently guests at Bartram's house.
For many years his house was the resort of all the distinguished foreigners who came to Philadelphia ; and they usually went away charmed with their Quaker host's intelligence, learning, and simplicity. Franklin, Rittenhouse, Wilson, Rush, Shippen, and all the early distinguished physicians of Philadelphia were his friends. The "Washington Room" in the house is still pointed out. There is still in the garden an enormous cypress, which he brought home from one of his trips to the southern swamps; also a cider-mill and a horse-trough, both hewn out of solid rock, and near by can still be seen the head-stone which marks the grave of a favorite slave, whom he is said to have buried with his own hands.
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Thomas Godfrey was a mathematical genius who might have been almost the equal of Rittenhouse if it had not been for his habits of intemperance and his early death in his forty-fifth year. Besides showing great brilliancy in unimportant matters, he succeeded in making a permanent improvement in the quadrant, for which the Royal Society gave him two hundred pounds' worth of furniture,-a form of reward which, it was hoped, might not be consumed in drink.
There were, of course, other men in the colony who were much interested in science, without becoming world-wide in their reputation, like Bartram, Rittenhouse, and Franklin. For example, Dr. Benjamin S. Barton, after practising medicine with great success for many years, was appointed in 1789 to the professorship of botany and natural history in Philadelphia College, now the University of Pennsylvania. This was the first pro-
fessorship and he was the first professor of these subjects in America. He wrote a number of books, which are said to have laid the foundations of the American school of natural history. Among his works are the first American book on elementary botany and the first American book on materia medica. His nephew became a distinguished surgeon, and lengthened the long list of Philadelphia's famous physicians.
Alexander Wilson, the first American ornithologist, should be mentioned in this connection. He was born in Scotland in 1766, and came to Pennsylvania when he was twenty-eight years old. He cannot be claimed as altogether a Pennsylvanian, but it is noteworthy, that, although he showed some taste for natural history while in Scotland, he never did any serious work in it until he
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had lived for some time in this commonwealth, and con- versed with Bartram, who turned his attention towards birds.
Wilson started on his first expedition into the woods in 1804, and from that time the volumes of his work began to appear. He was the first man to describe, from actual scientific observation, the birds of North America. Books have since appeared which perhaps excelled his in the engraved plates, although even in this respect Wil- son's drawing was admirable. But no writer on the same subject has excelled him in power of description, and to this day he remains a classic.
Audubon, the other distinguished American naturalist of that time, was also closely connected with Pennsyl- vania. He was born in Louisiana in 1780, but came to live in Pennsylvania with his parents when he was eighteen, having previously spent a couple of years in Paris, where he learned to draw under David.
Pennsylvania had the same effect on Thomas Nuttall as upon Wilson. Nuttall was a journeyman printer, born in England, who came to Philadelphia in 1808, when he was about twenty-two. He was brought in contact with Professor Barton, who persuaded him to study the trees of North America, and he very soon be- gan travelling over the continent, and penetrated to the Pacific Ocean, a great feat at that time.
He returned by sea from the coast of California on the same ship in which young Richard Henry Dana, of Boston, was a common sailor. He is described in Dana's " Two Years Before the Mast," from the point of view of a Jack-tar who had a supreme contempt for the seedy and sea-sick professor. But Nuttall survived it. He was
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at one time curator of the botanic gardens at Harvard, and his three volumes of "North American Sylva," to- gether with his other books, are still standard authorities.
It is, perhaps, a significant fact that Joseph Priestley, a very distinguished man of science, who discovered oxygen, furnished the means of discovering several other gases, and who is often spoken of by his eulogists as the creator of modern chemistry, sought Pennsylvania as
a refuge. He was so outspoken in his views, he carried the deductions of science so far in advance of his time, and he was so radical in politics that he was persecuted in England, and on one occasion the mob destroyed his house, library, and manuscripts. He fled to Pennsyl- vania in 1794, and spent the remainder of his days at Northumberland, at the forks of the Susquehanna.
The favorable conditions which existed in Pennsyl- vania for the growth of science are further shown by the rapidity with which the study of medicine was de- veloped there. The great discoveries in medicine and surgery, as in every other science, have been made since the Reformation, and are the result of the new mode of reasoning which it introduced. What was known before that period is mere nothing to what has been discovered since.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the ad- vancement in this most useful of occupations was con- siderable, and among the colonies in America, Pennsyl- vania was the first to be affected by it. The first Amer- ican book on a medical subject was a little volume by Dr. Thomas Cadwallader, treating of the iliac passion, and written and published in Philadelphia in 1740. The first American hospital was established in Philadelphia
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in 1751, by the efforts of Dr. Bond. The first separate dispensary was also founded there in 1786, and there had previously been one connected with the hospital.
To the same city is also due the honor of the first medical school and the first systematic teaching of medi- cine. The medical department of the University of Pennsylvania was started in 1765. But a regular course of medical lectures had been delivered since 1762.
All this was in advance of any of the other colonies. New York followed closely after with a medical school attached to King's College in 1767. But it was sus- pended by the Revolution, and not started again until 1792. It was not by any means successful until 1813, when, several other medical schools springing up, it was united to the College of Physicians and Surgeons, which has now become famous.
Boston had no medical school until 1783, no dis- pensary until 1796, and · no general hospital till 1811. New York started a hospital in 1773, but before the building was entirely completed it was burnt, and, the Revolution intervening, it was not rebuilt till 1791.
Boston, however, must be given the credit of intro- ducing inoculation for the small-pox as early as 1721. But it was introduced by the ministers, headed by Cot- ton Mather. There was only one regular graduate in : medicine at that time in Massachusetts, Dr. William Douglass, and he opposed it.
Dr. Rush, Philadelphia's first great physician, has been frequently called the Father of American Medicine. He was a curious man, very much devoted to the prac- tice and teaching of his profession, and yet at the same time taking considerable part in politics. He signed the
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Declaration of Independence, and was a member of the cabal which attempted to deprive Washington of the command and put Gates in his place. He was positive in his opinions, reckless and violent in stating them, and got into some fierce medical controversies, especially on the subject of the yellow fever. Most opposite opinions of him have been expressed. His admirers describe him as " a brilliant star in the galaxy of American worthies," and associate his fame with Howard, Sydenham, and Washington. Others, who happened to dislike his theories, describe him as a writer of “ utter nonsense and unqualified absurdity," of " unintelligible and preposter- ous assertions."
But his reputation went far beyond his own State and country, and his fame in Europe was by no means trifling. Since his time Philadelphia has never been without one or more physicians of national and European reputation. The line begins with Rush, Morgan, and Shippen, and comes down unbroken through Wistar, Jackson, and Barton, to Mitchell, Gross, Agnew, and others of our own time. All through the colonial pe- riod, and down to the middle of the present century, Philadelphia was the centre of medical education in this country, and still retains a large part of this pre-eminence.
The first scientific society in America was founded at Philadelphia, and called the American Philosophical Society. It still exists, and retains its valuable library, manuscripts, and rare collections. It was organized at the suggestion of Franklin in 1744, but was rather un- successful for some years, until, in 1769, it was joined by the famous Junto, another society of very much the same character, also founded by Franklin. He was for a long
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time the president of the Philosophical Society, and was succeeded by Rittenhouse. Thomas Jefferson and other prominent persons throughout the colonies were mem- bers, and during the colonial period it was the only society of its kind in the country, and held a very prom- inent position.
Philadelphia is still the home of learned societies. The Academy of Natural Sciences, founded there in 1812, is the oldest as well as the most complete institu- tion of its kind in America. The most prominent names in American science are on its rolls. It has the largest collection of shells in the world, and until within a few years had the largest collection of birds. Its library is also unrivalled.
It has been built up by the individual efforts and do- nations of Philadelphians, and by the natural interest in science which has always existed in the city. Until within the last few years it had received no assistance from the State. Taken as a whole it is equalled only by institutions in Europe which have received frequent aid from the government.
It has taken active part in several important Arctic expeditions, among them that led by Dr. Kane in 1852 and the one led by Dr. Hayes in 1860. Both Kane and Hayes were Philadelphians and members of the academy.
When we examine carefully into the early history of this institution, which grew so rapidly to such large pro- portions, we find that it was not founded by professional and distinguished men of science, nor by men of wealth who were seeking to perpetuate their names, but by plain, ordinary persons who represented the average ability and feeling of the city.
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The founders were John Speakman, an apothecary, and Jacob Gilliams, a dentist. They were young men who had a taste for natural history as amateurs. They were joined by others, also apparently average men. At their first meeting they decided that the "operations of nature demanded unprejudiced attention and severe scrutiny ;" that sectarians had always been "prone to oppose the promulgation of any newly discovered fact which seemed to militate against their dogmas ;" there- fore they excluded from their debates all discussion of religion or even reference to it. They also put politics under the same ban.
They began in a small room over a milliner's shop, on Second Street, where they placed their first few speci- mens and books. Other young men have often begun similar collections, but their seed was not sown in such fertile soil. The score or so of rocks and bottles of the young dentist and the young apothecary drew their vig- orous life and rapid growth not so much from their first owners as from the fruitful, scientific feeling of the city in which they were placed.
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