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SOME AMERICAN
MEDICAL BOTANISTS




^SOME AMERICAN
MEDICAL BOTANISTS /

Commemorated in our Botanical

Nomenclature

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BY



HOWARD A. KELLY, M.D., LL.D,

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Delivered as a lecture before the Medical Historical Society of
Chicago, 2920, and before the University of Nebraska,

October 26, 1913






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TROY, N.Y.
THE SOUTHWORTH COMPANY, PUBLISHERS

1914



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ASTOR, LENOX AND
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COPYRIGHT, 1914
BY

THE SOUTHWORTH COMPANY,
TROY, NEW YORK



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Boro (gafttmor*

BALTIMORE, MD., U. S. A.



DEDICATION

I am happy in dedicating this work of love to
her who inspired me with my first interest in
God's natural world, who planned my first fear-
some excursions out into the unknown for speci-
mens, who rejoiced in my boyish triumphs and
who still continues the inspiration of my riper
years my Mother.






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CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE 7

INTRODUCTION n

SARRAZIN, MICHEL S 31

MITCHELL, JOHN 33

GOLDEN, CADWALADER 38

CLAYTON, JOHN 44

BARTRAM, JOHN 49

GARDEN, ALEXANDER 60

KUHN, ADAM 69

MARSHALL, MOSES 75

WISTAR, CASPAR 82

BARTON, BENJAMIN SMITH 88

HOSACK, DAVID 97

BALDWIN, WILLIAM 104

DARLINGTON, WILLIAM 113

MACBRIDE, JAMES 118

BIGELOW, JACOB 120

SHORT, CHARLES WILKINS 129

TORREY, JOHN 136

PITCHER, ZINA 145

PICKERING, CHARLES 151

RIDDELL, JOHN LEONARD 154

ENGELMANN, GEORGE 157

CHAPMAN, ALVAN WENTWORTH 163

GRAY, ASA 165

SAXE, ARTHUR WELLESLEY 178

PARRY, CHARLES CHRISTOPHER 180

HOWE, ELLIOT C 187

HERBST, WILLIAM 190

POST, GEORGE EDWARD 192

ROTHROCK, JOSEPH TRIMBLE 203

HAPEMAN, HARRY 214




" Incisi fundunt capitella papaveris ex se

somniferas lachrymas, Opii sub nomine claras:
Illud restituit lapsas in pristina vires
exhibitum caute, & cluet anchora sacra Medentum:
Sin minus, est gladius, quern gestat dextra furentis."

(From Title-page of George Wolff gang Wedel's Opiologia, Jena, 1682)



PREFACE

I have written these brief sketches of the lives
of some of our great medical forebears who lived
in the days when there were giants and when the
Anakim lived in the land, in order to while away
a few pleasant hours and to wean my fellow-
doctors and surgeons a little from the pragmatic
spirit of the age. The lives of some of these old
worthies led them to lift their eyes daily from
nature to nature's God and to recognize in the
Bible the same hand that made the floweret, so
that Chaucer's accusation " His studie was but
litel on the Bible " no longer held. I would that
many of their lineal successors were like them in
their piety.

My lifelong interest in botany began in the
year 1874, w ^ tn a warm friendship with Dr. J. P.
Crozier Griffith at Upland, Delaware County,
Pennsylvania. Later, in 1877, we were both
medical students when I had assumed charge of
a Summer School of Natural History at North
Mountain, in Sullivan County, Pennsylvania, to-
gether with my lifelong friend, Dr. Lewis H.
Taylor, of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. We
three botanized in the footsteps of our revered
predecessor, that distinguished botanist, Dr. J. T.



8 PREFACE

Rothrock. Here, in prosecuting our botanical
studies, we broadened our interests to include the
ferns. It was in this locality and at this time that
Dr. Griffith found the Aspidium aculeatum,
variety Eraun'n, growing in a profusion of beauti-
ful sturdy brown clusters at the falls of a little
brook which tumbles down through the shales of
the mountain on its way toward the North
Branch of the Susquehanna River. As this was a
lower habitat than any before noted, it was tri-
umphantly recorded at a subsequent meeting at
the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadel-
phia. Of the joys of this and many subsequent
summers ; of the patient hours spent with needles
and lens in overcoming difficulties, and the con-
stant thumbing, sometimes of Wood's, but gen-
erally of Gray's, analytical keys, with the tri-
umphs of identification of some hundreds of our
native plants of Pennsylvania and adjacent states ;
of trips to New Jersey for Helonias bullata and
other treasures, and the thrilling memories of the
specialized groups of plants found by the sea-
shore, my old Gray's Botany, with its marginal
notes of time and place of finds, continues to bear
mute but eloquent testimony. Nor dare I omit to
mention here, among the rarities, the beautiful
little Pellaea gracilis found growing at Raines's
Falls in the Catskills. These were the days when
Rothrock was in his prime; when Thomas Mee-



PREFACE 9

ban and John H. Redfield, ever willing coad-
jutors of the younger generation, were active in
the meetings at the Academy of Natural Sciences
in Philadelphia; when Asa Gray, almost the cre-
ator of ourNorth Americanbotanical science, was
looked up to as the great leader of us all; and
when Eaton was cataloguing and figuring the
ferns of North America. Times have changed
and other interests seem to thrill the boys of to-
day, but neither they nor any subsequent genera-
tion will ever discover a passion purer, sweeter
and more refining and more exhilarating than the
field botanical excursions, followed by the subse-
quent painstaking closet work of identification,
which occupied their fathers and grandfathers.
I fear reviewers will accuse me of being some-
what capricious in my selections, for some other
names besides those chosen are also worthy of
extended notice.

It is a pleasure to acknowledge my debt first
of all to Davina Waterson, who has devoted her
time and her talents to this work from start to
finish for several years, and without whom it
could never have been completed; for, although
the lives are brief, they have been prepared only
after a painstaking search for facts in current
journals, in reports, as well as in biographies.

I am glad, also, to thank Prof. J. H. Barnhart,
Prof. N. L. Britton, Dr. G. T. Stevens, Prof. Uri



10 PREFACE

Lloyd and Prof. Edward J. Nolan for their help
in revision.

The book includes medical men, living and
dead, who have been honored and immortalized
by these floral tributes. I shall be thankful to any
one who will help me by adding others.



INTRODUCTION

" There is religion in a flower ;
Its still, small voice is as the voice of conscience;
Mountains and oceans, planets, suns and systems
Bear not the impress of Almighty power
In characters more legible than those
Which He hath written on the tiniest flower
Whose light bell bends beneath the dewdrop's weight.'*

I began, once upon a time, to gather some bio-
graphical data relative to the floral medical god-
fathers of such well-known plants as the Gar-
denia, Wistaria and Claytonia, and this led me
holidaying further into the botanical field than I
had ever intended to wander. My little flower-
bed soon grew into a fair garden of no small size,
for there sprang up on all sides the names of many
other botanists and flowers clamoring for recog-
nition, until at last my plots and alleys had de-
veloped into a stately botanic garden. As I ad-
vanced I found my heroes scattered through the
centuries, so I proceeded to arrange them in sim-
ple chronological sequence. It seemed well, too,
to trace the wonderful work of our American pio-
neer botanists at a time when journeying was
truly laborious and often dangerous, and good
text-books comparatively scarce. Now, on the
completion of my task, I find in my garden such



12 INTRODUCTION

a strange medley of plants as I am sure has
scarcely ever been seen before. Even an old-
fashioned nosegay, plucked at random and daz-
zling the eye with all the hues of the rainbow,
does not present so bizarre an appearance. Here
there are gathered within one sacred enclosure, in
which the pious may reverently walk and rumi-
nate, the memories of the great demigods of the
healing art; flowers from every section of our
land, fragrant like Gardenia, and brilliant of
color like Poinsettia, lowly like Glaytonla and
Mitchella, climbing over our houses and droop-
ing their beautiful panicles like Wistaria; stately
trees of the forest like Torreya and Douglas' fir,
and here and there about an old root the fungi of
Herbst; and down in the swampy corner of
the garden grow Sarracenia and Darlingtonia.
I must not dwell longer here upon these hon-
ored colleagues who have left behind them
these memorials more lasting than bronze. He
who will know them better must from time to
time foregather with me in the pages which
follow.

It is generally agreed that the Canadensium
Plantarum aliarumque nondum editarum His-
toria, 1635, by a French botanist, Jacques Cor-
nuti, 1 was the first book on American botany,

1 Commonly referred to as " Cornut," but his real name seems to
have been " Cornuti " in French.



PUBLIC



A8TOP
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MAP OF THE AMERICAS IN 1663
(From the original in the author's possession)

Western coast unknown and the Gulf of California called the Vermian
Sea. Lower California represented as an island



INTRODUCTION 13

the author writing on specimens sent him from
Canada, and it seems probable that Thomas Har-
iot (or Harriott) (1560-1621) was really the first
to write on the natural history of America
in his Briefe and True Report of the new
found Land of Virginia (1590). Harriott was
the friend of Raleigh and was sent out by
him to America. Two other Englishmen, John
Josselyn, living in Boston, and the Rev. John
Banister, who came over and settled in America,
added to the literature in New England's
Rarities, 1672, and A Catalogue of Plants Ob-
served in Virginia, 1680. The statement that
Banister ever travelled, except from England to
Virginia (where he settled and remained until
his death) appears to be without foundation.

There still exists some of the Botanic Garden
made by Dr. John Bartram, about 1730, on the
right bank of the Schuylkill, near Philadelphia.
From this garden the doctor sent collections of
seeds and plants to his friend Peter Collinson 2 in
London. He also conducted A series of experi-
ments on the Lychnis dioica, illustrative of the
doctrine of sex in plants.

1739 saw the publication of the first systematic
enumeration of North American plants, edited
by Gronovius at Leyden, Holland, to which I
have referred in the life of John Clayton.

2 Peter Collinson, F. R. S., 1693-1768.



14 INTRODUCTION

Men in Europe, hearing of the wonderful
America where plants, all unnoticed, were grow-
ing and blowing and dying and living again,
ventured upon a journey fraught with peril and
discomfort to discover these treasures for them-
selves. Thus, Dr. John Mitchell, who came in
the early part of the eighteenth century, was able
to send Collinson " a paper in which thirty new
genera of Virginia plants were proposed," while
Peter Kalm, a Swedish naturalist, was spending
three years in Pennsylvania and the neighboring
states investigating, and, in 1753, publishing his
Travels in North America. Dr. Alex Garden,
another European, practising in South Carolina,
had begun his long and useful correspondence
and exchange with Linnaeus and other leading
botanists. Dr. Adam Kuhn, of Philadelphia,
was probably the first professor of botany in
America (appointed 1768), and Humphry Mar-
shall founded the second botanic garden, 1773,
in West Bradford, Pennsylvania. His Arbustum
Americanum (on title-page erroneously " Arbus-
trum "), published in 1785, is our first botanical
work by a native American. I own a first
edition of this in its stout grey paper cover
and with its long title, and a note on the
last page saying that " Boxes of seeds and grow-
ing plants .... are made up in the best manner
and at a reasonable rate by the Author."



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Imprinted at London in Panics
Churchyard at the fignc of the Qacnes
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MONARDUS' JOYFULL NEWES



INTRODUCTION

Dr. Schoepf, a German physician, who spent
some years here, published in 1787, at Erlangen,
an American Materla Medica; and Dr. Benja-
min S. Barton followed in the same track with his
collections for an Essay towards a Materla
Medica of the United States, in 1798, and an Ele-
mentary Botany, 1803; and Dr. Jacob Bigelow
with an American Medical Botany, 1817.

The Flora Garollnlana, 1788, by Thomas
Walter and published in London, came be-
tween the latter and William Bartram's Travels
through North and South Carolina, etc., 1791,
first editions of which are rare and costly.

It would not do to except the work of a
travelled Parisian, Andre Michaux, who, in
1801, gave us his Hlstolre des Chenes de V Ame-
rlque Septentrlonale, nor the younger Michaux's
magnificent Hlstolre des Arbres Forestlers de
V Amerique Septentrlonale, 1810, with colored
plates; and with these two names must be
bracketted those of the Rev. Henry Muhlenberg,
of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who made a fine
Catalogue of the hitherto unknown Plants of
North America, 1813, and Frederick Pursh, the
English botanist, who published his Flora
Amerlcae Septentrlonalls, 1814.

About this date, and shortly after, came
several works on state and local flora, notably
Bigelow's Florula Bostonlensls, 1814; Stephen



1 6 INTRODUCTION

Elliott's Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina
and Georgia, 1816; Dr. W. P. C. Barton's Phila-
delphia Flora, 1818; and Dr. John Torrey's
Catalogue of Plants growing within Thirty Miles
of the City of New York, 1819, a collaborated
work. The year before had seen the birth of
Thomas Nuttall's Genera of North American
Plants, an epoch-making volume.

Dr. W. P. C. Barton, again, in the same year,
feeds the botanical flame with a Flora of North
America including original painted drawings.
" This," says Darlington, " though entirely with-
out method, was tolerably w r ell executed and ex-
tended to three volumes quarto, when it was dis-
continued." Torrey, also, in 1824, left a useful
paper partly incomplete his Flora of the North-
ern and Middle Sections of the United States-
but that on The Rocky Mountain Plants, 1826,
the first American specimen of a regular Flora
arranged according to the Natural System,
was " indeed an admirable performance." The
modest bibliographer, William Darlington, then
adds, without a comment, his own Florula Ces-
trica, 1826, and goes on to speak of some articles
in the tenth volume of the American Journal
of Science by Dr. Lewis C. Beck, Contributions
toward the Botany of the States of Illinois and
Missouri, 1826, then breaks into warm praise
of Sir William Hooker's Flora B ore ali- Ameri-
cana, 1829-1840, with its 238 quarto plates.



INTRODUCTION 17

Two more Flora now appear, the Prodromus
Florae Golumbianae of Dr. J. A. Brereton, 1830,
and, shortly after, Dr. C. W. Short's paper,
Florula Lexingtoniensis, these heralding a bigger
piece of work by Beck on Botany of the Northern
and Middle States, 1833. The Rev. L. D. von
Schweinitz followed with an elaborate paper on
Synopsis of North American Fungi, 1834, and
the year was also notable by the fact that Dr. Asa
Gray issued his first paper, A Monograph of
North American Rhynchosporae. Dr. John L.
Riddell published his Synopsis of the Flora of the
Western States in 1835, Gray appearing again,
this time with Dr. John Torrey, to rejoice the
student with their Elements of Botany, 1836, fol-
lowed in 1838 by a work which became a stand-
ard authority, the Flora of North America. In
between these two books came Gray's Revision
of the North American Melanthaceae, Darling-
ton's Flora Cestrica and Dr. W. E. A. Aikin's
Catalogue of Phaenogamous Plants and Ferns
Growing in the Vicinity of Baltimore.

Dr. George Engelmann is the next botanist on
the list, with his Monograph of the North Ameri-
can Cuscutineae, 1 842, Torrey pressing on behind
in 1843 with " two ponderous quarto volumes,
embellished with 161 colored plates ' on the
Flora of the State of New York. Dr. Alvan W.
Chapman made a useful List of Plants growing



1 8 INTRODUCTION

in the Vicinity of Quincy, Florida, and Gray,
with W. S. Sullivant, published a beautiful little
work on the Mosses of the Alleyhanies, both
works coming out in 1846.

Pioneer work has been shown making rapid
advances into volumes even now esteemed as
classics. Every botanist uses Gray's Manual of
Botany, 1848, which has gone through so many
editions, and some may be fortunate enough to
possess a first edition of his first volume of Genera
Florae Americae Boreali-orientalis, Illustrata,
1848, " designed to illustrate by figures and
analyses, the genera of the plants of the United
States."

It has been difficult not to write also concerning
English medical botanists whose scientific and
social life touched so closely on that of congenial
fellow-workers in America. The names of two
men, John Coakley Lettsom (1744-1815) and
John Fothergill (1712-1780), figure constantly
in the records of our early medical colleges, and
in the correspondence of our pioneer botanists.
Fothergill was constantly consulted as to the
choice of books to be sent over here, and gave
generously to any doctor who coveted the speci-
mens in his botanical garden. " The younger
Linnaeus distinguished a plant of the class Poly-
andria digynia, natural order Hamamelaceae, by
the name of Fothergilla " ( Darlington) , and was




JOHN FOTHERGILL, M. D., F. R. S.

1712-1780
(From a bust belonging to Dr. Lettsom)




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DRUGGIST'S SHOP IN WHITECHAPEL. HIGH STREET, WHERE
" LETTSOM'S PILLS " ARE STILL SOLD



INTRODUCTION 19

intimate with Lettsom, who began his medical
work under Fothergill, and like him, spent many
pleasant hours in writing to Humphry Marshall
and John Bartram in Pennsylvania. Lettsom
had a genus (Lettsomia) named after him. I
had the good fortune to find in Whitechapel
High Street, London, a little druggist's shop
where " Lettsom's Pills ' are still sold, and the
proprietor gave me one of the original advertise-
ments, which he had found on a street vendor's
barrow one Saturday night, also allowing me to
get a picture of Lettsom's house near London
from an old engraving hanging in his back
parlor.

The English names at this time crowd fast, and
folios of retrospective writing would not do them
justice; so, leaving the pioneers, I pass on to a
curious field of inquiry the personal nomen-
clature of plants.

Distinct epochs of thought concerning the pre-
eminence of tutelar gods, the merits of sovereigns
and saints and scientists in the mind of botanists,
can be traced in plant nomenclature. Narcissus
and Hyacinth are dear and familiar. Of Nar-
cissus, son of Cephissus and Lirope of Boeotia,
it was foretold that he should live happily until
he saw his own face. One day, heated with hunt-
ing, he came to drink at a stream and saw his own
reflection. After this he pined away and was



20 INTRODUCTION

changed into a flower; when the Naiads sought
his body

" Instead whereof a yellow flower was found,
With tufts of white about the button crown'd."

Hyacinth shared a like fate: the beautiful son
of Amyclas, King of Amyclae in Laconia, and
Diomede, he was killed through jealousy by
Apollo while the two were playing at quoits on
the banks of the Eurotas. From his blood the
god caused the hyacinth to spring, bearing on its
petals the exclamation Ai (woe!).

Artemisia bears one of the names of Diana,
who was specially venerated of young girls, who
sacrificed their hair to her before marriage. She
was equally renowned for healing and for swift
killing, and found the properties of the Artemisia
and gave it to her devotees to alleviate menstrual
pain. The leaves of this plant are still gathered
and dried for this purpose by the peasants in
France and Algeria.

The Telephium is called after Telephus, King
of Mysia, son of Hercules and Auge, but any
direct connection is, apparently, undiscoverable;
and the genus Euphorbia was so called- -some
aver- -by Linnaeus, after Euphorbus, physician
to Juba II, King of Mauritania, circa B. C. 19;
but Salmasius (1588-1653), a French botanist,
mentions the name, so Linnaeus could not have
been the sponsor.



INTRODUCTION 2 1

Our pretty little " blue-eyed gentian," which
" lifts its fringed lids to heaven," takes its name
from Gentius, King of Illyria, who first experi-
enced the virtues of the plant, and Eupatorlum
Pliny gives as the cognomen of Mithridates (132-
63 B. C.), King of Pontus, who discovered its
virtues.

Saints came in for their full share of floral
children; this naming probably arose in days
when, from the monastery gardens, plants were
gathered to concoct the gruesome mixtures ad-
ministered by priestly hands to the sick poor.
Herb St. Anthony, St. John's Wort, St. Christo-
pher's Herb, St. Ignatius' Beans, St. Martin's
Herb are some, while more are given by Jean
Bauhin in De Plantis a Divis Sanctlsve Nomen
habentlbus, 1591.

The endurance of flower and tree as a monu-
ment seems to have occurred to most botanists,
especially in the days when might was right and
the tenure of land, houses, and life itself ex-
tremely uncertain. The little annual, bearing a
fellow scientist's name, knew no destruction in its
perpetual renewal. The huge tree, victim of
storm and fire and man's desire, was safe in plan-
tation over half a world, and the delicate Spring
Beauty (Claytonla) would spring half shyly, half
mockingly in the neglected graveyard where
proud family monuments sunk lop-sidedly into



22 INTRODUCTION

the graves of the men they were intended to
commemorate forever.

Thus, in letters of Conrad Gesner, 8 the Swiss
naturalist, it is shown that, had he lived to finish
his Histoire des Plantes, he would have perpetu-
ated the names of many friends, as he asked them
Bauhin among the number - to choose among
his newly found plants for a namesake or to allow
him the pleasure of choosing for them.

Clusius,* himself known as Glusia (Plumier),
" called the Contrayerva of the shops B Drakena
in honor of his great friend Sir Francis Drake/ 1
and for a long time mutual compliments of this
kind followed, Tournefort, 8 Plumier, 7 and Peti-
ver, 8 being specially given to the practice. In
Plumier's Nova Plantarum Genera, 1703, giving
a description of 106 new genera he names some
50 after well-known botanists, seven of them Eng-
lish: Gerardia, Morisonia, Parkinsonia, Peti-
veria, Plukenetia, Sloanea, Turnera.

John Lindley, writing in his Vegetable King-
dom (1846), remarks that: " Since the days of

3 Conrad Gesner (1516-1565). Opera Botanica, 1753-1759.

4 Charles de PEcluse, 1526-1609, celebrated doctor and botanist.

Dorstenia Contrayerva. (Used to be mixed with crab's eyes, as a
remedy.)

6 Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, 1656-1708, royal botanist, 1683.

7 Charles Plumier, 1646-1704, scientist and botanist. Description
des Plantes de L'Amerique, 1695.

8 James Petiver, M. D., 1660-1718, doctor and botanist. Pterigraphia
Americana . . . . , 1712.



INTRODUCTION 23

Linnaeus, who was the great reformer of this part
of Natural History, a host of strange names, in-
harmonious, sesquipedalian, or barbarous, have
found their way into botany, and, by the stern but
almost indispensable laws of priority, are re-
tained there. It is full time, indeed, that some stop
should be put to this torrent of savage sounds,
when we find such words as Galucechinus, Oresi-
genesa, Finaustrina, Kraschenninikovia, Gra-
venhorstia, Andrezejofskya, Mielichoferia, Mo-
nactineirma, Pleuroschismatypus, and hundreds
of others like them thrust into the annals of
botany without even an apology. If such intol-
erable words are to be used, they should surely