Abstract
This article will argue that Edward Darrell Smith engaged in chemical analysis in order to broaden his understanding of the body, particularly stones, in a humoral framework. At the time, Antoine Lavoisier’s chemical innovations were exciting the medical world, and Lavoisier himself was pursuing medical questions in his chemical research. Medical students from Philadelphia to Charleston were writing dissertations on the different types of stones and concretions found in the body. Smith practiced medicine in a world in which the remedy for the stone was compelling and a long awaited discovery. By examining Edward Darrell Smith’s biography, we can get a vista into this world.
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References
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20.Ibid. 41 .
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22.Steven MS. Doctoring the south . University of North Carolina Press, 2004 .
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24.Harold JC. The history of medicine and the scientific revolution. Isis 2011; 102: 102–108 .
25.Warner. Science in medicine. Osiris 1985; 1: 37–58 and Ibid. The history of science and the sciences of medicine. Osiris 1995; 10: 164–193. Also see Michael W. Practice and science of medicine in the nineteenth century. Isis 2011; 102: 109–115 .
26.Waring and LaBorde disagree on the date of Smith’s birth. Some accounts attribute Smith’s birth year being 1777. Waring JI. A history of medicine in South Carolina : 1670-1825 . Charleston: South Carolina Medical Association, 1964, pp.315–316 and Maximilian LaBorde and James LR. History of the South Carolina college : from its incorporation, Dec. 19, 1801 to Dec. 19, 1865 . Charleston: Walker Evans & Cogswell, Printers, 1874, pp.88–94 .
27.LaBorde, 88–94 and Waring, 315–316 .
28.Waring, 315. Living in the South during different periods of his life, Smith had mixed views about slavery; Smith comments about slavery in the Pendleton District in David Ramsay’s The History of South Carolina, From Its First Settlement in 1670 to the Year 1808 in Two Volumes in 1809 .
29.Edward DS. A singular case of hydrocele: communicated in a letter from Edward Darrell Smith, M.D. of Charleston (South-Carolina), to Dr. Miller, dated May 30, 1801. Medical Repository 1802; 5: 134–136 .
30.This is where Waring and LaBorde disagree about their dates .
31.Though LaBorde says that Smith mostly focused on planting, and engaged in medicine when called, pg. 97 .
32.LaBorde, Ibid, 98–99 .
33.John MB. An architectural history of the South Carolina College : 1801-1855 .Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1976, pp. 59–61 and Minutes of the Trustees, South Caroliniana Library. Smith often negotiates with the Trustees for his needs for experimental supplies. It appears that sometimes Smith received the money and other times he does not. But by 1817, Smith is receiving money to buy new equipment and he is attempting to win Trustees over to the idea of building a special building devoted to chemistry. The Minutes of the Trustees contain a rich narrative of Smith’s time, and related events, at South Carolina College: see Volume 1 pages: 232–239, 245–249, 252–253, and 262. See Volume 2: 9–12, 50–51, 62–63, 68–69, 70–73, 79–80, 87–88, 90–91, 94–95, 98–99, 115–116, and 119–120. And for Smith’s comments on buying equipment see Silliman Family Papers MS 450 at Yale University, Series II: General Correspondence, 1796–1885 (Viewed through ILL microfilm). Edward Darrell Smith has letters in the collection in Box 21, Folder 60 (letters from 1818–1819), and Box 18, folder 10 (1814–1817). For ILL request rolls 9 and 12. In addition, see Chandos Michael Brown, Benjamin Silliman : a life in the young republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), specifically pages 279, 283, 296, 302, 304–307, and 294–296 for a discussion of the Silliman-Smith correspondence .
34.See Silliman Family Papers reels 9 and 12, at Yale University (viewed through ILL, see note 90). There are also several manuscripts between the two in Pennsylvania Historical Society in their card catalogue: Letter Edward Darrell Smith to Benjamin Silliman June 30, 1817 in Simon Gratz Collection Box 256 Folder 58 and April 8, 1819, in Box 7/25 in Folder 3 of American Scientists. There is another letter to Edward Darrell Smith to Samuel Latham Mitchell from 13 May 1816 in Simon Grazt Collection Box 256, Folder 58 .
35.Edward D. Smith to Professor Benjamin Silliman 8 April 1819. Letter from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, American Scientists in Simon Gratz MSS Folder 3 Box 7/25. This letter was written when Smith was visiting Charleston .
36.LaBorde, 88–4, Waring, 315–316, and Howe, 260–261 .
37.Edward DS. Inaugural dissertation : being an attempt to prove that certain substances are conveyed, unchanged, into the circulation; or, if changed, that they are recomposed and regain their active properties. By Edward Darrell Smith, A.M. of Charleston, South-Carolina, Member of The Philadelphia Medical Society (Philadelphia: Way & Groff, 1800). Smith dedicated his dissertation to Dr. William Smith Stevens, who was a surgeon’s mate during the revolution and surgeon-physician that Smith studied under when he returned to Charleston after his time at the College of New Jersey. Smith was also his nephew in addition to his student. I used a reprinted edition of the thesis, published in Charles Caldwell, ed. Medical Theses, selected from among the inaugural dissertations, published and defended by the graduates in medicine of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Thomas and William Bradford, 1805, pp.229–254) .
38.Ibid. 232; Smith declares that he is looking for the truth, and wants to avoid prejudices against previous theories .
39.Ibid. 234 .
40.The two men shared a lively correspondence as well. Barton’s lectures are cited in the footnotes of Smith’s dissertation .
41.Smith, Dissertation , 247 .
42.Ibid .
43.Black. Experiments upon the magnesia alba and Levere. Transforming Matter 54–58. Also see Joseph P. Directions for impregnating water with fixed air . London: J Johnson, 1772 .
44.For historiography about turn of the nineteenth century physicians looking for chemical cures for the urinary stone: Coley NG. Animal chemist and urinary stone. Ambix 1971; 28: 69–93. Coley. Medical chemistry at guy’s hospital. Ambix 1988; 35: 155–168, and Coley. The laboratories of the royal institution in the nineteenth century. Ambix 1980; 27: 173–203 .
45.Smith. Dissertation , 248, “Human calculi, by being macerated in these waters, were considerably diminished. They are also diminished by immersion in the urine of those persons, who had drunk water impregnated with fixed air; while the urine of a person in health, not using such water, had no effect in lessening their bulk.” .
46.Ibid. 135, The Captain received mercury because this would “… excite the absorbents into action, and carry off the effused fluid in that manner; but the tumor continued to increase …” .
47.Ibid. According to the Oxford English Dictionary a raphe is, “A seam-like line or ridge, esp. between the two halves of a bilaterally symmetrical organ or part of the body …” .
48.“solutions of sacch. saturini” might refer to a pain killer of some type .
49.Edward DS. Case of dysuria . By the late Edward D. Smith, M.D. Professor of Chemistry, &c. in the South Carolina College. The Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences 1820; 1: 147–149 .
50.Ibid. 147–148 .
51.Michel F. The birth of the clinic : an archeology of medical perception . (trans. by A. M. Sheridan Smith). New York: Vintage Books, 1975, xviii. The bracketed phrase [of medical practice] .
52.Ibid, 19–21. Also see note #9 for sources about the professional world of nineteenth century medicine .
53.Smith. Case of dysuria. 148 .
54.Ibid .
55.Alexander Marcet explains this in his Essay discussed in the last section of this article .
56.Ibid. 149 .
57.Ibid .
58.Terrie MR. Making medicine scientific : John Burdon Sanderson and the culture of Victorian science . Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002 and Joris V. Setting scientific standards: publishing in medical societies in nineteenth century-Belgium. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 2014; 88: 626–653 .
59.Thomas C. A discourse on the connexion between chemistry and medicine delivered in the University of Pennsylvania . Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: A Small, 1818; Powers. Inventing chemistry , porter, the greatest benefit of mankind, 44–83 and 245–304, and Nancy GS. History, medicine, and the traditions of renaissance learning . Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2007 and Medicine and the Italian Universities : 1250–1600 . Liden, Netherlands: Brill, 2001. Also see Vivian N. Ancient medicine . 2nd ed. Routledge, 2013. Jacques J. Hippocrates . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2001, and Chadwick J, Mann WN, Lonie IM et al. Hipporcatic writings . (edited by Lloyd GER). New York: Penguin Books, 1983, pp.148–170 .
60.Ibid .
61.Robert BS. Sanguine practices: a historical and historiographic reconsideration of heroic therapy in the age of rush. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 1994; 68: 211–234 .
62.Edward DS. On the use of prussic acid in consumptive cases. The Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and the Arts 1820; 9: 418–420 .
63.Ibid .
64.In the write up of the winter epidemic Davis later publishes he states that, “I am happy to be able to add that Doctor. E. D. Smith, professor of Chemistry in the South-Carolina College who during my own illness with the disease, was necessary drawn into the practice for several weeks from the scarcity of medicine aid, and to whom I showed this communication confirms the statements I have made as accordant with his own observations and experience.” James D. Account of the Winter Epidemic of 1815–1816, as it appeared in and adjacent to Columbia, S.C. By Dr. JAMES DAVIS. Pamphlet; Printed at Columbia, S.C. 1816. The Journal of Foreign Medical Science and Literature 1817; 7: 169 .
65.His work appears in The London Medical and Physical Journal disseminated and quoted under the title “Physiological and Medical Researches on the Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment of Gravel; by F. Majendie, M.D. &c. &c.” Majendie (or the alternative spelling Magendie) published many articles concerning the incorporation of chemistry into medicine and physiology .
66.Felix Louis L’Herminier immigrated to Charleston from Guadeloupe in 1815. L’Herminier was the curator of the museum in Charleston, but later returned to France. Waring writes up a short biographical entry for L’Herminier on page 254 in A History of Medicine in South Carolina 1670-1825 .
67.Smith used Volume II, page 224 of the edition likely edited by Thomas Cooper .
68.Smith, On the Use , 419 .
69.Ibid .
70.Ibid., 419–420 .
71.Edward DS. An account of the Warm Springs, in Bun-come County, state of North-Carolina; by the late Edward D. Smith, M.D. and Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in the South-Carolina College. The American Journal of Science and Arts 1821; 3: 117–125 .
72.Ibid., 119 .
73.
Oxford English Dictionary
.
74.Chadwick J. Hippocratic writings . pp.148–170 .
75.Ibid. This theory was postulated by another South Carolina physician, Dr. Mc Bride, who had tested the waters in 1816 .
76.Ibid., 120 .
77.Ibid., 124–125 .
78.Ibid., 125. OED . The origin of rheumatism coming from a humoral root was obsolete by the 17th century but the idea of a humoral balance can be seen in the idea of stiffness, or lack of rheum flowing to the muscles that characterize its use in the seventeenth and eighteenth century .
79.Smith. On the application of medico-chemistry to calculous affections: by the late Edward D. Smith, M. D. Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy, in the South- Carolina College. American Journal of Science 1821; 3: 300–310 .
80.Smith., 300, note .
81.Ibid .
82.Ibid., 307 and Oxford Dictionary of National Biography .
83.For instance, see William TB. Observations on the effects of magnesia in preventing an increased formation of the uric acid. Philosophical Transactions 1810: or William HW. On cystic oxide, a new species of urinary calculus. Philosophical Transactions 1808: Often there were review essays that appeared in medical journals. See “ART.VIII. A Letter on the Differences in the Structure of Calculi, Which Arise from their being formed in different Parts of the Urinary Passages”. Edinburgh Review 1810; 17: 155–167. This article was essentially a collection of reprinted essays .
84.Ibid .
85.Ibid., 302. A previous knowledge of the subject and a proper attention to these indications will generally enable us to apply correct remedies and thus to destroy in the germ what would be irremediable at maturity .
86.Ibid., 304–305. From the Oxford English Dictionary .
87.Ibid., 306 .
88.Louis R. The chemical works of Alexander and Jane Marcet. Clinical Chemistry 2001; 47: 784–792. Coley NG. Alexander Marcet (1170-1822), physician and animal chemist. Medical History 1968; 12: 394–402, and Louis R. Four centuries of clinical chemistry . New York: Routledge, 1999, pp.48–51, and there is information about Marcet in the National Dictionary of Biography under his wife, Jane Marcet, entry .
89.Alexander M. An essay on the chemical history and medical treatment of calculous disorders . London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1817 .
90.Smith cited the The London Medical and Physical Journal , but he could have read the review found in Volume 39 on page 313–321 or the review that appeared in the Edinburgh Review 13 (1819): 418–430, but this review came out during the end of Smith’s life and these are only speculations. Smith did not cite any specific review .
91.Smith. On the application. 309 .
92.Smith. Case of calculus . 151 .