PHYSICIANS ON (1786-1854)

By J. MONROE THORINGTON, M.D.

PHILADELPHIA

HE medical men whose lives village notary. Dr. Paccard studied first are here briefly sketched had a at Turin, obtaining his degree there, mutual interest in their scien- and later at Paris. Familiar with peaks tific and esthetic approach to and glaciers from childhood, he formed Tthe loftiest summit in the Alps. botanicalThey and geological collections, and were in no sense explorers, and Mont made barometric observations for alti- Blanc (15,781 feet) was die great adven- tude determinations. In 1785 he was ture of their lives, undertaken on the made a corresponding member of the spur of the moment, in a time when Royal Academy of Sciences at Turin on mountain ascents were not regarded in the basis of a paper3 dealing with rock the light of pure sport. Yet the tradition stratification. of physicians in alpine surroundings He was a careful student of the works goes back to the sixteenth-century Zü- of the Geneva scientist, Saussure, and rich school, led by Conrad Gesner, explored routes on Mont Blanc as early whose tract “De Montium Admira- as 1783. Saussure, who met him at Cha- tione” (1543)1 was the first to give voice monix in 1784, calls him “a fine fellow, to the urge of the scientist to leave the full of intelligence, fond of botany, cre- study for the field. ating a garden of Alpine plants, want- Mont Blanc was visible to travelers in ing to climb Mont Blanc or at least to Geneva, became a fashion- attempt it.” able inclusion in the Grand Tour, and The difficulties of the ascent, in which young medical graduates of many coun- Paccard took his share of the labor, pre- tries visited European resorts in a final cluded all but the simplest experiments fling before settling down to the routine on the summit. He read the thermome- of practice. ter, but the barometric reading was un- satisfactory; he used a color-scale to The ascent of Mont Blanc by Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard and the , measure the blueness of the sky. Jacques Balmat, on August 8, 1786, was On his return, Paccard issued a pro- from many points of view the most impor- spectus and opened a subscription for a tant event in the history of mountaineer- book to be entitled “Premier voyage fait ing. It is a very unfortunate fact that no a la cime de la plus haute montagne de complete account of their exploit by either l’ancien continent, le Mont-Blanc.” of the climbers ever appeared. Dr. Pac- Due to insufficient subscription and card undoubtedly intended to publish lack of means, it appears never to have such an account, and if he had done so, it been published, although Paccard was would have been read from one end of Eu- still at work on it in the summer of rope to the other.2 1788. Dr. Paccard was born in Chamonix The doctor survived his ascent by in February, 1757, his father being the more than forty years, and kept a diary4 of events occurring on the mountain day, and brought to its solution a com- during the period 1783-1825, living to bination of courage and enterprise un- see fourteen climbers follow in his foot- equalled in his own time.

steps to the summit. During the occu- Dr. Jeremiah Van Rensselaer and his pation of Chamonix by the French friend, William Howard, received their (1792-1814), Paccard was Juge de Paix medical degrees in 1817 from the Uni- for seven years, and mayor in 1794. He versity of New York and the University married Marie-Angélique Balmat in of Maryland, respectively, and left soon 1796, and some of his descendants still afterward to visit the medical centers of live. We know nothing further of his England and the Continent. life except that many distinguished vis- In the spring of 1819 they journeyed itors paid their respects to him and he to Italy and ascended both Aetna and frequently lent climbers his scientific Vesuvius. Returning over the Simplon instruments—which they often broke or they reached Geneva and Chamonix, lost. He died May 21, 1827, aged sev- where they conversed with Dr. Paccard enty years. and made excursions to the glaciers. As a mountaineer he set before him- Their curiosity was aroused and, on self the greatest alpine problem of his July 12th, 1819, they stood upon the summit of Mont Blanc. This was the In one of his numerous slips on the first American ascent.5 snow while descending, Howard unfor- Notwithstanding the indisposition to tunately broke his precious bottle of air,

action which he felt, Howard made a as well as the thermometer which they few observations, and carefully sealed a had borrowed from Dr. Paccard. How- bottle filled with the air of the summit, ard and Van Rensselaer were nearly intended for examination on his return. snow-blind by the time they reached They fired a pistol several times and Chamonix, and returned to Geneva in noted that “the report was that of a a darkened carriage, “having purchased squib.” The dark indigo of the actinic perhaps too dearly the indulgence of sky amazed them. They read the ther- their curiosity.” mometer (-2° F.) but “suffered a much Their narratives were the first printed greater degree of cold from the rapid descriptions in America of the ascent of evaporation from their body surfaces.” an alpine snow-mountain. They regretted the lack of instruments Jeremiah Van Rensselaer was born for making experiments on “the absorp- at Fort Crailo, the old family mansion tion and radiation of caloric, and on the in Greenbush, New York, on August 4, degree of cold produced by the evapora- 1793, and graduated from Yale in the tion of aether and other liquids.” class of 1813, receiving his m.d . from the University of New York four years Academy of Fine Arts; while among the later. After his return from the Euro- numerous honors conferred upon him pean tour he began to practice in New were membership in the Royal Society

York City, following an apprenticeship of Edinburgh and the Royal Academy in the office of his uncle, Archibald of Sciences at Naples. Bruce, then professor of materia medica In 1840 he visited Rome and re- and mineralogy. Van Rensselaer was for mained in Europe for three years, re- many years secretary of the New York suming practice in 1843. after Lyceum of Natural History, before more than thirty years of medical activ- which he presented his ‘‘Essay on Salt,” ity, he retired, and with the exception and in 1825 published a popular “Trea- of periods spent in European travel, tise on Geology.” During 1820-41 he lived at Greenbush until his death on contributed eight papers to the Ameri- February 7, 1871.° He married twice: can Journal of Sciences and Arts, cover- first, Charlotte Foster, of Boston, and ing a wide range of scientific subjects. second, Anne Ferrand Waddington, of He became associate lecturer on geology New York, who survived him by more to the Athenaeum (the name of Wil- than twenty years. liam Howard appears on the list of pa- William Howard was born in 1793, trons), and a director of the American the fourth son of Col. John Eager Howard (1752-1827), who fought at and Sherry Wines and Curacao, and Germantown, Monmouth and the Cotv- Maraschino.” pens, and became Governor of Mary- land, was elected to the Senate, and Dr. Edmund Clark, of London, became a candidate for Vice-President ascended the mountain August 25-26, in 1816. 1825.7 At the rock called Pierre William’s birthplace was the family l’Echelle, where one first enters upon homestead, Belvedere, where in 1826, the glacial ice, he took the pulse rates of the possibility of the Baltimore and his companions. “I had expected to find Ohio Railroad was first discussed. Tra- the pulse of the strongest and most mus- dition relates that Dr. Howard with- cular subjects the least accelerated. drew from medical practice after losing This, however, did not appear to be the his first patient, a friend whose life he case.” A young Hercules of a guide had strove in vain to save. He continued, a rate fourteen beats higher than Dr. however, as adjunct professor of anat- Clark’s. omy in the University of Maryland, his His fired a pistol, and Clark alma mater. thought that the concussion helped to His interest in mathematics became produce an avalanche which fell shortly predominant and he resigned to enter afterward. He was told of an experience the service of the United States Govern- when the guides camped on the snow, ment engineers, being appointed one of and one of their number falling asleep three to determine the route of the Bal- over a charcoal brazier was rendered in- timore and Ohio. He was also locating sensible by carbon monoxide and could engineer for the Chesapeake and Ohio only be roused with great difficulty. canal. In 1828 he published a “Report On the summit one of the party had of the Survey of a Canal from the Po- a hemorrhage from an accidental blow,, tomac to Baltimore,’’ and in the follow- which Dr. Clark was quick to see was ing year the Franklin Institute of Phila- not from the rarefaction of the air. delphia brought out his “Specification The blood appeared of a duller colour for an Improvement in Locomotive En- than natural; our lips were quite blue, gines.” but no one had the least spontaneous In 1828 Dr. Howard married Re- hemorrhage from the gums or eyes. . . . becca Anne Key, by whom he had an I had a slight tendency to nausea, most only son, William Key Howard, who overwhelming headache, some pain of the served in the Civil War. The doctor breast and rather feared the rupture of a died in 1834, at the age of forty, carried blood vessel, having been subject to hae- off by a plague epidemic then raging in moptysis when a boy, but this pain and Baltimore. “His Splendid Library and the rapid beating of the heart went off Philosophical, Chemical and Astronom- when we stopped to rest. ical Apparatus” were sold at auction, Clark had brought some small and besides an unusual group of alpine branches of olive from the Mediterra- books, gave evidence of a rounded life nean and placed this emblem of peace that would have delighted the philoso- in a glass tube, together with the name pher Montaigne (and Weir Mitchell!), of George iv and the most remarkable since his possessions included “Surgical people of the age, leaving it in the rocks Instruments for Amputating, a pair of nearest the summit that it might be pre- Duelling Pistols, and 20 dozen Madeira served through the centuries. Two years later the tube was found half-filled with papers on which, in the Philosophical water and the written memoranda en- Transactions (R.S.C.), he was awarded tirely illegible. the royal medal in 1839. c^s‘ covered the presence of spermatozoa Dr. Martin Barry, graduate of the within the ovum, and in the same year University of Edinburgh, President of became house surgeon in the Royal Ma- the Royal Medical Society and Fellow ternity Hospital of Edinburgh, where of the Royal Society of that city, had he gained the respect and love of the spent the summer of 1834 in Heidel- poor among whom he practiced. In 1849 berg. Traveling through Switzerland he he worked with Purkinje at Breslau, re- viewed the panorama of the Bernese maining abroad until 1853, when he re- Alps from the summit of the Faulhorn. turned to England and carried on his Crossing into France over the Col de microscopic studies up to a short time Balme, the sight of Mont Blanc in- before his death in 1855.° spired him to make the ascent, despite His most important discoveries were the lateness of the season, and his wish the segmentation of the yolk in the was crowned by success on September mammiferous ovum and the penetra- 16-17.8 tion of spermatozoa within the zona He was considerably exhausted at the pellucida. summit, noting that he had never previ- ously found “the flexors of the thigh I11 the summer of 1839, when he was and the extensors of the leg so inade- twenty-six years old, Dr. Harry Allen quate to the performance of their Grant made an attempt to ascend Mont office.” Blanc. His party reached the Grand Barry collected insects on the higher Plateau on July 16. “The clouds began snows, read barometer and thermome- very soon to rise from different points, ter, fired a pistol to judge the intensity and often obstructed view after view, so of sound, measured the boiling point of that to continue the ascent to the very water and brought down rock speci- summit we deemed would be useless as mens. On his return to Chamonix a con- far as the prospect was concerned.”10 temporary diarist says that “He was a The doctor made numerous experi- very fine young man, and looking un- ments. He lined up blocks of stone at commonly well.” intervals on the glacier to test the daily He gave two lectures in March, 1836, advance. At Chamonix, and at higher for the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, levels, he recorded the party’s pulse illustrating his adventures with a relief rates, noting that the rates were aug- (48 sq. ft.), made by a local sculptor and mented during the process of digestion. presented to the Royal Museum of Nat- He took six pigeons to the Grands Mu- ural History. lcts, where the night was spent, intend- Dr. Barry was born at Fratton, Hants, ing to measure the time required for a England, in 1802, and scientifically was flight to the pigeon-house of the hotel, the most distinguished physician con- but found that the birds could not take sidered in the present paper. He studied off at the high altitude. in Paris and London, and received his Dr. Grant was born at Simon’s Island, m.d . at Edinburgh in 1833. As a pupil Georgia, on January 23, 1813,11 the son of Tiedemann at Heidelberg he de- of a retired British naval surgeon. After voted himself to embryology, for two attending Union College, where he graduated in 1830, Grant received his He died at Enfield on November 30, m.d . from Baltimore College and be- i 884, in his seventy-second year. gan practice in Albany. There he re- Although little is known of Dr. Ed- ouard Ordinaire, of Besançon, he was the first medical man of his nationality to ascend Mont Blanc. As if his suc- cess on August 25-26, 1843, were not enough, he repeated it on August 30-31, after only a few days of rest, thereby gaining lasting fame as the first tourist to make two ascents of the mountain.12

Dr. Auguste Lepileur accompanied a purely scientific ascent13 in 1844, the first occasion on which men of science deliberately made up their minds to sleep near the summit and thus insure ample time for observations. After being twice turned back by storms, they started at midnight on Au- gust 27, reaching a tent they had left high on the mountain, where they con- tinued meteorologic and geodetic work until September 1. On August 29 they attained the summit and remained there five hours, carrying out many ex- mained for three years, but after the periments. death of his wife went abroad for study, spending four years on surgery, chiefly Albert Smith was born in the village in Paris. It was during this time that he of Chertsey, on the Thames, on May went to Chamonix. 24, 1816, the son of the local surgeon. Returning to America, Dr. Grant set- Educated at Merchant Taylors’ School tled in Hartford, but, after twelve years, illness forced him to withdraw from his and Middlesex Hospital, he won the profession. He went to Europe for med- midwifery prize and in 1837 had a pam- ical advice and his health was largely phlet published, entitled “Arguments restored. He then took up residence in against Phrenology.” He became Licen- Enfield, Connecticut, remarried and tiate of the Society of Apothecaries and had two sons. He was Surgeon-General a member of the Royal College of Sur- for the state in 1862, and was one of the geons in 1838. representatives for Enfield at the Gen- His father then sent him to the Hôtel eral Assembly. For a time he served as Dieu at Paris, and in the autumn of Collector of Internal Revenue, and in 1838 Albert Smith made a tour, largely 1864 became chairman of the delega- pedestrian, which took him to Chamo- tion from Connecticut to the Republi- nix and made Mont Blanc his lasting can National Convention at Baltimore. inspiration. He returned to England, joining his father for several years in Smith, that though he had quitted his country practice. In spare moments he original profession, he lost no opportu- made a series of lurid paintings, based nity of asserting its dignity by his pen.” on an account of the ascent, and devised a lecture with which he and his brother, carrying Mont Blanc on the back seat of their four-wheeled chaise, enlightened the inhabitants of Surrey villages where, as Smith said, audiences had tired of oxygen and the physiology of the eye. In 1851, Smith, having abandoned medicine for journalism, achieved his ambition by ascending Mont Blanc, his interesting narrative14 being enlivened by the astonishing list of provisions taken along. When Smith returned to London he had his traveling companion, William Beverley, a professional scenic artist, make a series of large views, and pre- sented a Mont Blanc entertainment at Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, which caught the public fancy and ran until his death in 1860. A born mimic and a good story- teller, Smith sang and chatted in an original and exhaustless manner of the l)r. Israel Tisdale Talbot, who ad- mountains and the people on the moun- mitted to “no little experience in moun- tains. In the two seasons of 1852 and tain-climbing,” had been in the White 1853 there were 193,754 paid admis- Mountains during the summer of 1 853. sions, bringing in upwards to £17,000. The ascent of Mont Blanc had been a had not yet become cherished idea from childhood, and he a recognized sport of Englishmen, and had read all available accounts. During “scores of men who afterward distin- the summer of 1854, being then twenty- guished themselves in the exploration seven years old, he was in the Tyrol, of the great Alps, first had their imag- and had but a few days to spare when inations fired by listening to the inter- he arrived at Chamonix. He accom- esting story told at Egyptian Hall.” By plished his desire on August 25-26, mak- July 6, 1858, more than 2000 perform- ing the second complete ascent by an ances had been given. American.15 Smith died on May 23, i860, within This was a sporting ascent, as was twenty-four hours of entering his forty- usually the case after Albert Smith’s fifth year, but his success had been un- time, the doctor carrying out no scien- precedented, scarcely equalled by any tific observations, although he left on writer or actor of his time. The Lancet the summit a part of a pebble that he could truly say, “It deserves to be re- had picked up on top of Mt. Washing- membered to the honour of Albert ton, “a first greeting from the White Mountains—the Mont Blanc of America 1873-78, then dean, a position which he —to the Mont Blanc of Europe.” filled until his death. Dr. Talbot was born at Sharon, Mas- sachusetts, in 1829, and died at Boston Readers interested in details of the in 1899. Graduating from the Homeo- various ascents will consult the some- pathic Medical College of Philadelphia what rare narratives cited. Here are the in 1853, he took his m.d . at Harvard in men themselves, and the panorama of the following year. He became profes- their achievements, Mont Blanc tower- sor of surgery at Boston University, ing as their common meeting-place. Ref ere nces 1. Gesn er , C. On the Admiration of Moun- of an excursion to the summit of Mont tains, and A Description of the Riven Blanc. New Monthly Magazine, pp. Mountain (Pilatus). Trans, by H. B. D. 434'49- 59°-6°o ’ 1826; pp. 289-95, 1827. Soule. On Conrad Gesner, and The 8. Barry , M. Ascent to the Summit of Mont Mountaineering of Theuesdank, by Blanc. Edinburgh, 1836. J. M. Thorington. San Francisco, 9. Dictionary of National Biography. Re- Grabhorn, 1937. prints of a number of Dr. Barry’s Brown ing , W. Some of our medical ex- papers will be found in the library of plorers and adventurers. Aied. Rec., the College of Physicians, Philadel- 1918 (Oct. 26). [A modern paper of phia. allied interests.] 10. Grant , H. A. A week among the glaciers. 2. Monta gni er , H. F. Dr. Paccard’s lost Am. J. Sciences and Arts, 46:281. narrative: a note. Alpine Journal, 11. Trumbu ll , J. H. The Memorial History 26:36, 1912. of Hartford County (1633-1844). De- Dubi , H. Paccard wider Balmat. Bern, spite an extensive search, no portrait of Dr. Grant could be found. Stev ens , E. H. Dr. Paccard’s “Lost Nar- 12. Savois en , G. C. Ascension au Mont Blanc rative,” an attempted reconstruction. fait en 1843. Bonneville, 1844. Cha- Alpine Journal, 41:98, 1929. monix in Dr. Paccard’s time was not in 3. Journal de Physique, vol. 27 (July), 1781. France, but belonged to the Kingdom 4. Now in the library of the Alpine Club of Sardinia, with Turin as capital. (London). 13. Lepil eur , A. Ascension au Mont-Blanc. 5. Howar d , W. A visit to the summit of Illustration, p. 68 (Oct. 4), 1844. Mont Blanc. Anatectic Magazine, 1820 14. Smith , A. The Story of Mont Blanc. (May). London, 1853. Van Rens se laer , J. Account of a jour- Thoring ton , J. M. Mont Blanc Side- ney to the summit of Mont Blanc. Am. show. Philadelphia, Winston, 1934. J. Sciences and Arts, 2:1, 1820. 15. Who’s Who in America. Talbot’s ac- A Narrative of a Journey to the Summit count of the ascent appeared as an of Mont Blanc. Baltimore, 1821. Re- appendix to Pictures of Europe, by published, 1856. Cyrus A. Bartol (Boston, 1855). The 6. Obit. A?n. Med. Rec., 1871 (Apr. 1). Dex- American Alpine Club possesses the ter, F. B. Yale Biographies, 1805-15. original manuscript certificate of the New Haven, 1911. ascent issued to Dr. Talbot by the 7. Clar k , E., and She rwi ll , M. Narrative Chamonix guide-syndicate.