Professionalizing Medicine: James Reeves and the Choices That Shaped American Health Care by John M. Harris Jr. (review)

As of this writing, the world is in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. Success in handling the pandemic in the United States will be due partly to the efforts of a West Virginia medical doctor, James Edmund Reeves. John M. Harris Jr., MD, has written an excellent biography of Reeves that not only details the life of this remarkable man but also shows how medicine as a profession, and the public perception of it, was influenced by a West Virginia doctor whose life spanned the period from 1829 to 1896. Reeves spent his early life in Barbour County but moved to Wheeling shortly after the Civil War and remained there until he relocated, for health reasons, to Chattanooga in 1888.

Harris uses the life and times of James Reeves as a vehicle to describe the efforts to “professionalize” medicine in the nineteenth century. Consequently, the book is much more than a biography in that major portions are devoted to describing work done by other physicians to advance the science and professionalization of medicine. Harris presents his historical material in a manner that those not trained in medicine can understand and brings Reeves and pertinent events of the 1800s to life.

Reeves’s medical degree had been obtained from a reputable school, the University of Pennsylvania Medical College, in 1860. He had little tolerance for those who claimed to be doctors without the proper education or, as an alternative, significant training. A tireless crusader, he sought to identify and neutralize medical practitioners who he felt preyed on the public with questionable treatments and untested medicines. Exhibiting personal bravery, he wrote letters to the newspapers criticizing such practitioners and was sued, unsuccessfully, several times for libel.

He sought new scientific information and was constantly upgrading his medical practice to include tested and effective medical procedures. He investigated his environment to find causes for diseases. When Reeves moved to Wheeling from Barbour County, he found an industrializing city that had not yet come to grips with the pollution, both in terms of industrial waste and poor hygiene, caused by a large population. His support of efforts to eliminate sources of contagion caught the eye of local citizens, and he was chosen to serve for several years as the public health officer for the city of Wheeling and later as a member of the city council, his one foray into politics.

There were few, if any, laws regulating medical practice in the 1800s. Into this void, doctors organized associations with the purpose of elevating standards. Reeves helped organize or was a member of several medical societies or associations, including the Medical Society of West Virginia, Medical Society of Wheeling and Ohio County, American Public Health Association (served a term as president), Association of American Physicians, American Medical Association, and others. Though these associations could, and did, exclude those they considered a danger to the health of the public, there was nothing to keep anyone from practicing.

In 1881, Reeves was successful in lobbying for a West Virginia Board of Health. The new board, the first of its kind in the country and composed of medical professionals, was charged with licensing doctors. As Harris points out, this act was not perfect but a very good start. The law was good enough to withstand a challenge from Frank Dent, who had been forbidden a license to practice medicine and was convicted of violating the statute. Dent appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which upheld his conviction. The resulting decision, Dent vs. West Virginia, established a national “constitutional precedent for all forms of professional licensure” (155).

Despite Reeves’s accomplishments, he is not mentioned in any West Virginia histories. How amazing that a man who was so influential not only in West Virginia medical history but in that of the United States had, before now, not drawn a footnote in the state’s history.

This book...