Three Generations of Physicians
THE SMITHS, A DARTMOUTH FAMILY, TRACE ANCESTRY BACKTO 18TH CENTURY GRADUATE OF THE COLLEGE
FEW THINGS please a physicianfather more than to have a son voluntarily follow a medical school training and become a physician and practise in his turn. The phenomenon is not uncommon. Rarer, however, are families in which men from three generations in succession become doctors, and more impressive becomes the tradition.
Dartmouth has on its honor roll an unusual family with a not uncommon name: Smith. Since 1850, members of a certain Smith family have been intimately connected, as physicians, with the physical welfare of New Hampshire communities, and three successive generations of Smiths have produced four doctors who have been associated with the College.
This genealogical history becomes still more interesting when one learns that in early days three Smith brothers, direct progenitors, worked for the spiritual welfare of New Hampshire as Congregational ministers—all of them graduates of Dartmouth.
The first of the Smith doctors was Dr. David O. Smith, born in Hudson, N. H., in 1823, who began life as a school teacher but became so much more interested in diseases and the sufferings of humanity that he went to Harvard Medical School from which he was graduated in 1850.
The father attained a wide reputation as a keen diagnostician, and during his more than 50 years of active practice the sick in
This first physician became a favorite pupil of Oliver Wendell Holmes, who from 1847 to *BB2 delighted medical students at Harvard with his anatomical lectures, which were conspicuous, no less than his essays on homoeopathy, for their vivacity, unfailing freshness and vitality—the same Dr. Holmes who in 1858 pleased even the most lugubrious of New Englanders with his The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table and delighted the ones with a sense of humour.
Dr. David O. Smith also distinguished himself by earning a prize given for excellence in surgery, and 36 years later his son, Dr. Herbert L. Smith, won a similar prize for outstanding work at Dartmouth.
Dr. David O. Smith immediately began to practise in his native town, Hudson, N. H., the home of his parents and his grandparents, and he settled down in a house which had been built in 1823 by a local physician, Dr. Dustin Barrett. Never since the house has been built has any person lived in it who was not a doctor; in 113 years at least eight doctors have lived in it; and it is now the property of Dr. Henry O. Smith, a son of Dr. David O. and a member of the class of 1886 at Dartmouth.
many towns roundabout called on him for help. An earnest student of medicine throughout his career, he in his later life enjoyed the discussion of obscure cases with his sons and other physicians.
Noteworthy were his treatment of fractures. Unaided by the modern laboratory procedure which is now commonplace, he was so accurate that he aroused the admiration of his son, Dr. Herbert L. Smith, who could contrast the excellence of his father's work against the present-day background.
This son, born in Hudson, 1863, was graduated from Dartmouth with high honors in 1882. Like his father, he too began to teach, and he held the position of headmaster in the Hanover High School for a year. After study at the Harvard Medical School, he interned with the Boston City Hospital where he concentrated on surgery and became later assistant superintendent and a member of the surgical staff.
There he devised the method of treating certain fractures at the elbow by acute flexion, the method now universally accepted. During his studies of this subject he produced many experimental fractures on the cadaver, followed by dissections to determine the exact relation of the tissues.
Early in his career Dr. Herbert L. Smith settled in Nashua, N. H., the city across the river from his native town, and here he soon achieved recognition as one of the leading surgeons in New England and originated several new and successful operative procedures.
A story is told of Dr. Smith's energy in saving a patient's life. On a bitter winter night when the mercury was a very short blue spike at 25 to 30 degrees below zero, when the snow was deep, and when the roads were poorly broken, he was called to a town 20 miles away by a physician who was controlling a bleeding artery in the throat by pressure with his finger in the patient's mouth. Relays of horses and relays of drivers brought Dr. Smith to the sufferer before it was too late, and at 2 a.m. the common carotid was ligated by the light of a kerosene lamp.
Dr. Smith has always maintained a close connection with Dartmouth, from which his son, Llewellyn D. Smith, was graduated in 1922. When the Old Pine finally died, he caused the encircling ring of cement with its bronze tablet to be placed around the stump.
Although Dr. Smith was honored by election to the Presidency of the New Hampshire Surgical Club and in 1923 to the Presidency of the New Hampshire Medical Society, of which organization he was a trustee at the time of his death, he found energy to interest himself in modern languages and just before his last illness he was studying Portuguese that he might read in the original papers written by eminent Brazilian surgeons.
FOLLOWS FATHER
A younger son of the first doctor and brother to Herbert, Henry O. Smith, also found himself impelled toward medicine. Henry O. spent two years with the class of 1886 at Dartmouth, entered Bellevue Hospital Medical College, then one of the leading Eastern schools, obtained his M. D. in 1887, served for a year as resident physician in a New York Hospital, and then returned to his native Hudson where he still lives. He is a member of the staff of the Nashua Hospital, was chosen speaker of the House of Delegates of the New Hampshire Medical Society in 1925, President of the Society in 1929, and, at present, he is serving the Society as one of its trustees.
Although Dr. Henry O. Smith never studied at the Dartmouth Medical School, he has always interested himself in its welfare, and in 1923 he introduced a resolution at a meeting of the State Society that the complete four year course should be reestablished. Like his father David, he has interested himself deeply in the welfare of the home of his ancestors as member and chairman of the local board of health for many years, as a member of the school board for 24 years, as a trustee of the town library for 43 years and as a trustee of the town trust funds since the creation of the legislature of these boards 20 years ago. To the third generation of the Smith family physicians belongs Dr. Henry O. Smith's son, Deering G. Smith, a nephew of Dr. Howard S. Dearing, Dartmouth '79, grand nephew of two physicians, nephew and grandson of doctors; he too responded to the urge. After being graduated from Dartmouth in 1917, he took two years of his medical work in Hanover and the final two at Yale, which awarded him his M. D. in 1920. After a year of interneship in the Rhode Island Hospital, he also settled in Nashua, where he served as chairman of the Nashua Board of Health for a time. For several years he has been sent by the State Medical Society as its delegate to the meetings of the American Medical Association.
The Smiths trace their family back to Daniel Merrill of Rowley, Mass., who as a boy of 15 enlisted in the Continental Army for the term of three years and who witnessed the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown during his service lasting some 23 months. He was graduated from Dartmouth in 1789, so were his brother Joseph in 1806 and his brother, Nathaniel, in 1809. Daniel was later a leading spirit in the founding of Colby College.
These are the three brothers who became Congregational ministers. A daughter of Daniel, the one who served 40 years at Sedgewick, Maine, and Hudson, married Reuben Greely of Hudson, and Dr. Herbert L. Smith and Dr. Henry O. Smith were their grandchildren.
THE SMITH FAMILY, NOTED IN DARTMOUTH AND NEW HAMPSHIRE MEDICAL HISTORY (Left to right) Dr. Herbert L. Smith '82, Dr. Henry O. Smith '86, Dr. Deering G. Smith '17.
