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Indiana Magazine of History INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY The Indiana Physician as Geologist and Naturalist William DePrex Inlow* In the development of natural science in Indiana during the nineteenth century the doctor of medicine played an im- portant role. His contribution is not to be marveled at, for it was he above all others who by temperament and training was led to the study of nature. It was to be expected that his primary concern with the science of man himself should also find expression in the exploration of other fields. The physician became a botanist almost of necessity, for he had need of medicinal plants. He roved forest and field in col- lecting ; he treasured his herbarium ; animal life intrigued him. He often made notations and reports concerning both the flora and the fauna of his area. Scientific interest thus always goes beyond subservience to what is deemed im- mediately practical. In the streams where the physician studied fish and searched for shells he found rocks exposed, some of which bore in them the remains of the life of eons past. He became a collector of fossils. The pursuit of paleontology led him into the intricacies of stratigraphy. When interest in geological knowledge developed, it was frequently to the physician that public authorities turned for assistance in geological survey. Today the physician is no longer natural historian having a wide knowledge of the abundant life forms of his state, no longer paleontologist classifying specimens for his cabinet, no longer field geologist conducting surveys of his own and other counties. Science in days past was not so comprehensive, so detailed as now. One then could be an all-round man, * William DePrez Inlow is senior surgeon, Inlow Clinic, Shelbyville, Indiana. This article is adapted from an address delivered before the Indiana Association of the History of Medicine at the Pre-conference Meeting of the Twenty-ninth Annual Indiana History Conference, In- diana State Library, December 11, 1947. 2 Indiana Magazine of HGtory competent in many fields ; but with modern specialization this feat has become well-nigh impossible. The present-day physician, busy with his own estate, seldom pauses long enough even to visit the lands of his neighbor. Intensification of effort confined to an ever smaller domain has brought much profit, but in the process of specialization something has been lost-something intangible and difficult to name. It has been customary to look down on the early medical man as a person of meagre intellectual attainment. In this judg- ment we should not be too hasty. It is the purpose of this presentation to call attention to some of the physician’s con- tributions in fields not ordinarily considered his province. After briefly tracing the general story of natural history and geology in the state, this article will portray the part taken in this development by certain medical men whose contribu- tions were outstanding. The history of science in Indiana begins at New Harmony. This town, up the Wabash some distance from its mouth, was founded by George Rapp and his followers, the sect of Rap- pists or Harmonists, in 1815. In 1824 Robert Owen, the famous Scottish philanthropist and socialist, purchased the property for a utopian experiment which eventually failed. Many talented men and women were led to seek this singular place. Here, it was affirmed, science and letters would rise like the orient sun to enlighten the benighted western world. Thus by attracting learned persons from abroad and from the East, New Harmony became and remained for a number of years an important scientific and literary center in Indiana. The first person to study natural life in Indiana was apparently the eccentric Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, though the ornithologist, John James Audubon, in the years immediately after 1808 doubtless made trips north of the Ohio from his home in Kentucky to add Indiana birds to his collection. Rafinesque came to the United States for the second time in 1815; wanderlust led him west. Securing the professorship of botany and natural history in Transylvania University at Lexington, he set out down the Ohio in the summer of 1818 to explore the fauna and flora of Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. He sojourned for a time at New Harmony. Here in the West was a veritable new world with plants and animals which had never before been catalogued. Unknown species were on every hand, and “like Indiana Physician as Geologist and Natumlist 3 a schoolboy, Rafinesque searched and found, studied, de- scribed, drew, sent abroad, the wonderful form in which he almost alone, now reveled.”l In the vanguard of those individuals who came to New Harmony in the mid-twenties, besides the Owens themselves, was Thomas Say. Say has been named the Father of American Entomology, the Father of American Conchology, and even the Father of American Zoology.* Rafinesque, the wanderer, scarcely can be called a true Hoosier; not so Say, who lived at New Harmony till his death in 1834. Although two parts of his American Entomology had already been published at Philadelphia before he came west, he researched and wrote all of his most pretentious treatise, American Conchology, after settling in Indiana.* But of all those who lived at New Harmony, David Dale Owen was destined to be “the first, the most learned and the most eminent of Indiana’s State Geologists.”* In 1837 the general assembly passed an act authorizing and requiring the governor “to appoint and commission a person of talents, integrity, and suitable scientific acquirements, as geologist for the state of Indiana. .” The salary was $1,500 with $250 for expenses. The geologist was to make a complete and minute geological survey of the state and “at those seasons not suited to the active prosecution of the geological survey, to analyze and ascertain the qualities and properties of mineral substances or soils left at his office or residence for that purpose by any citizen of the state. .”5 To this office Governor Noah Noble appointed David Dale Owen. 1 Richard Ellsworth Call, Ichthyologia Ohiensis or Natural History of the Fishes Inhabiting the River Ohio and its Tributary Streams by C. S. RafinesqzLe (Cleveland, O., 1899), 22; see ibid., 17-23, for a full sketch of the life of Rafinesque. For a survey of early science in the West in the period antecedent to the time covered in the present article, consult R. Carlyle Buley, The Old Northwest: Pipneer Period, 1815-1840 (2 vols., Indianapolis, 1950), 11, 580-597. For a discussion of Rafinesque, see ibid., 582-585. 2Barton Warren Evermann, “A Century of Zoology in Indiana, 1816-1916,” Proceedings of the Zndiana Academy of Science (1916) (Fort Wayne, Ind., 1917), 197. 3 Thomas Say, American Entomology, or Descriptions of the Insects of North America (3 vols., Philadelphia, 1824-1828) ; Say, American Conchology, or Descriptions of the Shells of North America (New Harmony, Ind., 1830-1834). 4 W. S. Blatchley, “A Century of Geolo in Indiana,” Proceedings of the Zndtizna Academy of Science (1916), ‘%ys. 5 Indiana, General Laws (1836-1837), 108-109. 4 Indiana Magazine of History Though Owen held the degree of doctor of medicine, he never practiced; in fact, he had an intense dislike for actual contact with those who were ill. It is said that he merely studied anatomy and physiology to help him understand paleontology. Until 1835 he had been primarily interested in chemistry, but in October of that year he embarked upon the study of medicine, registering at the Medical College of Ohio at Cincinnati for two terms of five months each during 1835- 1836 and 1836-1837. He received his degree in 1837.” David Dale Owen, fourth son of Robert and Anne Caroline Owen, was born at New Lanark, Scotland, June 24, 1807. When he was seventeen years of age, he and his brother Richard were sent to Fellenberg’s celebrated school at Hofwyl in the Swiss Alps near Berne. The foundation of David Owen’s knowledge of chemistry and natural history was laid during his three years of study at Fellenberg’s. In the mean- time his father had made a trip to America and had purchased New Harmony. David Dale, after returning to Scotland in 1826 and attending lectures for another year, set sail from Liverpool on November 16, 1827, with his father and brothers, Robert Dale and Richard, and arrived at New Orleans January 14, 1828. From this port he and Richard went directly to New Haimony.T In 1831 David Dale Owen returned to England for study at London University. London was alive with scientific ac- tivity. Michael Faraday and John Dalton were lecturing in the physical and chemical sciences; Charles Lyell, whose Principles of Geology (3 vols., London, 1830-1833) exercised an influence on scientific thought in the nineteenth century 6 Walter Brookfield Hendrickson, David Dale Owen: Pioneer Geologist of the Middle West (Indiana Historical Collections, Vol. XXVII; Indianapolis, 1943), 22-23. At the time of Owen’s attendance, the Medical College of Ohio was in wretched condition. Daniel Drake, greatest physician of the West, had founded the college in 1820 only to suffer expulsion from it two years later. He went on, however, to a somewhat stormy but brilliant career at other institutions. In 1835 when Owen entered the Medical College of Ohio, Drake had just estab- lished the Medical Department of the Cincinnati College (Drake’s School), where he had assembled the most distinguished faculty the West had ever seen. Until 1839, when the Medical Department of the Cincinnati College closed, there was bitter rivalry between the two schools. According to Hendrickson, ibid., 23, little is known concerning Owen’s medical training other than that Alban Goldsmith, arch foe of Drake, was his preceptor for a year.
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