Away
back in the early fifties, there used to travel through Canada a Doctor
Tumblety, who professed to cure rheumatism, lameness, diseases of the bones of
the body, and certain conditions of deformity, by manipulating the patient with
his hands, and that he was successful in a number of cases, there was ample
testimony at the time. Dr. Tumblety was a perfect specimen of manly strength
and was rather good-looking too. He was a liberal advertiser through the local
newspapers wherever he visited, as well as by posters and special circulars to
afflicted ones. To advertise himself further, he had a splendid chesnut mare
that was groomed as few horses were, and this animal he used to ride through
the streets twice a day. He was a fine horseman, and his athletic figure,
neatly dressed in a semi-military riding suit, top boots and knee britches,
made him an object to attract attention, which was worth a good deal as
advertisement. There was nothing of the charlatan or empiric in his manner and
he was the suave gentleman to patients of high or low degree. He wanted their
money, and all received his best services, though he made a distinction in his
charges, the rich having to pay well, while the poor got off in proportion to
the leanness of their pocketbooks. The doctor had for his secretary a young
printer who was an apprentice in the London Free Press office in the days when
Charles Kidner presided over the Washington hand press, and Jack was as smart
as they made them. It was Jack’s duty to interview all patients and get an idea
of their financial standing, and in proportion to the gravity of their
ailments, the doctor would tax up the bill of costs. The doctor had his
headquarters in the Burlington hotel, which was located on King street east,
opposite the Victoria hotel. This was before the days of the Anglo-American
hotel, now the Waldorf, and the Burlington, and the City, now the Royal, were
the two first class hotels in Hamilton. Dr. Tumblety had not been in Hamilton a
week when his fame spread abroad, and the halt and the maimed and the rheumatic
flocked to his rooms for treatment which consisted solely in the manipulation
of the muscles with his hands and restoring the wasted parts to healthy action.
He had a hand as soft as velvet, but with a grip like steel when operating on
patients. How he would make the bones of the sufferers crack, and while at work
every muscle and fibre in his arms and face were at the highest tension.
Anesthetics were not in general use then as now, but few patients could be
induced to pass under the influence, preferring a little pain to the danger of
taking ether. One can almost fancy at this distance of nearly half a century
the shrieks of the victims thundering down the corridors of the old hotel, even
transformed as it is today. No one who entered the doctor’s rooms was permitted
to take away crutches or canes, and he had them piled up in a conspicuous place
as trophies of the cures he effected. Dr. Tumblety did not administer medicine
nor prescribe for his patients; he depended altogether on the strength of his
hands and the muscles of his arms to manipulate the afflicted ones. Had the
patients continued in the same line of treatment after the doctor discharged them
the probabilities are that a majority of them would have been permanently
cured, but they dropped back into their habits of neglect, and the old troubles
returned. The doctor made a deal of money and left Canada and its rheumatic
ailments, and made his home in the Southern States.
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If Dr. Tumblety were living now, and
it may be that he is, he would be styled an osteopath. No one ever heard of
such practitioners in those days. We had a regular simon-pure old school doctor
who dosed liberally all the castor oil and salts and senna and all the other
bitter things that could be concentrated in a drug store. The very mention of
the stuff in these days of enlightenment and advanced science in medicine makes
one feel the bad taste we had to swallow half a century ago. Even if the
remedies were severe, appendicitis was unknown, for the drastic doses cleaned
out all impurities. Then we had the Thompsonian system of sweating out disease
by swallowing quarts of teas made with lobella, smart weed and ginger, and a
venturesome Yankee doctor, a disciple of Hahnneman, came to Hamilton and
undertook to cure all that flesh is heir to with medicated sugar pills. The
osteopaths believe that all the derangements of the system came from some
irregularity of muscles, and if you have dyspepsia or one of those
old-fashioned twisters under your vest, they hunt for the muscles in the region
of the stomach and cure the ailment by vigorous hand manipulations. Probably
Dr. Tumblety was a sort of John the Baptist for the osteopaths.
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But this is not intended as a chapter
on the science of medicine, but merely to recall one of the most infamous acts
that man could be guilty of. During the Civil War in the United States in
1861-65, Dr. Tumblety lived in the Southern States, and, like the majority of
foreigners who lived in the south in those troublous days, he was intensely
bitter in his hatred of the north. The doctor conceived and planned, and had
all the arrangements made to induce into the United States, through Canada,
clothing infected with the germs of yellow fever. This clothing was to be
scattered, and by that means inoculate the enemy with the disease. Associated
with Dr. Tumblety was a Dr. Black, another Confederate sympathizer. The scheme
miscarried, but it was not through lack of effort on the part of the two
doctors who conceived it and their allies who went to help it along. Hamilton,
at that time, was the headquarters of a southern jnta, and with the knowledge
that Dr. Tumblety had of this city and of Canada generally, gained a half
century ago, the plan was to make part of the shipment through this city and
into the United States by way of Niagara Falls.
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Talking about doctors brings to mind
two of the old-time practitioners in this city. In the early days, and probably
it is pretty nearly as bad now, people who were clamorous for the services of a
doctor when sick, were rather neglectful of their duty to the doctor when they
got well. When Hamilton was under the ten thousand mark, the doctors had to
depend as much on country practice as on their cases in town, and they had to
ride or drive over mud roads that were sometimes next to impassable. A retired
army doctor, who had settled down to bleed and physic his share of the Hamilton
population, as well as the surrounding country, had a patient over the mountain
who never was in a hurry about settling his doctor bills. It used to be the
fashion then in the country, as it is now, for the friends to wait all day to
see if the patient would not get better, and when night came and the fever got
worse or the sick one suffered more pain, then John would be sent to town for
the doctor, and it was usually well into the night before the messenger reached
town. The doctor had to get out of bed and dress and harness up his horse, so
by the time he got started it was well after midnight . The old farmer on the
mountain was suffering great pain when John Came for the doctor. Now the doctor
had sworn in his wrath that the next time the old curmudgeon got sick, he would
refuse to go, and when John had wakened him up and told him who wanted him, he
declared with all the emphasis of an old army surgeon that he would not go a
foot. “But he is suffering great pain, and his wife fears he will die if he
does not get relief at once,” pleaded John. “D--- him, let him die,” said the
irate doctor. “A man who will not pay his doctor is not fit to live, and the
sooner he goes, the better off will be the world.” John pleaded and finally
promised if the doctor would go at that time, he would become personally
responsible for the fee. The doctor went and the old farmer got better. The
first time he came to town after his convalescence the farmer called at the
doctor’s office and paid up all the arrearages, and promised that thereafter he
would never let another bill stand a week. It required a heroic treatment to
get it in the head of the farmer that the doctor was not practicing medicine
for fun.
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Another of the old-time doctors who practiced
in the early days of Hamilton had many queer experiences in his younger days when
he first hung out his shingle proclaiming himself a professor of the healing
art. He would sit in his office all day waiting for patients, and then, about
bedtime, he began to receive calls. Tom hadn’t been well all day, but his
friends put off calling for the doctor till night, hoping he would get through without
it. The winters were pretty cold in Hamilton in the early part of the last
century and it was not the pleasantest thing in the world to be called out of
bed and dress in a room with the thermometer below zero. Mind you, people didn’t
have fires to warm their houses after 10 or 11 o’clock, for the custom was to
cover the live coals and wood with ashes, so as to have a basis for starting
the morning fire. The doctor of whom this paragraph is written was young and
active and anxious for any call, and in order to be ready, he got into the
habit of lying down on a lounge with his clothes on, except his boots. He got
so accustomed to this way that even when summer came, he continued the practice
and till he died a couple of years ago, he never undressed for bed, always
sleeping in his clothes. A large part of his practice was out in the country,
and, many a time, rather than drive home before daylight, he would take a nap
at the patient’s house, then, when he got home, he would strip off and take a cold
bath, feeling as fresh as though he had slept with his clothes off. He dropped
out of practice a good many years ago, except with some of the old-time
families or when the sick one had not money to pay for another doctor.
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