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Charles T. Jackson, the State Geologist, in 1837; and by Two Young Men from Boston in 1845

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Charles T. Jackson, the State Geologist, in 1837; and by Two Young Men from Boston in 1845 DID DRUG USE AT HARVARD START ANESTHESIOLOGY? THE MAINE WOODS: Ktaadn, whose name is an Indian word signifying highest land, was first ascended by white men in 1804. It was visited by Professor J.W. Bailey of West Point in 1836; by Dr. Charles T. Jackson, the State Geologist, in 1837; and by two young men from Boston in 1845. All these have given accounts of their expeditions. Since I was there, two or three other parties have made the excursion, and told their stories. Besides these, very few, even among backwoodsmen and hunters, have ever climbed it, and it will be a long time before the tide of fashionable travel sets that way. The mountainous region of the State of Maine stretches from near the White Mountains, northeasterly one hundred and sixty miles, to the head of the Aroostook River, and is about sixty miles wide. The wild or unsettled portion is far more extensive. So that some hours only of travel in this direction will carry the curious to the verge of a primitive forest, more interesting, perhaps, on all accounts, than they would reach by going a thousand miles westward. CHARLES TURNER, JR. JACOB WHITMAN BAILEY DR. CHARLES T. JACKSON EDWARD EVERETT HALE WILLIAM FRANCIS CHANNING HDT WHAT? INDEX PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS AND CAPE COD: DR. CHARLES JACKSON During the 1840s, the Professor of Anatomy at the Medical School of Harvard College, John Collins Warren, was crusading in Boston in opposition to the “senseless cruelty of the masses,” their debased politics, their corrupting lack of moral standards. If they know what is good for them, the people must pay heed to their superiors! “Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline. We may therefore be sorely tempted to misuse that power in furthering a personal prejudice or social goal — why not provide that extra oomph by extending the umbrella of science over a personal preference in ethics or politics?” — Stephen Jay Gould BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS NY: Norton, 1991, page 429 2 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS AND CAPE COD: DR. CHARLES JACKSON Some of these superiors to the common run of mankind would be the three main actors in the story of the discovery of anesthesia, William Thomas Green Morton, Charles T. Jackson and Horace Wells, three Harvard College dental students who after turning on with nitrous oxide during the 1840s, would fall to fighting over who should get the credit for this. During this year ether was being introduced into northern Ireland as a preventive and folk remedy. Recreational drinking was spreading in the Ulster counties of Londonderry and Tyrone, possibly due to the example of a physician in Draperstown. Frolics produced either by inhalation or by drinking drops of ether in water were becoming common among youths of the upper classes both in Europe and in America. Wells started it all by doing experiments with nitrous oxide but failed to follow through. Jackson put Morton onto sulfurous ether (CH3CH2)2O but it was Morton who thought out and performed the research, took the risks, and developed a safe and reliable method. In support of Morton’s claim mention is made of a Boston chemical supplier named Theodore Metcalf, and a maker of surgical instruments named Wightman. Only after the risks had been taken and the discovery accepted by the medical establishment did Jackson try to cash in, claiming that he had been the head and Morton merely the hands: “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS AND CAPE COD: DR. CHARLES JACKSON • Horace Wells, 1817-1849 — this Boston dentist became a drug addict and committed suicide while in prison for a drug-related crime, receiving a prize from the French Academy of Sciences on the following day • William Thomas Green Morton, 1819-1868 — this Boston dentist and former student of Charles T. Jackson’s had a bad track record for buying goods on credit, selling them and pocketing the money, and then failing to pay his bills. By the age of 21 he had already been “run out of town” in Worcester MA, Rochester NY, Cincinnati, Ohio, St. Louis in the Missouri territory, and Baltimore! He suffered a nervous breakdown and spent the rest of his life battling poverty; four times he would be voted a pension by Congress, but four times this would be reversed itself when Jackson and others pressed their claims, and the acknowledgment when it finally came was in the form of a mere gravestone terming him something like “the discoverer of ether-narcosis” • Charles T. Jackson, chemistry professor at Harvard College who had earlier made an unsuccessful attempt to claim the credit for the invention of the telegraph — he went crazy at the sight of this William Thomas Green Morton monument and died in an asylum (Semmelweis also died in an insane asylum, after being beaten by the attendants, with Lister performing the 1st operation using antisepsis as well as anesthesia on the following day) 4 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS AND CAPE COD: DR. CHARLES JACKSON 1805 June 21, Friday: Charles Thomas Jackson was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts to Charles Jackson and Lucy C. Jackson.1 Lieutenant Gabriel Moraga, on his initial exploratory expedition from the San Francisco Bay area into the great Central Valley of California, traversed Pacheco Pass over the Diablo Range. GO AHEAD, TAKE THIS TRIP Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6 day / Our friends have now all left us, & may I proffitably reflect on past favors Yesterday afternoon meeting a friend whom I love & has felt very precious thro’ the Y Meeting took me aside, & proposed for my consideration a subject of importance, which was Matrimony. I have become seriously affected & am involved in some doubt respecting it, tho his judgement was that it was high time, yet I am not able to discover any open vision at present how or in what manner to dispose of myself. I hope to be guided by the Lords Spirit in matters small & great — & clear I am there is no case wherein it is more necessary to be favored with discovering of it than in this, as in my opinion it is something that is liable to affect us in this, & the world to come. ————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 1. In this year American physicians were using ether to treat pulmonary inflammation! “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS AND CAPE COD: DR. CHARLES JACKSON 1827 Charles Lyell abandoned the legal profession in favor of geology. He had already begun to plan his chief work, THE PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY: AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE FORMER CHANGES OF THE EARTH’S SURFACE BY REFERENCE TO CAUSES NOW IN OPERATION. For the following three years Charles T. Jackson and Francis Alger of Boston would be making a sort of amateur mineralogical/geological survey of Nova Scotia (their “A Description of the Mineralogy and Geology of a part of Nova Scotia; by Charles T. Jackson and Francis Alger” would appear in the January 1829 issue of The American Journal of Science and Arts). In the course of their travels they would notice a flat rock inscribed with the date “1606” and seeming to bear a symbol that they understood to indicate the Masonic Order. 6 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS AND CAPE COD: DR. CHARLES JACKSON CAPE COD: The very gravestones of those Frenchmen are probably older than the oldest English monument in New England north of the Elizabeth Islands, or perhaps anywhere in New England, for if there are any traces of Gosnold’s storehouse left, his strong works are gone. Bancroft says, advisedly, in 1834, “It requires BANCROFT a believing eye to discern the ruins of the fort”; and that there were no ruins of a fort in 1837. Dr. Charles T. Jackson tells me JACKSON that, in the course of a geological survey in 1827, he discovered a gravestone, a slab of trap rock, on Goat Island, opposite Annapolis (Port Royal), in Nova Scotia, bearing a Masonic coat- of-arms and the date 1606, which is fourteen years earlier than the landing of the Pilgrims. This was left in the possession of HALIBURTON Judge Haliburton, of Nova Scotia. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 7 HDT WHAT? INDEX PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS AND CAPE COD: DR. CHARLES JACKSON As we can see above, Jackson would carry his story to Henry David Thoreau, who would include it in CAPE COD. Unfortunately, the scratching above the date “1606” would turn out not to have been any sort of recognizable Masonic symbol — the Masonic Order, ordinarily eager for this sort of discovery, would disdain the entire idea! The marks may have been merely random marks left by a shovel, or may possibly have been intended to indicate that the white settler who had been buried beneath this flat rock had been a carpenter. Although the rock itself seems to have been lost (buried under plaster somewhere inside a wall), we do still have a photograph of it: The Masonic Stone of 1606 By R.W. Bro. REGINALD V. HARRIS, Grand Historian, Grand Lodge of Nova Scotia2 It will be good to read this article in conjunction with Bro. Harris’ article on “Freemasonry in Nova Scotia” published in The Builder of August last; and with the Study Club article of last month. Bro. Harris’ critical analysis of the claims of the Nova Scotia stone to be the monument of the earliest known appearance of Freemasonry on this continent was published in Transactions of Nova Scotia Lodge of Research, Jan.
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