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JOHN L. RICHMOND, WESTERN PIONEER SURGEON.* A Contribution to the Medical History of the West

BY OTTO JUETTNER, A. M., M. D., F. R. S. M. (ENG.) Author of "Daniel Drake and His Followers," Secretary of the "Western Association for the Preservation of Medical Records."

The fourth of April, 1822, was a memorable day in the history of medical education in the West. It was the first Commencement day of the Medical College of Ohio, the second oldest medical school in the West. A class of seven proud and ambitious young men were to receive diplomas from their Alma Mater, attesting to their fitness and qualification for the practice of medicine. There were no doctors in this Western country who could boast of that precious piece of sheepskin with its mysterious Latin inscription and its formidable evidence of authority, the seal of the first institution of medical learning in Ohio. The institution was, as stated, the second of its kind in the West, Transylvania University, in Lexington, Ky., having preceded the Medical College of Ohio by two years. That memorable Commencement was held in the hall of the Cincinnati College, on Walnut Street, where now the Mercantile Library Building stands. In addition to the friends of the graduates, a crowd of people from Cincinnati and the surrounding country was assembled, brought there partly by interest in the Medical College of Ohio, partly attracted by curiosity aroused by the prospect of witnessing an unique performance. There were a few doctors in the audience who represented the medical profession of the city. None of these were graduates in medicine in the academic sense of the word. Most of them had learned the art of physic under some older doctor. A few had been surgeons' mates in the army. They came with ill-concealed feelings of discomfort at the prospect of competition with what they considered young upstarts. The commanding figure on that auspicious occasion was Daniel Drake, the founder of the college, for whom this first Commencement of his institution meant a very particular

*Address delivered January 11, 1912, before the McDowell Medical Society, Cincinnati, Ohio.

triumph. He had been antagonized and maligned by the doctors of the city for years. He had suffered the proverbial fate of all progressive men. He had encountered the hatred, envy, and malice of every small mind in the profession. The common people love and admire a fighter who is pure in his motives, undismayed in the pursuit of his ideals, fair and square in his fighting, and fearless in the face of adversity. When Drake appeared on the stage on that first Commencement day to deliver a valedictory to the class, he was received like a conquering hero. And what a glorious effort that first valedictory was! The last words which he addressed to the class were beautiful in their diction and prophetic in their context. He said:

"You will make science the ground-work of your reputation; and acts of intelligence, honor, and benevolence the material of the superstructure. You will thus become shining lights of the profession: you will sit down with the great ones of the earth: the learned will thirst after your conversation: the rich will contribute their homage, the poor will call you blessed, and your names will live and be held in honor."

One by one the seven graduates walked up to the stage to receive their diplomas. There was one in that class who more than lived up to the glorious career foreshadowed in Drake's parting words. Ninety years have passed since that memorable first Commencement. To-night I wish to tell you the story of one member of that graduating class, John L. Richmond, Western pioneer surgeon, whose name can never be separated from the first proud records of surgery in this Western country, and is intimately associated, by similarity of the task performed and by consanguinity of genius, with the name of the distinguished man who is the inspiration of our work in this society, Ephraim McDowell.

John L. Richmond, son of Nathaniel Richmond and Susannah Lambert, was born on the fifth day of April, 1785, on a farm near Chesterfield, Massachusetts. When he was three years old his parents moved to Western New York. Barring two weeks' schooling which he received at a country school near his home, all his education was self-acquired. His people were poor and supported themselves by the hardest kind of manual labor. In his leisure hours and even while at work he tried to satisfy the longings of his soul for knowledge. He always carried a book or two with him and never idled away even a moment. Nature had endowed him with

a great deal of mental energy. His memory was unfailing and, up to his ripe old age, remained wonderfully clear and retentive. He married young in life and was fortunate in having a wife who appreciated the natural talents of her husband and aided him in every way to develop them. He worked in coal mines, on the field, and in the forest to make a living. Frequently his wife would copy a lesson or two from a book on slips of paper, which she would pin on his sleeves so that he might be able to pursue his studies while at work. It is said that most of his knowledge of Latin and Greek was acquired in this way. Even as a young man he had a reputation as a great Bible scholar. He was a natural-born orator, endowed with much fire and enthusiasm, and had a deep and powerful voice which he knew how to use. By incessant effort he finally succeeded (1816) in getting a license to perform the functions of a Baptist minister. On Sundays he labored for the spiritual welfare of his fellow-workmen and neighbors, preaching under the canopy of heaven or in some barn, while he continued his menial work during the week to support his wife and rapidly increasing family. Finally he turned his eye westward, where many of his friends had settled and had found new and better homes. Amid hardships too numerous to mention, he got as far as Pittsburgh, and from here took a flatboat which ultimately (in 1817) brought him and his family to Cincinnati. Here the battle of life had to be started anew. Down on Main Street, near the river, Isaak Drake, the father of Daniel Drake, conducted a general store. In the second floor of the building the Medical College of Ohio had its home. Here Richmond applied for work and was given the position of janitor of the Medical College of Ohio. By dint of the most exacting kind of economy and by accepting odd jobs here and there to make a few extra pennies, he kept the wolf from the door. After the gnawing of an hungry stomach had been assuaged, he began more keenly than ever to experience the thirst for the waters of the Pierian spring. He craved for more knowledge. He thought back over the hard times in New England when he would occasionally visit a neighboring doctor who had books to read and who would often discuss with him questions in medicine and surgery. He now saw the medical students assemble in old Drake's store and in his heart he began to feel the sublimest kind of envy, the envy of others who have better chances to acquire the things that are worth while. His mind was made up. Finally he courageously opened his heart

to Daniel Drake and offered one-half of his meager salary for the chance to attend lectures. Drake must have thought of his own modest beginnings and of his unceasing labor to overcome poverty and the difficulties placed in his way by an insufficient education. There must have been between these two men the spirit of companionship enkindled by the affinity of genius. Drake paved Richmond's way. On that eventful Commencement day, April 4, 1822, Richmond received his diploma as a full-fledged Doctor of Medicine. He had previously presented a thesis on "Euonymus Carolinensis" (Indian Arrowwood), which received the warm praise of the medical Faculty. He began his career as a physician in Newtown, Ohio. In 1825 he was appointed surgeon of the Second Regiment, Ohio State Militia.

Richmond did not, however, prove untrue to his first love, the ministry. He soon gathered about him a little band of Baptists and became their minister for body and soul. Every Sabbath day he expounded the gospel in the quaint little church on Cluff Road near Newtown, only a few miles from Cincinnati. If you, gentlemen, wish to revel in the memories of the pioneer days of the Miami Valley, go out and visit the old abandoned Baptist graveyard on Cluff Road and see the old church, now but a ruin. I stood in the old country churchyard late one afternoon in the early fall and thought of all the beauty, all the happiness, all the joys, and, withal, the anguish and sorrow of human hearts that are buried here in the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust. Not a sound disturbs the quiet grandeur of this hallowed spot,—

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a moldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The memory of John L. Richmond hovers about the old church where this rugged pioneer labored in the interests of human happiness following in the footsteps of his Master, the lowly Nazarene, who also administered balm to weary bodies and aching hearts.

In a collection of poems by George Crosley, who was born in