Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II, Part 71

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716

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there was promise of a revival of commerce with the rebuilding of Long Wharf from the proceeds of the lottery granted in 1795.

EARLY PROVIDENCE DOCTORS-John Green, surgeon, who removed from Providence to Warwick in 1641, was the earliest physician in the northern part of Rhode Island. If any other medical doctor came to the northern towns earlier than 1700, he did not tarry long enough to become a freeman. Dr. Richard Bowen settled in Seekonk, two miles from Provi- dence, about 1680, and thereafter visited the sick in Providence and Rehoboth. His grand- son, Dr. Jabez Bowen, settled in Providence about 1700, practiced his profession and founded a family, members of which in succession were doctors in Providence for over a century. Dr. Ephraim Bowen, direct descendant of Dr. Richard Bowen, of Seekonk, and of Dr. Jabez Bowen of Providence, died in 1812, leaving two doctor-sons, Dr. William Bowen and Dr. Par- don Bowen. Other early Providence physicians were Dr. John Walton, who entered the Bap- tist ministry after practicing medicine; Dr. John Bass, who resigned from the Congregational ministry in 1758 to practice medicine; Dr. Robert Gibbs, who was a teacher of medicine as well as a physician; Dr. David Vandelight, graduate of Leyden University, who married a daughter of the Brown family, and with her brothers conducted a commercial manufacturing business capitalizing the doctor's knowledge of chemistry; Dr. Thomas Truman, who was a member of the Providence school committee in 1785, when it included merchant princes and representatives of the learned professions of law, medicine and theology; Dr. Amos Throop, student of Dr. Jabez Bowen and Dr. Robert Gibbs, who began practice in Providence in 1738; Dr. Levi Wheaton, who was instructed by Dr. William C. Bowen after service as an assistant in a Revolutionary military hospital ; Dr. Solomon Drowne, graduate of Rhode Island College in 1773, student for a year with Dr. William C. Bowen, and later graduate of the school of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Vandelight died in 1755, Dr. Bass in 1762, Dr. Gibbs in 1769, and one Dr. Jabez Bowen in 1770. Of Dr. Gibbs it was said that he was the first Providence surgeon who dissected dead bodies to demonstrate his instruction in anatomy and to determine the cause of death by postmortem examination.

The Providence doctors maintained the traditions of the profession by educating other doctors to be their successors, but none of them except Dr. John Green and Dr. Vandelight had been trained in any of the European schools of medicine. In this respect they differed from their Newport brethren. With the passing of the older doctors, Dr. Ephraim Bowen and his two doctor sons, William and Pardon; Dr. Amos Throop, Dr. Levi Wheaton and Dr. Solomon Drowne remained to carry on the healing arts past the end of the eighteenth century. All these doctors had part of their medical education from members of the Bowen family of doctors. Dr. Throop was appointed as town physician in Providence in 1774, and helped to organize hospitals for smallpox inoculation. This preventive practice was stimulated later by lessons learned in the war; General Washington, after the trying experiences of early cam- paigns, was convinced of the utter futility of enlisting soldiers who were not immune to small- pox, and the army regulations required inoculation in detention hospital before departure for the front of men who had not already had smallpox. Dr. Throop, because of fortuitous error, was able to supply medicine for large numbers during the Revolutionary War. Hav- ing sent to England an order for medicines by one vessel, following the common practice, he sent a confirmatory order by a second vessel, thus to assure delivery, but did not indicate that the second order was merely precautionary. Both messages were received in England, and the doctor received duplicate consignments. His embarrassment was turned to joy later, when, with war a fact, he was in possession of supplies that were invaluable after the source had been cut off. Dr. Levi Wheaton entered hospital service in 1778, and continued as a student. Four years later, serving as surgeon on a privateer, he was captured by British, and

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by them placed in charge of the sick on the prison ship "Falmouth" in New York. Thus he had abundant opportunity for experience, from which he confirmed his belief in the efficacy of bleeding, emetic, cathartic, and opiate-the "four horsemen" of the old school.

Other Rhode Island doctors of the eighteenth century included: Dr. William Bradford, who studied medicine with Dr. Ezekiel Hersey of Hingham, who settled in Warren first and Bristol later and practiced in both towns, and who later studied law, and entered politics; Dr.' Joshua Babcock, native of Westerly and graduate of Yale, who practiced medicine in West- erly from 1724 to 1783 ; Dr. Joseph Torrey, also Congregational minister, who settled in South Kingstown in 1730, and practiced medicine until his death in 1783. Other doctors there were, probably, whose names were not recorded in public records nor preserved in private docu- ments. The number of physicians and surgeons in the eighteenth century was reasonably commensurate with Rhode Island's needs, and the distribution, with emphasis on aggrega- tion in the larger towns, was not widely variant from conditions in the nineteenth and twen- tieth centuries. Doctors settle in populous centres, and the rural population of Rhode Island was scarcely more remote in the early centuries from access to the services of a physician or surgeon than it is at present. Dr. Amos Throop is credited with being the first Rhode Island physician who included obstetrics in his practice; this function, so significant in modern med- ical procedure as to suggest specialist and separate hospitalization, was in the eighteenth and earlier centuries relegated to women midwives. Those were times in which natural bone- setters reduced dislocations and fractures, barbers opened veins and applied leeches, charla- tans and quacks sold panaceas, old women gathered herbs and roots for curative teas and tonics, and the effectiveness of a concoction was related to its unpleasantness to the taste. The pioneer settlers in America and others who followed them brought with them from the mother country a knowledge of the traditional materia medica of herbs and roots, and in America increased their knowledge by what they learned from the Indians, who had a materia medica of the same sort almost as extensive as that of Europe. Treatises on medicine were included among the few books occasionally listed in the inventories of estates in probate in Rhode Island, indicating the precaution taken in anticipation of pioneer life remote from a doctor. Yet Rhode Island was well served by physicians and surgeons through the period from 1636 to 1800, and, what is more remarkable, by an unusual number of doctors who had been trained in the best medical schools of Europe. The larger number of the latter among the Newport doctors may be attributed to the facts of population, wealth, social activity and cul- ture which induced the Dean of Derry to tarry in Newport in the golden age in which New- port was a Venice in commerce, an Athens in philosophy, a Florence in the magnificence of its grandees, and a Rome in its assumption of the title of "metropolitan."

EPIDEMIC DISEASES-Additional to strange diseases in a new land, including maladies affecting sinus, mucous membrane, tonsil, speech and respiratory organs to such an extent that New Englanders are accused by their English cousins of breathing through the mouth and talking through the nose, colonial doctors encountered epidemics of smallpox and malignant fevers which they were poorly prepared to combat. In this connection it should be remem- bered that the conquest of smallpox is due principally to Jenner's discovery of vaccination in 1798, and that the microscope and bacteriology have furnished the information necessary for preventing other epidemic diseases only in comparatively recent times. Smallpox was epidemic in 1690-1691, and again in 1716; a mysterious fever called "burning ague" in 1732, and yellow fever from 1795 to 1805. Smallpox was so common in years in which it was not epidemic that public action was taken from time to time to combat it. The General Assembly enacted a quarantine law in 1712, and four years later Newport established a smallpox hos- pital, or pesthouse, on Coaster's Harbor Island. Bristol in 1732 and Providence in 1751, the

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latter with financial assistance from the general treasury, established pesthouses, principally for smallpox. Others were established ; Providence had three, one each at North Providence, Field's Point and Tockwotton, in 1776.

Dr. Jonathan Easton of Newport introduced inoculation with a mild type of smallpox as a preventive of the malignant form in 1772. There was serious opposition to proposed legis- lation authorizing inoculation, the General Assembly took no action, and inoculation continued as a private rather than a public health measure. Public opinion changed somewhat with recognition of the merit of inoculation; it was practiced as a war measure under military authority during the Revolution, and eventually towns established inoculation hospitals. Oppo- sition lingered in Providence ; so late as 1789 106 citizens petitioned the town council not to "allow inoculation to be carried on in the hospital in this town." Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse of Newport, first American physician to use Jenner's discovery, introduced vaccination in Newport. Again, as in the instance of inoculation, opposition yielded to public recognition of merit. Sylvanus Fansher vaccinated 4305 persons in Providence in 1810, charging the town $233.25 for service, or little more than five cents per capita. Relatively there were few cases of smallpox and no epidemics after vaccination as a public health measure had become firmly established.

The fever epidemic of 1732 continued four months ; the disease was fatal in twenty-three of twenty-five cases. The malady of 1795-1805 was called variously malignant fever, putrid fever, and yellow fever. Sporadic cases, afflicting residents of Providence and sailors return- ing from southern voyages, occurred in 1791, 1793, 1794 and 1795. Forty-nine persons died of the fever in Providence between August 18 and October 9, 1797, and the town was busy with preventive measures relating to speedy and private burial of the dead, removal of infected persons to isolation hospitals, cleaning and disinfection of insanitary places, and the burning of tar, resin and other naval stores making heavy, black smoke. The epidemic reappeared in Providence in the summers of 1798 and 1799. The malady was brought to Newport in 1800 by the United States Frigate "General Greene"; in Providence in the same year 100 persons were treated, of whom fifty died. The epidemic waned in successive summers, and ceased in 1805. Doctors of the period disagreed as to (1) methods of treatment; (2) medicination ; (3) sources of infection ; (4) conditions of contagion. One patient survived the "no less than 125 grains of calomel" administered in two days! The identification of the mosquito as the active agent in carrying yellow fever was not determined until near the end of the nine- teenth century. Yet the mosquito was the differential factor that explained the recurrence of the disease as a summer epidemic in Rhode Island, and the reason for the dispute between doctors as to the possibility of contagion "in fine atmosphere," or "pure and freely circulating air." Newport had less yellow fever than Providence because there were fewer mosquitoes in Newport ; this, in turn, was due to the higher velocity of air movement near the seacoast than thirty miles inland. The alleged advantage of smoky fires as a preventive lay also in the mosquito's dislike for pungent smoky odors. Dr. Charles F. Bartlett of Newport recom- mended that the "General Greene," frigate, be sunk "to her lower deck in salt water for at least a fortnight" as "the most likely means of cleansing her from the infection." The doc- tors who were active during the yellow fever epidemic included Ephraim, Pardon and Wil- liam Bowen, John Mason, Amos Throop and Levi Wheaton of Providence; and Charles F. Bartlett and Isaac Senter of Newport.

The aged Dr. Levi Wheaton called a meeting of physicians at the State House in Provi- dence on June 19, 1832, to consider the menace of Asiatic cholera, which was then sweeping across the country from Atlantic ports of entry. Drs. Wheaton, Joseph Mauran and Thomas H. Webb were appointed as a committee on precautionary measures, and recommended quar- antine against infected localities, removal of filth, suppression of insanitary nuisances, and

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isolation hospitals. Drs. Mauran, Webb and Samuel B. Tobey visited New York to study the disease, and reported their observations when, eventually, they reached home. On their return they landed at Seekonk instead of Providence, which was quarantined against New York, proceeded to Pawtucket, were excluded from houses on the way, were kept outside Providence and fumigated before they were permitted to enter. The cholera reached Rhode Island in spite of quarantine, being attributed to "the cholera atmosphere." It did not become epidemic, however, although twenty-five of thirty-six cases in Providence were fatal. In 1849 150 persons died of Asiatic cholera in Providence, and in 1854 159. The study of the disease convinced the physicians of the period that filth and other insanitary conditions establish the location of infection, assuming the presence of "the cholera atmosphere." Similarly an epidemic of malaria in 1880 was related to stagnant ponds, the mosquito escaping indictment for his part in spreading the diseases because he was not suspected. An epidemic of diph- theria in 1876 and 1877 caused more than 600 deaths, and in 1889-1890 influenza was epi- demic, affecting not less than one-third of the population. The reappearance of influenza dur- ing the World War occasioned many deaths and much suffering; doctors disagreed as to the identity and nature of the disease, as to the methods of treatment, and as to the source of infection. The mosquito could not be blamed for this winter malady. One of the most suc- cessful practitioners, who lost no patients during the epidemic, diagnosed and treated it as a tropical fever which he had studied while in service as a naval surgeon.

MEDICAL SCHOOL-The fifth American medical school* was established as a department of Brown University in 1810. The medical faculty included Dr. Levi Wheaton, Dr. William C. Bowen, Dr. Solomon Drowne, and Dr. William Ingalls, although it is not certain that all of them lectured. The instruction in medicine at the beginning was limited to lectures on anatomy and surgery, and on chemistry, which as part of the general college course, led to the degree of doctor of medicine. A more pretentious plan was undertaken follow- ing a reorganization in 1822, with Dr. Levi Wheaton as professor of the theory and prac- tice of physic and obstetrics, Dr. John De Wolf as professor of chemistry, Dr. Solomon Drowne as professor of materia medica and botany, and Dr. Usher Parsons as professor of anatomy, physic and surgery. Of these Dr. Wheaton had entered Rhode Island College in 1774, and completed his studies, interrupted by the Revolutionary War, in 1782. Meanwhile he had served as a hospital orderly, had studied medicine with Dr. William C. Bowen, had been surgeon on a privateer and "doctor" in charge of a British prison ship while himself a prisoner. An eminent physician and surgeont wrote of Dr. Wheaton: "His practice was based upon the theory that diseases in this climate are generally inflammatory, and that when inflammation is controlled the disease subsides as a necessary consequence; hence vene- section, tartrate of antimony, epsom salts and calomel were among the remedies upon which he placed the greatest reliance. It was a common remark with him 'that we did not bleed enough ; that there was no remedy of equal value in the treatment of our diseases.' He said he had not had occasion to regret bleeding, but in more than two or three instances in the whole course of his practice ; but that he had frequently regretted the omission of it. Emetics, cathartics and opium were his favorite remedies."

Dr. Solomon Drowne was graduated from Rhode Island College in 1773, studied medicine for a year with Dr. William C. Bowen, entered the University of Pennsylvania and was grad- uated as doctor of medicine. He served as surgeon in the Revolutionary War, and was attached to Colonel Crary's regiment at the battle of Rhode Island. After the war Dr. Drowne settled in Providence and practiced medicine until 1784, when he went abroad. In

*Philadelphia, 1762; New York, 1768; Boston, 1780; Hanover, 1800.

tJohn W. Keefe, M. D., F. A. C. S. In the preparation of this chapter I have had occasion to refer many times to Dr. Keefe's excellent monograph, "Traditions of Medicine in Rhode Island."

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the winter of 1784, he attended lectures in London by Cline and Hunter at St. Bartholomew's, St. Thomas' and Guy's hospitals. In 1785, he visited The Hague, travelled through Holland and Belgium, and at Paris visited hospitals and attended lectures by Nelaton, Louis, Brissaud and others. After his return to Rhode Island he resumed practice, removed to Marietta, Ohio, returned to Providence, removed to Virginia because of ill-health, and lived in Penn- sylvania seven years. Eventually he returned to Rhode Island and made his home at Mount Hygeia in Foster. His outlook on the practice of medicine was indicated in an address to the Rhode Island Medical Society: "In Simplicitate Salus-Restoration to health depends on simplicity in remedies, or, more literally, there is safety in simple things. On a review of my own practice I have perceived greater advantages from the use of simple, indigenous remedies than of others commonly prescribed. It is to the simplicity and paucity of remedies used, to attention to the natural habit and regimen, that I can with least hesitancy ascribe my success in practice. By this I would not be understood to boast of cures performed, these were effected by the work of nature; the self-preserving energy, by exciting it when languid, restraining it when vehement, in changing morbid action; or in obviating pain or irritation, when they oppose sanitary courses."

Dr. Usher Parsons, after studying with Dr. Hall and Dr. John Warren, of Boston, was licensed as a medical doctor after examination in 1812. He was commissioned as surgeon in the navy in 1812, and was on the "Lawrence" with Commodore Perry at the battle of Lake Erie. During the battle "the wounded were brought down faster than I could attend to them, further than to stay the bleeding and apply bandages and splints," said Dr. Parsons. He amputated six legs during the battle, and spent the entire day and night after the battle in amputating limbs and dressing wounds. Only three of the ninety-six wounded died. Dr. Parsons was some time professor of anatomy and surgery at Dartmouth.

The medical department at Brown University was abandoned in 1827, when the corpo- ration voted "that salaries shall be paid only to such professors, tutors or other officers as shall devote themselves during term time exclusively to the instruction and discipline of the insti- tution, and shall occupy rooms in college during study hours." None of the doctor-professors had served on full time; the university could not afford to pay them such salaries as would be reasonably equivalent to their earnings as practitioners. Curiously, President Francis Wayland, who advocated the action taken by the corporation, later became an advocate of a broad and liberal curriculum and a program for extending the service of the university to the community. In the seventeen years of the medical department eighty-seven graduates of Brown University received the degree of doctor of medicine.

MEDICAL SOCIETY-A second movement for the improvement of the profession was undertaken in 1812, when the General Assembly named forty-nine doctors as members of the corporation of the Rhode Island Medical Society, and entrusted to the society authority to examine and certificate doctors, thus: "The president and members of said society . . shall have full power and authority to examine all candidates for the practice of physic and surgery who shall offer themselves for examination respecting their skill in their profession; and if upon examination the said candidates shall be found skilled in their profession and fitted for the practice of it, they shall receive the approbation of said society in letters testi- monial . . This authority to examine and certificate was granted by the General Assem- bly as one of the powers of a professional society; the law did not require license or cer- tificate, or impose any penalty on a doctor who chose not to present himself for examination and certification. Eighty-three years later, in 1895, authority to examine and license doctors was conferred upon the State Board of Health, and the statute excluded unlicensed doctors from practice under penalty of prosecution. There was reason, therefore, in 1848, for the

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purposes expressed in the constitution of the Providence Medical Association of "the sep- aration of regular and irregular practitioners," and of "maintaining the union and harmony of the regular profession of the city." The list of members of the Rhode Island Medical Society of 1812 included sixty-four names. The society in 1853 became an agency for col- lecting statistics of the registration of births, marriages and deaths, continuing as such until the establishment of the State Board of Health in 1877. The society promoted in 1869 a measure "to protect the profession of medicine and the public from the accidents resulting from the ignorance of that class of citizens engaged in the vending of medicines, by a proper exam- ination and license," which resulted in creation of the State Board of Pharmacy in 1871. Six years later its support assured legislation establishing the State Board of Health. The origi- nal library of the society was presented in 1868 to Rhode Island Hospital. A new library was started in 1879; in twenty years, through steady acquisition, the collection numbered 12,000 volumes. A brick building for library purposes was erected at Francis and Hayes streets in Providence in 1912; the present collection numbers 28,500 volumes, besides thousands of pamphlets and original manuscripts.

HOSPITALS-Except pesthouses, Rhode Island had no hospital until 1847, when Butler Hospital for the Insane was opened. Nicholas Brown, who died in 1841, left a bequest of $30,000 for the establishment of a hospital "where the unhappy portion of our fellow beings who are by the visitation of Providence deprived of their reason, may find a safe retreat, and may be provided with whatever may be conducive to their comfort and to their restoration to a sound state of mind." A charter for a hospital was obtained in 1844, and Cyrus Butler offered a gift of $40,000, provided a similar amount should be raised by other subscriptions. The money was raised and the new hospital projected was named for Cyrus Butler. Grotto farm, on the west bank of the Seekonk River, was purchased. A building planned to accom- modate 100 patients was constructed and opened on December 1, 1847. Besides private patients, Butler Hospital cared for incurable insane persons who had become public charges until the opening of the first group of buildings for the State Hospital for the Insane, erected under the direction of the State Board of Charities and Corrections at Howard in 1870. But- ler Hospital continues as a state-aided privately controlled public hospital for curable mental diseases.

Captain Thomas Poynton Ives, who "studied medicine for the love of the study and his interest in the science," was leader in the movement to establish the institution known as Rhode Island Hospital. Moses Brown Ives, the Captain's father, who died in 1857, left a bequest of $40,000 for a hospital to be built in Providence. Dr. J. W. C. Ely, in 1862, at the request of Captain Ives, obtained a dozen signatures of doctors to a petition addressed to the General Assembly, which requested a charter of incorporation for a hospital. The doctors were: The veteran Usher Parsons, Joseph Mauran, L. L. Miller, Richard Brownell, Samuel B. Tobey, George Capron, W. O. Brown, S. Augustus Arnold, Hervey Armington, Charles W. Fabyan, George L. Collins, and J. W. C. Ely. The petition recited: "Whereas, the attention of many benevolent persons, members of the medical profession and others, has often been called to the special need in this state of a hospital for the sick and for those who may be dis- abled by accidents and injuries, such as are of frequent occurrence in the industrial occupations in which our population are engaged; and, whereas, the establishment of a charitable insti- tution for the above-named humane objects would evidently be of great advantage to the people of the state," etc. The charter was granted, and Captain Ives pledged $10,000 in a popular subscription for the hospital. He was home at the time on furlough from service in the navy, and besides subscribing to the hospital fund, was one of eight who purchased the original hospital lot. After the war Captain Ives went to Europe to recuperate his broken

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Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II, Part 71

Author: Carroll, Charles, author Publication date: 1932 Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 716

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716