Appalachian History

"To be the mother of many children is ranked among nature's chief blessings but when the cares of the busy housewife are added to the trials of frequent motherhood, it is too great a burden for a woman who is not in prime health and condition. Every woman who is called upon to bear the ordeal of bringing many children into the world needs the support and reinforcement of that wonderful strength-promoting "Favorite Prescription" originated by Dr. R. V. Pierce, chief consulting physician of the Invalids' Hotel and Surgical Institute, Buffalo, N. Y., and one of the most eminent of living specialists.

"Mrs. David H. Langley, of Lancing, Morgan Co., Tenn., in a recent letter to Dr. Pierce, writes: I am now thirty-six years old and have given birth to ten children. Eight only are living. I have twin boys six years old. The same spring after they were born I was confined to my bed all spring and summer with female complaint; had it so badly I could hardly walk around the house without feeling worse.

"I was restless at night, sleep almost left me, and I was almost a skeleton. I did not call my doctor as I had tried the doctors twice before when I was down with the same trouble, and my husband paid out a great deal for me. I received no lasting benefit; I had almost lost all hope of being able to do anything. My husband had to work very hard and I could not even attend to the babies.

"No one can know the distress of my mind as well as body. Dr. Pierce's Favorite Prescription was the only medicine that seemed to do me any good. After I had taken the first bottle and part of the second. I could sleep well and all my troubles began to get better. I believe I took eight bottles and then I felt like a different person. I gave birth to another baby and my old complaint came back. I began using the "Favorite Prescription" and was soon relieved and was able to do my work, including the washing."


Source: Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, Nebraska, December 25, 1898
Online at www.tngenweb.org/morgan/NEWSPAPERITEMSvariousdates.html

Dr. William James Glass, Sr. (b. 1879) owned about twenty-five saddle horses. He made an effort to buy the very best. The average horse he bought would last about three years, but he had a few wonderful horses that lasted him much longer. Prior to 1916, he used the horses year around.

Following that time, he used them only in the winter when the roads were impossible for a car. In October, he would bring the horses in from the farm where they had been on pasture all summer. It was usually the first of June before the roads dried up sufficiently to use the car.

Dr. William J. & Pearl Milam Glass in an undated photo.

During the active part of his career he would ride a horse on the average of 25 miles a day, often in the mud and very frequently in the ice and snow. It was not unusual for him to swim a horse across a high river. He had only one horse that was such a good swimmer that he could get up in the saddle and not get wet. Once while Dr. Glass was returning from the Frogs Creek area, the stream became so swollen that he couldn't get across. After he'd waited an hour or two, two men living near the stream advised him that it had fallen sufficiently to ford.

He started across on a high spirited horse. When the cold water and chunks of ice began to hit the horse's side, it apparently became excited and starting lunging down the stream. Both went under, but after a short time, Dr. Glass pulled the horse onto the bank where the horse was able to get a footing.

Both of the men who had advised him to cross had already stripped off most of their clothes in anticipation of going in after the doctor, who was clothed in everything from arctics to a full length sheep lined overcoat.

On another occasion when Poca [Pocatalico] River was a little too high to ford, he was going around a steep bank across the river from Fisher Chapel Church when the bank gave way. His horse, saddle bags, and himself slipped into the river and went under. He scrambled out and ran down the river to catch his saddle bags.

Mrs. Mable Lanham, who lived six miles above Sissonville on Poca, had typhoid fever when she was eighteen years old. Her father came after Dr. Glass one summer day and said she was hemorrhaging. At that time, the doctor owned a beautiful red roan horse that was very fast. He saddled the horse and reached the Monk residence in about thirty minutes. Apparently the horse was so overheated that a few days later it developed pneumonia and died.

He had a few horses that never seemed to tire. One was a large mare named Minnie. She was an intelligent horse that needed very little urging and scolding. She was a beautiful bay with a black mane and tail, had a good running gait, and could cover a lot of ground in one day.

The Pocatalico River on a foggy morning, near Sissonville, WV.

Another was a dun horse with a black mane and tail that Dr. Glass bought from a man who couldn’t handle him. The man shot the horse once through the neck with a .38 pistol to control him. Through kind treatment, such as giving the horse a little bit of candy every time he saw him, Dr. Glass was able to tame him and make a very useful horse of him. He was a beautiful horse and well gaited. No matter how hard he was ridden during the day, he would kick up his heels, neigh, and start running when Dr. Glass came in sight of the stable.

The best horse he ever owned was a large chestnut sorrel mare named Gert reared at Maysville, KY. She was deep chested, had tremendous endurance, seemed to never tire, was high spirited, and extremely gentle. She was the easiest riding horse he ever had, that is, he tired less riding her than any other. She had a running gait and a trot. She could cover a tremendous amount of ground in a day. He acquired her when she was ten years old and kept her longer than he did any other horse. He sold her at the age of twenty and learned that she was still going good at the age of thirty.


---Excerpt from 'The Dr. Will Glass Story,' from Sissonville, A Time to Remember, compiled by The Sissonville (WV) Historical Awareness Committee of The Sissonville Village Association, 1988
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wvkanawh/Sissonville/hphphp87.jpg



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‘Musty’ is one of those old-fashioned words you don’t hear used much anymore. You might on occasion refer to a damp basement that way, and that’s about it. But in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the word struck fear in the hearts of mountain folk.

One of the great comforts of jokes is that they help us live with life’s terrors. Defang a fear with laughter, as it were. My grandmother Pauline Winifred Tabler, who was born in 1901, told us kids a story involving mustiness which she thought uproariously funny, but which made our eyes roll every time she told it again. She knew something about mustiness that we’d never have to experience, however.

Pauline loved to bake cakes, did so frequently from scratch, and was quite proud of her culinary ability. One fine summer morning her friend Hattie Rakestraw dropped by when Pauline had just finished baking. They got to chatting over a cup of coffee while the German chocolate cake cooled on the open windowsill. Finally they cut a few slices to try. Hattie, an inveterate trickster, stopped chewing mid-forkful and looked Pauline dead in the eye. “Pauline,” she said slowly, “this cake is musty!” She carefully set the plate down and stepped back.

Pauline panicked. “How could that possibly be?? Hattie, I swear to you I was just to town the other day to get all the ingredients fresh."

Hattie was known to gossip, and the last thing Pauline needed was to be the local pariah, the hostess who poisoned her guests.

"You know that cake couldn't possibly have mold---you saw yourself it came straight out of the oven!” She was very near tears.

Hattie struck a long theatrical pause.

After watching her mark squirm sufficiently, she swooped back to table edge, grabbed the fork and pronounced “I MUST have another piece.” And they both broke down laughing in relief.

When Pauline and Hattie were both growing up, musty corn (and any food containing contaminated corn products) was thought to be the cause of the life-threatening disease pellagra, a condition that we understand today results from a lack of niacin. Mountaineers of that era noticed that it struck in the winter season. And of course for families who relied on the store of dried corn to make it through the winter, it must have been a daunting choice to either eat corn that had gone musty, risking pellagra and death, or go without, risking starvation and death.

Here’s an article from the July 14, 1910 issue of Kentucky’s “Springfield Sun,” which discusses the scourge of ‘the dread pellagra.’

"Perryville, Ky., July 14.---After a careful examination attending physicians announced yesterday afternoon that Laura Bottoms, colored, of this city, is afflicted with pellagra, a disease of comparatively recent origin, which became more or less prevalent in the southern States. This is the second case to have developed in Kentucky, the other having resulted in the death of a lady at Nicholasville last fall.

"Photographs were taken of the patient this morning and they will be sent to the medical journals to be used in a scientific study of the disease, which has puzzled the medical specialists of the nation. The disease, which is not considered infectious, is said to be caused by the eating of foods made from musty corn products. Scales develop on the body of the patient and the results are similar in some respects to leprosy.

Unidentified family, all suffering from pellagra, c. 1920. Photo from National Library of Medicine.

"Among its first symptoms is usually a kind of ‘sunburn’ of face, chest and hands. This is followed by skin rash, catarrh of stomach and intestines, feverishness, lassitude and weakness, and as the trouble recurs in spring and autumn, year after year, the weakness increases and often leads to lunacy and death.

"Believing the disease to be infectious, Dr. J.J. Wolfe, of Durham, NC, has been lately seeking its organism in pellagrous blood and has obtained some spherical bacteria, without certain evidence that they are the cause of the disease. He has found a similar organism in a culture from damaged Indian corn."


sources: Springfield Sun, Wednesday, July 20, 1910 at Kentucky Virtual Library http://name.kdl.kyvl.org/spr1910072001



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1887 ad for Thompson's Bromine-Arsenic Springs Water ---

Thompson's Bromine-Arsenic Springs Water is offered to the public as a gift of nature for the alleviation and cure of many of the ills to which the human family is subject. Wherever it is known it has the unqualified approval of physicians in the treatment of impurities in the blood.

Its constituents.

Bromine and Arsenic commended it to the most favorable consideration of sufferers from Eczema, Scrofula, Cancerous Affections, Primary and Secondary Syphilis, Ulcers, Tumors, Boils, Erysipelas, and Diseases of the Lungs, Kidneys, Womb and Bladder, and it builds and repairs these organs and wasted tissues of the system. Through its action in purifying the blood it imparts health to the skin and gives clearness to the complexion.

Its analysis by Dr. H. Froehling (whose reputation as a chemist is second to no one in this country) is a sure guarantee of its correctness, and any educated physician will testify to the value of the ingredients which are so happily blended in this water.

It is the only combination of the kind ever discovered in this or any other country, and is destined to become the most extensively used natural mineral water in the world.

It is put up in cases of one dozen half-gallon bottles each, and sold at $6.00.

Address all orders to
Lewis W. Burwell
General Manager, Saltville, Va.


source: www.newrivernotes.com/nc/heal1887.htm



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Today, Holzer Medical Center-Gallipolis is the largest employer in Gallia County, OH with 1,123 people on the payroll.

Dr. Charles Elmer Holzer (1887-1956) came to Gallipolis in 1909, as a resident surgeon at the Ohio Hospital for Epileptics. Recognizing the need for a community hospital, he returned in May 1910, after completing his training. With a local loan, he converted a private home into a seven-bed infirmary just a stone's throw from the Ohio River.

In 1913, Holzer furthered his training in surgery, closing the hospital temporarily to study in Europe (where he in a few short years would volunteer as a surgeon during the World War). He returned to Gallipolis in 1914, married nurse Alma Vomholt and resumed his practice. The couple bore a son, Charles Elmer Jr, in 1916. That same year Holzer senior began construction on the First Avenue Holzer Hospital, the first general hospital in southeast Ohio.

The new facilities opened in 1917, and Holzer Hospital continued to expand until further growth in that location was no longer possible. Dr. and Mrs. Holzer meantime opened the area’s first school of nursing in 1920.

Holzer Hospital in the 1930s. Courtesy of the Gallia County Historical Society, photo by the late Dick Thomas, retired photojournalist, Gallipolis Tribune.

Dr. Charles E. Holzer's contributions beyond the field of medicine include founding The French Art Colony, a regional multi-arts center. It occupies a historic Greek Revival house, "Riverby,” on a site continuously occupied since 1796. Dr. George Livesay constructed Riverby between 1855 and 1858. Originally, the building had three stories, six rooms, a large front hall, and a winding stairway.

The Holzers purchased four adjoining city lots and the home in 1918 for $5,700.00. Alma Holzer is credited with naming the home "Riverby" after seeing that phrase in a book, "A Journey Down the River," by naturalist John Burroughs. The Holzers made a number of physical changes to the house, adding a large front porch and a swimming pool where Mrs. Holzer gave swimming lessons to area children. The couple remained in the home the rest of their lives.

Charles Holzer organized construction of the Silver Bridge in 1928, joining the capitals of Ohio and West Virginia; purchased land for an airport; and initiated the first air ambulance service in Ohio.

In 1933, the Holzers bought an old Gallipolis tavern---‘Our House’---originally built in 1819 by a Henry Cushing and his sister Elizabeth, and furnished it. The tavern had been the center of the community's social life for many years. General Lafayette, on his triumphant tour of America, was entertained there on May 22, 1825. Gallipolis still celebrates Lafayette's visit with a ceremony each spring.

Jenny Lind, internationally recognized singing sensation of the mid-nineteenth century, stopped at Our House in the 1850s during her American tour. The Cushing family owned and operated Our House until 1865.

In 1936, the house opened as a public museum, The Our House Museum, and was given by the Holzers to the Ohio Historical Society in 1944 as a memorial to the French families who founded Gallipolis.

In 1949, the Holzers gave the growing Holzer Hospital to the citizens of the five county area, to be administered by the Holzer Hospital Foundation. After outgrowing its downtown location, Holzer Medical Center opened on Jackson Pike in 1972 with 269 beds.


sources: www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM2KMM
www.oll.state.oh.us/your_state/remarkable_ohio/marker_details.cfm?marker_id=553&file_id=3904
www.wegoplaces.com/OHGallipolis_Region_510_Cat_Attractions.aspx



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Morgantown Post, Nov 13, 1937 -

People of State Owe Much to Dr. Harriet B. Jones
First Woman To Be Doctor In The State
Served in Legislature - Pioneered in Fight Against Tuberculosis

Eighty-one years old and in the late stages of a long and honorable career in medicine, statecraft, politics, and public welfare, Dr. Harriet B. Jones, referred to many times in no overstatement as "West Virginia's foremost woman," is not content to let the memories of a brilliant life impair her visions for the future.

Not satisfied is she to rest upon the laurels she earned as West Virginia's first woman physician, as the first woman to serve in the State Legislature, as the founder of numerous hospitals and welfare institutions, and as a vigorous pioneer in the fight against tuberculosis.

Dr. Jones lives in a modest home in Glendale, Marshall County. She lives simply and quietly and is very happy. In June, 1936, she celebrated her eightieth birthday. Her friends in the First Presbyterian Church at Moundsville gave a party in her honor. Four days later she was off for Cleveland to attend the Republican National Convention.

She has retired from the practice of her chosen profession - medicine. Likewise, she isn't as physically active in many of her varied avocations. But now, as ever, she is a keen observer of political fortunes and many are the public office aspirants who beat paths to her door for advice.

Founded Four State Institutions

Long after this generation has passed there will remain monuments to the untiring efforts of this woman in the form of the West Virginia Industrial Home for Girls at Salem, the State Tuberculosis Sanitarium at Terra Alta, the West Virginia Children's Home at Elkins, and the State Tuberculosis Sanitarium for the Colored. She was instrumental in the founding of all of them.

… Two years as a general practitioner were followed by three years and a half at Weston as assistant superintendent at the State Hospital for the Insane.
Returning to Wheeling, Dr. Jones opened a hospital for women. Two years later, she constructed a new building, enlarged her equipment and set up a hospital which thrived for 20 years. During this time she practiced medicine and surgery and was regarded as one of Wheeling's leading doctors.
…
Interspersed with her medical practice and her hospital management were the endeavors for which she is best known.

Included among these are her agitation to have created the four institutions named above, her anti-tuberculosis work, her literary efforts, her service in the Legislature, and her general interests in politics.

Attended Twenty Legislative Sessions

While practicing medicine, Dr. Jones attended 20 consecutive sessions of the Legislature as a lobbyist. She broke precedent by making a successful race for Delegate in 1924 and she was re-elected for the following term.

source: www.wvculture.org/history/women/jonesharriet01.html

related post: "Did the early polio vaccine cause cancer??"


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