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1914 History of Boone County
Chapter XXXII
The Medical Profession

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The pioneers of the healing art in Boone County were the`guardians of a widely dispersed population. Aside from their professional duties, they contributed their full share to the material development of a newly opened country. Some were men of culture, who had gained their medical education in college. Others were of limited educational attainments, whose professional knowledge had been acquired in the offices of established practitioners of more or less ability in the sections from which they emigrated. Of either class, almost without exception, they were practical men of great force of character who gave cheerful and efficacious assistance to the suffering, daily journeying on horseback scores of miles, over a country almost destitute of roads and encountering swollen, unbridged streams, without waterproof garments or other now common protection against the elements. Out of necessity the pioneer physician developed rare quickness of perception and self-reliance. A specialist was then unknown, and the physician was called upon to treat every phase of bodily ailment, serving as physician, surgeon, oculist and dentist. His books were few and there were no practitioners of more ability than himself with whom he might consult. His medicines were simple and carried on his person and every preparation of pill or solution was the work of his own hands. During the summer and autumn of 1837 cases of bilious remitting fever occurred, which readily vielded to treatment. The winter following several cases of bilious pneumonia demanded prompt attendance and special vigilance in the observance of changes indicative of greater danger. These were the diseases and the principal ones which called for medical help up to the year 1849. Since that year, or from that period, the summer and autumnal fevers ceased to be epidemical and pneumonia became less frequent. It may be well to mention here that the fevers of 1849 after the third or fourth day assumed a typhoid character, the remission hardly observable, and the nervous depression occasioning great anxiety. It was probably Doctor Rush of Philadelphia - a great name up to about 1825 - who said the lancet was a "sheet anchor" in all inflammatory diseases, so it might have been said of quinine, as used in remittent and intermittent fevers, in both the Mississippi and Missouri valleys from 1830 up to 1850. During that period 120.000 square miles west of the Mississippi and north of St. Louis became populated and all of it more or less malarious. In some of these years the demand for quinine was so great that the supply in the American market became exhausted. "Sappington's pills" were indirectly the power which worked steamboats up the river from 1835 to 1843. They were, verily, the "sheet anchor" not only aboard boats but in many households. Doctor Sappington was a regular allopathic physician of considerable ability residing up the Missouri River, who thought it would be a benefaction to the new civilization of the West to prepare quinine ready to be taken in the form of pills. Boxes of his pills contained four dozen each and the pellets two grains each. The direction on the box was to take from two to twenty as the urgency of the case seemed to require, without reference to the stage of the paroxysm. PIONEER PHYSICIANS George W. Crooks makes the statement from memory that Dr. James Hull was the first physician to practice medicine in Boone County. He lived southeast, in Des Moines Township, and traveled all over this section of the country. James Hull was known as a botanical doctor and practiced at intervals when not needed on his farm. According to Mr. Crooks' recollection, the first regular practitioner in Boonesboro was Dr. D. S. Holton, who settled in the community before the town was laid out. His practice was not very extensive. His residence at Pea's Point was known as the first country hotel in Boone County. It was two miles southeast of the City of Boone and was erected in 1851. This house was long known as the Boone County House, being a hostelry where the wayfarer and traveler was given a hearty welcome and a bounteous entertainment. Doctor Holton arrived in the communitv about 1849 and boarded with John Pea. The doctor was a Frenchman and was a surgeon in the British army. He came here from Canada and while a member of the Pea family married Nancy, a daughter. He first established an office in the house of his father-in-law and then went to the county seat, where he hung out a shingle and there practiced until the spring of 1852, when he and his wife crossed the plains to Oregon and he there rose to prominence not only in the practice of his profession, but in politics. He was elected state senator and a delegate from Oregon to the national convention in i860, which nominated Abraham Lincoln. He was also a member of the Ogden State Board of Health. Both he and his wife died in the Oregon country. Dr. J. F. Rice settled in Boonesboro shortly after Doctor Holton and was one of the early physicians and took quite a prominent part in the afifairs of the county. Doctor Williams was in practice at Boonesboro as early as 1867, but before this, when George W. Crooks moved to Boonesboro, his memory now recalls that at that time there were practicing at the county seat Drs. J. F. Rice, P. S. Moser, William Pollock, Theodore DeTar and L. J. Royster. The first physician to take up the practice in Montana, or the City of Boone, was Dr. L. J. Alleman. He was a learned physician and a skilled surgeon, serving in the Civil war as assistant surgeon of the First New York Veteran Cavalry. He was mustered out in September, 1865, came to Boone and took up the practice of his profession. He became well known throughout the county and the respect shown him was as wide as his acquaintance. Among the worthy physicians and surgeons locating in Boone was Dr. Theodore DeTar. He was a native of Franklin County, Indiana, and attended a course of lectures at the Evansville Medical College. He came to Boone County in 1854 and engaged in practice in Boonesboro. During the Civil war he assisted in recruiting Company D, Thirty-second Iowa Infantry, and was commissioned as captain. At the battle of Nashville he lost his right leg, but was retained in the service until the close of hostilities, when he returned to Boone and resumed the practice of medicine. He was the father of Dr. David N. DeTar, who graduated from the medical department of Ann Arbor University. He, as his father before him, became prominent in his profession. Both have passed away. Dr. P. S. Moser was considered one of the best physicians who ever practiced medicine in Boone County. All these worthy professional men have long since passed to their final account. Dr. A. A. Deering was another physician who secured a high and enviable place in the ranks of his profession in Boone County. He first settled at Moingona in 1868 and later took up the practice and his residence at Boone, where he continued to distinguish himself in the profession until his death, which occurred a few years ago. Dr. M. Garst first came to Boone County from Champaign County, Illinois, in 1S58. He returned to Champaign County but again took up a permanent residence on a farm near the City of Boone. He had applied his energies for years before coming here to the practice of his profession, but it appears he had discarded medics for the more charming life of a tiller of the soil. Dr. H. D. Ensign was an Ohioan by birth. He served three years in the Civil war and while residing in La Salle County, Illinois, engaged in the drug business, read medicine and graduated from the Chicago Medical College in 1875. In December of that year he came to Boone and practiced here for many years with great success until his death. Dr. Robert M. Huntington was a New Yorker by birth. He drifted out West, attended a year's lectures at Hillsdale, Michigan, and from there received his diploma from the University of Missouri in 1861. He was an assistant surgeon in the Confederate service during the Civil war. He went to Kalamazoo, Michigan, after the surrender of Lee and in 1871 began the practice of homeopathy in Boone. It is difficult to learn the names of all the early physicians who practiced their profession in the county and it is not the province of this article to mention their names here, for the reason that Judge Lucas, who has ably and interestingly prepared the history of the different townships, has left nothing of historical importance go by him; so that it would show a repetition here if the various pioneer physicians in the various townships should be given place in this chapter. Another thing, it is not the intention, nor has there been any attempt made in this place, to speak of men of the profession now either in active professional life or living in retirement, for the reason that extended sketches of most of them will be found in the second volume of this work.

Source: History of Boone County, Iowa
N. E. Goldthwait, Supervising Editor
Illustrated, Volume I
Chicago, Pioneer Publishing Company
1914

Transcribed by Lynn Diemer-Mathews and uploaded November 11, 2024.

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