Source:
History of Shelby County, Ohio
and representative citizens
Evansville, Ind. -
1913 - 947 pgs.
.....
Chapter XV
Pg. 256
MEDICAL PROFESSION

The Pioneer Doctor - Prevailing Diseases in Early Days - Crude Methods of Cure -
Great Medical Discoveries - Some of the Early and Later Physicians of Shelby County
 - The Shelby County Medical Society - Present Physicians and Surgeons.

     The first disciples of Esculapius and Hippocrates to practice within the present limits of Shelby county did not have the advantages enjoyed by their brethren of the present day.  One hundred years ago the practice of medicine was crude and unsatisfactory.  It was the day of the lancet, calomel and jalap.  People then were afflicted with many diseases arising largely from the climate and exposures.  Doctors were few and ofttimes a half day's ride from the isolated cabin and not infrequently a swollen river intervened.  They were men of the family physician type—a type which has almost passed away in these days of specialism.  They did their work well and never flinched where duty called them.  Their patients honored them as they did
their priest or minister.  They were the men who fought the scourging epidemics of smallpox, black diphtheria, chills and fever and typhoid that were so prevalent.  They did it the best they could with the means at their command.  The prevailing diseases of the early days of county history were many.  The winters were cold. Consumption was practically unknown among the pioneers, croup was the terror of the household, rheumatism and, along the water courses, remitting and intermitting fevers including ague were common.  Dysentery occurred every summer in this locality, jaundice was common and besides the scourge of smallpox, there were two invasions of cholera.  Among the other diseases with which the first physicians had to
contend were scrofula, rickets, scurvy, dropsy and apoplexy.  Cancers were hardly known in the county then and insanity was very rare.  No bills of mortality were kept in the early days, there were no boards of health, and the old doctors were not called upon to furnish mortuary statistics.  The oldtime medical profession of the county had an intense hatred of the charlatan
or quack doctor who came to the surface now and then to the detriment of the regular profession.  Drug stores were unknown and every family was largely its own doctor.
     Who has not heard of the thrifty housewife and her bowl of goose grease for smearing the children's throats, a custom which obtains to the present day.  Each household had various remedies compounded from herbs and roots -

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among which tansy, boneset, snakeroot and poke were favorites.  Stimulants were found in the prickly ash, Indian turnip, sassafras, ginseng and the flower of the wild hops, tonics in the bark and flower of the dogwood, the rose willow, yellow poplar, the cucumber tree and the Spanish oak, while the red maple, wild cherry and crowfoot were regarded as astringents and so used.  Almost every neighborhood had its "charm doctor" that claimed to be expert in the removal of ringworms, tetter, felon and the like.
     It mattered little how weak a patient might be he had to be bled.  The bleeding process obtained in this county till long after the birth of the nineteenth century.  Sometimes, when they could be obtained, leeches were used in the practice of medicine to draw blood from the patient.  They bled for croup, which was another name for diphtheria, and nothing was as efficacious for pneumonia.  It is said that Washington was bled to death by his physicians.
     It must not be thought that the pioneer doctor was a man of little education.  He was a man much ahead of his profession.  He kept abreast of his time and especially in the therapeutics of the day.  His stock of medicine came generally from the east, though in later years pharmacopoeias were established at Columbus and Cincinnati.  For the remedies which he did not manufacture himself he drew on the nearest medical depot and aside from jalap and calomel, he was dependent on his own resources.
     To the introduction of anaesthetics and antiseptics is due a complete revolution of earlier methods, complete reversal of mortuary statistics, and the complete relief of pain during surgical operations; in other words, to these two discoveries the human race owes more of the prolongation of life and relief of suffering than can ever be estimated or formulated in words.  In the same class from the point of usefulness to mankind may be placed the discovery in recent years of the great value of antitoxin by Professor Von Behring of Berlin.  To Lord Lester is due the great honor of the discovery, of antiseptics—a process that would avail against putrefaction and to Dr. William T. G. Morton the use of ether in surgery first proved to the world in 1846.  On his tomb in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Boston is this self explanatory inscription:
     "Inocutor and revealer of anaesthetic inhalation, before whom in all time surgery was agony, and by whom pain in surgery was averted and annulled since whom science has controlled pain."
     The two grandest medical discoveries of all time are of Anglo-Saxon origin—the one British, the other American.
     It would be next to impossible to qatalogue all the old physicians of the county.  Some are forgotten and the record of them is but the slightest.  They lived in the days of poor fees and hard work but this did not daunt them.
     The first practicing physician that settled in Shelby county was Dr. William Fielding who settled in Sidney in 1824, shortly after its selection as the county seat.  He was born May 1, 1796, in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, and after a full medical course, commenced the practice of his profession in 1816 in Madison county, Ohio.  He was in the War of 1812 and served six months under Colonel Johnston.  In 1818 he went to Franklin and there practiced

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until coming to Sidney.  Dr. Fielding was identified with church, state and Masonic affairs as he was one of the ruling elders in the organization of the Presbyterian church in 1825.  He represented this county in the legislature for seven years both as senator and representative and was one of the original petitioners of Temperance Lodge No. 73, in 1825, was honored with being its first worshipful master, which position he held during his life at different nines for twenty-seven years.  He was a thirty-third degree Mason and to this clay the brethren assemble in the lodge room on his birthday every year. His portrait in oil hangs on the walls of the temple.  He was probably the most learned of the past physicians of the county, a fine scholar and deep thinker, a Lord Chesterfield in manners, immaculate in dress and his name for nearly fifty years was a household word in Sidney and Shelby county.  He was married in 1818 and the father of twelve children, eleven of whom reached maturity.
     In 1836, when Sidney had a population of about one thousand, Dr. H. S. Conklin came to Sidney.  The country for miles around was wild, the roads merely trails or paths through the forest and enough game remained in this section to furnish hunting grounds for a few Indians.  A physician's practice extended over a large area and carried with it a great deal of genuine exposure and hardship.  Sleep was often found in the saddle, while the saddle-bags  were capacious enough to carry both medicines and surgical instruments.  The subject of this sketch was born in Champaign county, Ohio, in 1814, and read medicine with Dr. Robert Rogers of Springfield.  He graduated from the Ohio Medical College at Cincinnati in 1836 and at once located in Sidney where he continued practising up to his death in 1890.  He was surgeon for the state militia for fifteen years and held the offices of president and vice president of the State Medical Society, and was surgeon with General Fremont during the war.  He was largely instrumental in securing the D. and M. and C. C. C. and I. railways for Sidney.  A great lover of line stuck, he indulged his fancy to the fullest extent.  A man of splendid physique, with a mind so astute as to enable him to arrive at a diagnosis of a case with almost unerring correctness, he was wise in counsel and sought for all over the state.  In 1838 he married Miss Ann Blake, a native of England and raised a family of three children.
     Dr. Albert Wilson, the third son of Col. Jesse H. Wilson, one of the pioneers of Shelby county, was one of the early practitioners of the county, settling here in 1852.  He was born Sept. 14, 1826, studied medicine under Dr. H. S. Conklin, of Sidney, and graduated from the Ohio Medical College of Cincinnati in 1851.  In the spring of 1861 he entered the army as regimental surgeon and remained in the service four years and three months.  He was the first volunteer from the town of Sidney having offered his service as surgeon within forty-eight hours after Lincoln's first call for troops.  At the close of the war he returned to his practice in Sidney and in 1875 engaged in the drug trade in connection with his practice.  In 1871 he married Miss Irene Ayres of Wapakoneta, and had one daughter, Jessie Ayres Wilson.  He possessed a strong physical organization coming from a hardy race of

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people, was loyal to his friends, honest and sincere, and his life was certainly an exemplary one.  He died June 2, 1903.
     Another physician that was contemporaneous with our early practitioners was Dr. Park Beeman, a native of New York, who settled in Sidney in 1838.  No data concerning the doctor can be found but it is recalled that he made surgery a specialty, was painstaking and honest and a man highly respected in the community for his deferential bearing to his elders and the sympathy and aid to the sick and unfortunate.  One of his two daughters, Mrs. Gloriana Driscoll, of Detroit, still survives him.
     While not contemporaneous with the old time practitioners of Shelby county it is thought best to enroll the name of Dr. D. R. Silver in the list of early physicians and his death a year ago, December 8, was sincerely mourned by the entire community. He was reared on a farm near Wooster, Ohio, where he was born Apr. 1, 1844, and when eighteen years of age entered upon an academic course at Vermillion Institute in Haysville, Ohio.  After finishing there he studied medicine in Wooster and then graduated from the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia in 1868.  He came to Sidney in 1871 from Apple Creek, Wayne county, where he had been practising and
married Miss Jennie E. Fry of Sidney, June 2, 1872, and has had three children, two of whom survive, Edith and Arthur, the latter having taken up his father's practice since his death.
     Dr. Silver was possessed of an analytical mind, positive in his convictions and unswerving in his devotion to his principles.  He was a stanch Republican in politics, an implacable enemy of the saloon and it is said his activity in the wet-and-dry campaign hastened his death.  An orthodox Presbyterian in which church he had been an elder since 1873.  A member of the board of health of the city, identified with the schools as medical inspector, in which capacities he made investigations of sanitary conditions and the laws of hygiene.  The father of the Shelby County Medical Society and a member of the Ohio State Medical Society. 
     One of the old school of physicians was Dr. Wilson V. Cowan, born near Urbana, Ohio.  Jan. 11, 1816.  After receiving such instruction as the public schools afforded he attended Miami University taking a four years' course.  He was a graduate of the Ohio Medical College of Cincinnati and in 1844 commenced the practice of his profession in Hardin, Turtle Creek, township, which he continued up to his death in 1874.  He was elected to the lower house of general assembly in 1856 and in 1861 joined the Fremont Body Guards as assistant surgeon.  He was surgeon of the 1st Ohio Cavalry and afterwards was made brigade surgeon.  He was married in 1845 and had a family of eight children.
     He was an excellent physician, suave and gentle in his manners, kindly in the sick room and a charming entertainer in his home.  A most ardent Methodist and a stanch Republican in politics.
     A doctor universally beloved by his community in, which he lived, whose home was noted for its old time hospitality, was John C. Leedow, who settled on a farm near New Palestine in Green township in 1842.  He was born in

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Bucks county, Pennsylvania, Nov. 13, 1817, was educated in the Philadelphia schools, and in the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia.  He was married in Pennsylvania in 1839 and had five children.  He combined the business of farming in connection with his profession and was a most enterprising man keeping abreast of the times.  A fine looking man of splendid physique, with most agreeable manners, he was truly a physician of the old school. He died at his home in Green township Oct. 28, 1891.
     The first Doctor Hussey, we say first because two of his sons adopted the profession of their father, Allen, who practiced in Port Jefferson, and Millard F., who has a large practice in Sidney, came to Port Jefferson, Salem township, in 1848, and thus is identified with the early history of the county.  He was born Stephen C. of Irish parentage in Greene county, Ohio, in 1819, the third in a family of seven children.,  He was a graduate of Sturling Medical College, Columbus, and continued the practice of medicine until his death in 1871.  In 1840 he married Miss Ann Wical and raised a family of eleven children, ten of whom were living at his death.  He was a man of genial disposition, positive in his convictions, a Democrat of the Jackson type, and one of the first officers in Stokes Lodge, No. 305, of F. and A. Masons.
     Dr. John L. Miller was another Port Jefferson practitioner, a student of Dr. S. C. Hussey, who enjoyed a lucrative practice in that community for many years.  He was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1833, and came to Salem township in 1854.  After studying medicine there he attended Starling Medical College and commenced the practice of his profession in Port Jefferson in 1857.  He married Miss Margaret Henry in 1858, and had two sons one of whom survives him.  He was a physician of more than ordinary ability, of fine literary tastes, and his death which took place in 1906 at Delaware, where he passed the last few years of his life, was most sincerely mourned by his old friends.  His body lies in Graceland cemetery.
     The Shelby County Medical Society was organized in 1871 and its founder was the late Dr. D. R. Silver. Its organization is on the plan adopted by the American Medical Association that is that the County Society is the unit of organization.  It is a component part of the Ohio State Medical Association and also of the American Medical Association.  Any member of the Shelby County Medical Society in good standing is a member of the Ohio State Medical Association and is likewise eligible to membership in the American Medical Association.  The officers of the County Association are Lester C. Pepper, president: J. D. Geyer, vice president; Arthur Silver, secretary.

LIST OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS OF SHELBY COUNTY

     Sidney - F. D. Anderson, Henry E. Beebe, Hugh McDowell Beebe, W. D. Frederick, J. W. Costolo, J. d. Geyer, S. G. Goode, A. W. Grosvenor, A. B. Gudenkauf, A. W. Hobby, Flint C. Hubbell, B. S. Hunt, Millard T. Hussey, C. E. Johnston, Lester C. Pepper, A. W. Reddish, B. M. Sharp, E. A. Yates, Osteopath, F. D. Clark.

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     Anna - C. W. B. Harbour, D. R. Millette
     Botkins - Frederick McVay, G. M. Tate.
     Montra - C. M. Faulkner
     Jackson Center - Arlington Ailes, Mary E. Hauver, J. M. Carter, Edward McBurney, Edgar McCormich.
     Maplewood - O. C. Wilson, Waldo N. Gaines, Dr. Elliott.
     Lockingham - S. S. Gabriel
     Houston - William Gaines.
     Newport - J. N. Strosnider.
     Kettlerville - O. O. Le Master.
     During the past century medical advance in the county has been great.  The old system of practice has passed away and their remains of it at the present day nothing but a memory.  It may be said in conclusion that the medical profession of the county has a record to be proud of and that it keeps in the foremost rank of research and discovery in its particular domain.

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- History of Shelby County - Publ. 1913 -