USA > Vermont > The Lake Champlain and Lake George valleys, Vol II > Part 33
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During the last century the practice of the law has increased tre- mendously in prestige. Whereas, at first, the lawyer was sometimes not welcome in a frontier community because he was supposed to stir up strife and trouble, he is often today the leading figure in our mod- ern town. Whereas at one time the door to the practice of law was open wide and a living thereby was precarious, today admission to the bar requires natural intelligence, hard work and intensive training; · and those who make the grade are experts, with compensation in accordance with ability. There is not a law school in existence in any of our eleven counties, and those who would be lawyers have been
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forced to study elsewhere, but there is no reason to believe that this has constituted a hindrance to the development of the profession in this area.
Clinton Prison at Dannemora, Clinton County, is by far the most famous of the institutions erected to house convicts. It is said to have been established as a result of movements commenced by mechanics of New York State who disliked the existing policy which forced them to compete with convict labor. They proposed that convicts should be employed in the mining and manufacturing of iron. The institu- tion was first opened in 1845. For the first ten years all the ore mined was sold elsewhere and none was manufactured. Later, however, works were erected and they ran under a contract system. This ven- ture proved to be disastrous and the State itself assumed management in 1866. The State also lost money and as a result the manufac- ture of iron was abandoned altogether. Instead, the convicts were employed making hats, particularly ladies' fine felt hats. Today it has a capacity of 1,820, while on June 1, 1938, it reported a popula- tion of 1,968. Also located at Dannemora is a State hospital for the criminal insane, opened in 1900. Its capacity is 816, while on June I, 1938, its population was 1,023, consisting entirely of male felons.
Dannemora is as well known among the criminal element as among penologists. It is here that the most hardened of criminals are sent, far from the crowds that are their natural prey. Here they are isolated from the influence of gangs, and their chances of escape are remote. This prison has been named the "Siberia of North America," and there is no question but that the average criminal does not look for- ward with relish to a long sojourn within its grim walls.
Clinton Prison was sixty-six years old before Great Meadow Prison was opened at Comstock in Washington County in 1911. Con- victs are received here only by transfer from other institutions. It has a capacity of 1, 198 and on June 1, 1938, it reported a prison popu- lation of 1,167. The Vermont jails are small by comparison. The State Prison at Windsor has an average population of but 350, and even this is outside the boundaries of this research. At Vergennes we find a State Reformatory.
The presidents of the bar associations in our New York counties are (1939) : Clinton County-Andrew W. Ryan, Plattburgh ; Essex County -Roy Lockwood, Ticonderoga; Saratoga County-Clarence B. Kil-
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mer, Saratoga Springs ; Warren County-Jere M. Cronin, Glens Falls ; and Washington County-Herbert Van Kirk, Greenwich. The heads of the bar associations in western Vermont are: Chittenden County- Charles H. Darling; Rutland County-Philip M. M. Phelps; Franklin County-Clarence Hull of Berkshire.
Of all the lawyers that are, or have been at some other time, asso- ciated with this area, at the top stands the present Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Charles Evans Hughes. Born in Glens Falls, he attained the highest honors within the power of New York State to bestow, came in 1916 so close to the presidency that the outcome was in doubt for some time and the "New York Times" con- ceded his election, and finally was selected as Chief Justice, the highest purely legal office attainable in America. Pressing closely on his heels in the Champlain Valley of the past and present are a great number of other lawyers, both in western Vermont and northeastern New York, who have climbed the heights to fame as servants and interpreters of the law. Probably Saratoga County was particularly noteworthy in the first half of the nineteenth century because of the famous lawyers who appeared in court there. In addition to local practitioners, the elite of the profession not only from New York State but from other states as well seem to have appeared here fre- quently. Considering them as a whole, the lawyers of this area have made a notable record in the legal history of Vermont, New York and the Nation. Although in early times their knowledge of the law was questionable, their integrity and faithfulness to justice has always stood the test of time. Isolated cases of improper conduct have never seriously tarnished the legal shield, and have only served to call attention to the fine character of lawyers as a whole.
CHAPTER XXII
The Medical Profession
In many respects the growth of the medical profession was simi- lar to the evolution taking place in the field of law. In all proba- bility the first doctors to practice in the frontier towns knew as little about medicine and treatment of the sick, as the first lawyers knew of the legal profession. They certainly were poorly trained. Men wishing to be doctors, instead of attending medical schools, merely served as apprentices to some physician for a period of two or three years. At the end of that time, if they passed examinations given by the censors of the nearest county medical society, they could practice medicine in their own right with the sanction of the leaders of their profession. Actually, any citizen, even without this unsatisfactory training, could practice, provided that he could find a customer. In New York, in 1806, the only penalty for practicing without a license was inability to collect fees by legal action. In Vermont, with the exception of the regulation of the right to collect fees between 1820 and 1838, there was no State regulation of the practice of medicine until 1876. The principle that licenses should be granted by a State department, rather than by those who teach or practice medicine, was first established in New York in 1872. A century ago, therefore, the profession was in a highly disorganized state, and one historian reported that "quacks abound like locusts in Egypt."
Under these circumstances, the practice of medicine could not be a profitable occupation. Lyman Allen is authority for the statement that not until well down in the 188os was a doctor able to earn a liv- ing by medicine alone in Vermont. Many of the early doctors were farmers, while some were preachers. The same situation also pre- vailed on the New York shore.
For some reason or other, great faith was placed in Indian reme- dies. There is no question but that the red men did make valuable
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contributions to medicine, but many whites seemed to feel that just because the Indians were known to use a given remedy it was the best obtainable. Even in this modern day that attitude is not dead, and a synthetic Indian, if properly dressed, can still make a fair living selling mysterious tonics to a gullible public. The early doctor often imitated the red man in concocting remedies from roots and herbs and bark. Dr. Roebeck, of Grand Isle, once reported that "Indian hemp is good for dropsy, spigot root for internal bruises, the bark of the red willow is a sure remedy for fever and ague, burdock root with black cherry and white ash bark steeped in cider the very best remedy for spring jaundice."
Altogether there were at least one hundred of these elementary remedies. Boneset was used for a century or more as a sovereign remedy for ague and fevers, even yellow fever. Families were con- tinually purged with senna and rhubarb root. Each spring children were given sulphur and molasses to purify the blood. In fact senna, rhubarb and molasses were swallowed in death-giving quantities at the slightest symptom of disease. Calomel was used for cleansing livers, while drinks of horehound were given for a variety of ailments. Quinine did not make its appearance as a treatment for malaria until 1823. In Chittenden County, at least, a fever patient was denied drinking water but was allowed to sip small quantities of clam juice instead.
Cupping and leeching were universally practiced. Patients seem to have been bled profusely as a cure for a variety of ailments, often until they fainted. This method was even used in cases of pulmonary consumption. Some doctors seem to have been obsessed with the idea that the more blood they could draw from the patients the greater was the benefit to the human race.
In the early days surgery was just emerging from the hands of barbers, and was looked upon with disfavor by the best men in the profession. Antiseptic methods were then unknown and gangrene was to be expected after most operations. This was the terror of all would-be surgeons, and as a result operating was done only as a last resort. Furthermore, anæsthetics were unknown until 1846 and the patient was forced to undergo terrible pain. The early doctors may have been sadly lacking in medical knowledge but they had to be courageous and resourceful. For example, there is a record of an
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amputation in 1814 where a beech withe was used for a tourniquet and a razor and a sash-saw constituted the only instruments.
Most obstetrics were performed by midwives rather than doc- tors, and less than half of the babies survived. No attention at all was given to the care of teeth and few individuals came to mature life with a serviceable set. The most common of all diseases one hun- dred years ago was tuberculosis, which accounted for one death out of every seven. Typhoid fever was also widespread. Smallpox was the bane of the Revolutionary armies in the Champlain Valley and also hit the population severely. Even after vaccination was perfected, a large portion of the public was prejudiced against this safeguard. The greatest outbreak of disease ever to hit Vermont occurred in 1813. It was called peripneumonia and followed an epidemic of spotted fever or cerebro-spinal meningitis. In a period of five months there were 6,400 deaths out of a population of 217,913.
Measures for the prevention of disease were adopted very slowly. At first there was no attempt to keep out of sick chambers, by the use of screens, flies, mosquitoes and other insects. Diseases themselves were poorly understood. For example: it was the generally accepted notion that tuberculosis was entirely hereditary and beyond the con- trol of man. Sufferers were made to sleep with windows closed tight to prevent contamination by the dangerous night air. Very little thought was given to water supply and frequently barnyards were not far from wells. Even in Burlington, as late as 1865, the situation was far from satisfactory. Here six hundred and fifty depended entirely on lake water hauled mostly in casks; more than eighteen hundred used cisterns entirely; about twelve hundred had a combina- tion of cisterns and wells; fifty-seven possessed springs; while one thousand obtained their water from a water company.
In view of the general situation prevailing in this area from one hundred to one hundred and fifty years ago, doctors must have felt rather powerless in controlling diseases and preserving life. Today we wonder not that so many people perished, but the miracle is that so many survived. We can readily appreciate the philosophy of Dr. Elisha Miller, of Ballston, in 1791, when he said: "When Death receives his summons to execute the almighty decrees of Heaven, doc- tors are but cobwebs before his all-conquering arm."
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The first medical school in this section and in the entire State of Vermont was the Castleton Medical College, which was founded in 1818. It is interesting to note that not even one of the founders was a graduate of a medical course anywhere. The school was incor- porated by the State and allowed to grant the usual degrees. In 1820 it united with Middlebury College and continued in that rela- tionship for seven years. It then became independent once more and remained open until 1861. In the entire course of its history it graduated over three hundred and fifty physicians. Probably the most dramatic chapter of its existence came in 1830 when the farmers of the surrounding countryside assembled in a decidedly irate mood to descend in a body on the institution. It seems that the body of one of their wives had been raised from the grave for dissection purposes at the college. Of this they most certainly did not approve, and among other things they threatened to burn the town if the body was not produced. The headless corpse was finally located under a floor and the head itself was also recovered. Carrying the mutilated body away with them the farmers then disbanded.
Today there is but one medical school in this area and that con- stitutes a department of the University of Vermont, at Burlington. It was founded in 1823, but was the outgrowth of private classes taught in that city beginning in 1810 by the famous Dr. John Pome- roy. It was here that his son, John N. Pomeroy, in 1816, taught the first regular course of lectures on chemistry ever given in the United States to a medical class. In the entire Nation there are but eight medical schools older than that belonging to the University of Ver- mont. Since 1823, when it was organized with five professors, it has had an interesting history and has exerted a tremendous influence on the practice of medicine in Vermont and also in northern New York.
The story of the organization of medical societies is also an impor- tant one in view of the fact that they provided the only regulation of the profession before the day of State control. The First Medical Society of Vermont was chartered in 1784 and included practically all the physicians in Bennington and Rutland counties. In 1813 it was merged with other organizations into the Vermont Medical Society. In New York State, Saratoga County played a leading part. The movement for organization of doctors started here in 1796. By 1805 plans were made to unite the physicians of Saratoga, Washington and
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Montgomery counties into one group. Finally, in January, 1806, a memorial was sent to the State Legislature asking legal recognition. The occasion was decidely auspicious because of the fact that one member of the committee, Dr. Alexander Sheldon, of Montgomery County, was also Speaker of the House. At the outset it was intended only to regulate the practice of medicine in a few counties, but as finally passed the Act provided for the entire State. This was the first instance of legislative recognition of such a medical society in the United States, and it is interesting to note that the county that bore the brunt of the battle was one of the five New York counties of this research.
The first secretary of the Medical Society of the State of New York was Dr. John Stearns of Waterford, Saratoga County. He occupies an important place in the history of medicine in this area. His chief claim to fame arises from the fact that he was mainly responsible for the introduction of ergot in scientific obstetrics. Ergot is a black fungous growth on various grains, particularly rye. It was the cause of a pestilential disease which ravaged the human race for many cen- turies. From it however, Stearns obtained a drug which was of great value in treatment of women in labor and which saved lives instead of destroying them. He became, in 1817, president of the State Med- ical Society, and also won, in 1846, the honor of serving as the first president of the New York Academy of Medicine. It was while a phy- sician practicing in Waterford (1793-1810), however, that Stearns made his great contribution to American medicine.
One of the most valuable contributions of this section to medical science came from Dr. William Beaumont. He was born at Lebanon, Connecticut, in 1785, but later made his way to the Champlain Val- ley, arriving in 1807 at the Clinton County village of Champlain. Here he taught school for three years and also tended store, at odd moments reading medical books which he obtained from Dr. Pome- roy's library at Burlington. In 1810 he crossed the lake to St. Albans, where he served as apprentice to a well-known physician living there. He received his license to practice in 1812. During the war he served as assistant surgeon to the 6th Infantry, but after the conflict was over he returned to Plattsburgh to practice. Here he remained until 1820, when he was made surgeon at Fort Mackinac, Michigan. So far, his life had not been unusual, but on June 6, 1822, an event occurred that paved his road to fame.
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On that date a gun was accidentally discharged, wounding a young French-Canadian named Alexis Saint-Martin. Two ribs were frac- tured, his lungs were lacerated, and there was a cavity in the left upper abdomen large enough to admit a man's fist. Dr. Beaumont was called to attend the unfortunate youth, and within a year suc- ceeded in restoring him to complete health. Alexis was able to do all kinds of hard manual labor but the aperture made by the shot was never closed.
Sometime afterward, Beaumont began a series of experiments upon the stomach of his patient, introducing various articles of food through the orifice and then studying the action of the gastric juice and the operations of the stomach. He finally brought his patient to Plattsburgh and Burlington, but that did not prove to be wise, for Alexis vanished over the border. In time he managed to locate his lost patient and prevailed upon him to return. The experiments were then continued, but Alexis evidently did not enjoy being a human guinea pig and from time to time Beaumont was destined to encounter difficulties. In spite of all obstacles, however, the doctor's studies continued and he is credited with having revolutionized the knowl- edge of digestion existing in that day. Dr. Walsh was able to say in 1919 that "comparatively little has been added to Beaumont's work done nearly ninety years ago." Beaumont was the first surgeon to obtain gastric juice through a fistula from a living human being and demonstrated beyond all doubt its chemical properties. He later resigned from the army and practiced medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, until his death in 1853. Throughout all his experiments, which were to prove so valuable, Beaumount was forced to undergo terrible self-sacrifice, having no financial resources except his meager army pay with which to support Alexis and meet other expenses. He was certainly a heroic figure in the medical annals of the Champlain Valley.
Best known, however, of all the great physicians who at one time or another have brought fame to this section was the great Edward Livingston Trudeau. He was born in New York City in 1848 and was graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1871. After a brief period of practice in that city he contracted pulmonary disease from nursing his brother and was forced to quit. In 1876 he was told that he had but a few months in which to live. He thereupon went to the Adirondacks and proceeded to recuperate so completely
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that within five years' time he was strong enough physically to give a burly backwoodsman a sound fistic thrashing. He remained in the Adirondacks until the end of his life, and his fight waged against tuberculosis is known throughout the civilized world. His influence has been profoundly felt in three separate fields.
In the first place, Trudeau demonstrated the infectious nature of tuberculosis to a coldly receptive medical profession in America. As we have remarked, it was a commonly accepted idea among the phy- sicians that the disease was entirely hereditary and therefore beyond the control of man. No attempt whatever was made to prevent infection. Trudeau, as early as 1882, became very much interested in Koch's work. He knew no German, however, and was unable to do much until a friend sent him an English translation. It was in 1885 that he finally succeeded in growing germs on coagulated blood serum outside of any animal body.
In the second place, Trudeau founded the sanatorium movement in this country. Before his time, physicians did not understand the part played by fresh air, rest and sunshine in the treatment of tuber- culosis. Patients were shut up in tightly closed rooms without a breath of fresh air. When Trudeau himself went to the Adiron- dacks and the out-of-doors, he certainly was not following the normal medical advice of that time. He became very much interested in the work of Brehmer, who originated the sanatorium method of treat- ing tuberculosis. In 1884, on a wooded plateau above the Saranac River, the first building was erected with two New York factory girls as the first guests. Altogether there were three frame build- ings, heated by wood stoves and lighted by kerosene lamps, while water had to be dragged up the hill from the river in barrels. The money making possible the tiny sanatorium was donated by the guides and residents of Saranac Lake, and Trudeau's efforts were limited to the treatment of incipient tuberculosis in working men and women. This was the first American institution to attempt the climatic and open-air method of treating the disease. In 1884, when the "Little Red" was built, the death rate for tuberculosis in the United States was 270 per 100,000. When Trudeau died in 1915 it had decreased to 146, while today it is down to 60. These statistics indicate more clearly than anything else the importance of the work accomplished by this famous man. Among his most noted patients was Robert Louis Stevenson.
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In the third place, Trudeau was the original instigator of tuber- culosis research in this country. When he founded, in 1894, the Sara- nac Laboratory, it was the first of its kind in America. In 1905, he was honored for his great work by being elected president of the Association of American Physicians, in 1910 he was made president of the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons, while he also was the first president of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis. No greater figure in the field of medi- cine ever set foot in this area.
Various other sanatoriums followed that of Trudeau. One of the best known of these is the New York State Hospital at Ray Brook, located three and one-half miles from Schroon Lake and five miles from Lake Placid. It has an altitude of 1,635 feet. In 1904 it was opened as an outdoor camp. Only those who have incipient pul- monary tuberculosis and are without funds are admitted, and patients have been expected to do light tasks. St. Mary's Hospital at Sara- nac Lake was established in 1910. At Pittsford Mills in Rutland County we find the Vermont State Sanatorium for the treatment of tuberculosis, while also in Pittsford we find the Caverly Preventorium dedicated to combating tuberculosis in children.
One of the best known sanatoriums is that maintained by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company on Mount McGregor in Sara- toga County. Because of its picturesque location on the side of a main artery of travel, large multitudes of people see it every year. Commenced in 1913 as a refuge for the company's employees suffer- ing from tuberculosis, and as a research laboratory, it is said to have restored more than eight thousand people to health.
In addition there are other hospitals for the treatment of tuber- culosis, particularly the county institutions. They are all doing a highly valuable work. Collectively they have much to do with ridding this country of this hated menace. When we read that mortality from tuberculosis has been reduced from first place in 1910 in the United States to seventh place in 1935, and when we realize that in this move- ment Dr. Trudeau and his followers led the way, we can then realize the magnitude of the achievements attained in this field by the profes- sion in this area.
Throughout these counties we also find, of course, many general hospitals. Space forbids detailed reference to them. but as a whole
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they today enjoy fine reputations. Here patients are ministered unto by reputable physicians and highly-skilled surgeons, many of whose names are known far beyond New York and Vermont. Valuable achievements here in the field of medicine have been numerous although in no one phase have the contributions approached those attained in the control and prevention of tuberculosis. As a rule the entire medical profession has been characterized by high ideals of public service.
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