A first-hand second opinion of early Texas doctors: Part Four

Those of you who have read a lot of this blog know that I love to quote a Washington County doctor when writing about the Republic days. Dr. John W. Lockhart is another early leader in the region that was also one of our local doctors. He was also a passionate writer, and probably would have been a blogger had he been born in this era. Dr. Lockhart wrote some enlightening passages about the status of the early Texas doctor, which explains this common feature, that of physician-politician, of Republic of Texas doctors.

Evidently, the chasm was so great between the ignorant and unschooled and the learned and degreed, that an educated man was something of a god. I’ll let Dr. Lockhart explain in his own words…

“It was a long way to a medical college then, and no conveyances except horse-back and long stage rides, which consumed many days. It was almost an impossibility for a man to moderate circumstances to obtain a degree. But when he did, and settled in the town or little village, or the crossroads, he was a power in the land. The words which fell from his lips were like so many oracles. He was always profuse in medical terms. These not being understood by the people, made him a greater genius. The old ladies flocked about him to catch the wise words he uttered.

He was considered the biggest man in the neighborhood, not excepting the circuit rider. He had no one to fear, except the crossroad politician; and he could always be bribed with a few bitters, which the doctor knew exactly how to make. Once in his good graces, the doctor could bleed and blister to his heart’s content…

… It was wonderful to see the influence the oracle in the neighborhood had with the people. In all cases of law he was consulted; and to add importance to his opinion, he kept a copy of the decisions of the lower court on hand. The part that appertained to the practice of the justice court was well worn from the numerous references made when settling questions arising in the neighborhood. What he said in the premises was regarded as almost supernatural.

His opinion was sought with equal regard to medicine, religion, astronomy, astrology, and all things appertaining to science. But his greatest genius ran in the way of politics. No man need run for office in the precinct, unless he first obtained the doctor’s consent, or his assistance. To do otherwise, would be to court certain defeat. However, that other wise man of the precinct who succeeded in getting himself elected justice of the peace, was a man to be reckoned with- the only man the doctor need fear.”

Dr. Lockhart went down in local history as a great benefactor of his community, and was seemingly loved and trusted by all and deserved that trust, but even he had trouble treating those whose faith was built on superstition…

“Negroes objected to taking calomel and castor oil more than any medicine. The former they believed was made from the bones of dead people ground to powder, and the latter they believed to be the grease made from the bodies of the dead. These facts were the actual truth to them; and in some instances, force had to be resorted to, to make them swallow it.”

Dr. Lockhart also wrote of the struggle with ye age old wives tales…

“…In Texas- for instance, in the country where there were no doctors, the lady of the house had to do all the doctoring; and would resort to barks, weeds, and all things thought to have medicinal properties. For instance, she substituted the inner bark of the ash for action on the liver and bowels. This she prepared by cutting off the rough exterior bark, using the inner white portion. This she boiled- throwing out the fibre, and when the juice had simmered to the consistency of tar, it was mixed with flour and rolled into pills.”

I’ll offer this one last quote from the good doctor, who won my heart with such balanced skepticism, on all sides... here he comments on a doctor's convention, and he seemed to touch on a timeless argument…:)

“Many specific papers were read before this body which were a credit to the authors and the profession. Diseases were discussed, and their causes and cures. The germ theory also had its advocates. Microbes, bacilli, and the like were ably handled; and if the doctors do not quit finding so many things existing in the air we breathe, and the food we eat and the water we drink, they will starve this nation out.”

[From: SIXTY YEARS ON THE BRAZOS]

Not much has changed and will not, whenever we match man’s capacity against the handiwork of an Infinite God.

I want you to know about the next generation of doctors that flooded into Grimes County after the Civil war, only to be almost decimated by a Yellow Fever epidemic in 1867.

Next time… on the Navasota Current.

Navasota Doctors: The very early days: Part Three

The early Texas doctor, this is one of a collection of life-sized portraits I painted for the Star of the Republic Museum at Washington on the Brazos.


Wow, I was writing about our wonderful medical history here in Navasota when several music events kind of blew all that out like a blue Norther in a chicken coup. I think it is too late to gather all the chicks and put them back in… but I do want to pursue this subject, for posterity.

Like I said before, nobody has ever put down the story. Or asked the questions. For a pretty small town Navasota had a bunch of physicians. Why or how come so many? I am fortunate enough to have several great sources to tell you about our pioneer doctors, who they were and some wonderful anecdotes about them… So we will approach them like a doctor would, chronologically. In past segments we have learned about the very first doctors in Texas, about Cabeza de Vaca and La Salle’s murderous surgeon Liotot… Thank goodness some real physicians finally showed up! These three men were our doctors and leaders during the Republic of Texas days.

Benjamin Briggs Goodrich. B. B. Goodrich was perhaps one of the most prominent men in Grimes County for many years. But not because he was a doctor. Goodrich was one of the earliest pioneers to settle here, and became a political leader from the very beginning.

Born in 1799, B. B. Goodrich graduated from medical school in Baltimore and then migrated south, with short stays in Tennessee, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama where he was soon elected to the State Legislature. He and his younger brother John, known as the “bee hunter,” finally found Texas in 1833, settling in Eureka, later to be combined with Fanthorp and renamed Anderson. John Goodrich was one of the men who made Texas forever famous when he died at the Alamo.

B. B. Goodrich served early Texas as a delegate to the Consultation in 1835, and the Convention at Washington on the Brazos in 1836. He was a signor of the Declaration of Independence. He also helped to write the Republic of Texas Constitution. Later he was instrumental in helping to select the town site of Anderson as the County seat for the new County of Grimes in 1846 when it was separated from Montgomery County.


Dr. Robert Caldwell Neblett. Born in Virginia in 1795, his early training was in carpentry. Robert abandoned this vocation and took up going to school and playing the violin. His father burned the violin and sent him to work. Robert joined the Virginia Militia instead. At age seventeen he volunteered and ended up in the War of 1812, where he rose to the rank of Sergeant Major. After the war he taught school, then in 1818 decided to attend medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. After he graduated, he started practicing in Clarksville, Tennessee. From there he moved to Wayne County, Mississippi where he married Marie Poe in 1825.

He kept moving west. He and his family settled in Louisiana, and there he farmed and practiced medicine and went into merchandising at Neblett’s Bluff, and this town was named after him.

But by 1840, Dr. Neblett arrived in Texas, very near the present town of Navasota. Here he “planted his ebenezer” and continued to use all the talents he had developed to that date. At that time, the other doctors were engrossed in political affairs, and Dr. Neblett served the region between the San Jacinto and Brazos rivers! He helped to organize one of the first schools, the Masonic Collegiate Institute, in Anderson in 1843. He was a charter member of the Orphan’s Friend Lodge.

Medical supplies were scarce and costly, and Neblett carried the only medicine known to exist within hundreds of miles in his saddle bags; calomel and quinine. He had no anesthesia, not even chloroform. Patients often could not be carried, and he made many house calls, travelling the country on horseback. His most frequent foes besides ignorance and superstition were infection and Malaria. One of the more interesting superstitions he ran into was the use of a native root called the Mandenke, or May Apple root. Its root grew into a shape not unlike a man, and it had a fork which looked like legs. Users believed that they should take a part of the root from the corresponding part of their own body which was ailing, and make a tea from it and consume it.

Dr. Neblett was elected into the Texas Legislature in 1855. Neblett helped to bring St. Paul’s Episcopal College to Anderson in 1861. Dr. Neblett was active serving his community until 1970, and died in 1871. The U. S. Government placed a marker on his grave at the Orphan’s Lodge Cemetery recognizing his bravery in the War of 1812.

David Catchings Dickson. D. C. Dickson was another early doctor from Anderson that fell into a leadership role in Texas very quickly. After his first wife died in Mississippi, he married her younger sister and came to Texas in 1841. Dickson was the first doctor to open a practice in Alta Mira, a village west of present day Anderson. He was soon elected as the Justice of the Peace. He helped to found the Orphan’s Friend Masonic Lodge in Anderson. He was elected as a Representative to the State Legislature in 1846, where he served four terms. In 1851, he was elected the Speaker of the House. In 1853 he was elected as Lieutenant Governor. In 1855 he became snared in a political strategy that backfired when he announced his candidacy for the office of Governor, challenging then Governor Pease. Pease replaced him on his ticket and he then was defeated.

D. C. Dickson represented Grimes County in the Texas State Senate during the Civil War. Perhaps his most heroic challenge was while working for the Texas Prison system. After the war, he was appointed as the financial agent of the Huntsville Penitentiary. When the Yellow Fever epidemic broke out in 1867, he stayed at his post and provided essential care to the guards and inmates during this deadly time. His own son died during epidemic, but he was credited with continuing his fight against the disease, which raged in the unhealthy environment inside the walls. He served out his remaining years assisting his brother Lawrence here in Grimes County as Deputy Clerk. He died in 1880.

Most of this was taken from Blair’s History of Grimes County, pub 1930, and The Medicine Man in Texas, 1930.

Grimes County Doctors: Part One... and #5 in my TOP TEN of TEXAS

Someday many years from now, one of you is going to ask this question and do a search on the Internet, and WA-LA, this will pop up… another of Cushman’s blogs that he wrote back when nobody was asking... bless his heart.

ANSWER: The Doctors of Grimes County. The question is who were the first leaders and benefactors of this land, later to become the Republic of Texas? Who were they and why did Navasota and the surrounding area have so many, when the rest of the country was deprived of medical care? And even more amazing, how did they survive such dangers and hardships?

The following study of these, men, is an attempt to finally do them justice after so many years of neglect. I think you will find their story interesting…

No account of Texas doctors would be complete without prefacing it with the quintessential proto-physician of the Texas frontier; Cabeza de Vaca (and this gives me a chance to plug Dr. Robin Montgomery’s book, which I illustrated, called March to Destiny, where his and many other great stories can be found). Cabeza de Vaca means Head of a Cow. Yes, "Head of a Cow" was a Spanish nobleman who had the misfortune of being named Royal Treasurer on an ill-fated trans-Atlantic voyage to the Spanish held lands north of Mexico.

A flotilla led by Narvaez left Cuba with hundreds of men and landed first in Florida, where they met one disaster after another. By the time de Vaca and his men arrived on Galveston island, only a few dozen were left, and they were dying off quickly. In rags and famished from days on the open sea, he and his men were glad to be taken in by the Karankawa Indians and become their servants in exchange for survival.

Over time, de Vaca found himself nearly alone, yet a venerated healer among the stone-age men that owned him. His combination of common sense, prayer and experimentation made him seem to be almost a divine- ent medicine man, and he selflessly served these primitive tribesmen for two years. Eventually he made his escape, and like most doctors since then, had to weigh the needs of his patients against the greater good. De vaca spent ten years wandering in Texas, New Mexico and northern Mexico, making a splash wherever he arrived, finding the natives were totally believing he had powers of healing, and making testimonies about that gift. So convinced were they, those healed would escort him to the next village in his path, where they would take everything in sight, in trade for doing that tribe the great service of bringing him there. The stunned villagers would shrug, get their folks healed, and then repeat the cycle. It is quite possible that no doctor in Texas has covered as much ground, or had such success and made such a name for himself as de Vaca, until the mass Media came along and made our heart doctors in Houston world famous.

Not really a trained physician, Cabeza de Vaca typified the frontier Texas doctors that would come three hundred years later. Not greatly educated, but still much more than the average citizen, who was illiterate and superstitious, and feared doctors; Men of faith and cunning who were there to do something when everyone else was wringing their hands.

Their effectiveness may have been questionable, but at least they tried. Over the years, after considerable “practice,” they made the “art of medicine” appear to be science. But as each of these stories will show, they were “great men,” or as some like to put it, not necessarily extraordinary men, but average men doing extraordinary things…

Sad but true, de Vaca went on another mission for his King in South America, only to suffer a mutiny and be returned to Spain in chains. It seems his constant empathy, mercy and healing ministry to the natives irritated his associates, who did not understand de Vaca's demands to be escorted through the jungles on a litter, a kind of man-powered vehicle known as a lectica (ancient Rome), jiao [较] (China), sedan chairs (England), palanquin (also known as palki Bengali'পালকি' ) (Bangladesh, India), Woh (วอ, chinese style known as giao เกี้ยว) (Thailand), gama (Korea) and tahtırevan (Turkey). [Thank you Wikipedia] basically an emperor's style stretcher of sorts (probably for effect, to show the natives his authority). They finally had enough and whopped him on the side of the head and sent him home, so they could resume their search for riches.

An embarassment to the Crown, and perhaps a threat because of all he knew, (after all, he had covered almost two continents and never found any gold... the justification for these excursions) so he spent eight years in prison, before his case was heard. He had been banished to Africa when finally the Crown snatched him up and dusted him off, and gave him a pension and some amount of vindication. For all is efforts to help mankind, Cabeza de Vaca is remembered mostly as the first writer to chronicle the American Southwest. In fact his writings about his adventure in South America is much greater. Alas it is still hard to ever get published... especially when your words do not feed the popular delusions of the day.

So Cabeza de Vaca is, hands down one of my "Top Ten in Texas" if not in the Western Hemisphere.

I think I have around four left to go...

Next time… on the Navasota Current.

Dear Blogreader; This is part of a series called my "top ten in Texas" and part one of a series about early Texas doctors. You can go back to the main page and type in "top ten in texas" or "benevolent bones" in the search button, and then click on the button to find the rest of the articles.