USA > West Virginia > Encyclopedia of contemporary biography of West Virginia. Including reference articles on the industrial resources of the state, etc., etc. > Part 11
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In this session, as well as in the former, his first bill was for the relief of the M. E. Church of Charleston, W. Va. Again he presented bills for the improvement of all the rivers before
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mentioned, besides many private relief bills that cover several pages of legal cap. His speeches were numerous, and several quite lengthy, upon the River and Harbor and Ap- propriation bills. Perhaps the most important achievement of Mr. Hereford in this his last term in the Senate was the final passage of the bill for improving the Great Kanawha, and empow- ering the Government to select sites and buy the same for dams and locks. While it is diffi- cult and often invidious to specify the individ- ual work accomplished by a legislator, either in the halls of his State Capitol or those of the nation at Washington, it can be honestly said, without detriment to any one else, that Senator Hereford's efforts in both houses of Congress in behalf of the Kanawha River improvement were most laborious, exacting, and prolonged. He offered the first bill in the Forty-second Congress for that purpose, and in every subse- quent Congress up to the time of his resignation to succeed Senator Caperton, he upheld the same cause against all opposition-never flagging, never discouraged, and never beaten in his efforts to advance that great engineering enter- prise. In the Senate it was his favorite theme, and he continued there what he had so well begun and so thoroughly sustained as a member of the House. In fact, all of the principal rivers needing improved channels in the southern region of West Virginia, of which his district was comprised, were the special subjects of his constant and zealous attention. "Final and com- plete success crowned those efforts, but not until such knightly opponents as Roscoe Conkling had been met and vanquished on the field of their own choosing. To wrest a bill of that character away from the opposition of Senator Conkling was an achievement not to be com- pared for one moment with the passage of a favorite bill against the contending of fellow- members of equal or even greater ability than the advocate of the measure. But against the greatest legal and legislative debater of his time it is no small victory, and the one who succeeds may be pardoned for indulging in self-apprecia- tion of the fact; and after he has gone from the stage of life his friends and admirers may be even commended for reciting again the victory so won -a victory of peace and emolument to the con- stituents and their children's children by the vic-
tor-who thus secured them their heritage and conferred invaluable and lasting advantages up- on the people of a great State. Space will not allow of a full brief of the discussions in the Senate over the Kanawha River Bill, but we shall give a few extracts from the Congressional Record (Vol. 38). In the session of the Senate of May 29, 1879, Mr. Hereford, then a member of the Com- mittee on Commerce, moved to postpone the pending order and proceed to the consideration of the bill (H. R. No. 1,999) to amend an act entitled " An act making appropriations for the construction, repairs, preservation, and comple- tion of certain works on rivers and harbors, and for other purposes, approved March 4, 1879." This brought Mr. Conkling to his feet with the inquiry if the bill had been reported by a com- mittee, and Mr. Hereford said that it had; and continuing, he explained that it was simply a local matter, that the Chief of Engineers and the Secretary of War wanted to purchase sites for dams, etc., and did not think the original River and . Harbor Bill gave the authority, without special legislation, which was now asked for the Kanawha improvement, that a portion of the money might be specifically used for that purpose.
" Mr. Conkling: How much money is appropri- ated to the improvement of the Great Kanawha River mentioned in the bill? Mr. Hereford: I believe $150,000, and $25,000 for the Big Sandy River, in Kentucky. Mr. Conkling: One hun- dred and seventy-five thousand dollars for the two rivers mentioned in the bill. Mr. Here- ford: For the two purposes. The object of this bill is simply to use enough of that amount to purchase the sites indicated."
Then Mr. Conkling began what resulted in a long debate of a geographical and legal nature, in which he poured out a flood of learning on the subject of rivers, the right of eminent do- main, the question of "navigable rivers" as un- derstood by the constitutional interpretation, etc .- that "the national authority shall enter the State of West Virginia and undertake to condemn private property for public use, mak- ing, of course, in the language of another pro- vision of the Constitution, just compensation. That is this bill."
" Mr. Davis, of West Virginia: The Senator probably does not understand that the State
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Legislature has already passed a bill giving its consent."
To which Senator Conkling replied by again going into the powers of the National Govern- ment at great length, when Mr. Chandler, of Michigan, interrupted with a request that the Senator permit him to make a motion to ad- journ. "We are always very much interested in the Senator's remarks and would like to hear them completed on another day." Mr. Conkling : "I know the Senator from Michigan does not wish to hear me." Mr. Chandler: "Indeed I do, I assure the Senator." But Mr. Conkling per- sisted that the "Senator would rather go" and the Senate adjourned. At the session of June 2 the Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, resumed the consideration of the bill, and Mr. Conkling again met Mr. Hereford in vigorous opposition and took up the question of " naviga- ble rivers" after again reminding the Senate that Mr. Chandler did not want to hear him speak at the previous session. Mr. Hereford was fully prepared, and in reply quoted from Justice Field an opinion cited in Wallace's Report to the effect-
"I mean this: the Supreme Court have de- cided in other decisions that I have not brought here this morning, that if there be a river that connects with other rivers going through more than one State, and if there be rapids in that river, the Government has the power to clear out that rapids, the same. power that she has to clear out Hell Gate."
Continuing, Mr. Hereford quoted further from Wallace (11) in the case of The Montello and also cited among other authorities Mr. Justice Story, in the first volume of his Commentaries, that "the Government may appropriate money to improve harbors, to build breakwaters, to assist navigation," and continuing at still greater length with good law and precedent as to streams in other States. Mr. Conkling replied to Mr. Hereford as having listened to the speech of "two very eloquent senators," and compli- menting Mr. Beck for his alleged contributions to Mr. Hereford's efforts, etc., which, how- ever, the honorable Senator from Kentucky did not acknowledge, but rather discouraged, to Mr. Conkling's surprise, who continued, and this time branched out upon the technicalities of Constitutional law and the subject of " Cen- tralization, dangerous in its nature and detri-
mental in its proposed exercise." Again both gentlemen resumed, and Mr. Conkling fills a solid page of the Record, when Mr. Beck came in in defence of himself and Mr. Hereford; and again more words, words, for which the great Senator from New York was so famous. All the while Senator Hereford kept closely to the Kanawha River question and watched the bill. Finally the end came. Mr. Cameron of Wis- consin had proposed an amendment, favorable in itself, but its adoption would have sent the bill back to the House again; so Senator Here- ford requested that he withdraw the amendment, and he did so very gracefully and declaring :
"I shall vote for the bill advocated by the Senator of West Virginia with a great deal of pleasure. . .. I will withdraw the amendment. The bill was then reported to the Senate with- out amendment, ordered to a third reading and read the third time. Mr. Conkling: For the reason particularly among others, that this bill includes the power to condemn private property in order to construct those locks, I ask for the yeas and nays upon its passage. I should like to have the sense of the Senate upon the bill."
Considerable discussion then took place among Senators who were paired. The result was announced-the yeas twenty-nine; nays fourteen, with thirty-three Senators absent. "So the bill was passed." "Yeas-Allison, Bayard, Beck, Bruce, Burnside, Call, Cameron of Penn- sylvania, Cameron of Wisconsin, Coke, Davis of West Virginia, Ferry, Garland, Hampton, Here- ford, Hill of Colorado, Houston, Jonas, Jones of Florida, McMillan, Maxey, Morgan, Ransom, Slater, Vance, Voorhees, Walker, Whyte, Wil- liams, Windom." Senator Hereford married, July 23, 1872, Miss Alice B. Caperton, eldest daughter of William Gaston Caperton and Har- riet Boswell Alexander. He had four children, Francis Gaston, Harriet Alexander, Katharine Steuart, and Henry Alexander. Surrounded with all the comforts of life, and tenderly cared for by his family, the Senator in his last days calmly awaited the final summons which he knew was only a short time removed. In bus- iness affairs he always acted philosophically, considering financial losses through others as only a man of broad views could consider them, and accepting the inevitable with the becoming grace of a statesman and a gentleman. Senator Hereford died December 21, 1891. He had suf-
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fered much for eighteen months prior thereto from an affection of the brain, which resulted in partial paralysis. The accompanying por- trait represents him as he appeared while in the Senate and is from a photograph taken in Wash- ington.
JOHN FRISSELL.
JOHN FRISSELL, A.M., M.D., an eminent physician and surgeon, of Wheeling, W. Va., and recognized as the Nestor of the medical pro- fession west of the Alleghanies, was born in Peru, Berkshire County, Mass., March 8, 1810. He came of mixed English and Scotch ancestry, his father being Amasa Frissell, a farmer, whose antecedents were Scotch, and his mother of English parentage. They had six children, four sons and two daughters, and, being well to do, were able to secure for them an excellent edu- cation. The eldest of the sons took to agricul- ture and became a farmer; while the other three, after being properly prepared by academic in- struction, went through college and entered the liberal professions-one as a lawyer, who rose to become a judge; another in theology, and the third in medicine. Of the two daughters, the eldest became a missionary to the Choctaw Indians, and located at a station in the north- eastern part of the State of Mississippi; the other daughter married and removed to New York City, where she settled. John Frissell, the subject of this sketch, followed the custom- ary practice in his day in country neighbor- hoods, working on the farm in summer with his father and attending the common school in winter. He showed an aptitude for study and was sent to the academy in Old Hadley, and from there he entered Williams College in the autumn of the year 1827, graduating, four years later, bachelor of arts. Attracted to the study of medicine by his own natural proclivity, he at once went into the office of Dr. Ebenezer Emmons, of Williamstown, who aside from being a distinguished physician was professor of chemistry and natural history in Williams Col- lege, and where for two years young Frissel had been his assistant in the chemical laboratory. Added to the instruction which he received in the office of Dr. Emmons, he attended lectures,
in the fall of 1832, in Pittsfield, Mass., at the Berkshire Medical College. In the next spring Professor Willard Parker invited young Frissell to Woodstock, Vt., where he became demon- strator of anatomy, and at the end of the same year filled the same position for Professor Parker in the Berkshire Medical School, includ- ing in his duties that of performing the dissec- tions for the professor and afterward recapitu- lating to the class the professor's lecture, while carefully superintending and instructing all those students making dissections. He contin- ued to fulfil these duties during the year 1834, at the same time attending lectures, and grad- uated M.D. from the Berkshire College at the close of the term, in the fall of the same year, receiving the degree of A.M. from Williams College. He remained in Pittsfield for another year, listening to recitations and instructing students in anatomy, materia medica, etc., and demonstrating his fourth and last course of lectures. On June 3, 1836, Dr. Frissell removed to Wheeling, Va., and began practice, at the same time teaching. His business was not very brisk in the beginning, and he gave lectures on various subjects, temperance, phrenology, and physiology, and taught botany, rambling with classes through the country, seeking flowers and specimens, and lecturing in the schools of Wheeling. He possessed a taste for geology and mineralogy, and this he indulged by study of the rocks and minerals in his neighborhood, and in this way passed his first years in Wheel- ing. Meanwhile he was not idle socially, being teacher and leader of the choir of the First Presbyterian Church during fifteen years or more, which brought him in contact with the prominent members. But this was only in the beginning of his career. The time soon came when the practice of his profession filled all his time, and his work in it made him notable as a man of remarkable scientific attainments and gifts as a surgeon, a discoverer, and a healer. He became physician to the Convent of the Sisters of the Visitation, to St. Vincent's Col- lege, and to the school for young ladies at Mount de Chantal. With ideas in advance of the pro- fession in general, Dr. Frissell was always ready to adopt any improvement, invention, or discov- ery which promised to ameliorate the condition of the sick or injured. Thus he was the first
ATLAN & FOUG & LNu IN)
John Afrique a.m. M.D.
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surgeon in western Virginia to employ chloro- form in capital operations, and it is a remarka- ble fact in his professional experience that, al- though he employed it in thousands of cases, no serious accident ever occurred in his practice. A large proportion of Dr. Frissell's work was, on account of the fact that Wheeling was a man- ufacturing and commercial city, in the line of surgical practice, laborers and mechanics being necessarily exposed to frequent accidents. For- tunately his exact knowledge of anatomy and his remarkable skill in manipulation stood him well in hand, and he speedily grew to be recog- nized as one of the best surgeons in western Virginia. As early as 1838, for instance, he performed an operation for hare-lip and de- formed upper jaw, and the following year oper- ated on club-foot by division of the tendons, shortly after the first operation of this character had been performed by Dr. George Mcclellan, of Philadelphia. In 1841, Dr. Frissell began prac- tice as an oculist and became celebrated for operations upon the eye, beginning by an oper- ation for strabismus and extending his business until it covered nearly all the different opera- tions on the eye, including the total extirpation of the organ in a diseased condition, either by enucleation or by removing with the eye a part of the tissues of the orbit. In 1846, Dr. Fris- sell performed his first operation for stone in the bladder, and, in 1856, his first successful operation for vesico-vaginal fistula. Dr. Fris- sell began his relations with the hospital insti- tutions of the city of Wheeling as early as 1845. He was at first with the Wheeling Dispensary, which was conducted, during its brief existence, by Drs. Todd, Bates, and Hildreth, one of the four physicians being present at a certain hour each day at the office and dispensary-room ready to prescribe for patients desiring advice and medicine. This was in 1845, and in the latter part of the same year an infirmary was started by Drs. Frissell and Hullihen to accommodate private patients-an infirmary which was en- tirely under their control, they being the only physicians in the city possessing the right to either send patients there or attend them. In March, 1850, the Wheeling Hospital was char- tered, and put in charge of the Sisters of St. Joseph by Bishop Whelan. Drs. Frissell and Hullihen remained as surgeons, and it was under
the same restrictions as before. Later this hos- pital was extended, through the purchase by Bishop Whelan of additional property, its capac- ity being increased to one hundred and fifty patients. This institution was under the charge of a board of directors, of which Bishop Whelan was the head. Dr. Hullihen died on March 27, 1857, when Bishop Whelan, with the approval of the board of directors, appointed Dr. Frissell the surgeon and physician of the Wheeling Hospital, giving him the entire professional charge of the institution, an appointment which has never since been changed. In fact, from the organization of the first infirmary, in 1845, up to the present time, nearly half a century, Dr. Frissell has had the main charge and direction of the hospital institutions of the city of Wheeling, and full charge since the death of Dr. Hullihen. As the hospital, since its completion, has fully supplied the needs of West Virginia, western Pennsylvania, and eastern Ohio, for regular hospital patients, it will be seen that the responsibilities have been great and the duties exacting. Of late years Dr. Frissell has left most of the hos- pital work to his son, Dr. Charles M. Frissell, although still exercising a supervisory interest in the affairs of the institution and over the ad- mission of patients. Soon after the beginning of the Civil War, Dr. Frissell was appointed by Governor Pierpoint, medical superintendent of the military prisoners and sick soldiers of Wheeling, and the Surgeon-General of the United States Army continued him at the same post with the rank of Assistant Surgeon up to the close of the war. He also served as a member of the State Board of Examiners for surgeons entering the army during the war. Meanwhile he has filled the position of surgeon to the marine patients, at Wheeling, for nearly forty years. The remarkable success achieved by Dr. Frissell in operations for stone in the blad- der have become well known throughout the profession in the United States. He has oper- ated in his neighborhood many times by what is known as the lateral operation, and always with success, never having lost a patient or had any evil results occur from pyæmia (or blood poison), and yet he used in his practice almost invariably for antiseptics merely pure water, insuring perfect cleanliness, accompanied by
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devoted care; in fact he has found no better suc- cess in the employment, of late years, of car- bolic acid and bichloride of mercury solutions. He has been known to operate successfully for stone on a patient only two years of age, and also with equal success upon one who had passed the age of three-score and ten years. His oper- ations for strangulated hernia have also been numerous and very successful, except in cases where mortification supervened. In the case of uterine polypi and fibroid and other tumors, Dr. Frissell has had an experience probably un- equalled by the majority of physicians in the country. In some instances these tumors were removed in sections, in order to diminish their size to a point at which they could successfully be extirpated either by the ligature or by ecra- sure. As cancer is frequently one of the sequel of these diseases, and as in Dr. Frissell's prac- tice the extirpation has been complete and without such results, it will be seen at once with how much skill, judgment, and knowledge he operated. In plastic surgery Dr. Frissell has been no less successful, and a case of this char- acter which came under his treatment and for which he performed the operation necessary, in 1871, ranks among the most remarkable of its kind known to medical literature and history. This was a case where the chin and sternum were held nearly in contact. Dr. Frissell is a member of the Ohio County Medical Society, of the American Medical Association, and of the State Medical Society of West Virginia, of which he was the first president. He is also an honorary member of the Medical Society of Cali- fornia, and in 1876 was a member of the Inter- national Medical Congress. Modest and unas- suming in his character, Dr. Frissell has never cared to make publication of his successful cases and operations; but, fortunately for the profession, others have valued them at their true standard and have described and written them out for medical and other journals, while they can also be found in the transactions of the West Virginia State Medical Society. Dr. Fris- sell has justly gained the highest reputation in his State as its leading surgeon. In accomplish- ing this, his devotion to his profession and to his patients has been assiduous and intelligent. Meanwhile his remarkable success has not seemed to elevate him in his own estimation,
and he is known as well for his jovial and pleas- ant disposition and his elevated character and charming manners as for his professional attain- ments and success. Dr. Frissell was married on December 3, 1850, to Elizabeth Ann, daughter of Col. John Thompson, of Moundsville, W. Va. They have two sons living, of whom the eldest, a graduate of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York City, is a practising physician and surgeon, and now occupies his father's position; and the younger has been scientifically educated and is the chief chemist in the Wheeling steel plant at Benwood. A circular was issued to the profession in West Virginia, under date of February 28, 1867, signed by Dr. Frissell, Thomas Kennedy of Grafton, H. W. Brock, Morgantown, J. C. Hupp, E. A. Hildreth and others of Wheeling and other places, calling for the organization of a State Medical Society. The society was duly organ- ized at Fairmont, April 1, 1867, and Dr. Frissell chosen president. The first semi-annual session was held at Wheeling, Wednesday, October 2, 1867, in the hall of the House of Delegates. Dr. Frissell, President, took the chair; Rev. D. W. Fisher, of the First Presbyterian Church, by request of the President, addressed a fervent petition to the Throne of Grace. Dr. John C. Hupp, of Wheeling, Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements, being called upon by the President, made an address of salutation to the profession. In a vigorous and eloquent address Dr. Frissell voiced among other sentiments and truths the following which are selected :
"I trust that this society will be the means of advancing largely our noble science, and greatly ameliorate the suffering of those afflicted by accident or disease, and I trust it will prove a powerful arm in elevating our State to a level with her older and more favored sisters. . . . We do not propose to admit those who have been nominally educated as regular practition- ers, and have straggled off, with various ex- cuses, into some form of quackery, for the pur- pose of making money faster, or living easier, more pleasant, and indolent lives, or because, which is the most common reason, they lack the talent, the energy, and the honesty to suc- ceed in making a living in the practice of reg- ular scientific medicine."
The doctor gave a concise and learned sketch of the history of medicine, from Esculapius, who " was a Greek, and lived thirteen centuries
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before the Christian era." He referred to Hip- pocrates, Galen, Paracelsus, and others, and said :
" The science of medicine is progressive. More has been learned of medicine in the last century than in the six thousand years before. Since the days of Bacon and the adoption of his principles of reasoning, a great amount of material, of facts, have been collected. Many valuable general principles have been deducted from them, and the practice of medicine vastly improved."
At the first annual meeting of the society held at Clarksburg, Dr. Frissell made another characteristic address full of learning and val- uable advice. Referring to the prejudice that used to exist against the dead body and against those who handled the dead, and especially against the surgeon and demonstrator of anat- omy, he said:
" Who would not prefer, were their own feel- ings alone concerned, to be useful after death to the living, rather than undergo the slow and disgusting process of chemical decomposition in the silent recesses, gloomy vaults, and putrefy- ing vapors of the charnel house? The moment life departs numerous insects deposit their eggs unseen by the friends who watch by the side of the corpse, and when committed with the body to the earth they are dormant only until suffi- cient heat is evolved by putrefaction to call them into activity; then they feed to fulness on the rankling corpse; and when ready to assume their perfect shape they make their way to the surface, and are carried abroad on the four winds of heaven to repeat a similar process on other dead."
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