Notes from Under- ground

by David Rose

Evangelical Gynecologist: The Mycological Career of Howard A. Kelly, M.D.

n the fateful year 1919, on the heels first to describe the state of American medical school opened in 1893, with of the Great War that found France medicine during the decades preceding an enrollment of a handful of students. a shell-shocked, corpse-strewn the Great War. Yet, in order to evaluate Dr. William Henry Welch (1850-1934) Ibattlefield as Germany departed licking American medicine adequately, Barry stood at the head of the Johns Hopkins its wounds only to try again another was obliged to take a further step back to University School of Medicine as its day, the world had also been laid waste depict the state of medicine as practiced first full-time faculty member, and he by the worst influenza pandemic in at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and recruited three physicians, William history. From an army camp in Kansas, Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland. Stewart Halsted (1853-1922), Sir influenza spread in 1918 from the U.S. At the turn of the 19th century, Johns William Osler (1849-1919), and Howard through Europe and the world beyond, Hopkins was the pre-eminent medical Atwood Kelly (1858-1943) who, with killing 50 million people by 1920; its establishment of the age, and its Welch, have since been venerated as the severity is easily comparable to the Black revolutionary system of conjoining a Johns Hopkins “Big Four.” Each of their Death of bubonic plague that devastated hospital and medical school based on individual careers is amply impressive Europe in the 14th century. The horrific experimental research and laboratory of itself; collectively, they advanced magnitude and historical circumstances education in a university setting changed medicine with dramatic innovations of the course of the pandemic has been the course of teaching and practicing in surgery, pathology, gynecology, admirably described by John M. Barry medicine in the United States. obstetrics, clinical practice, education, in The Great Influenza. Barry, in order and public health. Welch has been called to set the stage properly to assess the The Johns Hopkins Hospital opened “the single most powerful individual dimensions of the pandemic and the in 1889, following the founding of Johns in the history of American medicine.”1 medical response to it, found it necessary Hopkins University in 1876, and the At Johns Hopkins he introduced a 12 FUNGI Volume 4:4 Fall 2011 German system of laboratory education developed several important surgical to the Bible as the word of Christ. Kelly after his studies with the bacteriologist innovations and devices, two of which was a devout Episcopalian, and the Robert Koch in Berlin, emphasizing (the Kelly speculum and Kelly clamp) Bible was the rock on which he lived, the importance of bacteriology in bear his name and are still in use today. studying it daily in Greek and Hebrew. the treatment of infectious disease. While at Hopkins he joined the staff of It was not only his constant companion; Incredible as it seems today, Welch “felt a small Baltimore hospital that became the Holy Writ was the divine bridge of it necessary to defend scientific medicine the Howard A. Kelly Hospital, with spiritual intercourse with everyone he from the charge of being impractical.” which he was associated until 1940. encountered. Under his boutonniere, Dr. In doing so, he and the Johns Hopkins Kelly developed surgical procedures for Kelly wore a small lapel button bearing physicians changed medicine forever. the repair of the female sexual organs, a question mark. When asked what the The standard biographical history is urinary tract, and kidneys; and his question was, he would blithely respond, William Henry Welch and the Heroic voluminous publications (18 volumes on “What do you think of Jesus?”6 His fervid Age of American Medicine by Simon and surgery and over 500 medical articles) Christianity did not stop with outward James Thomas Flexner, which remains a focus not only on medicine but veer into show; he supported missionaries, classic starting point for understanding religion and natural history. He was also delivered sermons in Maryland churches the impact of Dr. Welch and the regime one of the first to realize the potential of (all denominations), and avidly took that laid a new foundation for medicine radioactivity in radium to treat cervical on the singular role of Baltimore’s vice in America.2 He was also memorialized cancer, and he became so interested in crusader for years. Dr. Kelly’s renown in the name of a toxic bacterium causing acquiring radium that he developed a was propelled, it seemed, by the synergy food-borne illnesses, Clostridium welchii mining partnership with the U.S. Bureau between his successes as a Johns (now C. perfringens). Perhaps most of Mines. Howard Kelly was a surgical Hopkins surgeon and as reformer for famously, the “Big Four” made a lasting wizard: widely popular, his speed in the the Baltimore community. He spoke out impact in cultural history in the painting, operating room was thought astonishing, against white slavery, and came down The Four Doctors (1906), by John Singer and he charged astronomical fees from especially hard on regulated prostitution, Sargent, which depicts Drs. Welch, some yet accepted no fee whatever castigating it for its promise of immunity Halsted, Osler, and Kelly in flowing black for the majority of his medical and from punishment and assumption of the robes posing confidently in all their surgical services – a sort of Robin Hood necessity of sin. formidable majesty amidst medical folios of medicine. He was acquainted with and a globe of the world.3 most everyone from Madame Curie and Howard Kelly’s intense interest in the Billy Sunday to the grandson of Lewis natural world began in his childhood Recent attention on the Hopkins Big David von Schweinitz – for one of his days. He collected snakes, and he Four has focused on William Halsted. interests in natural history centered on played with them fearlessly. During Gerald Imber’s Genius on the Edge: mushrooms.5 his teenage years, he methodically The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William dissected frogs and snakes. On a trip Steward Halsted explores Halsted’s Dr. Kelly and his family lived in the to Canada he discovered a cache of brilliant contributions to surgery in Bolton Hill district of Baltimore at 1406 Ojibwa skulls and trucked them all the context of his lifelong addiction Eutaw Place; the hospital that bore back to Philadelphia for his natural to morphine.4 Halsted’s posthumous his name was located nearby at 1418 history cabinet. Before he reached notoriety was such that the name Eutaw. His interests in nature study the age of 20 he immersed himself in “Halstedians” was once proposed for a were widely varied: geology, mineralogy, the works of Virgil, Wordsworth, and society of physicians who were narcotic conchology, botany, and astronomy Coleridge, imbibing their poetical addicts. Halsted’s colleague in surgery, all claimed his attention at one time perspectives on agricultural cycles Howard Kelly, while adding equally or another, but before his passion for and natural phenomena, all the while to the collective esteem of the Johns mycology dominated his love of nature, passionately seeking out snakes, owls, Hopkins faculty in surgical talent and herpetology stood out in high relief. He and minerals. He began to investigate the innovation, could not have been more loved to collect, study, and play with medicinal value of plants as his interest unlike him. An evangelistic Christian, snakes. He gave demonstrations of how in medicine grew. Kelly studied botany Kelly joined Johns Hopkins the year to handle snakes and expertly milked at the Academy of Natural Sciences of its hospital opened, and he quickly rattlesnakes of their venom. He was once Philadelphia under John H. Redfield and made a name for himself as one of the bitten (literally) but was not twice shy. Thomas Mehan and encountered two finest, if not the finest, surgeons of his At his home he kept several dozen cages of the most notable paleontologists of time. His specialty was gynecology, and for his menagerie of reptiles collected the nineteenth century, Joseph Leidy his career at Johns Hopkins spanned on excursions in Maryland and Florida. and Edward Drinker Cope. It was three decades, until his retirement He and his wife, Laetitia Bredow, had Cope who sparked his enthusiasm for in 1919. Kelly served on the medical nine children; his home was crawling herpetology.7 Initiating his medical faculty as Professor of Gynecology (for with kids and snakes. Herpetology may studies in New York, he rapidly became a time including obstetrics), authored seem an utterly incongruous pastime interested in surgical cases, yet described Operative Gynecology (1898) and in light of the force that gave his life himself as a “Lecturer in Zoology.” Medical Gynecology (1908) that became meaning beyond a stellar medical career Throughout, he disdained any study the standard textbooks in the field, and and ample love of nature: his devotion on Sundays, even reading or drawing, FUNGI Volume 4:4 Fall 2011 13 regretted to some that he discovered it so late in life, but his interest was never casual, for he ended up becoming a dedicated patron of mycology and lichenology. As most amateurs do, he grew fond of edible fungi, and in one diary entry he recorded enjoying a breakfast of Pleurotus ulmarius and a supper of “milk toast a la Suisse” with Coprinus micaceus, a Lepiota, and two species of boiled Pleurotus.9 Yet this was never a selfish indulgence, for true to his medical and spiritual callings, he believed knowledge of edible fungi would be helpful to campers and others. Dr. Kelly’s summer camp on Ahmic Lake in Ontario, Canada became a personal mecca in the summer months for a lengthy communion with nature and the pursuit of wild mushrooms. To his rustic log cabin at Magnetawan on Ahmic Lake came family, friends, and several notable mycologists to spend weeks amidst the rich panoply of mushrooms in the romantic desolation of the Northern woods.

For middle-class urban dwellers in the years surrounding World War I, amateur mycology was a marginal yet growing specialization of nature study. Dr. Howard Kelly with clam, nd. One peak of popularity had occurred in the 1890s, with the dominance of in order to consecrate the Lord’s Day. (1914) derived from an earlier article Charles McIlvaine (whose impassioned Kelly’s interest in Bible study and the in the Journal of the American Medical espousal of mycophagy was never temperance movement developed apace Association. Around 1915, four years far removed from proselytization, a with his passion for natural history; short of his official retirement from kind of personal Chautauqua) and he attended temperance lectures, Johns Hopkins (though maintaining the emergence of amateur mushroom including a Baltimore revival meeting his practice at the Howard Kelly associations including the long- of Dwight Moody, America’s foremost Hospital), he discovered the pleasures enduring Boston Mycological Club. evangelic preacher. By disposition an in mushrooming, quickly incorporating McIlvaine’s One Thousand American extrovert, Kelly spent a summer out this hobby into his general inquiry Fungi was a dependable if unwieldy West where he learned to brand cattle, after the natural world. He began to tome for the serious amateur, and use a lasso, hunt antelope, and skin collect fungi systematically, keeping the fact of its publication in a second beaver and rabbits. In his formative species lists and copious diary notes. edition in 1912 attests to an enduring years he began to teach Sunday school His interest encompassed mushroom market of mushroom enthusiasts in and simultaneously to write articles identification, mycophagy, the history the Progressive Era. Naturalist Emma on methods of examining the urinary of the discipline, the research of L. Taylor Cole came out with a slim organs. Kelly’s exuberant engagement contemporary mycologists, and volume, Guide to the Mushrooms, with life was multifaceted and mycological illustration. As a scholar in 1910 as Mycologia was in its first astonishing, encompassing the roles and completist, he began to amass year of publication with William A. of surgeon, gynecologist, naturalist, what became an enormous library Murrill at the helm. Murrill, too, preacher, and even cowboy and, later, of mycological literature, purchasing was a popularizer, writing books on mycologist.8 expensive volumes from booksellers in every aspect of nature study, later America and Europe. From his initial launching an amateur group in 1920, Kelly developed a deep fascination captivation with mushrooms through the Yama Farms Mycological Club, with mycology as he prepared to retire the 1920s and into his later years, which included the naturalist John from Johns Hopkins. He had already Dr. Kelly promoted mycology as a Burroughs. In Cincinnati, Curtis Gates published on botanical history; his salubrious pastime, sharing his interest Lloyd published the idiosyncratic Some American Medical Botanists with family and friends. He later Mycological Notes to tweak the 14 FUNGI Volume 4:4 Fall 2011 sensibilities of the taxonomists as arrived Dr. Howard Kelly of Johns that, as he suggested, comprised the bulk he pursued his own inexhaustible Hopkins, who situated mycology of the human race. His books ranged enumeration of the fungi. Aside from somewhere between therapeutics and from Damn! A Book of Calumny to The these, possibly the strongest, though theology as he studied his species, American Language. His biographer uncoordinated, interest in mushrooms mixed with the mycologists, and built Carl Bode said that Mencken “raised arrived in waves of immigration from a magnificent library of mycological impertinence to an art”13 in conducting Europe where mushroom hunting works covering the literature from what amounted to one-man guerilla for the table had proliferated as a Atkinson to Zahlbruckner. warfare on the cultural conservatism cultural and family tradition in many of the times. The weapons he used countries. The schoolteacher Myron Mencken vs. the Boob Bumpers in his personal crusade against anti- Hard noticed Bohemian laborers intellectualism and philistinism were from a wire nail factory regularly Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) his wit, scorn, and superior knowledge, gleaning a mushroom harvest from the was America’s leading independent all three of which were evidenced with countryside surrounding Salem, Ohio.10 intellectual in the decade after World extraordinary flair in his writing on his This occurred wherever an immigrant War I. Free-thinking, feisty, and analytic, rapid ascent as a journalist.14 Mencken community from Italy or eastern Europe he unapologetically skewered the foibles pilloried the unthinking masses as the imported old world traditions into the of humankind in articles published in, “booboisie,” and he singled out religious new, as mushrooms gained a reputation first, the Baltimore Herald, and then charlatans such as Billy Sunday as as “vegetable meat” and “beefsteak the Baltimore Sun. An editor of Smart “boob bumpers,” exposing their hype, of the poor.” The New York Herald Set from 1908 to 1923, he and George hypocrisy, and depressing effect on characterized the fad of mushroom Jean Nathan founded the magazine culture and society. Though recognized collecting as “some kind of national American Mercury in 1924. Mencken as America’s public intellectual for movement to prevent the enormous has been called a “literary Vesuvius” decades, he will be forever associated annual waste of mushrooms in the and an “American Voltaire.” His output with his native city, Baltimore, Maryland United States, estimated to be equal was prodigious, and he excelled in where he worked as writer his entire in food value to the entire agricultural vituperative and colorful essays, jousting life. One of the most notorious of his product of the country.”11 Yet even so iconoclastically with all the exemplars blistering attacks on the backwardness estimable a figure as Harry Hopkins, of mediocrity at which he took aim. of American culture was “The Sahara who became head of the Works Projects He gleefully flayed the stupidities of the Bozart,” an essay that mercilessly Administration and Secretary of of unquestioning patriots, literary skewered the American South as a Commerce under Franklin D. Roosevelt, busybodies, hunkerous millionaires, wasteland devoid of intelligence and enjoyed collecting mushrooms with the third-rate scholars, rustic ignoramuses, culture. The title itself is a crabby piece social reformer Dr. John A. Kingsbury half-wit and devious politicians, and of irony and ridicule: beaux arts refers in New York in 1916.12 Into this milieu the lot of frauds, yokels, and vulgarians to fine art and a style of architecture, as in the interior of Grand Central Terminal. Mencken deeply admired Thomas H. Huxley, the foremost exponent of Charles Darwin’s ideas about evolution, and his on-the-scene reporting of the Scopes “monkey trial” in 1925 was a high point in his brilliant career debunking self-righteous Biblical hogwash in defense of scientific truth. Henry Mencken believed that the critic’s role is to be a catalyst, sparking fresh appreciation of ideas, language, and art.15 Mencken’s pointed characterizations of the Johns Hopkins doctors are irreverent, often hilarious. His persistence in cleverly deflating the hubris of the high and mighty and airing out the soiled laundry of humanity was a touchstone of his stance as a journalist, and he gave no safe quarter to the Johns Hopkins Big Four.16 In his diary he satisfied himself privately with wry comments on, for example, the ironies in William Halsted’s smoking and tachycardia. Though he Esther, Titia, Howard, and Olga Kelly, Magnetowan Camp, Ontario, considered Halsted the most brilliant Canada, nd. of the four, he probably had no inkling FUNGI Volume 4:4 Fall 2011 15 his respect, and he did not hold back in occasion to travel together by train from the ridicule he gleefully put forward on a medical banquet in Washington back to Kelly’s reformist tendencies. He called Baltimore. So exasperated was Mencken him “Doctor Evangelicus,” and not only at Kelly’s long-winded sermonizing on enjoyed taking aim at the profound themes from his “barbaric religion” on inconsistency of Kelly’s belief in the this trip that Mencken famously quipped, Bible and simultaneous adherence to “Three separate times I was on the point the tenets of medical science but also at of jumping out of the train-window.”22 blasting away full-bore at his crusading Mencken insisted that Howard Kelly was exercises against the familiar triad of “the most implacable Christian I ever vices that plagued the Progressive Era: knew, at least among educated men,” alcohol, prostitution, and gambling. and some of his pronouncements were Kelly availed himself as a public target so harsh as to seem libelous. In fact, for Mencken because his own crusade Mencken went to extremes by belittling was public, vociferously so. He edited Kelly’s medical expertise, dismissing a Maryland newspaper, The Christian his surgical talent as the craft of a mere Citizen, which decried all the social mechanic, falling far short of innovators News headline, Baltimore Sun, 1922 vices and sought even to close down of the stature of Halsted. This kind of “places of amusement” on Sundays, not ad hominem attack was patently unfair of his morphine addiction else it too to mention “bawdy houses” and saloons. and undoubtedly a result of Mencken’s might have been unceremoniously Mencken saw this regime as complete scratching his “hair shirt” too vigorously: examined. Mencken’s private opinion anathema and branded Kelly a menace he scarcely knew when to let up in his of Dr. Welch was unflattering in the to “practically everything [civilized] men broadsides against Kelly’s religious extreme. Though they interacted esteem.”20 The positions of Mencken and pomposities. Kelly was Mencken’s publicly, Mencken consigned to his diary Kelly were diametrically opposed on local bête noire, and he smirked that his belief that Welch was not just lazy every major moral issue of the day. Kelly Baltimore’s great evangelist physician and selfish, but one of the laziest and held fast to an uncompromising position “couldn’t distinguish the difference most selfish men he had ever met – a on the evils of drink, causing Mencken between a section of sarcoma and a slice shameful publicity-hound.17 By contrast, to froth with righteous ebullience on the of beefsteak.”23 Mencken mercilessly President Herbert Hoover orated, “Dr. natural right of a man to hoist a stein lampooned Kelly and his “theological Welch is our greatest statesman in the of beer at the first intimation of thirst. dissipations,” as in this squib, a cartoon field of public health.”18 His 1935 homage Mencken considered Prohibition an caricature of a typical day in the life of to Welch (one can scarcely call it an unmitigated disaster and its perpetrators the good doctor: obituary) in the Baltimore Sun consisted guilty of a messianic delusion; among wholly of remarks contrasting Welch’s his many encomia to alcohol when the Before cock-crow in the morning gourmandize and avoirdupois with his Volstead Act took effect, he proposed he has got out of bed, held a surprising longevity and a lifestyle totally a “festschrift to ethyl alcohol on its song and praise service, read two

at odds with medical common sense: deathbed” entitled Hic Jacet C2H5OH, i.e., or three chapters in his Greek Here Lies Ethyl Alcohol.21 Old Testament, sung a couple A year or so before his death I of hymns, cut off six or eight happened to sit beside him one Despite sniping at each other in public, legs, pulled out a pint of tonsils day at lunch. The main dish was Mencken and Kelly were friendly (or at and eyeballs, relieved a dozen country ham and greens, and of it least, civil) on social occasions, dining patients of their appendices, filled he ate a large portion, washing it and taking tea together at one time or the gall-stone keg in the corner, down with several mugs of beer. another. Yet their public asseverations pronounced the benediction, There followed lemon meringue one against the other were deadly washed up, filled his pockets pie. He ate an arc of at least 75 serious, often wildly comic. Mencken’s with tracts, got into a high-speed degrees of it, and eased it into his biographer Carl Bode called Kelly automobile with the Rev. W. W. system with a cup of coffee. Then “Mencken’s hair shirt” for sending Davis, and started off at 50 miles an he lighted a six-inch panatela and him a steady stream of pious letters hour to raid a gambling house and smoked it to the butt. And then and evangelistic tracts, soliciting his close the red light district at Emory he ambled off to attend a medical advice on best practices of reforming Grove, Maryland.24 meeting and to prepare for dinner.19 prostitutes, and even once inviting him to dinner at his home with none Kelly himself was indeed implacable, for Mencken reserved his most scathing other than Anthony Comstock, the he never gave up trying to save Henry critique for Howard Kelly. Oddly self-appointed anti-obscenity czar L. Mencken for Christ and reform the enough, the doughty journalist actually and erstwhile postal inspector who jaded journalist’s view that this world had a good measure of respect for founded the New York Society for the is “a cosmos that we all infest.” In 1916, Kelly, seeing him correctly as a man of Suppression of Vice. Ten years into their Kelly started a prayer list in his diary; the principle. But that was the outer limit of “friendship,” Kelly and Mencken had first name on it was H. L. Mencken. He 16 FUNGI Volume 4:4 Fall 2011 admitted that Mencken was clever but train window, the Sun actually did run each one in a little bag or cone of tissue felt sure that he prostituted his natural an article, “Dr. Kelly Hunts Mushroom paper (never cotton), with the name and abilities, exemplified in the proverb: “the in Park.” A Sun reporter interviewed addresses of the sender and the place wicked is snared by the transgressions Kelly about his interest in mycology and time of finding.” Dr. Kelly waxed of his lips.” In one exchange in the and his favorite local mushroom haunt, nostalgic about mushroom hunting in Baltimore Sun, Dr. Kelly fired back at Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park. The article Druid Hill Park: “It is pleasant to recall Mencken with a hyperbolic salvo of commenced: that Druid Hill Park was a favorite fish-words derived from Latin and Greek hunting ground for Miss Banning a that sounds like a passage lifted right out When tennis and golf and zoo- generation ago. Miss Banning and Mr. of Finnegans Wake: visiting begin to pall as outdoor McIlvaine are the only two mycologists diversions the sport-loving of note we have in Maryland.”27 In Which Dr. Kelly Develops Baltimorean can hie himself (or A Most Unexpected Sense of herself) to Druid Hill Park and Kelly was particularly curious about Humor And Slays That Devilish chase the elusive mushroom to its the career of Mary Elizabeth Banning, Philistine, Mencken, With Jaw- lair. Dr. Howard A. Kelly, reformer, an amateur noted for her unprecedented Breaking Epithets Gathered surgeon and mycologist, has made series of watercolor illustrations From Every Fish-Market Known a mushroom survey of the park and compiled in The Fungi of Maryland, To Classical Dictionaries. has communicated the result to which she donated to the New York State The Sun.26 Museum in the care of Charles Peck. To the Editor of the Sun – Sir: Not surprisingly, Kelly’s interest in Mary If Mr. Mencken would put a Druid Hill Park is a 745-acre park, Banning developed a religious overtone photospectroheliograph on now home to the Maryland Zoo, and when he learned that her mycological his ramshackle tergiversating whose northern extremity contains pursuits had a missionary purpose: she cerebrum, I think he would undeveloped forest growth, some of once stated that her original motivation discover that he was something the oldest in Maryland. Kelly described for her lavishly colorful studies of the of a synentognathous finding there Amanitopsis vaginata fungi of Maryland was to educate physoclistous levirate leventine var. plumbea, Psalliota arvensis, students in a mission school about belone with perissodactyl and Hypholoma lacrymabundum. the world of mushrooms.28 For similar affinities; in other words, an He cautioned collectors about the reasons, Kelly was also drawn to the acanthopterygian lophobranch “Paneoli” growing in the park that career of Lewis David von Schweinitz, not far removed from a produce “curious symptoms, a form of the reputed “father” of American plectognathic sesquipedalian intoxication, with hallucination, anxiety, mycology, who was a Moravian minister. orthopter. My opinion of my profuse sweat and an affection of the Religious practitioners among the mendacious friend is summed optic nerves causing objects to swim mycologists were not the only ones up briefly in the expressive, around and assume variegated colors.” who received his admiration however, hemisemidemiquaver, Here was a medical doctor, a surgical for Kelly dedicated himself to the full orthrophoitosukophanto- innovator who had no hesitation to breadth of mycology. As a gregarious dikotalaiporos. This is my deploy radium, then an unknown, to person with wide-ranging interests in most gentle response to his last treat cervical cancer, recognizing and natural history and with his national innocuous blustering. Howard describing an otherworldly experience prominence as a Johns Hopkins A. Kelly25 triggered presumably by psilocybin in surgeon, he swiftly and easily gained 1922, decades before the psychedelic the acquaintance of contemporary To Dr. Kelly, H. L. Mencken may indeed Sixties, and one wonders whether he workers in the field. He corresponded have been a fishy, attention-grabbing associated this phenomenon in any way with the botanists and mycologists orthopter, a godless mechanical bird to religious experience. But Kelly had of the New York Botanical Garden, flapping its wings profanely to advertise no frame of reference to situate this including Gertrude Burlingham, William all the cardinal sins. But to Mencken, strange phenomenon as transcendent Murrill, Fred Seaver, Mary Eaton, John Howard Kelly was an overzealous or spiritual; its symptomatology fit no Hendley Barnhart, George Nash, and shitepoke who left behind a trail of preconceived category of experience John Kunkel Small. As his enthusiasm inexplicable and misguided nonsense other than “intoxication.” Therefore, for the subject mounted in 1918, Kelly each time he took flight into the absurd it was the toxic that he emphasized, wined and dined the mycologists of the reaches of his high holy sermonizing. and a “victim” of this mushroom day as if he was courting a young flapper. intoxication need only send a specimen He lunched at the Maryland Club in It’s a pity that Dr. Kelly failed to to Dr. William Ford of Johns Hopkins Baltimore with Albert Blakeslee and introduce Henry Mencken to the University for analysis, whom Kelly Herbert Whetzel and met with George delights of mushroom identification; touted as “the greatest living authority Atkinson at Lake Placid and William if he had we might have seen popular on mushroom poisoning.” He even Murrill in Washington, DC. With articles on mycology in the American invited readers to send their specimens Murrill he traveled to Virginia to meet Mercury or Baltimore Sun. In the very to his home on Eutaw Place for Murrill’s brother-in-law where Kelly year of Mencken’s near-leap from the identification, with instructions to “put saw a magnificent specimen of Clitocybe FUNGI Volume 4:4 Fall 2011 17 illudens for the first time. In 1919, he met see for himself where Peck toiled over with Curtis Gates Lloyd to discuss fungal specimens and to pay his devotions to nomenclature. Lloyd’s advice to Kelly the watercolors of Mary Banning’s Fungi was to learn Kauffman’s nomenclature of Maryland, which he pronounced an which followed “the European system.”29 “astounding interesting volume.”31 He took Lloyd’s advice a step further by becoming close friends with Calvin Louis Krieger Kauffman himself. and the Great Catalogue

Kelly’s plunge into mycology was total, Howard Kelly had an expert eye for and his approach was broadly holistic. illustration and consistently retained His philosophy about mushroom the services of talented illustrators in all identification involved the necessity of of his scientific pursuits, professional observing the totality of characteristics and amateur. The first and foremost in a specimen in a process that was first was Max Brödel, a German artist analytic, then synthetic, and once again who, at Johns Hopkins, created the analytic. After some practice, minor first academic department of medical anatomical characteristics become illustration. Brödel illustrated Kelly’s increasingly important the more one two-volume textbook Operative knows, he believed; and that one will Gynecology, remaining fast friends value the characters best when one with Kelly for life. Another was Louis knows all the species in any given C. C. Krieger (1873-1940) who became genus. In his diary he listed not only the known as the finest mycological specimens he collected and identified but illustrator of the age. Krieger was born made curious notations on mycology and in Baltimore and began his career with mycologists, even noting that Lactarius the USDA where he worked under delicious was painted on the walls at Thomas Taylor in the Division of Pompeii. His observations on Charles Microscopy, illustrating government Howard Kelly bookplate for Moritz Peck are particularly sympathetic (Peck, publications, including bulletins on Fűnfstűck Lichen Collection, 1929. too, was a religious man), full realizing edible and toxic fungi. For ten years, that the famed New York State Botanist from 1902, he worked for William drawings.32 Second, Krieger published was a solitary worker with meager Farlow at Harvard University as one an article in the May 1920 issue of institutional support for the duration of two artists creating the illustrations National Geographic, “Common of his career. Kelly’s observations about for Icones Farlowianae. At Harvard, Mushrooms of the United States” Peck were further informed by private Krieger created four hundred aquarelles which introduced the allurements of discussions with Cornelius Shear of fungi and algae. He then moved to mycology to a national audience. Third, and William Farlow. Shear attributed the U.S. Plant Introduction Garden in in addition to his work as illustrator, Peck’s interest in the fungi to Moses Chico, California, collected mushrooms Krieger set to work cataloguing the Ashley Curtis and revealed that Peck in the Sacramento Valley, and painted growing collection of books, articles, suffered from an inflamed eye and studies of Opuntia (prickly pear cactus). and manuscripts of Dr. Kelly’s personal chronic indigestion, that he constantly Through his friendship with the Johns library of mycology. In actuality, kept a bottle of milk within easy reach Hopkins toxicologist William Ford, Krieger was a database manager. He for use as an antacid, but that even Krieger became known to Howard kept a personal, life-long mycological in old age he had the enthusiasm of a Kelly at the moment when mycological index of the fungi he collected, and his boy first enjoying the marvels of the studies fully consumed Kelly’s attention. work as a chronicler and copyist might fungi.30 William Farlow distrusted Peck’s In December 1918, Louis Krieger easily be overlooked in the light of his identifications, intimating that he would began his service as an illustrator and artistic productions. His work was done consult with Peck in Albany, borrow his amanuensis for Kelly, a relationship that entirely by hand. Like many others, he specimens and, without betraying his was to last a decade and bear fruit in collected Peck’s annual Report of the intentions, smuggle them off to Europe several notable projects. State Botanist assiduously (from around for the famed pharmacists Boudier 1891) and strove to keep a complete and Patouillard to examine and pass With Krieger on retainer as set. Krieger first wrote to Peck as judgment. When the French mycologists mycologist and illustrator, Kelly first “Dr. Farlow’s artist.” The comparative identified Peck’s specimens as Old planned to write a book on the fungi scarcity of information on the fungi at World species, Farlow would enter their with Krieger’s artwork. The plan had century’s turn is striking compared with opinions on Peck’s vouchers. Dr. Kelly, three results, though not the original today’s hyper-accelerated transmission however, was not one to be enthralled one intended. In 1919, Kelly published, of data and photos, for Krieger by mycological gossip, and he made a not a book, but an article in The mentioned to Peck that he copied by trek to the museum in Albany to consult Therapeutic Gazette, “Mushrooms hand the available issues of the annual with Peck’s successor Homer House and and Toadstools” with Krieger’s pencil report on mushrooms when unable to 18 FUNGI Volume 4:4 Fall 2011 acquire a copy of his own. He wrote to During his years with Dr. Kelly, Louis So much for Dr. Kelly’s preface; Peck on several occasions attempting Krieger created over 300 illustrations the collection itself was gargantuan: to be included on a subscription list but of mushrooms. As before, he used an archive of original artwork and regretted that he had neither published photographs as models for his artistic documents appended to a library of papers nor mycological specimens to renderings, following McIlvaine’s books. It contained over 7000 titles on exchange in return. In a later turn of delineation of groups by spore color. He mushrooms, lichens, and myxomycetes events, Kelly assisted Krieger to find also worked on Kelly’s great catalogue. in English, Spanish, French, German, employment at the New York State The Catalogue of the Mycological and Italian; original watercolors by Museum when his service at Eutaw Library of Howard A. Kelly (1924) is a Lewis David von Schweinitz; Charles Place came to an end. At this juncture, bibliographic snapshot of the state of McIlvaine’s original paintings and Louis Krieger began work on a guide to mycological knowledge in the 1920s. photos from One Thousand American New York State macromycetes, better Compiled by Krieger, the bibliography Fungi; manuscript letters from von known as The Mushroom Handbook. describes the contents of Kelly’s Schweinitz, McIlvaine, and Peck; library, from single journal articles mushroom photographs of Murrill, The Mushroom Handbook was to classics of mycological literature, Kauffman, and Beardslee; a personal first published under the title A European and American. Krieger herbarium of 2000 specimens; Krieger’s Popular Guide to the Higher Fungi began to compile Kelly’s catalogue at key of 400,000 cards; 300 Krieger (Mushrooms) of New York State in Harvard while working for Farlow; by paintings; wax replicas of fungi; lichen 1936. Still a serviceable guide for 1924 there were 400,000 entries. In exsiccati donated by Moritz Fünfstück, those unperturbed by species names the preface Kelly writes at his most and more. As Kelly advanced into his that are long out of date and out of sprightly, as if he were in conversation golden years, he decided to donate fashion, Krieger’s handbook is not only about his favorite hobby, defending the collection to a repository where it a guide to common mushrooms, but an mycology before medicine, and arguing would remain permanently useful. Just introduction to the basics of mycology. that since medicine is allied with the as Mary Banning had sent her Fungi of The text ranges over general topics natural sciences, it should come as no Maryland out of state, so too Howard from spore dissemination to the fungal surprise that a physician might seek Kelly decided to donate his entire life cycle, and it handily introduces the to amplify his knowledge by way of mycological collection to the University novice to the unfamiliar territory of studying the fungi. He observed that of Michigan. Kelly’s relationship to the microscopy, cultivation, and collection few physicians pursue this calling, university was strong: he had already for the herbarium. Krieger discusses singling out Ezra Michener, William been awarded the title of Honorary such phenomena as the negative Herbst, and Jacob Weist as exceptions, Curator of Reptiles and Amphibians of geotropism of Amanita and was the first and designating “that late lamented the Museum of Zoology in 1923. His to explain in an American guide the master” William Farlow the greatest of friendship with Calvin Kauffman was dimorphism of Entoloma abortivum, all, though Farlow had never actually instrumental in his decision, and he then known as Clitopilus abortivus.33 practiced medicine. If the paltry cross- arranged to have the collection named Louis Krieger was a bit of a Renaissance fertilization of medicine and mycology in honor of Louis Krieger to recognize man, and he discoursed freely about the should cause disappointment, Kelly his role in helping to assemble it, benefits of mushroom-hunting, the aid explained, the numbers of clergymen compiling the catalogue, and for his that amateurs provide to science, and who have turned to this obscure unique contributions to mycology. In was wont to compare a colorful Russula science more than compensates. The 1928, as Krieger wrote to Kelly from the with a painting of Titian or Rubens. Rev. Miles Joseph Berkeley, the Abbe Cuba Sugar Experiment Station with The Dover reprint of 1967 features Giacomo Bresadola, and Lewis David an update on his mycological index, a a biographical preface and appendix von Schweinitz thus found a front-row tabulation of fungal species and their on nomenclatural changes by Robert pew in Kelly’s private camp meeting of inter-relationships begun in 1902, Shaffer of the University of Michigan mycologist-clerics. With these patron Kelly in turn informed him about the Herbarium. Shaffer characterized the saints securely on the dais, he then Louis Krieger collection in Michigan. guide as a “mycological textbook for consecrated mycology by way of a Kelly believed Krieger to be a “true amateurs,” and that’s precisely what it is. derogatory swipe at sports, claiming scientist,” and though Kelly himself did In his acknowledgments, Krieger noted it “so infinitely superior to golf and not represent his own contributions above all “the gentleman who made the baseball and other distractions over to the field as anything beyond that book possible: Dr. Howard A. Kelly, the which my fellow mortals squander so of an amateur, he was convinced the writer’s cherished friend and patron.”34 much of precious time of their brief satisfactions of “amateur” knowledge Krieger was not the only author touched mundane allotment.”36 After reviewing were equal to that of a professional, by Dr. Kelly’s natural history stimulus, the American literature of value to the especially when assistance to the for William Sturgis Thomas (founder amateur – Nina Marshall, McIlvaine, professional was an intrinsic part of of the “second” New York Mycological Peck – he singled out Kauffman’s the amateur’s experience.37 Curiously, Society) acknowledged Kelly for “his Agaricaceae of Michigan as the ne plus Krieger published a kind of pendant to interest and valuable suggestions” in ultra of works that should command the Catalogue in 1924 – a “phantasy” his Field Book of Common Mushrooms the attention of anyone interested in entitled The Millenium of Systematic published in 1928.35 the fungi. Mycology. In this fairy tale of eight FUNGI Volume 4:4 Fall 2011 19 pages, a mycologist working on a remained in contact for years afterwards. she recalled their happy excursions into monograph of Inocybe dreams he has He referred to her friend and illustrator the woods and the rapturous feelings that died and gone to heaven to find all the Ann Hibbard as “the mycologist who Kelly elicited in their deep communion fungi bearing labels with species names paints,” always appreciating the necessity with nature: in consummate perfection. He notices, of fine illustration. They exchanged however, that there is no authority name mycological updates periodically, and These hours in the woods are with the binomial species name. He he found her susceptible to expressions among my most treasured puzzles over this until he learns that of religious faith as well, so she received memories. He drew my attention since God the Mycologist had created, copies of The Christian Citizen along to exquisite flowers, ferns, moss, and labeled, all the fungi, an authority the way. On her return to New York, vines, lichens, fungi, the delicate name is utterly superfluous. Krieger he confided to her, “I am always glad to colors and forms of mushrooms sent a copy of his tale to Fred Seaver have our dear friends with us at meal and the austere beauty of rocks, in New York who replied, “the thought times when we read together the Word, millions of years old. At his camp, that impressed me most was that somehow it sanctifies every relationship. on a high elevation, he erected anyone could even dream of finding two We do not speak often enough of Christ I an observatory, purchased a mycologists in heaven.”38 am sure in our daily relations. How much telescope and on clear nights time we spend on botany, and how gladly showed us the wonders of the The Holy Grail: we speak of it when we are interested, sky – the moon, the planets, stars, Selecta Fungorum Carpologia but it is not so with our faith, is it?”40 and constellations. Through these revelations Dr. Kelly has given me Howard Kelly’s summer retreat at Gertrude Burlingham’s Russula kellyi joy, refreshment and above all else, “Indian Point” in Magnetawan, Ontario is a standard honorific, the kind of immortal inspiration.41 was a haven for his contemplation of homage that can be awarded only within nature that he enjoyed sharing with the precincts of science. Howard Kelly To an informed naturalist today, “rocks family and friends. The log cabin there had the social and scientific prestige millions of years old” and “wonders of had been built around 1897, where the that might garner such recognition, the night sky” immediately provoke river flows into Ahmic Lake. After a and his patronage of the east coast reflections on evolution and the age of the time, his wife Laetitia was disinclined to mycologists assured that they would universe. In Mary Cullen’s reminiscence, travel so far north with their large family take him seriously. Yet the obverse to these are nowhere evident. Rather, her in tow, so Kelly established another his infatuation with methodologies of memory was aglow with the ineffable summer residence closer to home in how to learn mushroom species was, no beauty of moss and mushrooms in a Bel Air, Maryland named Liriodendron, surprise really, his reverence and delight pristine woodland setting, an exquisite after the genus of tulip trees. Yet it in nature experienced as the work of spiritual moment mediated through the was Magnetawan that catalyzed the God. That mushrooms were evanescent eyes and words and mind of an outspoken magnetic attractions of the natural marvels, the least conspicuous of nature’s churchman of great moral authority who world in Kelly’s mind, and several Johns living abundance, gave them a Christian encountered nature as Christ visualized. Hopkins associates followed him there, prestige that Kelly sought to find erecting cabins of their own nearby. validated in mycology as substantiation Howard Kelly was not a visionary of the These included Max Brödel and Thomas of his sympathetic intuition. This attainments of St. John of the Cross, the Cullen. There were a constant stream intuition about of visitors; among them in 1919 and nature, attainable 1920 were mycologists Henry Beardslee by any person of and Gertrude Burlingham. Dr. Kelly faith as the glory had introduced himself to Burlingham of God’s creation, in 1918, requesting information on was shared with Mary Banning with the notion of others freely. Mary writing a short memoir about her. B. Dixon Cullen, Their correspondence blossomed into the wife of surgeon a friendship, and Kelly invited her to Thomas Cullen spend two weeks at Magnetawan entirely (Kelly’s protégé at his expense in August 1920. Mailing and successor at travel directions in July, he told her, “Prof Johns Hopkins), Beardslee is here with his wife and the remembered Dr. fungi are literally popping!”39 Burlingham Kelly in a tribute published “Notes on Species of Russula” written just after his in Mycologia with a short account of the death. The Cullen trip, reporting a new species, Russula summer camp was kellyi, named in Dr. Kelly’s honor. He across the lake appreciated both her tribute and her from the Kelly’s at advice on Russula and Lactarius and Magnetawan, and Max Brödel illustration on Ganoderma applanatum, nd 20 FUNGI Volume 4:4 Fall 2011 Christian anchorites, or William Blake. Mushrooms,” a talk delivered to the treatises on fungi in the history of the Nor was he a deist who found divinity Boston Mycological Club and published field, Selecta Fungorum Carpologia, revealed only in nature but not in the in Science in 1909. Kelly himself made a published in Paris in three volumes from Word of God, i.e., the Holy Bible. Yet diary entry about a “poisoning” due to 1861 to 1865, describing the life-histories his experience of mushrooms in nature Panaeolus papillionaceus and claimed to of the Pyrenomycetes and Discomycetes. was inflected by spiritual associations in have “analyzed” Psilocybe ammophila.43 Their revolutionary advance was an a fairly complex way, and he would find Ford also analyzed the truly dangerous understanding that many fungi are the means to ensure that his mycological toxins and identified the toxic principle pleomorphic, i.e., having two different legacy would reflect this permanently. In of Amanita phalloides that he called states or spore-stages: the anamorphic, the half-century just past, any mention of amanita-toxin, resistant to both heat and or sexual state, characterized by sexual mushrooms and spirituality in the same digestion (and later resolved into two spores, and the teleomorphic, or asexual sentence virtually assures one that the separate toxins).44 While questions remain state, characterized either by the absence subject at hand is “entheogenic” fungi. about just what psychoactive species were of spores or by asexual spores called Not so with Kelly, or at least not quite. As involved and how they interpreted their conidia. These states have long been mentioned, Kelly knew of hallucinogenic properties, neither Kelly nor Ford reached known as “perfect” and “imperfect” fungi, but he lacked the psychosocial the breakthrough revelation about these states of fungi, and in a given species context and the personal experience fungi that Richard Evans Schultes and one form is often widely divergent in necessary to bring the realization of Robert Gordon Wasson would reach appearance, habit, and genesis from their entheogenic potency fully to many years later. the other. The Tulasne brothers’ life- consciousness. Incredibly, he had traveled long study of plant pathogens in the to Oaxaca in 1911 to explore mines in That entheogenic fungi were absent orders of rusts (Uredinales) and smuts a search for radium and was thereby from Kelly’s deeper worldview is (Ustilaginales) reached its pinnacle in a hair’s-breadth from the source of immaterial; he might have rejected the description of pleomorphic fungi set Mazatec culture that figured so integrally them outright as a profanation of forth in Selecta Fungorum Carpologia. in R. Gordon Wasson’s experience with the soul. Yet he received a beneficent The taxonomy of these fungi is often mystical mushrooms forty odd years later. illumination from mushrooms all exceedingly complex; this brief account When Kelly visited Oaxaca, he wasn’t the same. Kelly’s diary is a bizarre is a mere simplification. seeking Psilocybe mexicana, whereas concatenation of Christian homiletics Wasson was. Psilocybe, or something and species lists of fungi. In his pocket “Carpology” is the study of the like it, was a prime focus of Wasson’s notebooks mushroom collection lists structure of fruits and seeds (in this determined quest, described in ample were juxtaposed with moral pieties and case, spores), and the full title of the detail in Mushrooms, Russia, and History. reflections on the spiritual presence Tulasne brothers’ masterpiece is “Selecta However, Dr. Kelly did have one associate of Christ. Like alternating current, Fungorum Carpologia, exhibiting at Johns Hopkins that might have meditations on the meaning of the Bible especially those facts and illustrations reached a realization of the entheogenic reversed flow into notes on the lineage which go to prove that various kinds of phenomenon – this was William Webber of mycological ideas from Linnaeus, fruits and seeds are produced, either Ford (1871-1941). Fries, and Persoon. He confided in his simultaneously or in succession, by diary that four immediate advantages of the same fungus.” The illustrations In the years when Kelly’s mushroom Christian belief were that God is known are of singular importance: Charles enthusiasm was at its height (1918 to through Christ, the Bible is immediately Tulasne’s meticulous line drawings of 1924) William Ford was the head of available as the revealed word of God, ascomycetes with wriggling hyphae, the departments of bacteriology and that the difference between right and bursting pycnidia, and wildly biomorphic immunology at Johns Hopkins School wrong can be immediately apprehended, stromata are among the most life- of Public Health.42 In 1907, Ford’s paper and that Christ imparts power to govern like and mesmerizing in mycological on “A Clinical Study of Mushroom and guide everyday life.45 There is no literature. The illustrations of Selecta Intoxication” appeared in The Bulletin doubt that Howard Kelly believed this Fungorum Carpologia pull the beholder of the Johns Hopkins Hospital alongside with every fiber of his being and kept into a surreal microcosm of bizarre Kelly’s “Method of Preserving Outlines it always in mind. He lived his religion and energetic organisms that teem of Visceral Lesions” on his system of the and practiced what he preached. But with life and menace, a world of frozen graphic representation of abdominal how could he possibly reach a further motion that in every detail is alien, tumors. Some species of the genus realization of Christ through mycology? almost shocking. Their intent, however, Panaeolus had gained a reputation He found it in two fellow believers, was not pure surrealism (although in for “stimulating the nervous system,” perhaps the most ostensibly devout retrospect it is that), but the glorification and Ford recognized that Panaeolus Catholics in the annals of mycological of God in all of His Creation. This is papillionaceus and P. retirugis produced science: the Tulasne brothers. Louis what attracted Howard Kelly to the “hilarity and mild intoxication” when René (1815-1885) and Charles (1816- Tulasne brothers’ magnum opus, for in eaten, a phenomenon Capt. McIlvaine 1884) Tulasne were respectively lawyer the prolegomena to their description pointed out in One Thousand American and physician by training but worked of the successive states of microscopic Fungi. Ford surveyed mushroom toxins together as mycologist and illustrator fungi, the Tulasnes explained fungi as a in “The Distribution of Poisons in to produce one of the most astonishing manifestation of divinity. They stated: FUNGI Volume 4:4 Fall 2011 21 power of the same life which it but Shear made it clear that “every word inherited from its ancestors, and from cover to cover, including not only then is doomed to return to the the Prolegomena but also the preface dust from which its body was built and the scriptural quotations” must be up. … Yet, since on the one hand translated. He added, “these last appeal, not even the smallest atom of the particularly, to Dr. Kelly, and I think visible world can perish unless it perhaps had something to do with his is destroyed by the Omnipotent decision to assist in this good work.”48 himself, and on the other hand Grove assented but admitted that the life is sustained by the alternate preface “reads exactly like a sermon.”49 and never ending interchange of He wrote to Kelly on August 17, 1928 Memorial plaque at Howard Kelly exhausted or used up and rejected informing him that the translation was material, it is plain that the completed at last and asked whether residence, 1406 Eutaw Place; inhabitants of the earth to-day, to Kelly would permit his dedicating the Baltimore, Maryland. whatever branch of the animal or translation to him. After consultation “we will endeavour to bring forth, from vegetable kingdom they belong, not with Buller and Shear, he retracted the even the very smallest of his creatures, only enjoy a continuance of the life offer as inappropriate, and Kelly agreed the praise of Him ‘by whom all things of their parents, but also are clad completely. For the translation, he paid were made, who is before all, and in in the venerable dust. So, with the Grove $750, the equivalent of nearly whom all things consist, unto whom, will and help of GOD, death brings $10,000 today. Among the multitude immortal, invisible, the only GOD’, as forth life to the very end of time; of his good works, Kelly now had the Paul says (Coloss.i.17; I Timoth.i.17), ‘be from the first to the last creature of translation of a mycological classic honour and glory for ever and ever’.”46 its kind a single series, life received to his credit, one whose entire spirit, The brothers defined their purpose with and transmitted so long as it shall though grounded plainly in science, ample scriptural quotation, as Kelly please the supreme Lord. But the was also grounded in a vision of Christ vastly appreciated, to reveal the presence mode in which each soul both of whose resurrection inhered in the life of God in “insignificant” organisms as animals and of vegetables forms for cycle of the fungi. they described scientifically, “in fact and itself a body out of the surrounding illustration,” just how these organisms material constitutes a wonderful Under the spell of the Tulasne behaved and propagated. They allowed link of spiritual appearances with brothers, Kelly brought out a book of his that God was the “Supreme Artificer” visible nature.47 own to explain his peculiar commitment who made nothing in vain in the to science and religion. A Scientific hierarchy of life, and that “lower” life- Such an important work should merit Man and the Bible was issued in 1924, forms are as worthy of regard as the most wide dissemination, but the Selecta and Henry Mencken snapped at it like noble. The divine goodness of the Lord had been written in Latin. Dr. Kelly, a hungry lion after a gobbet of meat established an equilibrium in nature enthralled by a perspective that so with a review in the American Mercury. that a disciple of Christ would value by resembled his own, saw fit to sponsor He commended Kelly for his frankness praising God in all, even the fungi, which a translation of Selecta Fungorum and courage but complained, “How as the most humble are transposed by Carpologia into English. Through the am I to convince you that one of four the authors, incredible as it seems, into offices of two well-known mycologists, men who laid the foundations of the avatars of Christ. The Tulasne brothers Cornelius Lott Shear of the USDA and Johns Hopkins Medical School – the adored the fungi, seeing in them the A. H. Reginald Buller of the University daily associate and peer of Osler, Welch very image of God. Even the heraldic of Manitoba, he contracted the services and Halsted – is here on exhibition as emblem that adorns the frontispiece of of William Bywater Grove (1848-1938) a Fundamentalist of the most extreme their book depicts a scene of teeming to translate the Tulasne masterpiece into wing, compared to whom Judge conidia multiplying endlessly toward English. Grove, a classics scholar and Raulston, of Dayton, Tenn., seems almost an erupting volcano, all surrounded by headmaster for the Birmingham School an atheist?”50 Raulston, of course, was a floral garland from which depends for Boys, was just the person for the job. another of Mencken’s favorite hang- a rosary and crucifix. An excerpt will He was author of The British Rust Fungi ups, the butt of his outrage in reporting offer a glimpse of the awe and devotion (1913) and had a special appreciation of the celebrated Scopes “monkey trial” in expressed by these Catholic mycologists: the Tulasne brothers’ accomplishments. 1925. Mencken’s Baltimore Sun articles Kelly proposed underwriting the on the trial have been collected in a neat Fungi are a daily evidence that translation in 1923, which was accepted volume, A Religious Orgy in Tennessee. life arises from death. Since the warmly by Buller and Shear who oversaw In his dispatches from the trial, he time when the primeval types of the project, negotiating with Oxford’s poked fun at Dayton as a town made every creature received from the Clarendon Press while Grove handled up entirely of Doctor Kellys, but sternly eternal Creator the breath of life the translation. Grove questioned accused “Evangelical Christianity” to implanted in their form, each of whether he might omit certain passages be “founded upon hate,” whereas “the those creatures hands on in its or reduce the multitude of Tulasne Christianity of Christ is founded upon turn to its posterity the force and spore names to a common synonym, love.” He taunted Kelly: “I propose that 22 FUNGI Volume 4:4 Fall 2011 Dr. Kelly be sent here for sixty days, was erected on dogma, that there was earth’s crust to test unbelievers. His son preferably in the heat of summer. He nothing so dogmatic as science, that described the resulting embarrassment will return to Baltimore yelling for a indeed scientific laws and facts were over Omphalos: carboy of pilsner and eager to master nothing less than a tissue of dogmatic the saxophone. His soul perhaps will be assertions. If the dogmas of science, My Father, and my Father lost, but he will be a merry and happy Kelly maintained, are the foundation for alone, possessed the secret of the man.”51 In his book review, he called a reliable understanding of the material enigma; he alone held the key Kelly “insane” for beliefs that rendered universe, we must admit as infinitely which could smoothly open the his clinical acumen paradoxical and more important the religious dogmas lock of geological mystery. He recalled Kelly’s conversion experience upon which our religious convictions offered it, with a glowing gesture, in a Colorado blizzard as a defining are based, in particular the convictions to atheists and Christians alike. moment. In that early experience, Kelly of the Christian faith. If we accept This was to be the universal had been stricken with “snow blindness” the dogmas of scientific men as part panacea; this the system of (photokeratitis), and he was overcome of everyday belief, he seemed to say, intellectual therapeutics which by a “great light” which he accepted then how could we deny the dogmas could not but heal all the maladies as a numinous encounter with God. of Christian belief, supported by the of the age. But, alas! atheists and Mencken harped, “How would any millions of believers, their testimonies, Christians alike looked at it, and ordinary medical student interpret that and the experiences of religious men. laughed, and threw it away.56 great light? How would an ordinary This is entirely specious reasoning that ice-wagon driver, or chiropractor, rests on a confusion of dogma and belief As a magisterial leader of medical or Methodist bishop, or even catfish as well as a disregard of the hypothesis science, Howard Kelly never interpret it? Obviously, he would refer of falsifiability of scientific propositions. embarrassed himself with the it to the violent conjunctivitis from Yet he couldn’t help but consider unscientific tactics of Philip Henry which he was suffering – in other harmonizing the Bible with science Gosse, for he was never really perturbed words, to a purely physical cause. But on occasion and complained that the by the dissonance of incompatible not Kelly. After fifty years of active emphasis on evolution was “foolishly” beliefs. Science today would eagerly medical practice he still believes that applied to every natural phenomenon.53 borrow Mencken’s vitriolic assessment the glare was due to the presence of of fundamentalism to attempts by God!” According to Mencken, such Many scientists have maintained contemporary “creationists” to insinuate beliefs swiftly ushered Kelly into the the seemingly incompatible views their unscientific agenda in education, “intellectual Bad Lands” making him a of science and religion despite the a political agenda that has no equal “violent enemy of objective fact.” Giving work of debunkers such as Henry merit in public education. Creationism a little ground, he admitted that Kelly Mencken or Richard Dawkins. A is nothing but indoctrination. And did not apologize for his beliefs, “nor notable instance is Albert Einstein, yet when we look back at Kelly and does he try to bring them into grotesque whose cosmic religiosity never posed Mencken, we need to recognize and incredible harmony with scientific an obstacle to his scientific thought; he that both were impelled by a moral facts.”52 But conspicuously absent from called religion “an attempt to find an imperative to disseminate knowledge Mencken’s unsubtle diatribe was the out where there is no door.” Einstein and uphold truth. The lesson to be record of Kelly’s accomplishments adopted an expansive view; Max Born learned from them resides in fully in medicine, not to mention his stated “he had no belief in the Church, understanding both poles of their unsolicited generosity in supporting but did not think religious faith was intellectual battle. mycological publication and research a sign of stupidity, nor unbelief a sign financially. of intelligence.”54 Philip Henry Gosse That Kelly somehow experienced remains a classic example of one that Christ in mushrooms is perhaps more Kelly simply did not accept the attempted unsuccessfully to reconcile difficult to understand. His outlook divorce between science and religion deep religious convictions with Darwin’s partakes, to an extent, in what William as did Mencken because he was theory of natural selection. The story is James labeled “the religion of healthy- uninterested in the unprovability of told quite poignantly in Father and Son mindedness.” Studying the fungi religious belief as fact; instead, his by his son, the literary critic, Edmund may seem an odd form of pursuing life was based on an unshakable faith Gosse, who mused, “There is a peculiar happiness, but many have discovered that bolstered him as physician and agony in the paradox that truth has two unique pleasures in this outré, reformer. On one occasion however, forms, each of them indisputable, yet unfashionable hobby without burdening Kelly took pleasure in engaging each antagonistic to the other.”55 The it with labels and doctrines. Kelly a scientist, a fellow mycologist, elder Gosse was an enthusiastic natural captured the aesthetics of perceiving the in a peculiar conversation about historian, whose adherence to Genesis fungi when he reflected on his discovery dogma. When the mycologist stated was shaken by the challenge posed in of a dainty little Mycena: unequivocally that he hated dogma in Darwin’s theory. His book Omphalos response to Kelly’s leading question, was an attempt to reconcile the two …the hand that fashions Nature Kelly needled him by expressing regret belief systems by positing the absurd thrills us with interest by all it that this was a pity, since science itself notion that God “hid” fossils in the accomplishes with exiguous FUNGI Volume 4:4 Fall 2011 23 resources. … The same is true of The marvelous beauty of mushrooms Atwood Kelly, then faded and pitched fungi – mushrooms, toadstools, persists in the astonishing loveliness that into oblivion through the dark days and their ilk. The groundwork idea recapitulates this fundamental form in of the Great Depression and World is that of a parasol and nothing endless variation. Our easy familiarity War II. Yet this mycological spark, more: a stalk lifting it from the with mushrooms, smothered over caught perhaps from Mary Banning ground and a veil to protect the with scientific data, has turned such an and Charles McIlvaine and transmitted spores until they mature under observation into cliché, but the truth mysteriously through Howard Kelly their efficient cover. But lo, what that Kelly grasped deserves deeper to Guy Nearing, Gordon Wasson, and an infinite variety! What marvels phenomenological and historical inquiry. Harry Knighton, is the very spark that of provision for disseminating their ignites the imaginations of so many in spores! It was only a little toadstool One wonders at the superior their pursuit of mycology today. which gave me the greatest thrill I fortitude of a man like Howard Kelly, have ever experienced in the field of whose drive was not drivenness, Louis Krieger’s last years were plagued Nature. I wish I could communicate whose dynamism did not terminate with a double misfortune: the suicide it in the telling. It was not its size, in burn-out, and any one of whose of his wife and his daughter’s resultant for it was only about an inch tall, accomplishments might have been emotional trauma. He managed to growing on an island near my satisfactory (or stupendous) for scrape by on a tiny pension, living with camp, looking at first sight like any another individual. Unlike Philip his sister in Vineland, New Jersey. He ordinary fungus; its beauty lay in the Henry Gosse, the two temperaments sent a desperate letter to Kelly in 1940, exquisite amethystine luminosity of of Howard Kelly did not demand gratefully acknowledging his spiritual the numerous translucent mycelial reconciliation, for the swinging advice and pathetically beseeching his threads enveloping its lower stem- pendulum of his twin commitment to former patron with the question of like beauty so often evanescent, for it science and religion seemed nestled whether God forgives suicides. We do faded in an hour or two after picking. in a furious, atomic oscillation, giving not know whether Kelly responded, And where, for example, can we find heat to his character and purpose to though it was certainly in character to colors more glorious than in many of his career. Where Mencken carped on reach out to a friend in need. Henry our fungi?57 about an irreconcilable and perplexing Mencken saw Kelly on a final, sad dichotomy, Kelly only plunged ahead occasion at Max Brödel’s funeral in 1941. This “groundwork idea” deserves healing bodies and saving souls. Yet Age had transformed the once robust comment: the immanence of the Creator there was a psychological duality doctor, and Mencken confided to his lies implicit in this expression; but rather around which was tightly coiled the diary that Dr. Kelly appeared “shrunken than revert to his everyday messianism, strangely varied ensemble of Kelly’s and pathetic.” Two years later, he couldn’t the evangelical doctor stood down from interests and talents – on the one hand, refrain from taking a final, private swipe the pulpit on this occasion simply to drink the unconditional surrender to the at Kelly, recording in his diary that in the captivating beauty of the fungi. All living presence of Christ that fired his while Howard and Laetitia Kelly lay on the same, his observation is certainly the evangelism; on the other, a passionate their deathbeds two of their sons were record of an epiphany: “It was only a little fascination with manifestations of furiously enjoying a craps game at the toadstool which gave me the greatest thrill nature in which lingered the potency Maryland Club, a cruel observation to I have ever experienced in the field of of evil and death: radioactive isotopes, be sure. One month to the day before nature.” This echoes the typical sentiment poisonous reptiles, and toxic fungi. Kelly’s death, a tragedy befell him: his of the mushroom enthusiast, but Dr. Why did Kelly gravitate to these things grandson Lt. Howard A. Kelly III was Kelly was no ordinary amateur. Indeed, above all others? Was his evangelical killed in action on an American bombing his sentiment seems an overstatement, enthusiasm a penitential offset to mission in Africa. Dr. Howard Kelly for Kelly was an outdoorsman of wide his everyday familiarity with human died on January 12, 1943 as the world experience, whose forays spanned the female genitalia and reproductive plunged deeper into the catastrophe of continent and whose interests in natural organs? The female body was indeed World War II. An obituary appeared history were not those of a dilettante. still shrouded under the cloak of in Mycologia, and a U.S. liberty ship, Earlier, in the preface to his Catalogue, he Victorian repressions at the time he an emergency cargo vessel of the U.S. singled out the stipe-and-cap umbrella wrote Operative Gynecology, yet few Maritime Commission, was named shapes of mushrooms as “modifications other men of his time understood the Howard A. Kelly in his honor and of one fundamental idea.” Focusing on the the mechanics of the womb as he launched on March 18, christened by umbrella shape as a Platonic form slights did. Here was a vice crusader who his daughter Olga as it slipped into the multifarious variety of form in the took up undulating serpents – and Baltimore Harbor.58 In his final days, did ascomycetes and polypores; but Kelly, if sported with them! Here was a soldier he offer his supplications to the Lord not quite attempting an argument from for Christ whose scribbled devotions for personal salvation, or for a world design to glorify the Supreme Artificer to the Lord were interspersed with gone insane in a frenzied Armageddon a la Tulasne, was surely suggesting species lists of fungi! Here was a of bloodshed and horror? On the day that something akin to the urpflanze of moment of enthusiasm for mycology he died, Soviet armed forces turned the Goethe (if not the hand of God) was also that seemed to have luminesced like an tide against the Nazi siege of Leningrad, the basis of design in the world of fungi. incandescent coal in the life of Howard and President Franklin Roosevelt was in 24 FUNGI Volume 4:4 Fall 2011 flight across the Atlantic, headed for a Papers, Diary, Box 24, folder 2; 37 HAKP, quoted from Johns Hopkins conference at Casablanca with Winston [hereafter, HAKP]. Hospital Bulletin (1933), 53(2): 94. Churchill and the Allied command. 9 Ibid, Sept 14, 1919 38 Fred Jay Seaver Papers, LuEsther Harry Hopkins, the former mushroom 10 Myron E. Hard, The Mushroom, T. Mertz Library, New York Botanical enthusiast, was at Roosevelt’s side, but Edible and Otherwise (1961 [orig. 1908], Garden; Seaver to Krieger; fungi were farthest from his mind. The Hafner). December 10, 1924. only mushrooms available for years 11 New York Herald, May 21, 1911. 39 HAKP, July 20, 1920. to come were those arising as clouds 12 Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and 40 GSBP, Kelly to Burlingham, August from the fury of aerial bombardment, Hopkins: An Intimate History (1948, 31, 1920; Burlingham, “Notes on Species engulfing the obliterated cities of Europe Harper), p. 27. of Russula,” Mycologia 16(1): 17 (1924). and Asia.59 13 Carl Bode, Mencken (1986, Johns 41 Thomas S. Cullen, op. cit. Hopkins University Press), p. 4-5. 42 Elizabeth Fee, Disease and 14 Ibid, p. 79. Discovery: A History of the Johns Acknowledgements 15 Ibid, p. 250. Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Grateful thanks to the living 16 Charles Stewart Roberts “Mencken Health, 1916-1939 (1987, Johns Hopkins descendants of Dr. Howard A. Kelly, and the four doctors: Osler, Halsted, University Press), p. 114. particularly to Dave Davis and W. Welch, and Kelly” Proceedings, Baylor 43 HAKP, Diary, Box 26, folder 6, Boulton Kelly, Jr., for their invaluable University Medical Center, 2010, p. 119. assistance and for permission to 23(4):377-88. 44 William W. Ford, “The toxicological reproduce the photographs herein. 17 H. L. Mencken, The Diary of H. constitution of Amanita phalloides” Thanks also to Dr. Victor Marrow, L. Mencken, ed. by Charles A. Fecher Journal of Experimental Medicine, 1906, Executive Director of the Office of (1989, Knopf), pp. 61-2. 8:437-50. Funded Programs of Johns Hopkins 18 Flexner and Flexner, op. cit, p. 3. 45 HAKP, Diary, Box 26, folder 6. University School of Medicine for his 19 H. L. Mencken, A Mencken 46 Louis Rene and Charles Tulasne, stimulating ideas and enthusiastic Chrestomathy (1982, Vintage), p. 3. Selecta Fungorum Carpologia (1861, support, and to Marjorie Kehoe of the 20 Charles Stewart Roberts, Paris), translated by William Bywater Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives op. cit., p. 380. Grove, p. 6. for her assistance and guidance. 21 H. L. Mencken, Letters of H. L. 47 Ibid, pp. 9-10. Thanks to all! Mencken (1981, Northeastern University 48 USDA Agricultural Research Press), p. 101. Service Collection, Cornelius Lott Shear 22 Carl Bode, op. cit; p. 151. Papers, May 25, 1924. Endnotes 23 Charles Stewart Roberts, op. cit., 49 Ibid, March 14, 1924. 1 John M. Barry, The Great Influenza p. 381. 50 H. L. Mencken, “Fides Ante (2005, Penguin), p. 180. 24 H. L. Mencken, quoted in Roberts, Intellectum” [review of A Scientific 2 Simon Flexner and James Thomas op. cit., p 379. Man and the Bible by Howard Kelly] in Flexner, William Henry Welch and the 25 Baltimore Sun, January 13, 1927. Prejudices (2010, Library of America), Heroic Age of American Medicine (1993 26 Baltimore Sun, May 28, 1922. Vol. 2, pp. 449-52. [orig. 1941], Johns Hopkins University 27 Ibid. 51 H. L. Mencken, A Religious Orgy in Press). 28 HAKP, Diary, Box 26, Tennessee (2006, Melville House), 3 For the John Singer Sargent portrait, folder 6, p. 141. pp. 44, 48. see http://jssgallery.org/Paintings/The_ 29 HAKP, Diary, Box 26, folder 6. 52 H. L. Mencken, op. cit., 2010; Four_Doctors.htm. 30 HAKP, Diary, Box 26, folder 6, pp. 450-52. 4 Gerald Imber, Genius on the pp. 115-18. 53 HAKP, Biographical Mss, Chapter Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. 31 Gertrude Simmons Burlingham Seven: Hobbies, pp. 5-7; Diary, Box 27, William Stewart Halsted (2010, Kaplan Papers, LuEsther T. Mertz Library, folder 7. Publishing). New York Botanical Garden; Kelly to 54 Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life 5 There is no recent, scholarly Burlingham, January 21, 1919; and Times (1971, Avon), p. 516. biography of Howard Kelly. See Audrey [hereafter GSBP]. 55 Edmund Gosse, Father and Son, W. Davis, Dr. Kelly of Hopkins: Surgeon, 32 Howard A. Kelly, “Mushrooms and (1970 [orig. 1907], Penguin), p. 74. Scientist, Christian (1959, Johns Toadstools” The Therapeutic Gazette, 56 Ibid., p. 77. Hopkins University Press). July 1919. 57 Kane, Paul “Howard Atwood Kelly,” 6 Thomas S. Cullen, “Dr. Howard 33 Louis C. C. Krieger, The Mushroom Nature Magazine; August 1931, Atwood Kelly” (1943, The Johns Hopkins Handbook (1967, Dover), p. 251; 300-01. pp. 104-06. Alumni Magazine, 31:3/4). 34 Ibid., pp. 15-16. 58 Bessie B. Kanouse, “Doctor Howard 7 Louis C. C. Krieger, Catalogue of the 35 William Sturgis Thomas, Field Book Atwood Kelly,” Mycologia, Jul-Aug 1943, Mycological Library of Howard A. Kelly of Common Mushrooms (1936, G. P. 35(4):383-4. (1924, Baltimore). Putnam’s), p. x. 59 The phrase “the fury of aerial 8 The Alan Mason Chesney Medical 36 Louis C. C. Krieger, Catalogue of the bombardment” is borrowed from a Archives, The Johns Hopkins Medical Mycological Library of Howard A. poem of the same title by Richard Institutions, Howard Atwood Kelly Kelly, p. ii. Eberhart. 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