Vigo County, Indiana - Chapter 37: Medical, 1891

A S early as January 1, 1819, by a law of the State, it was commanded that there shall be a medical society in this State to be denominated the "State Medical Society of Indiana;" to be com¬ posed of delegates elected by the district societies, who are hereby authorized to hold such elections, and the delegates so elected, or a majority of them, when met, shall constitute a quorum for the trans¬ action of business. They were required to meet at the State capitol. The State society had power to district the State for the different distiict societies. And it was further provided that every person who may hereafter practice medicine in this State, except such as are now resident practitioners of physic and surgery, without having first obtained a license from the State Medical Society, or from one of the district societies, or in the interval, a permit from one of the censors, every person so offending shall forfeit and pay a sum not less than $10, nor more than $20, for the first offense, and for every succeeding offense double the sum as aforesaid, etc.

. ^ ^as been before referred to that a new country, especiallv all this northwest, so rich in its deep, dark alluvial soil, was in its early settlements literally scourged with sickness. The plow turning up the mold of thousands of years to the sun and the wind, was the avful Pandora s box of chills and fever, congestive chills, and nearly every form of fevers. At times this besom of death swept over- the country, its periods of greatest visitation commencing with the early fall, and m some cases growing into that low form known as the "thirdday chills " that were so difficult of cure, and that in some cases ran from year to year. Sallow-faced children with huge "ague-cake " that defoimed them and told its own pitiful story, were in many cabins Then there was the milk-sick; that to the most of the pioneers was a new monster, and they knew nothing of its concealment until it had them m its hideous embrace. This too came with the first frosts in the fall of the year. The cow would contract it from the water or food, none could ever tell which, and to drink her milk or the use of the flesh of a diseased animal was to catch the fearful contagion. It was at one time the rule in the fall of the year, before slaughter¬ ing a beef, to run it for some time, drive it as hard as possible, in order to see if it was infected. When heated by driving the disease became manifest in animals that apparently, when at rest, were sound. No very great mortality ever came to the people from milk sickness. They soon learned to ward against it. They ate pork and bacon mostly, and learned not to use so much milk and butter. This strange disease was found along certain streams - creeks where the cattle would go for water in the dry falls, and where they would graze after the prairies had become dry and the grasses deadening. In districts where the people would know that the stock would get the disease by leaving the prairies and going to the woods on a certain creek, they would pen their milch cows in the perfect con¬ fidence that they would be safe. One cow brute could not convey it to another except by drinking the milk of the diseased cow, as in the case of the calf; hence if the cow was diseased her calf might die of it long before the cow showed any symptoms of sickness. A man would suffer for years with the disease and often not know that it was milk-sickness. In some rare cases it would cause death in a few months. When you saw a person with a greenish, cadaverous complexion or skin you did not know whether it was milk-sickness or the common malarial effects of the country and season.

When the boys would be driving the cattle and they would report that a certain one was " trimbling like everything," it was understood that it was a case of true milk-sick. The disease it seems affected the whole internal organs and gave but few outward signs of its presence. It was confined to certain districts, and was contracted only there by the cattle. In one instance on a large cattle farm in Texas, the writer was shown where the spot that was fatal to the cattle had been fenced in in less space than an acre of ground. The ranch contained thousands of acres, and the stock were safe so long as they were kept out of that spot, but in the fall to put a calf in there during a night was certain to cause its death. And yet what is the cause is to-day as much of a mystery as it was a hundred years ago in the first settlement of the country. There is a fireside tradition, too, that there has been a standing offer of a premium of $100,000 - still in force, they say - by the French government for the discovery of the cause of milksickness. And investigators and ambitious young men are still discovering it. A few years ago these men who had just fixed it or were just on the point of demonstrating that it was a certain vegeta¬ ble growth, were as common as the inventors of perpetual motion; and each discoverer met in the end the same dismal failure. An- other characteristic of the disease is that, like the malaria of the early times, it and its terrors have largely passed away with the advancement of the country. Where settlements and even villages were sixty and seventy years ago depopulated by this scourge, peo¬ ple now live with impunity, and little or nothing is heard of the milk-sick any more. The pioneers knew nothing about it; either how to avoid it, or how to treat it when it caught them. Neither, for that matter, did they at first understand what to do with the malaria that rose up in such fatal and unseen waves all over the land. They when it was possible sent for the physician, and he had to assume all wisdom - know everything necessary to raise the dead or lose his practice. If he were a man of sense, as was gener¬ ally the case, he knew that he really understood no more about it than the patient he was called to see. If he was a graduate then he was pretty sure to be handicapped with the precedents of the books - mostly the merest barbarisms couched in ancient jargons, which if fired rapidly at a man in ordinary health might have been warranted to kill or cure, regardless of sex or color. One can readily imagine that in the beginning of the practice of medicine that it was the rule to burn the patients on the principle of purifying by fire. This would not only purify, but it would drive out the disease; in fact, make it too hot for even the seven devils that it was then assumed every one carried concealed about his person. This kind of doc¬ toring may have been cruel toward the census takers, but it gave a dying man a sure start on the purity line in the Kingdom-come land. But even their burning must have been bungling and a very poor job generally - the thoroughgoing crematory is modern. Their cremating machinery was sadly imperfect - it consisted of bleeding and calomel and jalop in comparatively modern times and in high fevers, no cold water, but toast and elm water that had set in the sun until full of air bubbles, incipient boiling. Another of their rigid rules was never to allow you anything to drink or eat that you most craved, and generally gasping for water, they finally ceased even to gasp for breath, and the fact that they died was the conclusive evidence to the country for miles around of the learning and ability of the attending physician. When a patient got well he was out of order, because lie had evidently not given the doctor a fair show; it was little less than getting into health when sick under false pretenses. To bleed and to salivate was the sole duty of man. That mild and soothing salivation that was the joy and hope of the doctor at one time that knocked out the teeth of every one that it once fixed its clutches upon. Those were glorious salivation times, when there was no play doctoring, but it smacked of business from the start to the finish - dead earnest.

That many lived to a green old age was no doubt due to their utter poverty, the free circulation of air and sunshine to which they were exposed, and the fact that they had to rely on boneset tea, dogwood bark, and the bark of the elder bushes and such " yarbs " as by necessity they had found to have medicinal properties. These were nearly always harmless, even if they were generally of little or no virtue in healing the sick. They gave nature a chance, and this was a great improvement on the ancient blood-letting and sali¬ vation.

To the pioneer of sixty years of age the memory of the average practice of medicine when he was a boy is little less than the hor¬ rors of the most frightful nightmare. When to sit down in the sunshine an hour at any time of day in the fall was sure to bring on a chill, and the first sensation that went creeping up the back wras perhaps laden with death.

The history of medicine, the science of diseases, illustrates the fact that in this as in everything else, men are the same. They love precedent and its unbending authority, and this they cling to as the child to its mother's apron. The transmitted relics of bar¬ barism are probably to be more distinctly traced in this common trait of mankind - looking to precedent for authority - than in any other one thing. Here we allow ourselves to ask no questions, and never, except upon compulsion, to hunt for any new paths in the walks of life. But away back toward the days of the pioneers the common mind was opening for a change. The first inroad was probably made by the Tbompsonians, or what was known as the "steam doctors" - and a hot-corn steam was no very idle affair as the writer can indistinctly remember. The regulars had already begun to pay attention to the effects on patients who broke over their rules and drank cold water, or peach juice, or eat things in mere desperation that they had been told they must not eat, and if they did were sure to kill at once. To their own and the doctor's amazement, instead of dying, these nearly always were the first to get well.

Dr. B. F. Swofford, who at this time has probably attended more patients than any man in the county, and who, of course, was too young to practice medicine in those early days; not even being born until 1833, can yet remember something of the days of the renais¬ sance of the blood-letting and salivating period. He thinks the profession had in it quick-witted, observing men - men who could take a hint or profit by experience, and as much as they had been wedded by their education to the lancet and salivation, yet they were as ready to drop the indiscriminate use of those as were the people. And they went to experimenting, too, and have made many valuable discoveries. An honest old farmer watched his pigs eat all they could and then sleep it off and grow fat, and he started the inquiry if sleep was not better for digestion than the old theory of exercise after eating and never to sleep on a full stomach. Lazy and easeloving men had slyly adopted the scheme of an after dinner nap. The ignorant farmer once thought that rusty, strong bacon was a great strengthener in their labors, and that fresh beef or chicken was a light kind of Sunday diet when they were not at work.

Dr. J. W. Hitchcock gives a very amusing experience he had here at an early day upon the occasion in the winter of 1830-31 to go and relieve a woman named Kiddle, about twenty miles away, who had "up-set' her jaw. Now, as then, a woman's "jaw" is her one implement of war and defense - her perpetual motion, if she so inclines. This poor woman on getting up early in the morning was going through the pleasant exercise of yawning and gaping, and finally putting too great a strain upon it threw it out of place, dis¬ located it in short, and there it stood, immovable, at a wide stretch. Of corn se it was painful, and when her lord told her to shut her mouth she did not obey - she simply couldn't. Her husband started to Terre Haute to get a doctor - full twenty miles away. His ride at least to the gaping woman was quite as important as was the more notable one of Phil Sheridan. Drs. Septer, Patrick and Hitchcock were partners, their office in " Rotten Row," on First street. This was then "Rotten Row" because it had their office, Hi. Modesitt s, AVasson s tavern, McCabe's hat shop and grocery, and Osborn's printing office, and Judge Gookins ivas his jour! printer, and Judge Kenney editor.

Riddle lived in what was called Christie prairie, beyond Lockport, and he landed in Patrick & Hitchcock's office and told them that his wife had "gaped her jaw out of jint." As Patrick was get¬ ting old and had a new wife and as Hitchcock was young and had no wife, it fell to his lot to go on the mission of healing and mercy, that was about the size of the fee he knew he might expect. It was m the dead of winter, wet, and the mud frozen on top only, The doctor estimated that two miles an hour was all he could make! Riddle, the husband, was keeping as near up to him as he could, but he bad a jug of "tea," he called it, in his saddle-bags; he had examined his jug so often by the time they reached Honey Creek that he was wrecking the stock, and the liquid began to leak out of the sacldle-bags. The doctor thought the tea was about a week old, and Riddle, finally in speaking of his loss and the jug, got to calling it hic-shug; young as the liquor was it proved too much for the man, and the last time he had it out and in trving to put the cob back into the mouth of the jug, he had put it anywhere along outside and let it drop; he said, as well as he could articulate, that he would stop and pour the liquor out of the saddle-bags back into the jug and then follow on after the doctor. The doctor went on alone, inquiring the way, and found the cabin late in the after¬ noon; in a minute he had relieved the poor sufferer. He could not attempt to return until the next day and the night was very cold. The ground was then frozen hard and his horse could travel better than on the day before. He met Riddle on the way, he was sober and dejected, and hardly life enough in him to inquire if his wife could now shut her mouth.

As descriptive of the road at that time, we quote the Doctor's words: I came out of the woods about 10 o'clock, and when I had reached the point where the county road, by which the day before I came out, crosses the Lockport road, the spirit which inclines me sometimes to avoid old ruts and choose for myself, induced me to ride straight for town. The glistening ice of Lost Creek and the view of Terre Haute three or four miles distant led me to try the short route. The cupola of the court-house (the only part of the town I could see) stood up plainly in the distance, * * * and so I determined not to go back by the Bloomington road and the bridge. I rode down to the wide-spread ice and upon it at the usual crossing place. It proved too weak to bear us - I and the horse. Although breaking through at every step I urged him onward. His fore feet would be upheld until he raised our whole weight upon it, when it would break. In this slow way we reached about the middle of the stream, and my good horse became dis¬ couraged and stopped. He stood shaking as if alarmed, and I could not persuade him to move another step. I dismounted, and wading broke the ice to the shore, and yet he would not move. I tried to lead him; talked to him in soothing terms - I was freezing. I had been in the habit of talking to that faithful friend kindly, patronizingly and socially, as he had carried me from New York through Buffalo to Cleveland, thence to Cincinnati and via Brook - ville, Rushville and Indianapolis to Terre Haute, and he under¬ stood me well and had never " sassed back." The water was about three feet deep, and the only colder thing then in the world was the cutting northwest wind that was searching out what it might freeze to death. My wet clothes were getting stiff and icy, and I remarked to my Friday friend that we would get out of this or freeze. I was becoming desperate. Going behind him I informed him he must move for his life, and at the same time applied the lash with a force he had never before felt. He plunged forward in perfect terror, and plunge after plunge brought him to terra firma, when he stopped to wait for me. I mounted as quickly as possible and went for a doctor (Dr. Patrick) faster than I ever knew anyone to go before or since. He was frightened when I presented myself befoie him. The thermometer had stood at zero all morning, and np to noon, and to the time of my arrival. He soon brought me something hot. What it was I did not know, but I detected ginger, sugar and caloric, and suspected his young sine qua non (whiskysix (lays less than a week old). I could not well object without hurting his feelings, and I swallowed it. I was soon all right and comfortable, except a tenderness that was in my hands and ears. I never afterward heard of Riddle and his gaping wife, but I have an impression, how it came I do not know, that they left the State and went to Illinois, Edwards county, to a place called Bone Gap, a little town to which perhaps they gave the name. From there it is probable, in the course of things, both have ere this passed through the jaws of death; the earth has gaped to swallow them, and that they now look back to the life here below as Shakespeare in his dreams saw it, as ''of mingled yarn, good and ill together."

Contemporary in their coming, in their lives and practice, as well as an essential part of the early history of the county, were Drs. John Durkee and Charles B. Modesitt. The former settled west of the river, and the latter was one of the first settlers in dene Haute. A sketch of the lives of these two men may be found in another part of this volume.

One of the profession who settled here in 1843 says that there were then in practice here, Drs. Ebenezer Daniel, Septer Patrick Edward V. Ball and Azel Holmes.

He says "Drs. Irish and Brooks were here young men, and some others not now remembered, but within a few months they sought locations elsewhere. Just prior to that time, Dr. John W. Hitch¬ cock had left, having very creditably sustained himself in his pro¬ fession for several years. He was the pupil of Dr. Valentine Mott, of Jsew York, was a good surgeon, had professional merit, and was recommended to this community by his preceptor. Dr. Daniels was a man of learning, a graduate of Jefferson Medical College, Phila¬ delphia, ambitious, industrious and jealous of his rights. & He had studied the profession with great care, practiced it with great care, and brought to his aid judgment and skill and learning. He was a good surgeon, and partial to that branch of the profession. I have rarely seen any one who could more readily bring to light latent difficulties at the bedside, or more skillfully suggest proper rem¬ edies. It is no disparagement to the most learned physicians of In¬ diana, at that time, to say that Dr. Daniels was in all respects their equal. He died of pneumonia in 1847, aged about fifty-six years.

nally from tlie State of New York; had practiced medicine on the Wabash and in this place until his head was whitened, enjoying the confidence and respect of his medical brethren and the entire com¬ munity. Always poor, always industrious and faithful to the sick, and always a good physician. He attended one course of lectures in New York, was a careful observer, and from Jong practice was skilled in the diseases of this locality. In the California gold ex¬ citement he went there like many others, only to find the same obstacles he had left behind. He died in that State in the year 1858, aged seventy-eight years.

"Dr. Ball, a native of New York, was an excellent and highly esteemed citizen, and a very careful and industrious physician. He commanded the confidence of his patients, and for more than forty years enjoyed a very large practice. He died in the year 1873, aged seventy-three years.

"Dr. Azel Holmes was born in Herkimer county, N. Y., in the year 1804. He studied medicine with the celebrated Dr. Mas¬ sey, and graduated in medicine in one of the New England schools. He enjoyed an extensive practice in this county for several years; had cultivated a careful ability; was exact and precise, and a most excellent physician. He went to California in the year 1850, with his brother-in-law, Joseph O. Jones, Esq., of this city and died in Sacramento the same year.

"The picture will not be very flattering to those of pecuniary tastes and desires about entering the profession, when told that weary years of toil and drudgery had not given to any of these phy¬ sicians estates exceeding in value $5,000, Dr. Ball excepted.

"Professional remuneration was small, and begrdugingly tendered. It is due to my dead confreres to say that they were temperate, charitable and exemplary, and in all of their professional obliga¬ tions scrupulously exact. As physicians and citizens their lives were without blemish and without stain.

"Dr. Henry D. Lee, a native of Virginia, settled in early times on a farm ten miles from Terre Haute, and near Lockport, this county. He was a good physician, without pretension, and at all times commanded the esteem of medical men and the universal re¬ spect of his neighbors. He was a Christian gentleman, and through life was occasionally in the habit of preaching in his own neighbor¬ hood and abroad. He died in 1871, aged sixty-six years, on his birthday.

" Dr. Hamilton of Prairieton, in this county, was a graduate of one of the Philadelphia schools of medicine, and was eminently fitted by education and habit for a high professional position, but died young in the year 1851.

"I have now named all the prominent medical men residing in this county thirty years ago, not one of whom now lives. There weie a few others of lesser note, but they, too, are dead or gone to other fields of labor.

" From the time here mentioned to the present, there have been many and various accessions to the profession in this city. The worthy and unworthy, the educated and uneducated, have alike tried their fortune, but with unequal success.

" a class, I have no hesitation in stating that the medical men of Terre Haute, and of the county of Yigo, would at all times com¬ pare favorably with a like number of physicians in professional ability, skill and industry in any other locality. When I came here I found a medical society in existence which at one time had cre¬ ated a good deal of professional interest, but was then languishing and not well attended.

" Subsequently the society was reorganized, and called the Yigo County Medical Society, membership being open to the physicians of the county as well as to those of the city. The societv has never excited among its members the interest it should, and* generally has been in a sickly condition. In the year 1817, the next year after the settlement of Terre Haute, and five years before that of Indianapolis, a medical society was formed at Ymcennes, embracing in territory this and the county of Parke north of us, or a distance north of Yincennes of ninety miles. Its very first members were men of distinguished character and of earnest professional zeal, as may be known from extracts from their original proceedings, the papers now on my table, and kindly furnished by Mrs. Shuler, the widow of one of its most distinguished members."

Dr. John W. Davis, of Carlisle, Sullivan county, afterward a membei of congress, speaker of the house of representatives, minis¬ ter to China, and governor of Oregon, was one of its early members. But Dr. Lawrence S. Shuler, twice elected president of the society, sent as delegate to the first State medical society, and a candidate for congress when this congressional district embraced a greater area of territory than one-third of Indiana, deserves more than a passing notice, for his surgical skill has been transmitted from sire to son, to the present time. He was a native of the State of New York, born in 1790, and was a graduate of the College of Physi¬ cians and Surgeons, New York. One of his tickets admitting him to lectures, is at hand, dated 1815, also his diploma. The Doctor was an earnest, scientific and skillful surgeon.

Dr. Charles B. Modesitt was one of the earliest, if not the first physician who settled on Fort Harrison Prairie, the prairie on which Terre Haute is located. At that early day the Indians greatly exceeded the whites in numbers, and for safety most persons settled at or near Fort Harrison, then a military post three miles north of Terre Haute, the Indians having recently been hostile, and in the interest or service of the British government.

Dr. William Clark, a military surgeon at Fort Harrison, prac¬ ticed medicine among the early settlers for a few years, and moved somewhere near Eugene, on the Wabash, about the year 1824.

Dr. Hotchkiss, from Connecticut, came here in the year 1822, and died in 1830, and Dr. Turner, from the same State, came in 1822, and died in 1832. All of the above named physicians belonged to the First District Medical Society, at Vincennes or Terre Haute.

In a conversation with Dr. B. F. Swofford, who is now one of the old residents of the county, coming here when a child, and who has been a practicing physician since early manhood, and in the very active professional life has amused his leisure hours by writing a history of the Wabash doctors, and is there tore well posted and re¬ liable on that as many other subjects, among other things, gave me substantially the following as the result of his investigations in reference to the early physicians: There was a Dr. Richard Taylor, who was a surgeon in the fort with Z. Taylor's command, and it is probable he was the first physician in what is now Vigo county. After leaving the army he settled eventually in what is now Parke county, where there are still his descendants. It is thought that Dr. Taylor died about 1830; also that there was a Dr. Middleton at one time in the fort, with Major Ohunn, commander. He left here it is supposed and went to live in Palestine, Ill., or near there, where he died. Dr. Hubbard settled on Otter Creek. He came with the first wave of immigrants after this became a State. Then there was old Dr. Lawrence Schuler, who was a prominent man in the very early day. A student of his was Dr. Robert Calhoun, who was an early settler, and died here in 1872. Dr. E. V. Ball was another of his students. Di-. Lee settled southeast of Terre Haute, in Riley township. In a tolerably early day Dr. Weir settled in Prairie Creek township. Dr. Orrin Dowdy located west of the river where he died thirty-five years ago; and a cotemporary of his was Dr. David Brown, who died about fifty years ago, and Dr. James Bell was another of about that time. He first settled in Prairieton. In the list of what may be called the third wave were Drs. Ezra Read, George W. Clippinger, Septer Patrick, J. W. Hitchcock, E. H. Hitchcock, Maxwell Wood, Jeremiah Long, Dr. Davis, west of the river; King and Ogden were in Nevins township, and Irish and P. M. Donnelly (botanic), Allen Pence (botanic), E. Daniels in Terre Haute. In the fifties may be named Stephen J. Young, Evans Campbell, J. C. Thompson, George W. Patrick, Thomas W. Curtis, William L. Mahan, Johnson (eclectic) and Rust. In the country were Foxwortliy, Mahan, George W. Hickson, Hartley, Daniel Hollingsworth, Samuel G. Hogue, David Hawkins and Benjamin F. Swofford.

Society: As already mentioned the early fundamental law pro¬ vided for State and local or branch medical societies. The early doings of this body have been already given, and as a summary of this it may be stated that in the early fifties the society was in full and active life and so continued until the war, when there was a decade when it was in a somnolent state. In 1868 it was again in active movement, and from that time to the present has flourished. There are now of all kinds 119 phvsicians in Vig-o county.

Dr. B. F. Swofford has an old paper that was issued by the first medical society of Yigo county. It is " Certificate number 7," and reads as follows:

In testimony whereof, I, the president of said board, have hereunto set my hand and affixed the seal of the said board, at Terre Haute, this 9th day of April, A. D. 1822. [SignedJ Richard Taylor, Pi ' esident ,

This Dr. Richard Taylor was with Z. Taylor, and was no doubt a close relative. He was a distinguished, a robust man, strong and original in mind and character.

Dr. Ezra Reed was eminent in his chosen profession and as well in learning and literature. He died in Terre Haute at the age of sixty-six, in 1877. He was born near Marietta, Ohio, August 2, 1811 ; reared a farmer's boy, working on the farm in summer and going to the country schools in winter; then attended the Ohio University at Athens for a term of three years. His brother was a professor in the institution. During his junior year at the university he re¬ ceived the appointment of midshipman in the navy, and after this served on several vessels, and was at one time stationed at Norfolk, where he came to know John Randolph and his remarkable eccen¬ tricities, as he was on the vessel that was ordered to take that man as embassador to Russia.

Dr. Reed died after a long sickness without organic disease - simply overwork and exhaustion. No man who has ever passed away in this city was more deeply or universally mourned. The flags of the city were displayed at half-mast on the occasion; professional men met in gatherings, and by speeches and resolutions expressed something of the common sorrow. But above all it was the poor and laboring people that felt the loss the keenest. Their common expression was that of a personal affliction to each and all. The employes of the shops, foundries and rolling mills held meetings and resolved to attend the funeral in a body; and from the poor quarters of the city came the men, women and children totake a last sad look at the face of their friend and common benefactor. And of the great dead nothing higher than this can be said by biographer or eulogist.

There are now in Yigo county 119 practicing physicians of all kinds. These are divided as follows: Regular, 93; eclectic, 16; homeopathic, 8 ; physio-medical, 2.