GERMANS-STLOUIS-L Archives

Archiver > GERMANS-STLOUIS > 2009-01 > 1232515367


From: "G STOLTMAN" <>
Subject: Re: [GERMANS-STLOUIS] My response to your comments and suggestions
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:22:47 -0500


Although considered a fine surgeon, Joseph Nash McDowell was *very* eccentric.

From: Haunted St. Louis, Troy Taylor, 2002
"While well known for being generous in his treatment of the poor and the sick, he was also known for his hatred of immigrants, colored people and Catholics. He would lecture on those subjects at street corners to anyone who would listen. McDowell made a habit of wearing a breastplate of armor, believing that his enemies might try and kill him at any time."

I doubt that he would have been active in immigrant surgery unless he felt there was a good chance they would end up as a cadaver.

His school was taken by Fremont because McDowell was a rabid secessionist (he left town and became surgeon general for the confederates). It was turned into the notorious Gratiot Street prison.

Gary

----- Original Message -----
From: M Gordon Seyffert
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 2:45 AM
To:
Subject: [GERMANS-STLOUIS] My response to your comments and suggestions

Back again, fellow researchers, with still more information!

Kay, I do want to thank you for your comment today about the Missouri
State Archives death certificate project. It's important for people
to note that finding information on persons who died before 1910 is a
whole lot tougher than 1910-57. I've used the digitized death
certificates, and they're great! And this time of year (about the 4th
week in Jan.) will alway see the release of one more year's worth of
certificates (as the 50-year mark protecting them passes).

If you go to the Secretary of State's web site for the pre-1910 deaths
you will find an abstract -- but not see the City's Registry of Deaths
as you now do in using Ancestry.com. And,… there are problems with
the Missouri site, not the least of which is that I did not find my "A
W Bullenson" listed.

I used the initials "A W" for the partial name search -- in both the
City and County options for records. In the former instance it
appeared as though only records from the late 1850s were included --
except for one from 1906. I tried the same with just the name
"Robert" as a test, and got much the same result. Using "A W" with
the St. Louis (County) option produced 342 records, including one
other person with those exact initials, but mostly just people whose
entire name contained both letters at some point. Some of these names
were give in reverse order, some had errors (Wmma for Emma on the last
record), and in some the given names were preceded by "Mrs." And I
still didn't find my 1861 death record.

Which brings me to mention here that there often were different
records kept by St. Louis City and the State of Missouri for the same
event. For example, using birth records as an example, my father had
in his papers a 1941 "Certified Copy of Birth Record" for himself from
the City's Bureau of Vital Statistics. For years after he died, I
wondered why I had never asked what his mother's middle name had been,
as her own death certificate does not give it. On my father's City
birth record, only her middle initial is given. So, in Jefferson City
a couple of years ago, I decided to visit the state's office to
correct an oversight on his own death certificate; his mother's maiden
name had not been listed. At the counter I was asked what reference I
could use to verify the information I was giving. As he was born in
Dec. 1910, I suggested they retrieve his birth certificate from their
own files. Lo and behold, it was the "State of Missouri Bureau of
Vital Statistics Certificate of Birth," and it had her full name! So
the moral of this story is: Always check to see what else might be
available, especially if your ancestor was from the City of St. Louis.

Now to the historical question I posed to you all. Looking to the
book "The Civil War in St. Louis," by William C. Winter, page 79 has
this background on the McDowell Medical College:

"The McDowell Medical College was founded by one of St. Louis'
most colorful characters, Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell. McDowell came to
St. Louis in the late 1830s, and in 1840 he organized a medical
department for Kemper College. In 1845 this effort failed, but
McDowell reached an agreement with the University of the State of
Missouri to continue his curriculum, an arrangement which held until
1857. At that point, he organized his school as an independent
institution, the McDowell Medical College.… In medical circles,
McDowell was held in high regard.…"

So there was a possible "draw" in St. Louis at that time, but did the
College claim to have any treatment for cancer, and did its reputation
reach to Europe? Here I'm still awaiting that St. Louis "medical
historian" to weigh in with an opinion.

Lastly, Jeff suggested that my ancestor might have received better
treatment if she were a citizen. Whether or not that is true, she was
already married and the mother of five children! The matchmaking I
imagined had to do with the fact that, after arriving in this country
in 1857, both of her daughters then married before her death -- the
first in about 1859 and the second in early 1861. Possibly she came
to St. Louis because of a relative or a friend having come here
first. If the McDowell College was (self-)promoting certain
treatments by the mid-1850's, then this contact might have written to
her suggesting that she come here for treatment.

The Registry of Deaths (digitized by Ancestry.com) names liver cancer
as the cause of her death, but that is often a secondary and certainly
a quick-acting cancer. My somewhat dated edition of the Cecil
Textbook of Medicine notes, under "Tumors Metastatic to Liver," that:
(1) the liver and lung are the most frequent sites of metastatic
malignancy, (2) hepatic metastases occur in more than half of patients
with primary malignancies having portal venous drainage (e.g.,
stomach, colon, and pancreas), and (3) other solid tumors that
frequently metastasize to the liver include melanoma and tumors of the
lung, oropharynx, and bladder. There's more, but I'm sure that this
is more than many of you want to know. Knowing that she had cancer at
least five years, the researcher in me sends me automatically to such
a reference work as the Cecil Textbook -- just as you'd consult
Black's Law Dictionary when considering a genealogical question in the
context of a legal issue. [You would, wouldn't you?] I'm guessing
she had something like a melanoma. It would have been more obvious to
her, and might not have advanced quickly. That could have been, in
fact, the actual treatment that she might have sought (and not
treatment for the liver cancer that finally ended her life).

Best wishes to all,

Gordon

-------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message


This thread: