Bicentennial Ruminations

BICENTENNIAL RUMINATIONS SAMUEL STEARNS, M.D.* INTRODUCTION What's wanted here is not a roll of names, great deeds, biographies or dates, for fame's a flimsy thing at best, the rumor spread by friends and foes before a man is dead or after. Retrospectively, each man is not much different in essentials than another. TIME demands the deed that PLACE makes possible. As Olson says, great SPACE was what this country offered pioneers: colonials had room for new careers when Europe grew too old and lost its clout (as Marx and Malthus later pointed out). I Our land and time were once for pioneers who scorned tradition and patrician peers in politics and every learned craft. And though there were physicians dull and daft, not all were quite as bad as Lettsom who said, "I purge, I pukes, I sweats 'em." Some were ministerial like Mather who counselled one, Zabdiel Boylston, "Rather variolate than take a chance on pocks." Some clergy said it flouted God, in talks about God's will, but Zab, egalitarian, pricked both his Negroes and his little son.1 * 1 1 1 Perkins Street, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts 02130. 'Anonymous article (probably by Cotton Mather and Zabdiel Boylston), "A Faithful Account of What Has Occurr'd under the Late Experiments of the Small-Pox Managed and Governed in the Way of Inoculation," Boston Gazette (October 30, 1721). 334 I Samuel Stearns · Bicentennial Ruminations II When McDowell somehow missed both bladder and bowel and removed a cyst, he used resources and a daring which had sources in his bearing as a pioneer and courage greater than his fear as operator. Of course, some said he'd lost his head— made no pretense of common sense— but frontier heroes were never zeros. Ill Elnathan Todd2 gave horse to drink, filled multicolored jar and flasks, conned Latin, cribbed midwifery, did all his mentor's simple tasks, but when, year two, he took a call, he robed himself in proper clothes, announced himself as DOCTOR Todd, and made his rounds with turned-up nose. He learned by doing, though not too well, yet there were few to do him better: bitter and foul as his nostrums were, the sick obeyed him to the letter. In time he found a younger man to give his horses hay and water; in doing so he taught his craft, producing doctors as he oughta. 2J. F. Cooper, The Pioneers (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1933), chap. 6. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Spring 1976 | 335 IV When Simon Flexner criticized our medical education, he was not the first by far to deplore our situation. John Morgan in year '65,3 bright, arrogant, ambitious, harangued the Philadelphians in language sharp and vicious: —physicians in this land of ours should have a preparation suited for the doctor's life of continuing education. —of course they'd work at colleges, do nothing pharmaceutical; to youngsters in mazed student years they'd be utmost tutorial. All this was well, but why in hell did he slight poor William Shippen who gave him most of these ideas when they'd been off in Britain? V To fife and drum and bullets' hum, their bayonets a-gleaming, the Redcoat drill marched up Breed's Hill where Warren stood a-dreaming; a single shot struck vital spot: Joe Warren fell, esteeming 3J. Morgan, "A Discourse upon the Institution of Medical Schools in America, etc." (paper delivered at the Public Anniversary Commencement, College of Philadelphia, May 30-31, 1765). 336 I Samuel Stearns · Bicentennial Ruminations equality and being free part of a doctor's deeming. VI Benjamin Rush was widely hailed an American Hippocrates. He bled and purged, and bled again, to calm such turbulent disease as yellow fever, clap and pox, quinsy throat, malaria, dengue, typhoid, and the flux, pleurisy and diphtheria. So the men who attended Washington thought to offer him the best: they bled and purged, and bled again till he was laid to rest. I cannot help but wish that they had had a bit more skill in modern pharmacology and giving penicillin. Editorial note.—Ajournai having Perspectives as the key word in its title could...