Exerpts from the speech given by Dr. James E. Marvil at the dedication of the Old Doctor's Office, 1974.

In dedicating this nineteenth century physician's office we honor the twenty past presidents of the Medical Society of Delaware from Lewes and vicinity, the many physicians who have practiced nearby since 1674, the Medical Society of Delaware founded in 1766 and incorporated in 1789, and the Sussex County Medical Society founded in 1863.

Early in the nineteenth century -- possibly 1836 -- Dr. David Hall or his father, Dr. Henry F. Hall, built a small classic Greek Revival style office building on South Street -- now Savannah Road -- facing Second Street. From 1862 to 1866 Dr. David Hall was the only practicing physician in Lewes and was using this office or an adjoining one also owned by the Halls. For sometime after 1884, Dr. William P. Orr, Jr. used this building until around 1905 when he had his office in his home. Around 1936, the building was moved to Second Street and rented to Joseph Shek and used as a tailor shop. In 1945 it was sold to William Clifton by Mrs. Orr to become a newspaper and cigar store until the surrounding buildings were destroyed by fire on New Year's Eve 1970. Mr. Clifton then donated the the undamaged historic office portion to The Lewes Historical Society for restoration as a Nineteenth Century Physician's Office.

Dr. David Hall was born April 21, 1831 and died February 12, 1905. He grew up in Lewes to become a fifth generation physician and the great-grandson of Colonel David Hall. He graduated from the Pennsylvania Medical College in 1852 and was associated with his father until the latter's death in 1866. His mother was the granddaughter of Dr. Joshua Fisher who landed in Lewes in 1725 to become Sussex County's first and one of Lewes' and the American Colonies' most prominent physicians. From 1881 to 1882 Dr. Hall was president of the Medical Society of Delaware. His son, Dr. William D.W. Hall followed him in medicine. In 1906 Drs. James & Richard Beebe purchased Dr. Hall's larger office and had it moved to the present location of the Beebe Hospital. In 1916 after adding two rooms and an operating room it then became the Beebe Hospital.

Dr. William Paynter Orr, 1857-1936.

Dr. William Paynter Orr, Jr. was born March 14, 1857 and died January 9, 1936. He was born in Lewes the son of a prominent merchant. He was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in 1884. He practiced for a short time in Rehoboth Beach and then moved to Lewes. He became the first resident physician for the United States Marine Quarantine Hospital Services at the Delaware Breakwater, later known as the United States Public Health Service. He served as assistant surgeon for ten years and again served for a period during World War I.

At the Annual Meeting of the Medical Society of Delaware in June 1875 held at the United States Hotel on Second Street in Lewes, later known as the Virden House and presently the location of the Post Office, Dr. J.M. Houston recommended the necessity of enforcing rigid quarantine restrictions in Delaware Bay and the importance of establishing a Marine Hospital for sick and disabled seamen. In 1878 the National Quarantine Act was passed and the Marine Hospital Service created. In July 1884 a quarantine was established in Lewes first utilizing a steamer Trench Coxe with Dr. G.W. Stoner as the quarantine surgeon. In October of 1884 the first Marine Hospital at Lewes was erected near the point of the Cape and Dr. Orr was appointed Chief Assistant Surgeon. All forgein vessels were boarded before entering Delaware Bay to ascertain the presence of Yellow Fever, Small Pox, Cholera or other quarantineable diseases. If found free of disease the ship was given pratique (permission to enter port). Local gossip suggests that the enforced delay for quarantine purposes promoted many dinner parties at Lil's, a well-known coastal brothel located near the beach.

The Marine Hospital, described in the Surgeon General's report for 1889, was located approximately one half-mile from the fish ol works towards the cape and one quarter-mile from the Iron Pier. It included surgeon's quarters, boatsman's quarters, hospital, Lazareto (pest house), anchorage for transfer barges, boathouses, and approximately 1,000 feet inland a graveyard. In the 1897 report it indicated that eighty-two seaman were treated and that there were two deaths. The total coast of operations: $1,673.73.

Incomplete records indicate that another prominent Lewes physician, Hiram Rodney Burton, also served as Assistant Surgeon at the Hospital from 1890-1894.

NINETEENTH CENTURY MEDICINE

Early nineteenth century medical patients were bled, cupped, blistered, purged, vomitted, and dosed with mercury, antimony and other compounds to meet specific symptons. The practice of medicine in these early days was no simple task. Travel was chiefly by water and what roads there were actually were paths. Sometimes the physician used a gig but usually made his trips on horseback carrying his bag of drugs, lancet, and a few surgical instruments to use on broken bones, dislocations, to probe or suture wounds, amputate crushed or gangreous limbs, extract teeth, drain abscesses, or bleed his patients.

These physicians had developed unusual powers of observation and possessed a keen sense of smell, touch, sound and sight. They lacked the assistance of later nineteenth century discoveries of anaesthesis, x-ray, clinical thermometer, stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, cystoscope, electrocardiograph and antispesis for the newly discovered casuses of disease.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, while the famous Dr. Benjamin Rush was working out his heroic treatment to correct the hypertensive pathology of disease, an unschooled New Hampshire farmer, Samuel Thomson, patented in 1812 a system of medical treatment which was destined to sweep the country. Based on a one cause-one cure theory of disease it made every man his own physician. To restore a disease caused by imbalance of earth, air, fire and water, Thomson recommended steam baths, hot botanicals like red pepper, emetics, purgatives, enemas and sweat producing herbs to clear the body of all obstructions. He excluded Rush's multiple phlebotomies and mineral medicines.

Thomson became a frank foe of regular physicians and damned their instruments of death: mercury, opium, ratsbone, nitre, and the lance. Thomson was thus the first to attack allopathy in America and was soon joined by Hahneman's Homeopathic Sect which initially emphasised infinitesmal doses of drugs.

At the same time, regular medicine was reacting. Students of French medicine, such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, were condemning blood-letting. Holmes stated that save for a few drugs, opium and anesthesia "if the whole materia medica as then used could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes." The new school of practioners learned to apply a few great medicines such as quinine, iron, mercury, iodine, potasium and digitalis. The potential of new medical chemistry was near and therapy was returning to natural methods: diet, exercise, bathing and massage. Nursing was directed towards the comfort of the patient and "Faith," as Sir William Osler aptly stated, "returned as a great level of life."

The public, however, had lost confidence in their physicians and turned in increasing numbers to quacks, patent medicines, food faddists, new healing sects, blatant medical advertisements, give-away medical almanacs, and Indian Medicine Shows. Suits and countersuits swept the world, out of it cam unfortunate but desireable publicity for the faddist nostrums. The public indicated that they wanted no restrictions on their right to choose the method by which they would be treated. Medical controls and statutes in most states fell to before the pressure of botanical lobbyists and public opinion.

In Delaware in 1843 the Medical Practice Act was amended to exempt any person practicing medicine on the Thomsonian or Botanix System or the Homeopathic System exclusively. Later Hygeio-Therapeutic and Eclectic Systems were also exempted. Honest physicians admitted that they could cure few diseases. Their rivals claimed that they could cure all ills. For each step forward that science cautiously made, pseudo-scientists appeared blindly claiming a medical cure. Elaborate advertising flooded our newspapers, barn walls and nostrum millionaries were not uncommon. Hundreds of patent medicines cropped up everywhere. Swaims Panacea, Radmas Microbe Killer, Old Indian Compound, Hostetter Bitters with 44% alcohol, Radal capiatizing on the discovery of radium and good old Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound with 18% alcohol.

The inability of the general public to discriminate between the new French scientific achievements and the American Quacks helps explain the disturbing paradox that at the time that major discoveries were scientifically explaining disease that faith in patent medicines were at its peak and sales and unscrupulous promotion were at the highest that America had yet seen.

With the introduction of experimental investigation and the increasing number of bacteriological discoveries the theory of spontaneous generation disappeared and new information led to the decrease in cases of anthrax, leprosy, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, diphtheria, cholera, tetanus, pneumonia, bubonic plague and to diseases caused by viruses.

In the latter third of the nineteenth century, there were many ill-trained physicians, if physicians at all. The background of many of these doctors were varied and not always reliable. Multiplication of medical schools throughout the United States had been a striking phenomenon. They opened and closed without restraint. In the course of the nineteenth century, the United States and Canada produced 457 medical schools most of which were exposed in 1909 by Dr. Abraham Flexner's Carnegie Survey. By 1949 the number of approved schools was down to seventy-two and the quality of training had improved immensely. Before medical practice was well regulated, one doctor might acquire his diploma by marrying the widow of a physician and putting his name on the dead doctor's diploma. Records indicate that another license was obtained by showing a Chinese napkin to a County Clerk and saying it was a diploma from a Chinese medical school. Even at Harvard, the head of the medical school explained in 1870 that written examinations could not be given because "a majority of the students cannot write well enough." The advancements of the nineteenth century led the way for the remarkable achievements of the Twentieth Century and the United States was emerging as one of the great leaders of the new medical world....

©2002-2005 The Lewes Historical Society