American Men of Mind Part 13

It should be remembered that in those days the use of anaesthetics had not yet been discovered, and every operation had to be performed upon the conscious subject, as he lay strapped upon the table shrieking with agony. To perform an operation under such circ.u.mstances required an iron nerve. Dr. Mott was one of the first to recognize the value of anaesthetics, and his use of them, immediately following their discovery, greatly facilitated their rapid and general introduction.

It is one of the boasts of American medicine that the first man in the world to conceive the idea that the administration of a definite drug might render a surgical operation painless was an American--Crawford W.

Long. Dr. Long graduated from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1839. When a student, he had once inhaled ether for its intoxicant effects, and while partially under the influence of the drug, had noticed that a chance blow to his shin produced no pain. This gave him the idea that ether might be used in surgical operations, and on March 30, 1842, at Jefferson, Georgia, he used it with entire success. He repeated the experiment several times, but he did not entirely trust the evidence of these experiments. So he delayed announcing the discovery until he had subjected it to further tests, and while these experiments were going on, another American, Dr. W. T. G.

Morton, of Boston, also hit upon the great discovery and announced it to the world.

Dr. Morton was a dentist who, in 1841, introduced a new kind of solder by which false teeth could be fastened to gold plates. Then, in the endeavor to extract teeth without pain, he tried stimulants, opium and magnetism without success, and finally sulphuric ether. On September 30, 1846, he administered ether to a patient and removed a tooth without pain; the next day he repeated the experiment, and the next. Then, filled with the immense possibilities of his discovery, he went to Dr.

J. C. Warren, one of the foremost surgeons of Boston, and asked permission to test it decisively on one of the patients at the Boston hospital during a severe operation. The request was granted, and on October 16, 1846, the test was made in the presence of a large body of surgeons and students. The patient slept quietly while the surgeon's knife was plied, and awoke to an astonished comprehension that the dreadful ordeal was over. The impossible, the miraculous, had been accomplished; suffering mankind had received such a blessing as it had never received before, and American surgery had scored its greatest triumph. Swiftly as steam could carry it, the splendid news was heralded to all the world, and its truth was soon established by repeated experiments.

To tell of the work of the men who came after these pioneers in the field of surgery and medicine is a task quite beyond the compa.s.s of this little volume. There are at least a score whose achievements are of the first importance, and nowhere in the world has this great science, which has for its aim the alleviation of human suffering, reached a higher development.

Among the physicists of the country, Joseph Henry takes a high place.

His boyhood and youth were pa.s.sed in a struggle for existence. He was placed in a store at the age of ten, and remained there for five years.

At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to a watchmaker, and had some thought of studying for the stage, but during a brief illness, he started to read Dr. Gregory's "Lectures on Experimental Philosophy, Astronomy and Chemistry," and forthwith decided to become a scientist.

He began to study in the evenings, managed to take a course of instruction at the academy at Albany, New York, and finally, in 1826, was made professor of mathematics there.

Almost at once began a series of brilliant experiments in electricity which have linked his name with that of Benjamin Franklin as one of the two most original investigators in that branch of science which this country has ever produced. His first work was the improving of existing forms of apparatus, and his first important discovery was that of the electro-magnet. His development of the "intensity" magnet in 1830 made the electric telegraph a possibility. Two years later he was called to the chair of natural philosophy at Princeton University, where he continued his investigations, many of which have been of permanent value to science. In 1846, he was elected first secretary of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, and removed to Washington, where the last forty years of his life were pa.s.sed in the development of the great scientific establishment of which he was the head. He steadily refused the most flattering offers of other positions, among them the presidency of Princeton, and like Aga.s.siz, he might have answered, when tempted by larger salaries, "I cannot afford to waste my time in making money." To his efforts is largely due the establishment of the national lighthouse system, as well as that of the national weather bureau.

Besides his services to American science as instructor at Harvard College, Louis Aga.s.siz rendered another when he persuaded Arnold Guyot, his colleague in the college at Neuchatel, to accompany him to this country. Guyot was at that time forty years old, and was already widely known as a geologist and naturalist, and the delivery of a series of lectures before the Lowell Inst.i.tute, established his reputation in this country. He was soon invited to the chair of physical geography and geology at Princeton, which he held until his death. He founded the museum at Princeton, which has since become one of the best of its kind in the United States. Perhaps he is best known for the series of geographies he prepared, and which were at one time widely used in schools throughout the United States.

Perhaps no family has been more closely a.s.sociated with American science than that of the Huguenot Le Conte, who settled at New Roch.e.l.le, New York, about the close of the seventeenth century, moving afterwards to New Jersey. There, in 1782, Lewis Le Conte was born. He was graduated at Columbia at the age of seventeen and started to study medicine, but was soon afterwards called to the management of the family estates of Woodsmanston, in Georgia. There he established a botanical garden and a laboratory in which he tested the discoveries of the chemists of the day. His death resulted from poison that was taken into his system while dressing a wound for a member of his family.

His son, John Le Conte, after studying medicine and beginning the practice of his profession at Savannah, Georgia, was called to the chair of natural philosophy and chemistry at Franklin College, and after some years in educational work, was appointed professor of physics and industrial mechanics in the University of California, which position he held until his death, serving also for some years as president of the University. His scientific work extended over a period of more than half a century, being confined almost exclusively to physical science, in which he was one of the first authorities.

Another son of Lewis, Joseph Le Conte, like his brother, studied medicine and started to practice it; but in 1850, attracted by the great work being done by Louis Aga.s.siz, he entered the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, devoting his attention especially to geology. After holding a number of minor positions, he became professor of geology and natural history in the University of California in 1869, and his most important work was done there in the shape of original investigations in geology, which placed him in the front rank of American geologists.

Lewis Le Conte had a brother, John Eathan Le Conte, who was also widely known as a naturalist of unusual attainments. He published many papers upon various branches of botany and zoology, and collected a vast amount of material for a natural history of American insects, only a part of which was published. His son, John Lawrence Le Conte, was a pupil of Aga.s.siz, and conducted extensive explorations of the Lake Superior and upper Mississippi regions, and of the Colorado river. He afterwards made a number of expeditions to Honduras, Panama, Europe, Egypt and Algiers, collecting material for a work on the fauna of the world, which, however, was left uncompleted at his death.

American science recently suffered a heavy loss in the death of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, one of the most brilliant of the pupils of Aga.s.siz, and from 1864 until the time of his death, connected with the geological department of Harvard University, rising to the full professorship in geology, which he held for over twenty years, and to the position of dean of the Lawrence Scientific School. He did much to increase public interest in and knowledge of the development of the science by frequent popular articles in the leading magazines, in addition to more technical books and memoirs intended especially for scientists.

Of living scientists, we can do no more than mention a few. Perhaps the most famous, and dearest to the popular heart is John Burroughs, a nature philosopher, if there ever was one, a keen observer of the life of field and forest, and the author of a long list of lovable books. One of the leaders in the "return to nature" movement which has reached such wide proportions of recent years, he has held his position as its prophet and interpreter against the a.s.saults of younger, more energetic, but narrower men.

Prominent in the same field is Liberty Hyde Bailey, since 1903 director of the College of Agriculture at Cornell University. His early training took place under Asa Gray, and his attention has been devoted princ.i.p.ally to botanical and horticultural subjects. He has written many books, his princ.i.p.al work being his Cyclopedia of American Horticulture, which has just been completed. Other recent important contributions to science have been made by Vernon L. Kellogg, whose work has dealt princ.i.p.ally with American insects, and whose recent book on that subject has been recognized as a standard authority; by Charles Edward Bessey, professor of botany at the University of Nebraska since 1884, a pupil of Dr. Asa Gray and the author of a number of valued books upon the subject which has been his life work; by George Frederick Barker, now emeritus professor of physics in the University of Pennsylvania, and the recipient of high honors at home and abroad; and by many others whom it is not necessary to mention here.

It will be evident enough from the foregoing that American science can boast no men of commanding genius--no men, that is, to rank with Darwin, or Huxley, or Lord Kelvin, or Sir Isaac Newton, to mention only Englishmen. Its record has been one of respectable achievement rather than of brilliant originality, but is yet one of which we have no reason to be ashamed.

Most of the men mentioned in this chapter have, in the widest sense been educators. Aga.s.siz, Gray, Silliman, Guyot--all were educators in the fullest and truest way. It remains for us to consider a few others who have labored in this country for the spread of knowledge. That the present educational system of the United States is not a spontaneous growth, but has been carefully fostered and directed, goes without saying. It is the result, first, of a wise interest and support on the part of the state, which early recognized the importance of educating its citizens, and, second, of the self-sacrificing efforts of a number of intelligent, earnest, and public-spirited men.

One of the first of these was Horace Mann, born in Ma.s.sachusetts in 1796, the son of a poor farmer. His struggle to gain an education was a desperate one, and its story cannot but be inspiring. As a child he earned his school books by braiding straw, and his utmost endeavors, between the ages of ten and twenty, could secure him no more than six weeks' schooling in any one year. Consequently he was twenty-three years of age when he graduated from Brown University, instead of seventeen or eighteen, as would have been the case had he had the usual opportunities. He went to work at once as a tutor in Latin and Greek, studied law, was admitted to the bar, elected to the state legislature and afterwards to the senate, and finally entered upon his real work as secretary to the Ma.s.sachusetts board of education.

He introduced a thorough reform into the school system of the state, made a trip of inspection through European schools, and by his lectures and writings awakened an interest in the cause of education which had never before been felt. His reports were reprinted in other states, attaining the widest circulation. It is noteworthy that as early as 1847, he advocated the disuse of corporal punishment in school discipline. After a service of some years as member of Congress, during which he threw all his influence against slavery, he accepted the presidency of Antioch College, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he continued until his death. It was there that the experiment of co-education was tried, and found to work successfully, and the foundations laid for one of the most characteristic of recent great development of higher school education in America. Oberlin College, also in Ohio, had by a few years preceded Dr. Mann's experiment, but the latter's great reputation as an educator caused his ardent advocacy of co-education to carry great weight with the public. From this time on it became a custom, as state universities opened in the west, to admit women, and the custom gradually spread to the east and even to some of the larger colleges supported by private endowments.

Turning to the three great universities, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, which have done so much for the intellectual welfare of the country, we find a galaxy of brilliant names. On the list of Harvard presidents, three stand out pre-eminent--Josiah Quincy, Edward Everett, and Charles William Eliot. Josiah Quincy, third of the name of the great Ma.s.sachusetts Quincys, graduated at Harvard in 1790 at the head of his cla.s.s, studied law, drifted inevitably into politics, held a number of offices, which do not concern us here, and finally, after a remarkable term as mayor of Boston, was, in 1829, chosen president of Harvard. The work that he did there was important in the extreme. He introduced the system of marking which continued in use for over forty years; inst.i.tuted the elective system, which permitted the student to shape his course of study to suit the career which he had chosen; secured large endowments, and, when he retired from the presidency in 1845, left the college in the foremost position among American inst.i.tutions of learning. Edward Everett, who was president of the college from 1846-49, was more prominent as a statesman than as an educator, and an outline of his career will be found in "Men of Action." The third of the trio, Charles William Eliot, whose term as president of the college covered a period of forty years, is rightly regarded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest educator this country has produced.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ELIOT]

Graduating from Harvard in 1853, at the age of nineteen, he devoted his attention princ.i.p.ally to chemistry, and, after some years of teaching, and of study in Europe, was, in 1865, appointed professor of chemistry in the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology. The same year, a revolution occurred in the government of Harvard, which was transferred from the state legislature to the graduates of the college. The effect of the change was greatly to strengthen the interest of the alumni in the management of the university, and to prepare the way for extensive and thorough reforms. Considerable time was spent in searching for the right man for president and finally, in 1869, Prof. Eliot was chosen.

That the right man had been found was evident from the first. "King Log has made room for King Stork," wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes, then professor of anatomy and physiology at Harvard, to John Motley. "Mr.

Eliot makes the corporation meet twice a month instead of once. He comes to the meeting of every faculty, ours among the rest, and keeps us up to eleven and twelve o'clock at night discussing new arrangements. I cannot help being amused at some of the scenes we have in our medical faculty--this cool, grave young man proposing in the calmest way to turn everything topsy turvy, taking the reins into his hands and driving as if he were the first man that ever sat on the box.

"'How is it, I should like to ask,' said one of our members, the other day, 'that this faculty has gone on for eighty years managing its own affairs and doing it well, and now within three or four months it is proposed to change all our modes of carrying on the school? It seems very extraordinary, and I should like to know how it happens.'

"'I can answer Dr. ----'s question very easily,' said the bland, grave young man. 'There is a new president.'

"The tranquil a.s.surance of this answer had an effect such as I hardly ever knew produced by the most eloquent sentences I ever heard uttered."

The bland young man's innovations did not seem to do much harm to Harvard, for under his administration, her financial resources have been multiplied by ten, as has the number of her teachers, while the number of her students has been multiplied by five. Dr. Eliot has grown into the real head of the educational system of this country; his influence has wrought vast changes in every department of teaching, from the kindergarten to the university. It was his idea that common school education and college education ought to be flexible, ought to be made to fit the needs of the pupil. The result has been the broad development of the elective system--broader than Josiah Quincy ever dreamed of. The same system has changed the whole aspect of the teaching profession, resulting in the demand for a competent training in some specialty for every teacher.

Dr. Eliot, who is in a sense the first living citizen of America, has not attained that position merely by success in his profession. He has devoted time and thought to the great problems of our government, and has taken an active part in many public movements--the race question, the relations of capital and labor, the movement for universal arbitration. He has been honored by France, by Italy, and by j.a.pan, and resigned from his great office, in 1909, at the age of seventy-five, with mental and physical powers in splendid condition, not to retire from active life, but to devote himself even more wholly to the service of his countrymen. In this age of commercial domination, a career such as Dr. Eliot's is more than usually inspiring.

In the history of the administration of Yale university, the most striking personalities are the two Timothy Dwights and Noah Porter. The first Timothy Dwight, born in 1752, and graduating from Yale at the age of seventeen, began to teach, and at the outbreak of the Revolution, enlisted as Chaplain in Parson's brigade of the Connecticut line. It was at this time he wrote a number of stirring patriotic songs, one of which, "Columbia," still lives. At the close of the war, he continued preaching and also opened an academy, at which women were admitted to the same courses with men, and which soon acquired considerable reputation. In 1795, he was called to the presidency of Yale, a position which he held until his death. His administration marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the college. At his accession, the college had about one hundred students, and the instructors consisted of the president, one professor and three tutors. He established permanent professorships and chose such men to fill them as Jeremiah Day, Benjamin Silliman, and James Kingsley. The result of this policy was a steady growth in the number of students, until, at his death, they had increased to over three hundred.

Noah Porter, who came to the presidency in 1871, had been graduated from the college forty years before, during which time he had studied theology, held a number of important charges, was called to the chair of moral philosophy at Yale, and finally elevated to the presidency. His work was most important, one feature of it being the introduction of elective studies, though he insisted also upon a required course, as opposed to the Harvard system. Some of the University's finest buildings were erected during his administration, and at its close the student body numbered nearly eleven hundred.

He was succeeded in 1886 by Timothy Dwight, grandson of the elder president Dwight, who, for many years has been closely a.s.sociated with the University, its financial growth being largely due to his efforts.

Under his management the growth of the inst.i.tution was unprecedented, the number of students increasing nearly fifty per cent within five years. He was also prominently identified with the general educational movement throughout the country, and his "True Ideal of an American University," published in 1872, attracted much attention.

Princeton has also had its share of eminent men, among them Jonathan Edwards, John Witherspoon, and James McCosh. Jonathan Edwards was one of the most remarkable characters in American history. Born in 1703, he was the fifth of eleven children and the only son. As a mere child, he developed uncommon qualities, entered Yale College at the age of twelve and graduated at the age of seventeen. His father was a clergyman, and the boy had been brought up in a household and community intensely religious, so that he very early began to have "a variety of concerns and exercises about his soul." It was inevitable, of course, that he should become a minister, and, at the age of nineteen, was ordained and began to preach at a small church in New York City. Edwards seems to have been afflicted from the first with what is in these days irreverently called an in-growing conscience, and early formulated for himself a set of seventy resolutions of the most exalted nature, which, however praiseworthy in themselves, were too high and good for human nature's daily food, and must have made him a most uncomfortable person to live with. He developed, however, into a powerful preacher, and his services were much sought, especially at revivals. One of his sermons, called "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry G.o.d," is said to have created a profound impression wherever delivered.

A difference with his congregation at Northampton caused him to resign his pastorate there, and, declining a number of calls to established parishes, he went as a missionary to the Housatonick Indians, at so small an income that his wife and daughters were forced to labor with the needle to support the family. It was while engaged in this work, that an unexpected call came to him to take the presidency of Princeton.

He accepted and was installed as president early in 1758. At once he began a series of reforms in the college administration, but an epidemic of small-pox broke out in the neighborhood, and Edwards, exposing himself to it fearlessly, contracted the disease and died thirty-four days after his installation.

Jonathan Edwards probably came as near to the old idea of a saint as America ever produced. Self-denying, stern, of an exalted piety, and intensely religious, he lived in a world of his own, and was regarded with no little awe and trembling. That he was a power for good cannot be doubted, and his sermons are still read, where those of his contemporaries have long since been forgotten.

Much more important to Princeton, was John Witherspoon, who came to the presidency in 1768, after a distinguished career in Scotland, one of the incidents of which was being taken a prisoner while incautiously watching the battle of Falkirk. He never wholly recovered from the effects of the imprisonment which followed. He brought with him from Scotland a valuable library which he gave to the college, and, finding the college treasury empty, he undertook a vigorous campaign to replenish it, making a tour of New England, and even extending his quest as far as Jamaica and the West Indies. Through his administrative ability and the changes and additions which he made in the course of study, the college received a great impetus.

The service to his adopted country by which Witherspoon will be longest remembered, was the course he followed at the beginning of the Revolution. From the first, he took the side of the colonies, and by precept and example, held not only the great body of Presbyterians true to that cause, but also the Scotch and Scotch-Irish, who were naturally Tories by sympathy. He was a member of the Continental Congress, urged ceaselessly the pa.s.sage of the Declaration of Independence, was one of its signers, and as a member of succeeding Congresses, distinguished himself by his services. After the close of the war, he returned to Princeton and devoted the remainder of his life to its administration.

Greatest of the three as an educator was James McCosh. A Scotchman, like Witherspoon, a student of the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, a pupil of Thomas Chalmers, he was ordained to the ministry in 1835, and was a leading spirit in the movement which culminated in the establishment of the Free Church of Scotland. His publications on philosophical subjects brought him the appointment as professor of logic and metaphysics in Queen's College, Belfast, where he remained for sixteen years, drawing to the college a large body of students, and publishing other philosophical works of the first importance. In 1868, he was chosen president of Princeton, and his administration, lasting for nearly a quarter of a century, was remarkably successful. Under him, the student attendance nearly doubled, the teaching staff was more than doubled, and the resources of the college enormously increased. During these years, too, he continued his philosophical work, publishing a series of volumes which are the most noteworthy of their kind ever produced in America.

The temptation is great to dwell upon other educators connected with the great universities: Ira Remsen, and his contributions to chemistry; David Starr Jordan, and his great work on American fishes; Woodrow Wilson, and his contributions to the study of American history; Jacob Gould Schurman, and his work in the field of ethics;--to mention only a few of them--but there is not s.p.a.ce to do so here. However, this chapter cannot be closed without some reference to the career of a remarkable woman, an educator in the truest sense, whose influence for good can hardly be estimated--Jane Addams.

John Burns, the English cabinet minister and labor leader, has called her "the only saint America has produced." Her sainthood is of the modern kind, which devotes itself by practical work to the alleviation of suffering and the uplifting of humanity, as opposed to the old fashioned kind of which we were speaking a moment ago in connection with Jonathan Edwards.

Graduating at Rockford College, in 1881, Miss Addams, then a delicate girl, spent two years in Europe. The sight which impressed her most, and which, to a large extent, determined her future career, was that of Mile End Road, the most crowded and squalid district of London, where she beheld a dirty and dest.i.tute mob quarreling over food unfit to eat. This vision of squalor and sin never left her, and the result was the establishment, in 1889, of the Social Settlement of Hull House, in the slums of Chicago. For Miss Addams had come to the conclusion that the only way to reach the dest.i.tute and despairing was to dwell among them.

How right she was has been abundantly proved by the splendid work Hull House has done. Its object, as stated in its charter, is "to provide a center for a higher civic and social life; to inst.i.tute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago." All that it has done, and much more; for it has been a beacon light of progress, pointing the way for like undertakings elsewhere. But most valuable of all has been Miss Addams's personal influence, the inspiration which her life has been to workers everywhere for social betterment, and the message which, by tongue and pen, she has given to the world. As an example of a useful, devoted and well-rounded life, hers stands unique in America to-day.

SUMMARY

AUDUBON, JOHN JAMES. Born near New Orleans, May 4, 1780; published "Birds of America," 1830-39; "Ornithological Biography," 1831-39; "Quadrupeds of America," 1846-54; died at New York City, January 27, 1851.

AGa.s.sIZ, JEAN LOUIS RUDOLPHE. Born at Motier, canton of Fribourg, Switzerland, May 28, 1807; professor of natural history at Neuchatel, 1832; studied Aar glacier, 1840-41; came to United States, 1846; professor of zoology and geology at Cambridge, 1848; curator of Cambridge Museum of Comparative Zoology, 1859; travelled in Brazil, 1865-66; around Cape Horn, 1871-72; died at Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, December 14, 1873.

AGa.s.sIZ, ALEXANDER. Born at Neuchatel, Switzerland, December 17, 1835; came to United States, 1849; graduated at Harvard, 1855; developed Lake Superior copper mines, 1865-69; curator of Cambridge Museum of Comparative Zoology, 1874-85; died at sea, March 29, 1910.