ALUMNI PUBLICATIONS
Dr. Lyman Spalding : the Originatorof the United States Pharmacopoeia;Co-laborer with Dr. Nathan Smith inthe founding of the Dartmouth MedicalSchool and its first chemical lecturer;President and Professor of Anatomy andSurgery of the College of Physiciansand Surgeons of the Western District,at Fairfield, N. Y. By DR. JAMES ALFRED SPALDING ('66). Boston: W. M. Leonard. 1916. Pp. 380.
The life of Dr. Lyman Spalding by his grandson is a biography of great interest not only because it reveals intimately the personality of a kindly and brilliant physician of the early nineteenth century, but because it also throws much light on American medical history from 1795 to 1820; and to Dartmouth men it has the further interest of presenting a considerable body of information about conditions at the College in the first two decades of the last century and about the lives of some two score of early graduates of the College and of the Medical School. The biography is made up largely of letters written to Dr. Spalding, with explanatory comment by the author. Since Dr. Spalding numbered among his correspondents most of the leading physicians and surgeons of America in his day, as well as some in London and Paris, and since the majority of their letters discuss questions of professional interest, an excellent background is presented for understanding the conditions of medical science a century ago. Over thirty of the letters printed are from the pen of Dr. Nathan Smith, the founder of the Dartmouth Medical School, and deal with affairs immediately concerning Dartmouth and Hanover.
Dr. Lyman Spalding was born in Cornish, N. H., June 5, 1775, received the degree of Bachelor of Medicine at Harvard in 1797, and came at once to Hanover at the request of Dr. Smith to become the latter's only assistant in the faculty of medicine. He held the position of Lecturer in Chemistry and Materia Medica for three years, resigning in 1800 because he was unable to eke out a living by practice in Hanover and because he could not afford to take from practice elsewhere the time necessary for the lectures at Dartmouth. To give his lectures in 1799 he had come up from Walpole, where he had settled temporarily, and for those of 1800 he had left his practice in Portsmouth. He was given by Dartmouth the honorary degrees of Bachelor of Medicine in 1798 and of Doctor of Medicine in 1804; in 1811 he was made an honorary Doctor of Medicine by Harvard. From 1799 to 1812 he was engaged in practice in Portsmouth, coming early to be looked upon as one of the most learned and progressive physicians in the state. He was a leader in the introduction of vaccination to this country, and one of the first physicians to compile accurate bills of mortality. He brought out an American edition of Willan's "On Cutaneous Diseases," and was a constant writer on medical subjects for the scientific and popular prints of the day. In 1808 he returned to Hanover for several weeks as demonstrator for Dr. Alexander Ramsay, the foremost anatomist in America, whom Dr. Smith had procured for a course of lectures at the Medical School. He served as President of Fairfield Medical School from 1810 to 1812, and of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District from 1813 to 1817. From 1813 to 1821 he lived in New York City, and devoted much time to the preparation of the first edition of the "Pharmacopoeia of the United States," of which he was the originator. As the result of injuries received in an accident in New York, he died at Portsmouth on October 21, 1821. All of Dr. Spalding's varied activities are fully and interestingly treated in this volume by his grandson.
From the sections dealing with the years spent by Dr. Spalding at Hanover we learn many new facts about the College of 1800' Here are to be found lists of books and supplies ordered for use in the school, accounts of the numbers in attendance at the lectures, and a record of the dissertations presented by the three graduates of the Medical School at the Commencement of 1799. "It is the law of the College," writes Dr. Spalding at this time, "that every dissertation shall be published within six months after delivery." We are told also how Dr. Spalding found it necessary to translate from the French a textbook to use in his classes in chemistry, and how he was obliged to write and deliver all the lectures of the school when Dr. Smith was absent from town. The financial state of the College is revealed in two or three letters relative to the salary of Dr. Spalding; it would appear that he received only fifty dollars for a course of fifty lectures, and even that sum the College found it hard to pay when it fell due.
Here and there is given an entertaining sidelight on the undergraduate life of the times. For example, we find that in 1798 the Sophomores resented the presence of geese about the trough under the College pump, and one day slaughtered a number of them with their heavy canes. The facetious editor of the Dartmouth Eagle reported incident as "a disease among geesehis account spread from paper to paper until it reached places where it was misunderstood and interpreted literally, finally winning comment in the London Monthly Magazine! Dr. Spalding in a letter to Judah Dana '95, speaks of the incident thus: "A great day for Dartmouth Sophs. So Literary and Philosophical are they in all their movements, even to that of killing a goose, that they are noticed by the great Sir Joseph Banks, before the Royal Philosophical Society, in the great Emporium of the East. Unfortunately this affecting malady happened before the establishment of the Dartmouth Medical Institution, otherwise the world would have been favored with the Professor's report officially on the subject." We learn further that the slang of the day denominated canes as "bloodees" and Hanover girls as "ditties."
One of the most interesting letters about the College is that of President John Wheelock under date of June 3, 1800, in answer to a request for information as to how to send a boy to Dartmouth. After discussing the course of study offered, the length of the terms, and the method and times of admission. President Wheelock adds a paragraph about expenses. "In regard to the annual amount of the expenses of individual members. The tuition, 16 Dollars which sum is divided into three terms of payment. The members all board in private families of good morals, and the price is from $1 to $1.50 cents per week, according as they shall choose to agree. The whole ordinary expenses of an individual student including board, tuition, room, wood and contingents may amount to about $100, excepting clothes and traveling and pocket money, which will be but trifling. I fix the estimate on a decent economical plan, though some spend more and some, by frugality, go through with less." Such was the high cost of living in Hanover a hundred years ago!
The entire volume is filled with material which, although less locally interesting than the passages quoted, will well repay the attention of any reader. F. L. C.
"Legislation," an address delivered by John W. Gordon '83, President of the Vermont Bar Association, on January 2, 1917, has been printed in pamphlet form.
Dr. Creighton Barker '13 Med., is the author of "Administrative Control of Sick Indigents," reprinted from the NewYork Medical Journal for April 14, 1917.
