THE ECLECTIC

MEDICAL GLEANER.

New Series. Vol. VIII,

MAY, 1912.

No. 3.

Edited by HARVEY WICKES FELTER, M. D., Chase and Pitts Streets, Cincinnati, Ohio, to whom all communications in reference to articles and matters for publication should be addressed.

Published at THE LLOYD LIBRARY, 224 West Court Street, Cincinnati, Ohio, to which all subscriptions, advertisements, and matters of business should be addressed. Subscription price, $1.25 per year.

EDITORIAL.

REV. MANASSEH CUTLER, M. S., LL. D.—The pioneer in any of life's activities is always an interesting character. He who treads for the first time the unbroken wilderness and opens up its possibilities to generations to come, commands the veneration of those who reap the benefits in the after years. He who is the first to make history, whether in the discovery of a new land, in the founding of a settlement, in the location of long sought but ordinarily inaccessible parts of our globe, in the more striking deeds of the battlefield, in the invention of revolutionary machinery or world-used devices or methods, has his name blazoned and treasured as is no other by posterity. The first to publish valuable treatises upon subjects as yet untouched is equally venerated. The American pioneer in the field of botanic record as having published the first American contribution to general botany and medical botany is deserving of at least a passing notice. Without apology, therefore, we call attention to that distinguished pioneer, in whose early botanical researches every Eclectic should be interested-the versatile Rev. Dr. Manasseh Cutler.

Manasseh Cutler, minister, scientist, promoter, and man of affairs, was born May 3, 1742, in Killingly, Connecticut, on a farm through whose manor-house ran the dividing line between Connecticut and Rhode Island. His father, Hezekiah Cutler, was of Puritan stock, descended from James Cutler, who during the early settlement of Massachusetts Bay Colony had emigrated from Norfolkshire, England. His mother, Susannah Clark, also of

Puritan descent, was the daughter of one of the early surveyors of Windham County, Connecticut. Raised to farm life, and in the atmosphere of a Puritan home, by parents who were sternly religious, economical, industrious, and of unimpeachable character, the boy grew to manhood imbued with principles that served in after life to render him a great and useful man. Young Cutler was of studious habit, and an ardent seeker into the mysteries of nature. As his studies, which he pursued under the tutorage of the Rev. Aaron Brown, of Killingly, progressed, he became very proficient in those sciences which engrossed the scholar's mind of those days-astronomy, meteorology, and botany. He then entered Yale College, from which he graduated with honors in 1765. School teaching was his next occupation. On July 27, 1766, he joined the Church of which Mr. Brown was pastor. On September 7, 1766, he was united in marriage with Miss Mary Balch, daughter of the Rev. Thomas Balch, of Dedham, Connecticut, and then became a merchant at Martha's Vineyard, and conducted a store at Edgarstown. Meanwhile he studied law and was admitted to practice in the courts of Massachusetts in 1767. In 1768 Yale College conferred upon him the Master's Degree, and some years later (1789) gave him the honorary degree of LL. D., a distinction also conferred upon him by Harvard and other colleges. In 1769 he began the study of theology under his father-in-law, Mr. Balch, and the next year was licensed to preach the gospel, beginning his ministerial career at Hamlet Parish (then a part of Ipswich, afterward Hamilton), where, after being ordained the regular pastor on September 11, 1771, he remained until his death, which occurred at Hamilton, Mass, on July 28, 1823. While thus serving at Hamlet, he made frequent excursions into New England territory as a preacher, and while traveling took the opportunity to collect plants for a herbarium, and interested himself in agriculture and horticulture. So this many-sided man was fully occupied and became a power in the newly opened country. When the Revolutionary War was in progress he took an active part in the Rhode Island Campaign of 1778, serving as chaplain under Col. Ebenezer Francis, in the Eleventh Massachusetts Regiment. After his return to Hamlet he studied medicine, that he might be able to attend to the physical as well as the spiritual ills of his parishioners; and continued his scientific studies, in which his reputation now ranked only second to that of Benjamin Franklin. After the Rev

olution he was a chief promoter in the formation of the Ohio Company, which made the historic settlement at Marietta, on the Ohio. To the great West he intended to move, and actually did make the journey of 750 miles in his sulky, accomplishing it in twenty-nine days, but subsequently returned to the Bay State. He was also twice a Member of Congress, declined the appointment of Judge of the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territory in 1795, and was a valued member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This exceedingly energetic man figures prominently as one of the chief active forces in the development of our country, his greatest benefaction to posterity perhaps being his part in the settlement of the Northwest Territory through the agency of the Ohio Company and his molding of the great Ordinance of 1787. Farmer, pedagogue, minister, lawyer, soldier, physician, traveler, scientist, and promoter; what more could he have been? Yet we, as physicians of the Eclectic school, should be most interested in his work

as

botanist and in his honest attitude as a scientific witness in a trial at law involving early medical persecution.

Dr. Cutler was the first to seriously undertake a study of New England botany. Over 350 specimens were examined by him and recorded. Two years before the first work on American medicinal plants ("Materia Medica Americana," by Johann David Schöpf, 1787) was published (and that was published in Europe), Dr. Cutler contributed the first treatise on New England Botany, which included medicinal notices as well as other utilitarian features. This production, not then issued as a separate book, was published in 1785, having been read by him before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on September 2d, and published in the Transactions of that body. This epoch-marking production has been reproduced in facsimile as "Reproduction Bulletin No. 7," of the Lloyd Library.

"Manasseh Cutler was a man of culture, of affairs, of deeds." "He was eminently fitted both by nature and acquirements for the great diplomatic work required of him, and was so successful that he united the discordant elements so as to make possible the enacting of those wise and beneficent measures relating to education, religion, and slavery" in the great Ordinance of July 13, 1787. Felt, in his "History of Ipswich, Massachusetts," says of Cutler: "In person Dr. Cutler was light of complexion, above the common stature, erect and dignified in appearance. His manners were gen