DID DRUG USE AT HARVARD START ANESTHESIOLOGY• Horace Wells, 1817-1849 — this Boston dentist...

DID DRUG USE AT HARVARD START ANESTHESIOLOGY?

THE MAINE WOODS: Ktaadn, whose name is an Indian word signifyinghighest land, was first ascended by white men in 1804. It wasvisited by Professor J.W. Bailey of West Point in 1836; by Dr.Charles T. Jackson, the State Geologist, in 1837; and by two youngmen from Boston in 1845. All these have given accounts of theirexpeditions. Since I was there, two or three other parties havemade the excursion, and told their stories. Besides these,very few, even among backwoodsmen and hunters, have ever climbedit, and it will be a long time before the tide of fashionabletravel sets that way. The mountainous region of the State of Mainestretches from near the White Mountains, northeasterly onehundred and sixty miles, to the head of the Aroostook River, andis about sixty miles wide. The wild or unsettled portion is farmore extensive. So that some hours only of travel in thisdirection will carry the curious to the verge of a primitiveforest, more interesting, perhaps, on all accounts, than theywould reach by going a thousand miles westward.

CHARLES TURNER, JR.JACOB WHITMAN BAILEY

DR. CHARLES T. JACKSON

EDWARD EVERETT HALE

WILLIAM FRANCIS CHANNING

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/ActiveIndex.pdf

2 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS AND CAPE COD: DR. CHARLES JACKSON

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During the 1840s, the Professor of Anatomy at the Medical School of Harvard College, John Collins Warren, was crusading in Boston in opposition to the “senseless cruelty of the masses,” their debased politics, their corrupting lack of moral standards.If they know what is good for them, the people must pay heed to their superiors!

“Scientists have power by virtue of the respectcommanded by the discipline. We may therefore be sorelytempted to misuse that power in furthering a personalprejudice or social goal — why not provide that extraoomph by extending the umbrella of science over apersonal preference in ethics or politics?”

— Stephen Jay Gould BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUSNY: Norton, 1991, page 429

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/thumbnails/T/HDT.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/explanation.pdf


“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3


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Some of these superiors to the common run of mankind would be the three main actors in the story of the discovery of anesthesia, William Thomas Green Morton, Charles T. Jackson and Horace Wells, three Harvard College dental students who after turning on with nitrous oxide during the 1840s, would fall to fighting over who should get the credit for this.

During this year ether was being introduced into northern Ireland as a preventive and folk remedy. Recreational drinking was spreading in the Ulster counties of Londonderry and Tyrone, possibly due to the example of a physician in Draperstown. Frolics produced either by inhalation or by drinking drops of ether in water were becoming common among youths of the upper classes both in Europe and in America.

Wells started it all by doing experiments with nitrous oxide but failed to follow through. Jackson put Morton onto sulfurous ether (CH3CH2)2O but it was Morton who thought out and performed the research, took the risks, and developed a safe and reliable method. In support of Morton’s claim mention is made of a Boston chemical supplier named Theodore Metcalf, and a maker of surgical instruments named Wightman. Only after the risks had been taken and the discovery accepted by the medical establishment did Jackson try to cash in, claiming that he had been the head and Morton merely the hands:






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• Horace Wells, 1817-1849 — this Boston dentist became a drug addict and committed suicide while in prison for a drug-related crime, receiving a prize from the French Academy of Sciences on the following day

• William Thomas Green Morton, 1819-1868 — this Boston dentist and former student of Charles T. Jackson’s had a bad track record for buying goods on credit, selling them and pocketing the money, and then failing to pay his bills. By the age of 21 he had already been “run out of town” in Worcester MA, Rochester NY, Cincinnati, Ohio, St. Louis in the Missouri territory, and Baltimore! He suffered a nervous breakdown and spent the rest of his life battling poverty; four times he would be voted a pension by Congress, but four times this would be reversed itself when Jackson and others pressed their claims, and the acknowledgment when it finally came was in the form of a mere gravestone terming him something like “the discoverer of ether-narcosis”

• Charles T. Jackson, chemistry professor at Harvard College who had earlier made an unsuccessful attempt to claim the credit for the invention of the telegraph — he went crazy at the sight of this William Thomas Green Morton monument and died in an asylum (Semmelweis also died in an insane asylum, after being beaten by the attendants, with Lister performing the 1st operation using antisepsis as well as anesthesia on the following day)






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June 21, Friday: Charles Thomas Jackson was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts to Charles Jackson and Lucy C. Jackson.1

Lieutenant Gabriel Moraga, on his initial exploratory expedition from the San Francisco Bay area into the great Central Valley of California, traversed Pacheco Pass over the Diablo Range.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal:

6 day / Our friends have now all left us, & may I proffitably reflect on past favorsYesterday afternoon meeting a friend whom I love & has felt very precious thro’ the Y Meeting took me aside, & proposed for my consideration a subject of importance, which was Matrimony. I have become seriously affected & am involved in some doubt respecting it, tho his judgement was that it was high time, yet I am not able to discover any open vision at present how or in what manner to dispose of myself.I hope to be guided by the Lords Spirit in matters small & great — & clear I am there is no case wherein it is more necessary to be favored with discovering of it than in this, as in my opinion it is something that is liable to affect us in this, & the world to come.

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1805

1. In this year American physicians were using ether to treat pulmonary inflammation!

GO AHEAD, TAKE THIS TRIP

RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltpalX8tZb8






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Charles Lyell abandoned the legal profession in favor of geology. He had already begun to plan his chief work, THE PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY: AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE FORMER CHANGES OF THE EARTH’S SURFACE BY REFERENCE TO CAUSES NOW IN OPERATION.

For the following three years Charles T. Jackson and Francis Alger of Boston would be making a sort of amateur mineralogical/geological survey of Nova Scotia (their “A Description of the Mineralogy and Geology of a part of Nova Scotia; by Charles T. Jackson and Francis Alger” would appear in the January 1829 issue of The American Journal of Science and Arts). In the course of their travels they would notice a flat rock inscribed with the date “1606” and seeming to bear a symbol that they understood to indicate the Masonic Order.

1827






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CAPE COD: The very gravestones of those Frenchmen are probablyolder than the oldest English monument in New England north ofthe Elizabeth Islands, or perhaps anywhere in New England, for ifthere are any traces of Gosnold’s storehouse left, his strongworks are gone. Bancroft says, advisedly, in 1834, “It requiresa believing eye to discern the ruins of the fort”; and that therewere no ruins of a fort in 1837. Dr. Charles T. Jackson tells methat, in the course of a geological survey in 1827, he discovereda gravestone, a slab of trap rock, on Goat Island, oppositeAnnapolis (Port Royal), in Nova Scotia, bearing a Masonic coat-of-arms and the date 1606, which is fourteen years earlier thanthe landing of the Pilgrims. This was left in the possession ofJudge Haliburton, of Nova Scotia.

HALIBURTON

JACKSON

BANCROFT






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As we can see above, Jackson would carry his story to Henry David Thoreau, who would include it in CAPE COD. Unfortunately, the scratching above the date “1606” would turn out not to have been any sort of recognizable Masonic symbol — the Masonic Order, ordinarily eager for this sort of discovery, would disdain the entire idea! The marks may have been merely random marks left by a shovel, or may possibly have been intended to indicate that the white settler who had been buried beneath this flat rock had been a carpenter. Although the rock itself seems to have been lost (buried under plaster somewhere inside a wall), we do still have a photograph of it:

The Masonic Stone of 1606By R.W. Bro. REGINALD V. HARRIS,

Grand Historian, Grand Lodge of Nova Scotia2

It will be good to read this article in conjunction with Bro.Harris’ article on “Freemasonry in Nova Scotia” published in TheBuilder of August last; and with the Study Club article of lastmonth. Bro. Harris’ critical analysis of the claims of the NovaScotia stone to be the monument of the earliest known appearanceof Freemasonry on this continent was published in Transactionsof Nova Scotia Lodge of Research, Jan. 31, 1916; as here givenhe has altered it somewhat.

WHAT some Masonic students and historians regard as the earliesttrace of the existence of Freemasons or Freemasonry on thiscontinent so far as we are now aware, is afforded by theinscriptions on a stone found in 1827 upon the shores ofAnnapolis Basin, Nova Scotia.There are two accounts of the finding of this stone. The first,from the pen of Judge Thomas Chandler Haliburton (known to usas the author of “Sam Slick”), was written in the year of thefinding of the stone or very shortly afterward, and is to befound in his HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF NOVA SCOTIA,published in 1829 (Vol. II., pp. 155-157), as follows:

About six miles below the ferry is situated Goat Island,which separates the Annapolis Basin from that of Digby,and forms two entrances to the former. The westernchannel, though narrow, is deep and generally preferredto others. A small peninsula, extending from the

2. As published in The Builder Magazine for October 1924 (Volume X, Number 10).






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Granville shore, forms one of its sides. On this pointof land the first piece of ground was cleared forcultivation in Nova Scotia by the French. They wereinduced to make this selection on account of the beautyof its situation, the good anchorage opposite it thecommand which it gave them of the channel, and thefacility it afforded of giving the earliest notice tothe garrison at Port Royal of the entrance of an enemyinto the Lower Basin. In the year 1827 the stone wasdiscovered upon which they had engraved the date oftheir first cultivation of the soil, in memorial oftheir formal possession of the country. It is about twofeet and a half long and two feet broad, and of the samekind as that which forms the substratum of GranvilleMountain. On the upper part are engraved the square andcompass of the Free Mason, and in the centre, in largeand deep Arable figures the date 1606. It does notappear to have been dressed by a mason, but theinscription has been cut on its natural surface.The stone itself has yielded to the power of theclimate, and both the external front and the interiorparts of the letters alike suffered from exposure to theweather: the seams on the back of it have opened, and,from their capacity to hold water and the operation offrost on it when thus confined, it is probable in a fewyears it would have crumbled to pieces. The date isdistinctly visible, and although the figure 0 is worndown to one-half of its original depth and the upperpart of the figure 6 nearly as much, yet no part of themis obliterated — they are plainly discernible to the eyeand easily traced by the finger.At a subsequent period, when the country was conqueredby the English, some Scotch emigrants were sent out bySir William Alexander, who erected a fort on the siteof the French cornfields, previous to the Treaty of St.Germain’s. The remains of this fort may be traced withgreat ease, the old parade, the embankment and ditch,have not been disturbed, and preserve their originalform. It was occupied by the French for many years afterthe peace of 1632.* * * *

The other account of the finding of the stone is contained in aletter written nearly thirty years after the event, and now inthe possession of the New England Historic-Genealogical Societyfrom the pen of Dr. Charles T. Jackson of Boston, the celebratedchemist and geologist. It is in the following words:

June 2, 1856.Dear Sir:When Francis Alger and myself made a mineralogicalsurvey of Nova Scotia in 1827 we discovered upon theshore of Goat Island, in Annapolis Basin, a grave-stonepartly covered with sand and lying on the shore. It borethe Masonic emblems, square and compass, and had thefigures 1606 cut in it.The rock was a flat slab of trap rock, common in the






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vicinity. At the ferry from Annapolis to Granville wesaw a large rounded rock with this inscription ‘La Belle1649.’ These inscriptions were undoubtedly intended tocommemorate the place of burial of French soldiers whocame to Nova Scotia, “Annapolis Royal, Acadia,” in 1603.Coins, buttons and other articles originally belongingto these early French settlers, are found in the soilof Goat Island in Annapolis Basin.The slab bearing date 1606, I had brought over by theFerryman to Annapolis, and ordered it to be packed in abox to be sent to the Old Colony Pilgrim Society (ofPlymouth, Mass.), but Judge Haliburton, then ThomasHaliburton, Esq., prevailed on me to abandon it to him,and he now has it carefully preserved. On a late visitto Nova Scotia I found that the Judge had forgotten howhe came by it, and so I told him all about it.* * * * * * *Yours truly,C. T. Jackson.(Addressed)

J.W. Thornton (Present.)This letter is accompanied by a photograph of the stone madesome thirty years later showing the square and compasses and thefigures 1606, rudely cut and much worn by time and weather, butstill quite distinct.

We shall later refer more particularly to the stone itself andthe two accounts of its finding, but wish first to refer to thesubsequent history of the stone which is most singularlyunfortunate.About 1887 it was given by Robert Grant Haliburton (son of JudgeT.C. Haliburton) to the Canadian Institute of Toronto with theunderstanding that the stone should be inserted in the wall ofthe building then being erected for the Institute. It was to beplaced in the wall, the inscription facing inside in one of theprincipal rooms.Sir Sanford Fleming wrote that he received the stone from Mr.R.G. Haliburton for the purpose of being placed in the museumof the Canadian Institute, Toronto, in order that it might be






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properly cared for. There is an entry respecting it in theminutes of the Institute, acknowledging its arrival and receipt.Sir Daniel Wilson was then President, and on March 21, 1888,read a paper on “Traces of European Immigration in the 17thCentury,” and exhibited the stone found at Port Royal bearingdate 1606. Sir Sanford Fleming further adds:

I have myself seen it more than once since its beingplaced in the Canadian Institute. When the building waserected on the northwest corner of Richmond and BertiStreets, Toronto instructions were given by Dr.Scadding to build it into the wall with the inscriptionexposed; but, very stupidly, it is said the plasterercovered it over with plaster, and even the spot cannotnow be traced, although the plaster has been removed atseveral places to look for it. Before these facts weremade known to me, or any trace could be had of the stone,I had a long correspondence with the Instituteauthorities, and I further offered a reward of $1,000for the stone if it could be found but it was all to nopurpose. I regret extremely that I can throw so littlelight on it at this day. If ever the present buildingbe taken down diligent search should be made for thehistoric stone, perhaps, the oldest inscription stonein America.

It is a most regrettable fact that this priceless stone shouldhave ever gone out of Nova Scotia. The necessity for a Masonicmuseum in this Province needs no argument when such things asthis happen.

HALIBURTON’S ACCOUNT IS PROBABLY MORE CORRECT

To return to the two accounts of the finding of the stone itself,there can be little or no doubt that Judge Haliburton’s accountwritten at the time of the discovery and on the spot, by one whohad made a study of the locality and of its history, is correct;and that Dr. Jackson’s account, written from recollection thirtyyears after he found the stone, cannot be relied upon as to theplace of discovery. Moreover, the historical facts stated byJudge Haliburton as to the place of the first settlement by theFrench establish beyond any doubt that the stone marked with thedate 1606 was found on the peninsula extending from theGranville shore opposite Goat Island, Annapolis Basin.As to the inscription on the stone, although the stone is notnow to be found for inspection, there can be little or no doubtas to the particulars of that inscription. Judge Haliburtonundoubtedly wrote his description of the stone with itimmediately before him. Dr. Jackson’s account made after he hadseen it a second time, confirms it and the photograph made beforethe stone was sent to Toronto further establishes the fact thatthe stone bore the date 1606 and the “square and compasses” ofthe Mason, though these emblems would seem to be too much wornaway to admit of a good photographic reproduction, a conditionnot to be wondered at after an exposure to the weather for over






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two hundred years.On the other hand, some who have examined only the photographhave doubted whether the marks on the stone (other than the date1606) were really the square and compasses of the Freemason. Thefact that these marks appear not to have been cut so deeply andwell has suggested to them that they are surface scratches suchas might have been made accidentally in digging with a pick orspade. An examination of the photograph, however, clearly showsthat the marks are more than mere scratches — deeper, clearerand more lasting, as they must have been to survive the attacksof the elements for more than two centuries. Judge Haliburtonin describing the stone says: “It does not appear to have beendressed by a mason but the inscription has been cut on itsnatural surface.” It is quite impossible today to decide whetherthe inscription was the work of a skilled or unskilled workman.Turning now to the explanations and theories respecting theinscription. Judge Haliburton describes it as a stone “uponwhich they (the French) had engraved the date of theircultivation of the soil, in memorial of their formal possessionof the country.”Against this theory may be urged the fact that the firstcultivation of the soil by these French settlers was in 1605 andnot 1606; Champlain’s map showing gardens is dated 1605; alsothat they had taken possession of the country in 1604; and theprobability that a national emblem, such as the fleur-de-lis,would be used rather than a Masonic emblem for such purposes.That this is exactly what they did is evident from the recordof Argall’s capture of Port Royal. In Murdoch’s HISTORY OF NOVASCOTIA he states that in 1614 “Argall destroyed the fort and allmonuments and marks of French national power. It is recordedthat he even caused the names of Demonts and other captains andthe fleur-de-lis to be effaced with pick and chisel from amassive stone on which they had been engraved.”This account not only shows what emblems the French used tocommemorate their occupation of the country, but also that ifthis stone was visible it does not commemorate a national event.

IT DID NOT COMMEMORATE FOUNDING OF A MASONIC LODGE

The theory that the stone might commemorate the establishmentof a lodge of Freemasons has virtually nothing to support it,though it is perhaps more than a matter of interest that duringthe winter of 1606-7 the French colonists, under the leadershipof Champlain, established a sort of club or society styled the“Ordre de Bon Temps,” consisting of fifteen members. Each memberin turn became the caterer to his brethren, a plan which excitedso much emulation among them that each endeavored to excel hispredecessor in office, in the variety, profusion and quality ofthe viands procured for the table during his term of office.Lescarbot, a member of the society and the historian of theseearly events, says that on each such occasion the host wore thecollar “of the order and a napkin and carried a staff.”At dinner, he marshalled the way to the table at the head of the






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procession of guests. After supper he resigned the insignia ofoffice to his successor, with the ceremony of drinking to himin a cup of wine. The little company included severaldistinguished names: Poutrincourt, the real founder of PortRoyal; Champlain, the founder of Quebec, two years later, andthe historian of many events at Port Royal; Biencourt,Poutrincourt’s son; Lescarbot, advocate, poet and historian ofthis early period; Louis Hebert, one of the first settlers ofQuebec; Robert Grave, Champdore, and Daniel Hay, a surgeon.That this social club was Speculative Freemasonry is highlyimprobable. The colony was a French settlement, and SpeculativeFreemasonry was not known in France for more than a hundred yearsafterward, namely in 1718. The corporations and gilds ofstonemasons and architects, we are told in Rebold’s GENERAL HISTORYOF FREEMASONRY, were suppressed in 1539 by Francis I., although asort of trade unionism seems to have existed from about 1650,and a correspondence with each other is believed to have takenplace between the unions at Marseilles, Paris, Lyons, andcertain cities in Belgium. These were undoubtedly operativebodies and consisted of not only masons and stone cutters, butof members of other trades, carpenters, architects, decorators,etc.That a union of these workmen may have existed at Port Royal isnot of course impossible, but that it contained any speculativemembers is exceedingly improbable. In England evidence islacking of the admission of Speculative Masons into Masoniclodges prior to 1646, and in Scotland prior to 1634.If such a speculative lodge existed at Port Royal in 1606 or ifthe Ordre de Bon Temps was even in a remote way connected withany trade, either Champlain or Lescarbot in their very detailedaccounts of these early days would have mentioned other factswhich would establish beyond any doubt such relationship. Theentire absence of any such facts must be taken as conclusive inthis matter.There remains for consideration one other theory respecting thestone, that of Dr. Jackson; that it was “undoubtedly intendedto commemorate the place of burial of French soldiers.” Thisexpression of opinion by Dr. Jackson in 1856 may have beenfounded on information given him by Judge Haliburton on his“recent” visit to Nova Scotia, and may indicate that the judgehad also changed his mind. Whatever the facts, the gravestonetheory would seem to have more to support it than any other.First, as to the stone itself. As described by Judge Haliburtonwho had possession of the stone from 1827 until his removal toEngland in 1859, it evidently measured two by two and a halffeet; undoubtedly monumental size and shape.Secondly, as to the place where it was found.Champlain in his VOYAGES gives a plan of the fort erected by himin 1605. This plan shows a burying ground and a garden outsidethe eastern parapet or palisade. Judge Haliburton’s theory thatthe stone commemorated the first cultivation of the soil mayhave been based on the fact that it was found on the site of thegarden but it is equally clear that it might also be agravestone, although Dr. Jackson says in his letter of 1856 thatit was found “upon the shore” “partly covered with sand and lying






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on the shore.”Assuming that the stone is a gravestone, two questions presentthemselves:1st. Why are the square and compasses on the stone?2nd. Whose gravestone is it?It will be convenient to answer these two queries together.Champlain in his history tells us that during the winter of 1605-1606 six members of the little colony died. While Champlain doesnot give the names of those who departed this life nor whetherthey died’ before or after Jan. 1, 1606, yet from his contextand Lescarbot’s account it would not be difficult to draw a verystrong inference that all died before the New Year dawned. Ithink we may safely assume that the stone is not the gravestoneof any of these six settlers.

LESCARBOT DESCRIBES THEIR ACTIVITIESIn the spring of that year (1606) Poutrincourt, who had gonehome with DeMonts in the autumn of 1605, induced Mare Lescarbot,an advocate of Paris, to join the colony. They reached Port Royalon July 27, where they remained until Aug. 28, when Poutrincourtstarted on an exploratory voyage down the American coast, as faras Cape Cod, leaving Lescarbot behind in charge of the colony.Lescarbot, in his New France, has this to say about the workdone while the rest were away:

Meanwhile I set about making ready the soil, setting offand enclosing gardens wherein to sow wheat and kitchenherbs. We also had a ditch dug all around the fort whichwas a matter of necessity to receive the dampness andthe water which previously had oozed underneath ourdwellings, amid the roots of the trees which had beencut down and which had very likely been the cause of theunhealthiness of the place.I have no time to stop here to describe in detail theseveral labours of our other workmen. Suffice it to saythat we had numerous joiners, carpenters, masons, stonecutters, locksmiths workers in iron, tailors, woodsawyers, sailors, etc., who worked at their trades, andin doing so were very kindly used, for after three hourswork a day they were free.* * * But while each of our said workmen had his specialtrade, they had also to set to work at whatever turnedup, as many of them did. Certain masons and stonecutters turned their hands to baking and made as goodbread as that of Paris.

Let us note in passing the use by Lescarbot of the two words“masons” and “stone cutters.” The original French words inLescarbot’s history are “masson” (mason) and “tailleur laPierre,” the former being a word of wider significance than theother, including any operative on the construction of abuilding, using either stones, bricks, plaster or cement, thelatter word denoting greater skill including not only the workof cutting inscriptions, but approaching the work of the






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sculptor.Poutrincourt’s party meanwhile spent some weeks exploring andwhen near Cape Cod a party of five young men landed in defianceof orders and were attacked by Indians. Three were killed andburied on the spot by their comrades; the other two were severelywounded; one of them, Duval, a locksmith, lived to take part ina revolt at Quebec two years later; the other was so piercedwith arrows that he died on reaching Port Royal on Nov. 14, 1606,where he was buried.During the winter of 1606-1607 there were four deaths but theseoccurred in February and March, 1607, and not during the year1606, according to both Champlain and Lescarbot. If, therefore,the stone was erected to mark the grave of one of the colonistswho died during the year 1606, it must have been the grave ofthe man who died on Nov. 14, 1606, or shortly afterward of woundsreceived at Cape Cod.What was his profession or trade?We know Duval was a locksmith, and though this is very scantlight for us to be guided by, it is probable that his companionson their wild episode on shore with the Indians were members ofthe various trades which Lescarbot says were at Port Royal atthis time. This is merely assumption, and not conclusive. If hehad been a man of standing either Champlain or Lescarbot wouldhave named him. They name none of those who died at Port Royal.

CARPENTERS HAD THEIR OWN MYSTERYWe must not forget that at that time the carpenters of Francehad their own mystery or trade gild, worked on lines somewhatakin to Operative Masonry, and using the square and compassesas their emblem.This may be well illustrated by a short quotation from FelixGras, the eminent Provencal poet and novelist, whose works wereso highly esteemed by the late W.E. Gladstone. In his Les Rougesdu Midi, a book dealing with the French Revolution (written in1792), he describes a visit paid by Vauclair, a carpenter fromMarseilles, to Planctot, a carpenter residing and working inParis.

As we stood outside the door we could hear the smooth“hush hush” of a big plane as it threw off the longshavings, but the planing stopped short at our loudknock, and then the door flew open and there wasPlanctot himself. It was plain that he knew Vauclair onthe instant, but instead of shaking hands with him, heturned his back and rushed off like a crazy man.... Ina few minutes we heard the clatter of old Planctot’swooden shoes on the stair. He had come to greet Vauclairaccording to the rite and ceremonial of their craft. Hehad put on his Sunday hat and his best wig; and beforehe said a word he laid a compass and a square down onthe floor between himself and Vauelair. At once Vauelairmade the correct motions of hand and foot, to whichPlanetot replied properly and then, under their raisedhands, they embraced over the ... compass and square.

Old Planctot is several times called “le maitre,” “the master,”






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which I take to denote his standing in the Craft. I think therecan be no historical doubt of the existence of such a craft gildamong French carpenters at the beginning of the 17th century;that is, about 1606.Let us summarize our theories: First, the stone was agravestone; secondly, it marked the last resting place of aFrench settler who died in 1606; thirdly, this settler wasprobably a workman and may have been an operative mason or stonecutter; fourthly, speculative Masonry, unknown in France in1606, was not practiced by the French colonists; lastly, theemblem of square and compasses would seem to be a trade-mark oremblem undoubtedly used by operative masons as their emblem, andpossibly by carpenters as well.In a word, the stone marked the grave of either a mason or stonecutter or possibly a carpenter who died Nov. 14, 1606, and notthat of a Speculative Freemason.

----o----“A king may make a noble knight, And breathe away another;But he in all his power and might,Cannot make a brother.”

----o----To summarize: Thoreau would include in CAPE COD something Dr. Jackson had bragged to him about. Dr. Jackson claimed to have discovered, while on vacation in Nova Scotia as a Harvard undergraduate, evidence of Freemasonry dating to 1606 (what he had found along that coast was the gravestone of a white settler bearing such a date, along with what seemed obviously to him to be a “Masonic coat-of-arms”). Jackson would go on in his life to allege when the electric telegraph began to be trendy after 1837, that actually he had been the one to initiate the whole thing (although his credit for this had somehow been misappropriated), and then when anesthesia began to be the cat’s pajamas in surgery and dentistry in 1846, that actually he had been the one to have ginned up the whole scheme (although his credit for this had somehow been misappropriated), and then to be terminated from his surveying contract in 1847 for incompetence or leadership failure or whatever — until finally he would fall apart and need to be institutionalized. So, here’s my question for you (now that it is clear that the rock Jackson had found in 1827, and had bragged to Thoreau about, did not actually have any sort of recognizable “Masonic coat-of-arms” engraved upon it): can this 1827 lookie-lookie-what-I-discovered-thingie in Nova Scotia now be understood as an early glimmer of the pretentious craziness that was going to characterize, and so damage, this man’s life? Can we see, in Thoreau’s book about the cape, early evidence of this fabulator’s easy ability to intrigue people?






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Charles T. Jackson graduated from Harvard Medical School, winning the Boylston prize for his dissertation, and left for a field trip in Europe during which he would study medicine and geology.

1829






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Having been appointed as the state geologist, Charles T. Jackson began a 3-year geological-survey tour of Maine, with James Thatcher Hodge (1816-1871) as his assistant. Three annual reports would be published:

Two of these reports would be in the personal library of Henry Thoreau, and would be referred to passim in THE MAINE WOODS.

Charles T. Jackson, M.D.’s FIRST REPORT ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE STATE OF MAINE (Augusta: Smith & Robinson, Printers to the State).

During this year Dr. Augustus Addison Gould became a corresponding member of the Rhode Island Natural History Society and a corresponding member of the Natural History Society of Athens. On page 119 of this report by Jackson on Maine geology is a list of shells found there by Dr. A.A. Gould.

During this year Captain Frederick Marryat passed through Rhode Island and made some observations about railroads and cemeteries:

Stepped on board of the Narangansett steam-vessel for Providence. Here is a fair specimen of Americantravelling:— From New York to Providence, by the Long Island Sound, is two hundred miles; and this isaccomplished, under usual circumstances, in thirteen hours: from Providence to Boston, forty miles by railroad,in two hours — which makes, from New York to Boston, an average speed of sixteen miles an hour, stoppagesincluded.I was, I must confess, rather surprised, when in the railroad cars, to find that we were passing through a church-yard, with tomb-stones on both sides of us. In Rhode Island and Massachusetts, where the pilgrim-fathers firstlanded — the two States that take pride to themselves (and with justice) for superior morality and a strictexercise of religious observances — they look down upon the other States of the Union, especially New York,and cry out, “I thank thee, Lord, that I am not as that publican.” Yet here, in Rhode Island, are the sleepers of

1836

1837

DR. JACKSON’S 1ST RPT.DR. JACKSON’S 2D RPT.DR. JACKSON’S 3D RPT.

TIMELINE OF THE MAINE WOODS

DR. JACKSON’S 1ST RPT.

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/37/1837_CharlesJackson.pdf









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the railway laid over the sleepers in death; here do they grind down the bones of their ancestors for the sake ofgain, and consecrated earth is desecrated by the iron wheels, loaded with Mammon-seeking mortals. And thisin the puritanical state of Rhode Island! Would any engineer have ventured to propose such a line in England?I think not. After all, it is but human nature. I have run over the world a long while, and have always observedthat people are very religious so long as religion does not interfere with their pockets; but, with gold in one handand godliness in the other, the tangible is always preferred to the immaterial. In America everything is sacrificedto time — for time is money. The New Yorkers would have dashed right through the church itself; but then, theyare publicans, and don’t pretend to be good.Boston is a fine city, and, as a commercial one, almost as well situated as New York. It has, however, lost a largeportion of its commerce, which the latter has gradually wrested from it, and it must eventually lose much more.The population of Boston is about eighty thousand, and it has probably more people of leisure in it (that is, outof business and living on their own means) than even Philadelphia; taking into the estimate the differencebetween the populations. They are more learned and scientific here than at New York, though not more so thanat Philadelphia; but they are more English than in any other city in America. The Massachusetts people are veryfond of comparing their country with that of England. The scenery is not unlike; but it is not like England in itshigh state of cultivation. Stone walls are bad substitutes for green hedges. Still, there are some lovely spots inthe environs of Boston. Mount Auburn, laid out as a Père la Chaise, is, in natural beauties, far superior to anyother place of the kind. One would almost wish to be buried there; and the proprietors, anxious to have itpeopled, offer, by their arrangements as to the price of places of interment, a handsome premium to those whowill soonest die and be buried — which is certainly a consideration.Fresh Pond is also a very romantic spot. It is a lake of about two hundred acres, whose water is so pure that theice is transparent as glass. Its proprietor clears many thousand dollars a year by the sale of it. It is cut out inblocks of three feet square, and supplies most parts of America down to New Orleans; and every winter latterlytwo or three ships have been loaded and sent to Calcutta, by which a very handsome profit has been realised.Since I have been here, I have made every enquiry relative to the sea-serpent which frequents this coast alone.There are many hundreds of most respectable people, who, on other points, would be considered as incapableof falsehood, who declare they have seen the animals, and vouch for their existence. It is rather singular that inAmerica there is but one copy of Bishop Pontoppidon’s work on Norway, and in it the sea-serpent is described,and a rough wood-cut of its appearance given. In all the American newspapers a drawing was given of theanimal as described by those who saw it, and it proved to be almost a fac-simile of the one described by theBishop in his work.






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Charles T. Jackson climbed Mount Ktaadn and, in his 2D REPORT ON THE GEOLOGY OF MAINE, wrote of Mount Kineo:

Hornstone, which will answer for flints, occurs invarious parts of the State, where trap-rocks have actedupon silicious slate. The largest mass of this stoneknown in the world is Mount Kineo, upon Moosehead Lake,which appears to be entirely composed of it, and risesseven hundred feet above the lake level. This varietyof hornstone I have seen in every part of New Englandin the form of Indian arrow-heads, hatchets, chisels,etc., which were probably obtained from this mountain

1838

READ MARRYAT TEXT

TIMELINE OF THE MAINE WOODS

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/39/1839_Marryat.fm






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by the aboriginal inhabitants of the country.

Henry Thoreau would comment in THE MAINE WOODS that he had himself

found hundreds of arrow-heads made of the same material.It is generally slate-colored, with white specks,becoming a uniform white where exposed to the light andair, and it breaks with a conchoidal fracture, producinga ragged cutting edge. I noticed some conchoidal hollows

DR. JACKSON’S 2D RPT.

THE MAINE WOODS: Ktaadn, whose name is an Indian word signifyinghighest land, was first ascended by white men in 1804. It wasvisited by Professor J.W. Bailey of West Point in 1836; by Dr.Charles T. Jackson, the State Geologist, in 1837; and by two youngmen from Boston in 1845. All these have given accounts of theirexpeditions. Since I was there, two or three other parties havemade the excursion, and told their stories. Besides these,very few, even among backwoodsmen and hunters, have ever climbedit, and it will be a long time before the tide of fashionabletravel sets that way. The mountainous region of the State of Mainestretches from near the White Mountains, northeasterly onehundred and sixty miles, to the head of the Aroostook River, andis about sixty miles wide. The wild or unsettled portion is farmore extensive. So that some hours only of travel in thisdirection will carry the curious to the verge of a primitiveforest, more interesting, perhaps, on all accounts, than theywould reach by going a thousand miles westward.

CHARLES TURNER, JR.JACOB WHITMAN BAILEY

DR. CHARLES T. JACKSON

EDWARD EVERETT HALE

WILLIAM FRANCIS CHANNING







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more than a foot in diameter. I picked up a small thinpiece which had so sharp an edge that I used it as adull knife, and to see what I could do, fairly cut offan aspen one inch thick with it, by bending it andmaking many cuts; though I cut my fingers badly with theback of it in the meanwhile.

Breveted Major James Duncan Graham of the US Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers was assigned to reconnaissance and surveys for military defenses in Maine. Re-publication of his 1835 A REPORT UPON THE MILITARY AND HYDROGRAPHICAL CHART OF THE EXTREMITY OF CAPE COD: INCLUDING THE TOWNSHIPS OF PROVINCETOWN AND TRURO, WITH THEIR SEACOAST AND SHIP HARBOR: PROJECTED FROM SURVEYS EXECUTED DURING PORTIONS OF THE YEARS 1833, 1834, AND 1835 (United States. Topographical Bureau; this included a map of Provincetown and Truro).

CAPE COD: The Harbor of Provincetown —which, as well as the greaterpart of the Bay, and a wide expanse of ocean, we overlooked fromour perch— is deservedly famous. It opens to the south, is freefrom rocks, and is never frozen over. It is said that the onlyice seen in it drifts in sometimes from Barnstable or Plymouth.Dwight remarks that “The storms which prevail on the Americancoast generally come from the east; and there is no other harboron a windward shore within two hundred miles.” J.D. Graham, whohas made a very minute and thorough survey of this harbor and theadjacent waters, states that “its capacity, depth of water,excellent anchorage, and the complete shelter it affords from allwinds, combine to render it one of the most valuable ship harborson our coast.” It is the harbor of the Cape and of the fishermenof Massachusetts generally. It was known to navigators severalyears at least before the settlement of Plymouth. In Captain JohnSmith’s map of New England, dated 1614, it bears the name ofMilford Haven, and Massachusetts Bay that of Stuard’s Bay.His Highness, Prince Charles, changed the name of Cape Cod to CapeJames; but even princes have not always power to change a namefor the worse, and as Cotton Mather said, Cape Cod is “a namewhich I suppose it will never lose till shoals of codfish be seenswimming on its highest hills.”

GRAHAM

JOHN SMITH






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Charles T. Jackson’s THIRD ANNUAL REPORT ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE STATE OF MAINE (Augusta ME: Smith & Robinson). A copy of this book would be found in Henry Thoreau’s library — he undoubtedly read Jackson’s geological reports on Maine in preparation for his excursions to the Maine woods. Thoreau would arrange for Jackson to give a lecture at the Concord Lyceum in 1841. Jackson would write an endorsement for the family’s lead pencils — highly recommending both the hard lead ones, for engineers, and the softer lead ones, for general use.

1839

DR. JACKSON’S 3D RPT.







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1840s, 1850s: In this timeframe several scientists were glimpsing chromosomes under the microscope, but not having the slightest clue what it was that they were looking at.

Laura Dassow Walls has pointed out in SEEING NEW WORLDS: THOREAU AND HUMBOLDTIAN SCIENCE that to enact the agenda of exploration and investigation being recommended by Alexander von Humboldt would require an army of workers — which on the continent of North America was indeed created, in the form of the tax-funded Corps of Topographical Engineers established by the federal government of the United States of America.

There were in the first half of the 19th Century a multitude of Congress-sponsored scientific expeditions and the control of our new federal government was extended in this manner over much of North America. Geological or natural history surveys funded by state governments had begun in North Carolina in 1823, and by the end of the 1830s such surveys had been initiated by 13 states. In addition the federal government had been funding or assisting with exploration since the expedition of Lewis and Clark, but throughout the 1840s and 1850s the great reconnaissance of the American West was being conducted by Army officers. Lieutenant John Charles Frémont led only three of these numerous expeditions across the western regions of the North

American continent. Between 1840 and 1860, the US government published 60 enormously expensive multi-volume double-folio or oversize treatises on the American West, in addition to 15 treatises on global naval expeditions and uncounted reports of the Coast and Geodetic Survey. Very little of our incessant contemporary dialog about the “free enterprise system” dates back to that era, and the cost of all this seems to have amounted to from 1/4th to 1/3d of the annual federal budget without having in any way set off alarm bells in the minds of the ideologues of the right of the political spectrum!3 Since Humboldt was very much in touch with these activities, a number of the explorers, scientists, and artists of the period may safely be characterized as “Humboldt’s Children”:4 personages such as Karl Bodmer, George Catlin, Frederic Edwin Church, John Charles Frémont, and Professor Thomas Nuttall. However, Louis Agassiz would also need to be characterized as having been a protégé of Humboldt, and Charles Darwin, Professor Asa Gray, and Arnold Henri Guyot. Humboldt corresponded with and was visited by American scientists such as vice-president of the Boston

1840

3. NASA, eat your heart out.4. Goetzmann, William H. NEW LANDS, NEW MEN, AMERICA AND THE SECOND GREAT AGE OF DISCOVERY. NY: Viking, 1986






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Society of Natural History Charles T. Jackson, academic scholars such as Harvard professor George Ticknor, and popular writers such as Washington Irving (to whom in this year we were offering the position of Secretary of the Navy).

Dr. Augustus Addison Gould of Massachusetts General Hospital became a corresponding member of the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia, of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, of the National Institute in Washington DC, and of the American Statistical Association. He published a pioneering work in the United States on the geographical distribution of species, “Results of an Examination of the Shells of Massachusetts and their Geographical Distribution,” in the Boston Journal of Natural History (Volume 3, Art. xviii, pp. 483-494).

James Ellsworth De Kay became First Vice-President of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York. His CATALOGUE OF THE ANIMALS BELONGING TO THE STATE OF N.Y. AS FAR AS THEY HAVE BEEN FIGURED AND DESCRIBED (made May 7, 1839) appeared on pages 7-14 of the FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE STATE MADE JANUARY 24, 1840 (484 pages, New York Assembly Document #50) and was reviewed in the American Journal of Science (Volume 40:73-85). (His “Report of the zoological dept” appeared on pages 15-36 of that same document.)

Beginning with this year, the Boston Society of Natural History would be publishing the record of their meetings:

This had been the year, Charles T. Jackson of the Society later would allege, during which he had discovered the anesthetic properties of ether. It wasn’t merely that he had invented the electric telegraph and then watched as his idea was stolen by that painter scoundrel Samuel F.B. Morse (etc.) — he had benefited mankind and alleviated suffering and he ought to be famous! Not to mention wealthy!

This footnote in Ellen Emerson’s biography of her mother Lydian Emerson, Charles Jackson’s sister, concerns the claims:

A concise statement of Jackson’s case is to be found in the

1841

PROCEEDINGS, FOR 1841

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/41/1841_BSNHproceedings.pdf






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anonymous “Presentation of Facts Relating to the Discovery ofthe Anaesthetic Effects of Ether Vapor by Charles T. Jackson andDisproving the Claim of W.T.G. Morton.” This pamphlet, basedmainly on evidence collected by a Congressional committee, holdsthat Jackson discovered in the winter of 1841-1842 how toproduce anaesthesia by means of sulphuric ether, that hecommunicated his discovery to Morton in 1846, and that Mortonfirst applied ether in a surgical case at the MassachusettsGeneral Hospital in the same year. Jackson and his family werebitter over the failure of Congress to give Jackson properrecognition, and Emerson was convinced that his brother in lawhad suffered a great injustice.

This is strange, for ether had been known as a narcotic substance since 1275, and had been in use by physicians since at least 1794, and the first operation using ether as an anaesthetic (of which we are presently aware) would occur in Georgia in March 1842, and the fact was that “ether parties,” in which the anaesthesia effects of ether were recreationally explored, had been a fixture of the college scene in that era. This had been going literally on for some time. Even Thoreau seems to have taken part in one such event while at Harvard College — and he had graduated in 1837. It sounds to me as common then as college students getting together to blow a joint, today. By the winter of 1841/1842 I’m sure that literally thousands of college men had learned how to “produce anesthesia by means of sulphuric ether,” by mutual experimentation at such college parties and events. But, continuing with Ellen Emerson’s biography of Lydian Emerson, concerns the claims:

When S.F.B. Morse secured a telegraph patent in 1840, CharlesJackson claimed to have explained the method of applyingelectricity to telegraphic use to Morse on board the ship Sullyin 1832. William T. Davis claims that ship’s mate, Blithen,verified Jackson’s claim to him in 1846.

Nothing could ever be based upon such a claim, either then or now, especially since there were several hundred people who actually were building electric apparatuses and conducting experiments and field trials before Morse won the day (he would win primarily by means of his political connections, which got him institutional support others were unable to obtain, for lengths of wire, rights of way, and quantities of electricity).5

February: If you were for some reason to pay a visit to the headquarters of the Society of Mayflower Descendants on North Street in Plymouth, Massachusetts, you would be able to inspect there a rocking chair coated in dark lacquer with, mounted on its back, a brass plaque that announces:

In This Chair Dr. Charles Jackson Discovered Etherization, February 1842

5. It is easier to grasp the nature of this syndrome in retrospect, for we now have a chronological record of the repetitions of this problem in the life of Jackson, and we can see how each of the repetitions was marked with the pattern of 1.) an announcement by someone else, 2.) immediate assertion of a claim to prior discovery, 3.) a markedly bitter struggle, and 4.) denial of Jackson’s claim by all but himself and his small band of sympathizers/relatives. This syndrome occurred in regard to the discovery of guncotton by Christian Friedrich Schönbein, in regard to the invention of the telegraph by Samuel F.B. Morse, in regard to the discovery of the digestive action of the stomach by William Beaumont, and in regard to the discovery that the copper deposits of Lake Superior could be economically mined by Douglass Houghton. In each case –with the marked exception of the mineability of the copper near Lake Superior– the historical record has gone against Jackson (in regard to the copper, Jackson had indeed in 1849 made the initial such assertion — but in such cases we simply do not ever award merit to some individual who merely notes a possibility while neglecting to mount any successful agenda of exploitation).

1842






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January 31, Thursday: Dr. Horace Wells lectured before Dr. John Collins Warren’s class of Harvard Medical students

at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on “The Use of Nitrous Oxide for the Prevention of Pain,”

1845






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and demonstrated “laughing gas” anesthesia for extractions. Dr. William Thomas Green Morton was present.

Afterward Morton consulted with his former teacher, Charles T. Jackson, a chemistry professor at the Medical College of Massachusetts (Harvard Medical School) with whom he had previously done work in the relief of pain, and used sulfuric ether on September 30 and October 16, 1846.

At the first surgery under ether, at Massachusetts General Hospital in this year, when the patient groaned, the operation was deemed by hostile medicos to have been a failure at avoiding “pain ordained by God.”

DENTISTRY






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(Later this patient would confess that actually he had felt nothing.)

Thoreau would have all his teeth pulled under anesthesia, and Waldo Emerson would first espouse the cause of this in-law who would lay claim to have himself originated the use of anesthesia and then eventually would






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himself die under anesthesia.

Well, there is really a question whether Mark Twain was correct, from a medical perspective. The introduction of anesthesia during operations did eventually reduce the general mortality from the point at which 29 people of 100 who were operated on died during or soon after the operation, many due to the pain and the sight of one of their limbs being sawed off (general post-traumatic shock), did reduce it to the point at which only 23 of 100 who were operated on would die immediately or soon. The next major advance in surgery, however, came when surgeons learned to wash their hands before as well as after an operation, and wash their saws between

Viewed in some lights, the discovery of anesthesia wasmore signally charged with beneficent consequences tomankind than any other event in the profane history ofthe world.

–Mark Twain.






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patients, and not operate in room filled with mummies or other dead bodies, etc. (that is, with the discovery by Lister of aseptic surgery). We may notice that the dentist Morton died poor, primarily because his colleagues bitterly opposed these attempts to diminish the mere pain experienced by their patients.

WALDEN: The village appeared to me a great news room; and on oneside, to support it, as once at Redding & Company’s on StateStreet, they kept nuts and raisins, or salt and meal and othergroceries. Some have such a vast appetite for the formercommodity, that is, the news, and such sound digestive organs thatthey can sit forever in public avenues without stirring, and letit simmer and whisper through them like the Etesian winds,or as if inhaling ether, it only producing numbness andinsensibility to pain, –otherwise it would often be painful tohear,– without affecting the consciousness. I hardly ever failed,which I rambled through the village, to see a row of suchworthies, either sitting on a ladder sunning themselves,with their bodies inclined forward and their eyes glancing alongthe line this way and that, from time to time, with a voluptuousexpression, or else leaning against a barn with their hands intheir pockets, like caryatides, as if to prop it up. They, beingcommonly out of doors, heard whatever was in the wind. These arethe coarsest mills, in which all gossip is first rudely digestedor cracked up before it is emptied into finer and more delicatehoppers within doors.

DENTISTRY






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Caroline Lee Hentz’s AUNT PATTY’S SCRAP-BAG.

Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History:

The use of nitrous oxide, or “laughing gas,” in dentistry began to be supplemented by the use of ether, over religious protests, and chloroform (invented in 1831) would follow in 1848.

When the Monthyon Prize of 5,000 francs was jointly awarded by the French Academy of Medicine to Charles T. Jackson of the Boston Society of Natural History and William Thomas Green Morton, Dr. Morton refused his share, because, he said, the discovery had been his and his alone and therefore the entire prize belonged to him and him alone!

1846








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DID DRUG USE AT HARVARD START ANESTHESIOLOGY?

The three main actors in the story of the discovery of anesthesia, William Thomas Green Morton, Charles T. Jackson and Horace Wells, three Harvard College dental students who turned on with nitrous oxide in the 1840s, would fall to fighting over who should get the credit, with disastrous results. Wells started it all by doing experiments with nitrous oxide but failed to follow through. Jackson put Morton onto ether but it was Morton who thought out and performed the research, took the risks, and developed a safe and reliable method. In support of Morton’s claim mention is made of a Boston chemical supplier named Theodore Metcalf, and a maker of surgical instruments named Wightman. Only after the risks had been taken and the discovery accepted by the medical establishment did Jackson try to cash in, claiming that he had been the head and Morton merely the hands:

• Jackson, 1805-1880 — chemistry professor at Harvard (Semmelweis also died in an insane asylum, of puerperal fever, with Lister performing the 1st operation using antisepsis as well as anesthesia on the following day)

• Wells, 1817-1848• Morton, 1819-1868 — this Boston dentist and former student of Jackson’s suffered a nervous

breakdown and spent the rest of his life battling poverty; four times he was voted a pension by Congress, but four times it reversed itself when Jackson and others pressed their claims.

We have an extant letter from one of Thoreau’s Harvard chums, which talks about students turning on with nitrous oxide back in the late 1830s. So, in the Kouroo database, we have a link between Thoreau and Jackson, and then a link between Emerson and Jackson in that his 2d wife Lydian was a blood relative of Jackson and in that Emerson was espousing Jackson’s claim to have originated anesthesiology. And, in the database, we have a link between Thoreau and painless dentistry in that he had all his teeth pulled at once under anesthesia and commented afterward about how his soul had been simply dissolved for a time in a chemical (!) — but up to this point we have not had a link between Thoreau’s absolute rejection of all recreational drug use, and the early drug scene at Harvard. What is being pointed at here could be extremely new and relevant, a wonderful tie-in if it might be established.

Morton and Jackson together sought to take out a government patent on their “Letheon.” When it became clear that in order to secure such a patent they would need not only to perform a surgical operation using the compound but also to reveal to all the secret nature of the compound to prove it wasn’t a quack remedy, Morton was willing to do so in full awareness that he was thereby kissing his dreams of wealth good-bye. Jackson however became furious at the though of such wealth-destroying disclosure and the animosity between these two men dates from that point forward. The Thoreau family faced the same problem in that era in which America essentially was a pirate nation, stealing patents, in regard to its processing of graphite. For them to have attempted to patent the process they were using in the hope of obtaining money for the leasing of this technology would have required them to reveal their processing secrets to the government, which in effect would have been for them to have given their trade secrets away for free. Nowadays we don’t think of the USA as a pirate nation, so when Chinese factories copy our music CDs and our computer programs and our medical textbooks and sells them on the world market for ridiculously low prices and pays no royalties, we are exceedingly indignant. We have forgotten that that was precisely the manner in which we ourselves once operated.

The defense in the Webster murder trial relied on expert witnesses who by the sheerest of coincidences or for some underlying unstated reason happened to be also supporters of the one side of the anesthesia controversy, while the prosecution in the trial relied on expert witnesses who by the sheerest of coincidences or for some underlying unstated reason happened to be also supporters of the other side of that controversy.






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September 30, Wednesday: At 9PM in his Boston dental office, a tooth was successfully extracted by dentist William Thomas Green Morton while his patient the city merchant Eben H. Frost was under sulfuric ether.







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Margaret Fuller reported to the New-York Tribune about her having gotten lost in the Ben Lomond terrain — and after her death this would appear in AT HOME AND ABROAD:

Birmingham, September 30th, 1846.I was obliged to stop writing at Edinburgh before the betterhalf of my tale was told, and must now begin there again, tospeak of an excursion into the Highlands, which occupied abouta fortnight.We left Edinburgh, by coach for Perth, and arrived there aboutthree in the afternoon. I have reason to be very glad that Ivisit this island before the reign of the stage-coach is quiteover. I have been constantly on the top of the coach, even oneday of drenching rain, and enjoy it highly. Nothing can be moreinspiring than this swift, steady progress over such smoothroads, and placed so high as to overlook the country freely,with the lively flourish of the horn preluding every pause.Travelling by railroad is, in my opinion, the most stupid






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process on earth; it is sleep without the refreshment of sleep,for the noise of the train makes it impossible either to read,talk, or sleep to advantage. But here the advantages areimmense; you can fly through this dull trance from one beautifulplace to another, and stay at each during the time that wouldotherwise be spent on the road. Already the artists, who areobliged to find their home in London, rejoice that all Englandis thrown open to them for sketching-ground, since they can nowavail themselves of a day’s leisure at a great distance, andwith choice of position, whereas formerly they were obliged toconfine themselves to a few “green, and bowery” spots in theneighborhood of the metropolis. But while in the car, it is tome that worst of purgatories, the purgatory of dulness.Well, on the coach we went to Perth, and passed through Kinross,and saw Loch Leven, and the island where Queen Mary passed thosesorrowful months, before her romantic escape under care of theDouglas. As this unhappy, lovely woman stands for a type inhistory, death, time, and distance do not destroy her attractivepower. Like Cleopatra, she has still her adorers; nay, some areborn to her in each new generation of men. Lately she has forher chevalier the Russian Prince Labanoff, who has spentfourteen years in studying upon all that related to her, andthinks now that he can make out a story and a picture about themysteries of her short reign, which shall satisfy the desire ofher lovers to find her as pure and just as she was charming. Ihave only seen of his array of evidence so much, as may be foundin the pages of Chambers’s Journal, but that much does notdisturb the original view I have taken of the case; which is,that from a princess educated under the Medici and Guiseinfluence, engaged in the meshes of secret intrigue to favor theRoman Catholic faith, her tacit acquiescence, at least, in themurder of Darnley, after all his injurious conduct toward her,was just what was to be expected. From a poor, beautiful youngwoman, longing to enjoy life, exposed both by her position andher natural fascinations to the utmost bewilderment of flattery,whether prompted by interest or passion, her other acts of follyare most natural, and let all who feel inclined harshly tocondemn her remember to“Gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman.”Surely, in all the stern pages of life’s account-book there isnone on which a more terrible price is exacted for every preciousendowment. Her rank and reign only made her powerless to do good,and exposed her to danger; her talents only served to irritateher foes and disappoint her friends. This most charming of womenwas the destruction of her lovers: married three times, she hadnever any happiness as a wife, but in both the connections ofher choice found that she had either never possessed or couldnot retain, even for a few weeks, the love of the men she hadchosen, so that Darnley was willing to risk her life and thatof his unborn child to wreak his wrath upon Rizzio, and after afew weeks with Bothwell she was heard “calling aloud for a knifeto kill herself with.” A mother twice, and of a son and daughter,both the children were brought forth in loneliness and sorrow,and separated from her early, her son educated to hate her, herdaughter at once immured in a convent. Add the eighteen yearsof her imprisonment, and the fact that this foolish, prodigalworld, when there was in it one woman fitted by her grace and






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loveliness to charm all eyes and enliven all fancies, sufferedher to be shut up to water with her tears her dull embroideryduring all the full rose-blossom of her life, and you will hardlyget beyond this story for a tragedy, not noble, but pallid andforlorn.Such were the bootless, best thoughts I had while looking at thedull blood-stain and blocked-up secret stair of Holyrood, at theruins of Loch Leven castle, and afterward at Abbotsford, wherethe picture of Queen Mary’s head, as it lay on the pillow whensevered from the block, hung opposite to a fine caricature of“Queen Elizabeth dancing high and disposedly.” In this last theface is like a mask, so frightful is the expression of coldcraft, irritated, vanity, and the malice of a lonely breast incontrast with the attitude and elaborate frippery of the dress.The ambassador looks on dismayed; the little page can scarcelycontrol the laughter which swells his boyish cheeks. Such canwin the world which, better hearts (and such Mary’s was, evenif it had a large black speck in it) are most like to lose.That was a most lovely day on which we entered Perth, and sawin full sunshine its beautiful meadows, among them the North-Inch, the famous battle-ground commemorated in “The Fair Maidof Perth,” adorned with graceful trees like those of the NewEngland country towns. In the afternoon we visited the modernKinfauns, the stately home of Lord Grey. The drive to it is mostbeautiful, on the one side the Park, with noble heights thatskirt it, on the other through a belt of trees was seen the riverand the sweep of that fair and cultivated country. The house isa fine one, and furnished with taste, the library large, andsome good works in marble. Among the family pictures onearrested my attention, — the face of a girl full of the mostpathetic sensibility, and with no restraint of convention uponits ardent, gentle expression. She died young.Returning, we were saddened, as almost always on leaving anysuch place, by seeing such swarms of dirty women and dirtierchildren at the doors of the cottages almost close by the gateof the avenue. To the horrors and sorrows of the streets in suchplaces as Liverpool, Glasgow, and, above all, London, one hasto grow insensible or die daily; but here in the sweet, fresh,green country, where there seems to be room for everybody, itis impossible to forget the frightful inequalities between thelot of man and man, or believe that God can smile upon a stateof things such as we find existent here. Can any man who hasseen these things dare blame the Associationists for theirattempt to find prevention against such misery and wickednessin our land? Rather will not every man of tolerable intelligenceand good feeling commend, say rather revere, every earnestattempt in that direction, nor dare interfere with any, unlesshe has a better to offer in its place?Next morning we passed on to Crieff, in whose neighborhood wevisited Drummond Castle, the abode, or rather one of the abodes,of Lord Willoughby D’Eresby. It has a noble park, through whichyou pass by an avenue of two miles long. The old keep is stillascended to get the fine view of the surrounding country; andduring Queen Victoria’s visit, her Guards were quartered there.But what took my fancy most was the old-fashioned garden, fullof old shrubs and new flowers, with its formal parterres in theshape of the family arms, and its clipped yew and box trees. It






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was fresh from a shower, and now glittering and fragrant inbright sunshine.This afternoon we pursued our way, passing through theplantations of Ochtertyre, a far more charming place to my tastethan Drummond Castle, freer and more various in its features.Five or six of these fine places lie in the neighborhood ofCrieff, and the traveller may give two or three days to visitingthem with a rich reward of delight. But we were pressing on tobe with the lakes and mountains rather, and that night broughtus to St. Fillan’s, where we saw the moon shining on Loch Earn.All this region, and that of Loch Katrine and the Trosachs, whichwe reached next day, Scott has described exactly in “The Ladyof the Lake”; nor is it possible to appreciate that poem, withoutgoing thither, neither to describe the scene better than he hasdone after you have seen it. I was somewhat disappointed in thepass of the Trosachs itself; it is very grand, but the grandpart lasts so little while. The opening view of Loch Katrine,however, surpassed, expectation. It was late in the afternoonwhen we launched our little boat there for Ellen’s isle.The boatmen recite, though not con molto espressione, the parts of thepoem which describe these localities. Observing that they spokeof the personages, too, with the same air of confidence, we askedif they were sure that all this really happened. They replied,“Certainly; it had been told from father to son through so manygenerations.” Such is the power of genius to interpolate whatit will into the regular log-book of Time’s voyage.Leaving Loch Katrine the following day, we entered Rob Roy’scountry, and saw on the way the house where Helen MacGregor wasborn, and Rob Roy’s sword, which is shown in a house by the way-side.We came in a row-boat up Loch Katrine, though both on that andLoch Lomond you may go in a hateful little steamer with asqueaking fiddle to play Rob Roy MacGregor O. I walked almostall the way through the pass from Loch Katrine to Loch Lomond;it was a distance of six miles; but you feel as if you couldwalk sixty in that pure, exhilarating air. At Inversnaid we tookboat again to go down Loch Lomond to the little inn ofRowardennan, from which the ascent is made of Ben Lomond, thegreatest elevation in these parts. The boatmen are fine,athletic men; one of those with us this evening, a handsome youngman of two or three and twenty, sang to us some Gaelic songs.The first, a very wild and plaintive air, was the expostulationof a girl whose lover has deserted her and married another. Itseems he is ashamed, and will not even look at her when theymeet upon the road. She implores him, if he has not forgottenall that scene of bygone love, at least to lift up his eyes andgive her one friendly glance. The sad crooning burden of thestanzas in which she repeats this request was very touching.When the boatman had finished, he hung his head and seemedashamed of feeling the song too much; then, when we asked foranother, he said he would sing another about a girl that washappy. This one was in three parts. First, a tuneful addressfrom a maiden to her absent lover; second, his reply, assuringher of his fidelity and tenderness; third, a strain whichexpresses their joy when reunited. I thought this boatman hadsympathies which would prevent his tormenting any poor women,and perhaps make some one happy, and this was a pleasant thought,






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since probably in the Highlands, as elsewhere,“Maidens lend an ear too oft To the careless wooer; Maidens’hearts are always soft; Would that men’s were truer!”I don’t know that I quote the words correctly, but that is thesum and substance of a masculine report on these matters.The first day at Rowardennan not being propitious for ascendingthe mountain, we went down the lake to sup, and got very tiredin various ways, so that we rose very late next morning. Theirwe found a day of ten thousand for our purpose; but unhappily alarge party had come with the sun and engaged all the horses,so that, if we went, it must be on foot. This was something ofan enterprise for me, as the ascent is four miles, and towardthe summit quite fatiguing; however, in the pride of newlygained health and strength, I was ready, and set forth with Mr.S. alone. We took no guide, — and the people of the house didnot advise it, as they ought. They told us afterward they thoughtthe day was so clear that there was no probability of danger,and they were afraid of seeming mercenary about it. It was,however, wrong, as they knew what we did not, that even theshepherds, if a mist comes on, can be lost in these hills; thata party of gentlemen were so a few weeks before, and only byaccident found their way to a house on the other side; and thata child which had been lost was not found for five days, longafter its death. We, however, nothing doubting, set forth,ascending slowly, and often stopping to enjoy the points ofview, which are many, for Ben Lomond consists of a congeries ofhills, above which towers the true Ben, or highest peak, as thehead of a many-limbed body.On reaching the peak, the night was one of beauty and grandeursuch as imagination never painted. You see around you no plainground, but on every side constellations or groups of hillsexquisitely dressed in the soft purple of the heather, amidwhich gleam the lakes, like eyes that tell the secrets of theearth and drink in those of the heavens. Peak beyond peak caughtfrom the shifting light all the colors of the prism, and on thefarthest, angel companies seemed hovering in their gloriouswhite robes.Words are idle on such subjects; what can I say, but that it wasa noble vision, that satisfied the eye and stirred theimagination in all its secret pulses? Had that been, asafterward seemed likely, the last act of my life, there couldnot have been a finer decoration painted on the curtain whichwas to drop upon it.About four o’clock we began our descent. Near the summit thetraces of the path are not distinct, and I said to Mr. S., aftera while, that we had lost it. He said, he thought that was ofno consequence, we could find oar way down. I thought howeverit was, as the ground was full of springs that were bridged overin the pathway. He accordingly went to look for it, and I stoodstill because so tired that I did not like to waste any labor.Soon he called to me that he had found it, and I followed in thedirection where he seemed to be. But I mistook, overshot it, andsaw him no more. In about ten minutes I became alarmed, andcalled him many times. It seems he on his side did the same, butthe brow of some hill was between us, and we neither saw norheard one another.I then thought I would make the best of my way down, and I should






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find him upon my arrival. But in doing so I found the justiceof my apprehension about the springs, as, so soon as I got tothe foot of the hills, I would sink up to my knees in bog, andhave to go up the hills again, seeking better crossing-places.Thus I lost much time; nevertheless, in the twilight I saw atlast the lake and the inn of Rowardennan on its shore.Between me and it lay direct a high heathery hill, which Iafterward found is called “The Tongue,” because hemmed in onthree sides by a watercourse. It looked as if, could I only getto the bottom of that, I should be on comparatively level ground.I then attempted to descend in the watercourse, but, findingthat impracticable, climbed on the hill again and let myselfdown by the heather, for it was very steep and full of deepholes. With great fatigue I got to the bottom, but when aboutto cross the watercourse there, it looked so deep in the dimtwilight that I felt afraid. I got down as far as I could by theroot of a tree, and threw down a stone; it sounded very hollow,and made me afraid to jump. The shepherds told me afterward, ifI had, I should probably have killed myself, it was so deep andthe bed of the torrent full of sharp stones.I then tried to ascend the hill again, for there was no otherway to get off it, but soon sunk down utterly exhausted. Whenable to get up again and look about me, it was completely dark.I saw far below me a light, that looked about as big as a pin’shead, which I knew to be from the inn at Rowardennan, but heardno sound except the rush of the waterfall, and the sighing ofthe night-wind.For the first few minutes after I perceived I had got to mynight’s lodging, such as it was, the prospect seemed appalling.I was very lightly clad, — my feet and dress were very wet, — Ihad only a little shawl to throw round me, and a cold autumnwind had already come, and the night-mist was to fall on me, allfevered and exhausted as I was. I thought I should not livethrough the night, or, if I did, live always a miserable invalid.There was no chance to keep myself warm by walking, for, now itwas dark, it would be too dangerous to stir.My only chance, however, lay in motion, and my only help inmyself, and so convinced was I of this, that I did keep in motionthe whole of that long night, imprisoned as I was on such alittle perch of that great mountain. How long it seemed undersuch circumstances only those can guess who may have beensimilarly circumstanced. The mental experience of the time, mostprecious and profound, — for it was indeed a season lonely,dangerous, and helpless enough for the birth of thoughts beyondwhat the common sunlight will ever call to being, — may be toldin another place and time.For about two hours I saw the stars, and very cheery andcompanionable they looked; but then the mist fell, and I sawnothing more, except such apparitions as visited Ossian on thehill-side when he went out by night and struck the bosky shieldand called to him the spirits of the heroes and the white-armedmaids with their blue eyes of grief. To me, too, came thosevisionary shapes; floating slowly and gracefully, their whiterobes would unfurl from the great body of mist in which they hadbeen engaged, and come upon me with a kiss pervasively cold asthat of death. What they might have told me, who knows, if I hadbut resigned myself more passively to that cold, spirit-like






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breathing!At last the moon rose. I could not see her, but the silver lightfilled the mist. Then I knew it was two o’clock, and that, havingweathered out so much of the night, I might the rest; and thehours hardly seemed long to me more.It may give an idea of the extent of the mountain to say that,though I called every now and then with all my force, in caseby chance some aid might be near, and though no less than twentymen with their dogs were looking for me, I never heard a soundexcept the rush of the waterfall and the sighing of the night-wind, and once or twice the startling of the grouse in theheather. It was sublime indeed, — a never-to-be-forgottenpresentation of stern, serene realities.At last came the signs of day, the gradual clearing and breakingup; some faint sounds, from I know not what. The little flies,too, arose from their bed amid the purple heather, and bit me;truly they were very welcome to do so. But what was mydisappointment to find the mist so thick, that I could seeneither lake nor inn, nor anything to guide me. I had to go byguess, and, as it happened, my Yankee method served me well. Iascended the hill, crossed the torrent in the waterfall, firstdrinking some of the water, which was as good at that time asambrosia. I crossed in that place because the waterfall madesteps, as it were, to the next hill; to be sure they were coveredwith water, but I was already entirely wet with the mist, sothat it did not matter. I then kept on scrambling, as ithappened, in the right direction, till, about seven, some of theshepherds found me. The moment they came, all my feverishstrength departed, though, if unaided, I dare say it would havekept me up during the day; and they carried me home, where myarrival relieved my friends of distress far greater than I hadundergone, for I had had my grand solitude, my Ossianic visions,and the pleasure of sustaining myself while they had only doubtamounting to anguish and a fruitless search through the night.Entirely contrary to my expectations, I only suffered for thisa few days, and was able to take a parting look at my prison,as I went down the lake, with feelings of complacency. It was amajestic-looking hill, that Tongue, with the deep ravines oneither side, and the richest robe of heather I have seenanywhere.Mr. S. gave all the men who were looking for me a dinner in thebarn, and he and Mrs. S. ministered to them, and they talked ofBurns, really the national writer, and known by them,apparently, as none other is, and of hair-breadth escapes byflood and fell. Afterwards they were all brought up to see me,and it was pleasing indeed to observe the good breeding and good,feeling with which they deported themselves on the occasion.Indeed, this adventure created quite an intimate feeling betweenus and the people there. I had been much pleased, with thembefore, in attending one of their dances, on account of thegenuine independence and politeness of their conduct. They werewilling and pleased to dance their Highland flings andstrathspeys for our amusement, and did it as naturally and asfreely as they would have offered the stranger the best chair.All the rest must wait a while. I cannot economize time to keepup my record in any proportion with what happens, nor can I getout of Scotland on this page, as I had intended, without utterly






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slighting many gifts and graces.6

October 16, Friday: This is the day that would come to be known as “Ether Day.” At approximately 10:15AM in the Bulfinch building at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Junior Surgeon Henry Jacob Bigelow had arranged for a demonstration of anesthesia with Senior Surgeon John Collins Warren. Joseph M. Wightman and Nathan B. Chamberlain had blown a glass reservoir with which to administer the sulfuric ether, using pass-over vaporization, and then changes had been made in the device by the dentist William Thomas Green Morton and Dr. Augustus Addison Gould. The patient was 20 year-old charity patient, Edward Gilbert Abbott, a printer and editor who needed to have a congenital vascular malformation removed from his neck.

What was underway here would reduce the deaths from operative and post-surgery shock from 29 patients in 100 to 24 patients in 100. The 1944 film “The Great Moment” is worth seeing.7

6. Walt Whitman clipped from the newspaper Margaret’s account of getting lost on Ben Lomond.

ARTHUR FULLER’S BOOK

“Gentlemen, this is no humbug.”

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/46/SEP/30sep1846_MargaretFullerREPORT.pdf






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Nathaniel Peabody Rogers died at a mere 52 years of age shortly after his return home to New Hampshire from Lynn MA. As he lay dying, he asked that Judson Hutchinson of the Hutchinson Family Singers come to the home and sing for him. Judson rushed there but was, apparently, too late.

October 17, Saturday: A 2nd operation using sulfuric ether.

7. Of course, surgeons could have saved far more lives if they had gotten those mummies out of the operating room, and washed their hands before operating as well as afterwards, and if, between amputations, they had cleaned their saws.







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October 27, Tuesday: R.H. Eddy, son of a patent commissioner and a friend of Charles T. Jackson, persuaded him to add his name to an ether patent.

December 9, Wednesday: Dr. Horace Wells published a claim as the discoverer of general anesthesia by use of nitrous oxide, in the Daily Hartford Courant.

Mr. Editor: — You are aware that there has been muchsaid of late respecting a gas, which, when inhaled, so






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paralizes the system as to render it insensible to pain.The Massachusetts General Hospital have adopted itsuse, and amputations are now being performed withoutpain. Surgeons generally throughout the country, areanxiously waiting to know what it is, that they may makea trial of it, and many have already done so withuniform success. As Drs. Charles T. Jackson and W.T.G.Morton, of Boston, claim to be the originators of thisinvaluable discovery, I will give a short history of itsfirst introduction, that the public may decide to whombelongs the honor.While reasoning from analogy, I was led to believe thatthe inhaling of any exhilarating gas, sufficient tocause a great nervous excitement, would so paralize thesystem as to render it insensible to pain, or nearly so;for it is well known, that when an individual is verymuch excited by passion, he scarcely feels the severewounds which may at the time be inflicted, and theindividual who is said to be “dead drunk”, may receivesevere blows, apparently without the least pain, andwhen in this state, is much more tenacious of life thanwhen in the natural state. I accordingly resolved to tryt he experiment of inhaling an exhilarating gas myself,for the purpose of having a tooth extracted. I thenobtained some nitrous oxide gas, and requested Dr. J.M.Riggs to perform the operation at the moment when Ishould give the signal, resolving to have the toothextracted before losing all consciousness. Thisexperiment proved to be perfectly successful — it wasattended with no pain whatever. I then performed thesame operation on twelve or fifteen others with the sameresults.I was so much elated with this discovery, that I startedimmediately for Boston, resolving to give it into thehands of proper persons, without expecting to derive anypecuniary benefit, therefrom. I called on DoctorsWarren and Hayward, and made known to them the resultof the experiments I had made. They appeared to beinterested in the matter and treated me with muchkindness and attention. I was invited by Dr. Warren toaddress the Medical Class upon the subject, at the closeof his lecture. I accordingly embraced the opportunity,and took occasion to remark that the same result wouldbe produced, let the nervous system be excitedsufficiently by any means whatever; that I had made usof nitrous oxide gas or protoxide of nitrogen as beingthe most harmless. I was then invited to administer itto one of their patients, who was expecting to have alimb amputated. I remained some two or three days inBoston for this purpose, but the patient decided not tohave the operation performed at the time. It was thenproposed that I should administer it to an individualfor the purpose of extracting a tooth. Accordingly alarge number of students, with several physicians, metto see the operation performed — one of their number tobe the patient. Unfortunately for the experiment, thegas bag was my mistake withdrawn much too soon, and he






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was but partially under its influence when the tooth wasextracted. He testified that he experienced some pain,but not as much as usually attended the operation. Asthere was no other patient present, that the experimentmight be repeated, and as several expressed theiropinion that it was a humbug affair, (which in fact wasall the thanks I got for this gratuitous service), Iaccordingly left the next morning for home. — While inBoston, I conversed with Drs. Charles T. Jackson andW.T.G. Morton upon the subject, both of whom admittedit to be entirely new to them. Dr. Jackson expressedmuch surprise that severe operations could be performedwithout pain, and these are the individuals who claimto be the inventors. When I commenced giving the gas, Inoticed one very remarkable circumstance attending it,which was, that those who sat down resolving to have anoperation performed under its influence, had nodisposition to exert the muscular system in the least,but would remain quiet as if partially asleep. Whereas,if the same individuals were to inhale the gas under anyother circumstances, it would seem impossible torestrain them from over exertion.I would here remark, that when I was deciding whatexhilarating agent to use for this purpose, itimmediately occurred to me that it would be best to usenitrous oxide gas or Sulphuric Ether. I advised with Dr.Nancy, of this city, and by his advice I continued touse the former, as being the least likely to do injury,although it was attended with more trouble in itspreparation. If Drs. Jackson and Morton claim, that theyuse something else, I reply that it is the same inprinciple if not in name, and they cannot use anythingwhich will produce more satisfactory results, and I madethose results known to both of these individuals morethan a year since.After making the above statement of facts, I leave itfor the public to decide to whom belongs the honor ofthis discovery.

Yours truly,Horace Wells, Surgeon Dentist.






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Dr. Augustus Addison Gould became a member of the Essex County (Massachusetts) Natural History Society. He published a “Description of Shells collected by Dr. C. T. Jackson on the Shores of Lake Superior,” Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, ii, pp. 262-264, 1847 (woodcuts). OTIA CONCHOLOGICA, pp. 201-202, 1862.

John Wells Foster and Josiah Dwight Whitney joined Charles T. Jackson, United States Geologist for the Lake Superior land district and the leader of a Geological Survey of that important copper-extraction region.

Jackson’s leadership would prove disastrous, he would be dismissed from his position, and the assistants Foster and Whitney would in 1850 be charged to complete the survey.

1847






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Waldo Emerson returned to London in the company of Joseph Neuberg, a Jewish businessman of Nottingham who desired to be introduced to Thomas Carlyle.8 While in London this time Emerson would be introduced to

Sir Charles Lyell (he having just been knighted), and to Thomas Babington Macaulay. While visiting the Royal College of Surgeons he would attempt to interest these British physicians in the claims then being made by his chemist brother-in-law Dr. Charles T. Jackson of the Boston Society of Natural History, to having himself been the uncredited discoverer of the anesthetic use of sulfuric ether — only to be informed that these surgeons had moved on from sulfuric ether to chloroform and were uninterested in these elaborate opposing historic allegations in regard to this obsoleted anesthetic substance, which the visiting American literary layman

1848

8. Later, Neuberg would assist Thomas Carlyle with FREDERICK.






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needed to recount.DENTISTRY







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May: While spraying his fruit trees for slugs, an appropriate analogy occurred to Waldo Emerson.

His brother-in-law Charles T. Jackson of the Boston Society of Natural History, who had filed for a US patent on the use of sulfuric ether as an anesthetic but who could get no credit for this, had “more vicious enemies

1849






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than any slugs that are on my leaves.”

January 17: Fredrika Bremer, the Swedish novelist, and Charles T. Jackson, Lydian’s brother, were brought out from Boston to Concord for a long weekend (until the 21st) in the Emerson household.

1850







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MARCH 21, THURSDAY: FROM THE SALEM Register: “HAWTHORNE SEEKS TO VENT HIS SPITE ... BY SMALL SNEERS AT SALEM, AND BY VILIFYING SOME OF HIS FORMER ASSOCIATES, TO A DEGREE OF WHICH WE SHOULD HAVE SUPPOSED ANY GENTLEMAN ... INCAPABLE.... THE MOST VENOMOUS, MALIGNANT, AND UNACCOUNTABLE ASSAULT IS MADE UPON A VENERABLE GENTLEMAN, WHOSE CHIEF CRIME SEEMS TO BE THAT HE LOVES A GOOD DINNER.”

THE CHEMIST Charles T. Jackson, MRS. Lidian Emerson’S BROTHER THE ether CONTROVERSIALIST, TESTIFIED FOR THE PROSECUTION IN RE THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS V. John White Webster THAT NO TRACES OF THE NORMAL EMBALMING PRESERVATIVES HAD BEEN FOUND IN THE REMAINS OF Doctor George Parkman. HE ALSO COMMENTED THAT HE NOTICED THAT THE 6-INCH BOWIE KNIFE WHICH THE PROFESSOR HAD HABITUALLY KEPT ON HIS DESK HAD SEEMED TO HAVE BEEN RECENTLY CLEANED.

In the middle of the testimony there was a ruckus, for a portion of the Tremont House had gone up in flames and fire brigades were rushing to the rescue.9

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE


WILLIAM THOMAS GREEN MORTON






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March 27, Wednesday: The defense began to present its case in re the Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. John White Webster. Perhaps it is not entirely surprising that, since the chemist Charles T. Jackson had testified for the

9. The Redding & Company that is mentioned in the above snippet from WALDEN was a periodical depot at 8 State Street in downtown Boston. They served the “easy reading” end of the market. The company had begun as a newspaper depot in the 1830s, became a periodical depot in the 1840s, and by the 1850s was a book publisher and seller as well as a tea merchant. George W. Redding (1824-1892) had started as a newsboy, then became a New-York newspaper distributor, then the proprietor of a periodical depot and a publisher of pamphlets such as “Easy Nat; or, Boston Bars and Boston Boys” (1844). Here is the sort of advice it offered to aspiring authors: “You see, our readers want everything condensed, rapid, dramatic. Take any ordinary novel, and cut it down one-half, and it’ll be twice as good as it was before.” Thoreau mentions that they didn’t merely sell magazines and dime novels and tea, but also, sold a few snack items such as nuts and raisins and a few bulk items such as salt and meal. They were really going after the extreme low end of the readership market, “the end with the munchies.” They were certainly never going to offer to sell anyone a book such as WALDEN, although they might well offer the “Readers’ Digest” version (yes, there is such), or one or another of those many-Thoreau-snippets-out-of-context market opportunities that one or another clown seems to be forever generating!






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prosecution, the anesthesia dentist William Thomas Green Morton would testify for the defense. The two men

were professional enemies locked in combat for the great prestige of having been the first to recognize the value of anesthesia during protracted surgery. Doctor Morton suggested that the dental remains which had been discovered in the assay oven could have come from just about any poor stiff who had been cut up in the medical school as a dissection cadaver. Many men’s mouths, in his observation, had exactly Doctor George Parkman’s condition of teeth and dental appliances. The panel of judges found this testimony to be not entirely convincing and would say so, as the dentist who had prepared Parkman’s partial plate had already testified in great detail






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as to all the various characteristics by which he was quite certain that this was the scorched remains of the plate which he had only recently taken the greatest of pains to create and fit for this specific deceased.

DENTISTRY






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June 2: Father Isaac Hecker, CSSR wrote to Orestes Augustus Brownson, Esq.

The Boston Medical Surgical Journal (46:359-360) announced, in regard to the controversy over the discovery of Anæsthesia, that the members of the French Academy had, on the representation of Charles Thomas Jackson’s friend Elie de Beaumont, awarded to him one of the Mouthyon prizes, involving a Gold Medal of Merit (it seems they had made no inquiry whatever into the validity of his claims and were unaware of the existence of a dispute). Here is Jackson proudly sporting his French award:

1852






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January 15, day: Would this have been the occasion on which Henry Thoreau read, in the PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOSTON NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Volume 4, a contribution by Dr. W.I. Burnett dating to July 20, 1853?

–and a contribution by Dr. Charles T. Jackson dating to December 1852, and made notes on these in his 2d Commonplace Book?

Dr. C.T. Jackson said, that he had recentlyobserved in a pond near Plymouth, Mass. The Bream(Potomis vulgaris) guarding its eggs. The nest wasformed of gravel pasted together with the eggs, and

1858






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over it the fish kept its watch. On driving itaway, it constantly returned when the alarm hadpassed. It could be approached so as to be easilythrown on shore with the hands. On breaking up thenest, the fish disappeared. Similar facts had beennoticed of late years in the habits of many fish,but Dr. Jackson was not aware that they had beennoticed with regard to this species.

January 15, 1858. At Natural History Rooms, Boston.Looked at the little grebe. Its feet are not webbed with lobes on the side like the coot, and it is quite whitebeneath. Saw the good-sized duck–velvet duck, with white spot on wing–which is commonly called “coot” onsalt water. They have a living young bald eagle in the cellar. Talked with Dr. Kneeland. They have a goldeneagle from Lexington, which K. obtained two or three years since, the first Dr. Cabot has heard of inMassachusetts. Speaking to him of my night-warbler, he asked if it uttered such a note, making the note of themyrtle-bird, ah, te-te-te te-te-te te-te-te, exactly, and said that that was the note of the white-throated sparrow,which he heard at Lake Superior, at night as well as by day.10

Same afternoon, saw Dr. Durkee in Howard Street. He has not seen the common glow-worm, and called his avariety of Lampyris noctiluca. Showed to Agassiz, Gould, and Jackson, and it was new to them. They thoughtit a variety of the above. His were luminous throughout, mine only in part of each segment.Saw some beautiful painted leaves in a shop window,–maple and oak.

June 3, day: John Brown left Boston with $500 in gold and with permission to retain the rifles he had in the Kansas Territory.

Henry Thoreau for the 15th time (Dr. Bradley P. Dean has noticed) deployed in his journal a weather term that had been originated by Luke Howard: “Yet I was surprised to observe that a long, straggling downy cumulus extending north and south a few miles east of us, when the sun was perhaps an hour high, cast its shadow along the base of the Peterboro Hills, and did not fall on the other side, as I should have expected.”

June 3. At length, by 3 o’clock, the signs of dawn appear, and soon -we hear the robin and the Fringillahyemalis, -its prolonged jingle, -sitting on the top of a, spruce, the chewink, and the wood thrush. Whether youhave slept soundly or not, it is not easy to lie abed under these circumstances, and we rose at 3.30, in order tosee the sun rise from the top and get our breakfast there. Concealing our blankets under a shelving rock near thecamp, we set out. It was still hazy, and we did not see the shadow of the mountain until it was comparatively short. We (lid notget the most distant views, as of the Green and White Mountains, while we were there. We carried up fuel forthe last quarter of a mile. A Fringilla hyemalis seemed to be attracted by the smoke of our fire, and flew quitenear to us. They are the prevailing bird of the summit, and perhaps are baited by the crumbs left by visitors. Itwas flitting about there, and it would sit and sing, on the top of a dwarf spruce, the strain I have often heard.I saw just beneath the summit, and commencing some fifteen or twenty rods from it, dwarfish RhodoraCanadensis, not yet anywhere quite out, much later than in file valley, very common; lambkill; andcheckerberry; in slightly boggy places, quite dwarfish specimens of Eriophorum vaginatum, quite common insimilar localities all over the rocky part, six inches high or more. A little water andromeda with it, scarcer out,and Labrador tea., scarcely suggesting flowers. (This I observed only in two or three places on the northerlyside.) A viburnum (probably nudum or a form of it) was quite common, just begun to leaf, and withne7nopauthes, showing its transparent leafets not jet expanded, a little behind the other, was quite sizable,especially the latter. These two, with the spruce, the largest shrubs at this height. In the little thickets made bythese bushes, grew the two-leaved Solomon’s-seal, not nearly out, and Clintonia borealis, not budded, thoughout in the valley. Within the folded leaves of the last, was considerable water, as within the leaves of the seasidegoldenrod on the sands of the Cape. Cornus Canadensis, along the base of the rocks, not out. Diervilla. And,on the moist ground or in the small bogs, Lycopodium annotinum, resembling at first sight the L. lucidulum, butrunning, was very common in boggy places, sometimes forming quite conspicuous green patches.Tile above plants of the mountain-top, except perhaps the mountain cranberry, extended downward over the

10. Vide his report, July 15, 1857.

THE BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY






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whole top or rocky part of the mountain and were there mingled wil.h a little Polypodium vulgare; a peculiarAmelanchier Canadensis, apparently variety oligocarpa, just begun to bloom, with few flowers, short roundishpetals, and finely serrate leaves; red cherry, not out; Populus tremuliformis, not common and quite small; smallwillows, apparently discolor, etc., also rostrata, and maybe humilis; canoe birch and yellow birch, for the mostpart scrubby, largest in swampy places; meadow-sweet; Lycopodium clavatum; Amelanchier Canadensis var.oblongifolia, not quite out, a little of it; and also a little very dwarfish hemlock and white pine (two or three feethigh); a little mayflower and Chiogenes hispidula. We concluded to explore the whole rocky part of the mountain in this wise, to saunter slowly about it, about theheight and distance from the summit. of our camp, or say half a mile, more or less, first going north from thesummit and returning by the western semicircle, and then exploring the east side, completing the circle, andreturn over the summit at night.To sum up, these were the Plants of the Summit, i.e. within a dozen rods of it: Potentilla tridentata (and lower);Vaccinium Vitis-Idœa; fine grass [Was it not Juncus trifidus of August, 1860?]; sericocarpus-like radical leaves[Was it not Solidago thyrsoidea of August, 1860?]; Arenaria Grœnlandica; dwarf black spruce; a little drymoss; the two kinds of cladonia, white and green, and the small leather-colored lichen of rocks [U. erosa (?) orhyperborea (?). Vide Sept. 21, 1858, and a specimen from Lafayette. Vide specimen of August, 1860.], mingledwith the larger Umbilicaria pustulata. All these but the V. Vitis-Idœa generally dispersed over the rocky part[The Vaccinium Vitis-Idœa also in patches lower down. Vide August, 1860.].Within fifteen or twenty rods of it, or scarcely, if at all, lower than the last: Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum andperhaps the variety angustifolium; Pyrus arbutifolia; mountain-ash. Generally distributed.Commencing fifteen or twenty rods below it: Rhodora; lambkill; checkerberry; Eriophorum vaginatum; waterandromeda; Labrador tea; Viburnum, (nudum,?); nemopanthes; two-leaved Solomon’s-seal; clintonia; CornusCanadensis; Lycopodium annotinum,; diervilla. Generally lower than the above, in the rest of the bare rocky part, with all of the above: Ribes prostratum;Polypodium vulgaris; Amelanchier Canadensis var. oligocarpa red cherry; Populus tremuliformis; Salixapparently discolor, perhaps also humilis, certainly rostrata.; meadow-sweet; canoe birch; yellow birch;Lycopodium clavatum; Amelanchier oblongifolia; a little red elder; hemlock; white pine; mayflower; chiogenes.[Saw the raspberry in ‘52 and ‘60.]Did not examine particularly the larger growth of the swamps, but think it was chiefly spruce, white and yellowbirch, mountain-ash, etc. The Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum and the Abies nigra are among the most prevailing conspicuous plants. We first descended somewhat toward the north this forenoon, then turned west over a ridge lay which someascend front the north. There: are several large ponds not far from the mountain on the north, and I thought therewas less forest to be seen on this sick than on the south. We crossed chic or two now dry watercourses, there,however, judging from the collections of rubbish or drift, much water must have flown at some other season.Jackson in his map in the Report on the Geology of Massachusetts calls this mountain “mica slate andporphyritic granite,” and [says] that the rocks on the summit are “a hard variety of gneiss filled with smallcrystals of garnets.”We observed that the rocks were remarkably smoothed, almost polished and rounded, and also scratched. Thescratches run from about north-northwest to south-southeast. The sides of the rocks often straight, upright walls,several rods long; from north to south and five to ten feet high, with a very smooth, rounded edge. There weremany of these long, straight, rounded walls of rock, especially on the northwest and west. Some smaller or lowerones were so rounded and smooth as to resemble at a little distance long-fallen trunks of trees. The rocks were,indeed, singularly worn on a great scale. Often a vertical cross-section would show some such profile as this:

as if they had been grooved with a tool of a corresponding edge. There were occasionally conspicuous massesand also veins of white quartz, and very common were bright-purple or wine-colored garnets imbedded in therock, looking like berries in a. pudding’. In many parts, as on the southeast plateau especially, the rocks wereregularly stratified, and split into regular horizontal slabs about a foot in thickness, projecting one beyondanother like steps.The little bogs or mosses, sometimes only a. rod inn diameter, are a: similar feature. Ordinarily the cladonia andother lichens are crackling under your feet, when suddenly you step into a miniature bog filling the spacebetween two rocks and you are at a loss to tell where the moisture comes from. The amount of it seems to bethat some spongy moss is enabled to grow there and retain sonic of the clouds which rest on it. Moisture andaridity are singularly near neighbors to each other up there. The surface is made up of masses of rock more orless smoothed and rounded, or else jagged, and the little soil between is a coarse, gravelly kind, the ruins of therocks and the decayed vegetation that has grown there. You step unexpectedly from Arabia Pretax, where thedry lichens crackle under your feet, into a miniature bog, say Dismal Swamp, where you suddenly sink a footin wet moss, and the next step carries you into Arabia Petraea again. In more extensive swamps I slumpedthrough moss to water sometimes, though the bottom was of rock, while a fire would rapidly spread in the and






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lichens around. Perhaps the mosses grow, in the wettest season chiefly, and so are enabled to retain somemoisture through the driest. Plants of the bogs and of the rocks grow close to each other. You are surprised tosee a great many plants o£ bogs growing close to the most barren and driest spots, where only cladonias coverthe rocks. Often your first notice of a bog in the midst of the avid waste, where the lichens crackle under yourfeet, is your slumping a foot into wet moss. Methinks there cannot he so much evaporation going on up there,-witness the water in the clintonia leaves, as in the solidago by the sandy seashore, and this (which is owing tothe coolness), rather than the prevalence of mist, may account for the presence of this moisture forming bogs.In a shallow rain-water pool, or rock cistern, about three rods long by one or one and a half wide, severalhundred feet below the summit, on the west side, but still on the bare rocky top and on the steepest side of thesummit, I saw toad-spawn (black with white bellies), also some very large spawn new to me. There were fouror five masses of it, each three or four inches in diameter and of a peculiar light misty bluish white as it lay inthe water near the surface, attached to some weed or stick, as usual. Each mass consisted of but few large ova,more than a quarter of an inch in diameter, in which were pale-brown tadpoles flattened out. The outside of themass when taken up was found to consist of large spherical or rounded gelatinous projections three quarters ofan inch wide, and blue in the light and air, while the ova within were greenish. This rain-water pool wasgenerally less than a foot deep, with scarcely a weed in it, but considerable mud concealing its rocky bottom.The spawn was unusually clean and clear. I suspect it to be that of bullfrogs, [Probably Rana jontinalis. VideAugust, 1860.] though not a frog was to be seen; they were probably lurking beneath the rocks in the water atthat hour. This pool was bounded on one or two sides by those rounded walls of rock five or six feet high. Mycompanion had said that he heard a bullfrog the evening before. Is it likely that these toads and frogs everhopped up there? The hylodes peeped regularly toward night each day in a similar pool much nearer the summit.Agassiz might say that they originated on the top. Perhaps they fell from the clouds in tire form of spawn ortadpoles or young frogs. I think it more likely that they fell down than that they hopped up. Yet how can theyescape the frosts of winter? The mud is hardly deep enough to protect them.Having reached the neighborhood of our camp again arid explored the wooded portion lower down along thepath up the mountain, we set out northeast along the cast side of the mountain. The southeast part of themountain-top is an extended broad rocky almost plateau, consisting of large flat rocks with small bogs and rain-water pools and easy ascents to different levels. The black spruce tree which is scattered here and there over it,the prevailing tree or shrub of the mountaintop, evidently has many difficulties to contend with. It is generallyof a yellowish green, its foliage. The most exposed trees are very stout arid spreading close to the rock, oftenmuch wider close to the rock than they are high, and these lower, almost their only, limbs completely filling andcovering openings between the rocks. I saw one which grew out of a narrow crack in the rock, which was threefeet high, five inches in diameter at the ground, arid six feet wide on the rock. It was shaped like a bodkin, - themain stem. The spruce commonly grows in clefts of the rocks; has many large limbs, and longer than the treeis high, perhaps, spreading close and low over the rock in every direction, sometimes eight or ten within a footof the rock; then, higher up the stem, or midway for three or six feet, though perfectly perpendicular, is quitebare on the north side and commonly showing no trace of a limb, no stubs, but the limbs at this height all rayout southward, and the top is crowned with a tuft of tender twigs. This proves the violence of the storms whichthey have to contend with. Its branches love to run along flat on the rocks, filling the openings between therocks. It forms dense coverts and forms, apparently, for the rabbits, etc. A single spruce tree of this habit wouldsometimes make a pretty good shelter, while the rocks on each side were your walls.As I walked over this plateau, I first observed, looking toward the summit, that the steep angular projections ofthe summit and elsewhere and the brows of the rocks were the parts chiefly covered with dark brown lichens,

— umbilicaria, etc., — as if they were to grow on the ridge and slopes of a man’s nose only. It was the steepestand most exposed parts of the high rocks alone on which they grew, where you would think it most difficult forthem to cling. They also covered the more rounded brows on the sides of the mountain, especially the east side,where they were very dense, fine, crisp, and firm, like a sort of shagreen, giving a firm footing or hold to thefeet where it was needed. It was these that gave that Ararat-brown color of antiquity to these portions of themountain, which a few miles distant could not be accounted for compared with the more prevalent gray. Fromthe sky-blue you pass through the misty gray of the rocks, to this darker and more terrene color. The temples ofthe mountain are covered with lichens, which color the mountain for miles.The west side descends steeply from the summit, but there is a broad almost plateau on the southeast and east,not much beneath the summit, with a precipitous termination on the east, and the rounded brows of the last arecovered with the above-named lichens. A spur of moderate length runs off northerly; another, but lower,southwesterly; another, much longer, a little Higher than the last, southerly; and one longer and higher thanthese, one or two miles long, northeasterly. As you creep down over those eastern brows to look off theprecipice, these rough and rigid lichens, forming a rigid crust, as it were baked, clone brown, in the stuff of






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centuries, afford a desirable hand and foot hold.They seemed to me wild robins that placed their nests in the spruce up there. I noticed one nest. WilliamEmerson, senior, says they do not breed on Staten Island. They do breed at least at Hudson’s Bay. They arecertainly a hardy bird, and are at home on this cool mountain-top.We boiled some rice for our dinner, close by the edge of a rain-water pool and bog, on the plateau southeastfrom the summit. Though there was so little vegetation, our fire spread rapidly through the dry cladonia lichenson the rocks, and, the wind being pretty high, threatened to give its trouble, but we put it out with a spruce boughdipped in the pool. [And wet the ground with it. You cook beside such a moss for the sake of water.] I thoughtthat if it had spread further, it must soon have come to a bog. Though you could hardly tell what was moist andwhat dry till the fire came to it. Nothing could be drier than the cladonia, which was often adjacent to a mass ofmoss saturated with moisture.These rain-water pools or cisterns are a remarkable feature. There is a scarcity of bubbling springs, but thiswater was commonly cool enough in that atmosphere and warm as the day was. I do not know why they werenot warmer, for they were shallow and the nights were not cold. Can there be some concealed snow or ice about?Hardly. They are quite shallow, but sometimes four or five rods over and with considerable mud at the bottomat first, decayed lichens, and disintegrated rock. Apparently these were the origin of the bogs, Eriophorumvaginatum, moss, and a few other boggy plants springing up in them and gradually filling them; yet, thoughsometimes filled with sedge (?) or fine grass, and generally the dwarfish Eriophorum vaginatum in the moss,they were singularly barren, and, unless they were fairly converted into swamps, contained very little variety.You never have to go far to find water of some kind. On the top, perhaps, of a square half-acre of almost barerock, as in what we called our wash-room by our camp, you find a disintegrated boy, wet moss alternating withdry cladonia (sign and emblem of dryness in our neighborhood), and water stands in little holes, or if you lookunder the edges of a boulder there, you find standing water, yet cool to drink.After dinner we kept on northeast over a high ridge east of the summit, whence was a good view of that part ofDublin and Jaffrey immediately under the mountain. There is a fine, large lake extending north and south,apparently in Dublin, -which it would be worth the while to sail on. When on the summit of this, I heard thering of toads from a rain-pool a little lower and northeasterly. It carried me back nearly a month into sprint;(though they are still ringing and copulating in Concord), it sounded so springlike in that clear, fresh air.Descending to that pool we found toads copulating at the bottom of the water.In one or two places on this side of the mountain, which, as I have said, terminated in an abrupt precipice, I sawbogs or meadows four or six rods wide or more, but with only grass and moss and eriophorum, without bushes,in them, close to the edge of the mountain or precipice, where, if you stood between the meadow and thesummit, looking cast, there would appear to be a notch in the rim of the cap or saucer on the cast and the meadowready to spill over and run down the mountain on that side; but when you stood on this notched edge, the descent

was seen to be much less precipitous than you had expected. Such spongy mountain bogs, however, areevidently the sources of rivers. Lakes of the clouds when they are clear water. Between this and the northeastspur or ridge was the largest swamp or bog that I saw, consisting, perhaps, of between one and two acres, as Iremember. It was a grassy and mossy bog without large bushes, in which you sank a foot, with a great manyfallen trees in it, showing their bleached upper side here and there but almost completely buried in the moss.This must once have been a dense swamp, full of pretty large trees. The trees buried in the moss were muchlarger than any now standing at this height. The outlet of this, if it had any, must have been northwesterly. Thiswas a wild place enough.Having ascended the highest part of the northeastern ridge north of this bog, we returned to the summit, first tothe ridge of the plateau, and west on it to the summit, crossing a ravine between. I noticed, in many places uponthe mountain, sandy or gravelly spaces from a few feet to a rod in diameter, where the thin sward and loamappeared to have been recently removed or swept away. I was inclined to call them scars, and thought of veryviolent winds and tempests of rain as the cause, perhaps, but do not know how to account for them.We had thus made a pretty complete survey of the top of the mountain. It is a very unique walk, and would bealmost equally interesting to take though it were not elevated above the surrounding valleys. It often remindedme of my walks on the beach, and suggested how much both depend for their sublimity on solitude anddreariness. In both cases we feel the presence of some vast, titanic power. The rocks and valleys and bogs andrain-pools of the mountain are so wild and unfamiliar still that you do not recognize the one you left fifteenminutes before. This rocky region, forming what you may call the top of the mountain, must be more than two






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miles long by one wide in the middle, and you would need to ramble about it many times before it would beginto be familiar. There may be twenty little swamps so much alike in the main that [you] would not know Whetheryou had seen a particular one before, and the rocks are trackless and do not present the same point. so that it hasthe effect of the most intricate labyrinth and artificially extended walk.This mountain is said in the Gazetteer to extend northeast [and] southwest five miles, by three wide, and thestreams on the east to empty into the Contoocook and Merrimack, on the west into the Ashuelot andConnecticut; is 3718 feet high; and, judging from its account, the top was wooded fifty years ago.We proceeded to get our tea on the summit, in the very place where I lead made my bed for a night some fifteenyears before. There were a great many insects of various kinds on the topmost rocks at this hour, and amongthem I noticed a yellow butterfly and several large brownish ones fluttering over the apex.It was interesting to watch from that height the shadows of fair-weather clouds passing over the landscape. Youcould hardly distinguish them from forests. It reminded me of the similar shadows seen on the sea from the highbank of Cape Cod beach. There the perfect equality of the sea, atoned for the comparatively slight elevation ofthe bank. We do not commonly realize how constant and amusing a phenomenon this is in a sunnier day to onestanding on a sufficiently elevated point. In the valley or on the plain you do not commonly notice the shadowof a cloud unless you are in it, but on a mountain-top, or on a lower elevation in a plain country or by the seaside,the shadows of clouds flitting over the landscape are a never-failing source of amusement. It is commonly easyto refer a shadow to its cloud, since in one direction its form is preserved with sufficient accuracy. Yet I wassurprised to observe that a long, straggling downy cumulus extending north and south a few miles east of us,when the sun was perhaps an hour high, cast its shadow along the base of the Peterboro Hills, and did not fallon the other side, as I should have expected. It proved the clouds not so high as I supposed. It suggested howwith tolerable accuracy you might easily calculate the height of a cloud with a quadrant and a good map of thecountry; e. g., observe at what distance the shadow of a cloud directly overhead strikes the earth, and then takethe altitude of the sun, and you may presume that you have the base and two angles of a right-angled triangle,from which the rest may be calculated; or you may allow for the angle of elevation of the mountain as seen fromthe place where the shadow falls. Also you might determine the. breadth of a cloud by observing the breadth ofthe shadow at a given distance, etc., etc. Many such calculations would be easy in such a locality. It was pleasantenough to see one man’s farm in the shadow of a cloud, -which perhaps he thought covered all the NorthernStates, - while his neighbor’s farm was in sunshine. It was still too hazy to allow of our seeing the shadow ofthe mountain, so we descended a little before the sun set, but already the hylodes had been peeping for sometime.Again the wood thrush, chewink, etc., sang at eve. I had also heard the song sparrow.As the sky was more cloudy this evening, we looked out a shelving rock near our camp, where we might, takeshelter from the rain in the night if necessary, i.e., if our roof did not prove tight enough. There were plenty ofclefts and small caverns where you might be warm and dry. The mosquitoes troubled us a little this night. Lying up there at this season, when the nighthawk is most musical reminded me of what I had noticed before,that this bird is crepuscular in its habits. It was heard by night only up to nine or ten o’clock and again just beforedawn, and marked those periods or seasons like a clock. Its note very conveniently indicated the time of night.It was sufficient to hear the nighthawk booming when you awoke to know how the night got on, though youhad no other evidence of the hour. I did not hear the sound of any beast. There are no longer any wolves to howlor panthers to scream. One man told me that many foxes took refuge from (logs and sportsmen on this mountain.The plants of cold northern bogs grow on this mountain-top, and even they have a boreal habit here, moredwarfish than such of them as grow in our swamps. The more memorable and peculiar plants of the mountaintopwere the mountain cranberry and the Potentilla tridentata, the dwarfish spruce, Arenaria Grœnlandica (not nowconspicuous). The Ribes prostratum, or fetid currant, was very abundant from quite near the summit to near thebase, and its currant-acid fragrance was quite agreeable to me, party, perhaps, from its relation to the currant ofthe gardens. You also notice many small weed-like mountain-ashes, six or eight inches high, which, on tryingto pull up, you find to be very firmly rooted, having an old and large root out of proportion to their top. I mightalso name in this connection not only the blueberry but the very common but dwarfish Eriophorum vaginatumand the Lycopodium annotinum, also the amelanchier, variety oligocarpa. I was not prepared to find vegetationso much later there than below or with its, since I once found blueberries ripe on Wachusett unexpectedly early.However, it was a pleasing lateness, and gives one a chance to review some of his lessons in natural history. Onthe rocky part, the only plants, as I noticed, which were or had been in bloom were the salix, now generallydone; Ribes prostratum, in prime; Eriophorum vaginatum, Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum, just begun;Amelanchier oligocarpa, little, not long; water andromeda, ditto, ditto; and probably (?) the populus, birches(?), mayflower, and spruce.






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Note that in his journal, where Thoreau refers as above to “the Gazetteer,” he is referring as always to a volume now in Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library, the 7th edition published in 1839 in Concord, New Hampshire and Boston of John Hayward’s THE NEW ENGLAND GAZETTEER; CONTAINING DESCRIPTIONS OF ALL THE STATES, COUNTIES AND TOWNS IN NEW ENGLAND: ALSO DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PRINCIPAL MOUNTAINS, RIVERS, LAKES, CAPES, BAYS, HARBORS, ISLANDS, AND FASHIONABLE RESORTS WITHIN THAT TERRITORY. ALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED.

NEW ENGLAND GAZETTEER

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/39/1839_NewEnglandGazetteer.pdf









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At some point that Spring: At some point during this spring, shortly before his death, Henry Thoreau gave to Edmund Hosmer his personal copy of A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, pointing out the lock of John’s hair pasted into the front and the poem that accompanied it, and said:

According to Raymond R. Borst, this happened on May 5th: “At Thoreau’s request, his friend Edmund Hosmer spends the night with him” and “In appreciation for this kindness, Thoreau asks his sister to give Hosmer his memorial copy of A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS with a lock of his brother John’s hair taped in it.” Borst’s reference is to the Concord Saunterer, 11, Number 4 for Winter 1976, page 16.

Thoreau was then in the process of revising A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS for Ticknor & Fields to reissue it.

At some point, also, Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau presented Henry with a handwritten list of people to whom, she suggested, he might want to leave some special gift. Her list included in no particular sequence Bronson Alcott, H.G.O. Blake, Theophilus Brown, Ellery Channing, Aunt Louisa Dunbar, Edith Emerson, Edward Waldo Emerson, Edmund Hosmer, Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, Elizabeth Sherman Hoar, Horace Mann, Jr., Friend Daniel Ricketson, Mrs. Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, the Concord Town Library, and the Boston Society of Natural History. Thoreau worked at this list, jotting down alongside the names various small gifts (such as his two-volume edition of Froissart’s CHRONICLES for Ellery),

until he got down to the entry for Ellen Emerson. Evidently at this point he was unable to proceed, for the bequest to her (of his volume on the mineralogy of Maine and Massachusetts, evidently because it was by her uncle Charles T. Jackson), and all the remainder, are not in his handwriting but instead in Sophia’s.

1862

You know how a pregnant woman has to eat for two.I have felt that I needed to live for John.

FROISART’S CHRONICLES, IFROISART’S CHRONICLES, II

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/55/1839_FroissartCHRONICLES_I.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/55/1855_FroissartCHRONICLES_II.pdf






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The PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY IX carried an article by Charles T. Jackson entitled “Henry D. Thoreau”:

1863

Henry D. Thoreau, of Concord, Mass., died at the age of 44years, of pulmonary consumption.His grandfather was a French emigrant from the island ofGuernsey [sic], and settled in Concord. His father was wellknown as a manufacturer of black-lead pencils, an art whichyoung Thoreau learned, but never practiced as a business,his tastes leading him wholly into the field of science, whilehe abhorred trade.Henry D. Thoreau was distinguished for the great accuracy ofhis observations, and for the thoroughness with which heexecuted every research upon which he entered. He was esteemedas an accurate land surveyor, the only business upon which heever entered for pay. As a botanist he was highly esteemed bythose who are the best judges of the subject.As an observer of the habits of animals he was unrivalled.He would wait all day if it was necessary, for a bird toapproach him. He said their curiosity would bring them toexamine him if he would remain quiet long enough; and hegenerally managed to make familiar acquaintance with allliving creatures he met with in his rambles through the forest.Thoreau had a genuine love of nature, and pursued naturalhistory for his own gratification, and not with any ambitiousviews. He was greatly troubled to find that anything hadescaped the observation of eminent naturalists, and seemed tobe surprised that anything should have been left for him todiscover.Thoreau was a man of original genius, and very peculiar in hisviews of society and the ways of life. He was conscientiouslyscrupulous, and was opposed to aiding or abetting, even by apoll-tax, measures which he did not approve of, and thereforegot into trouble occasionally with the constituted authoritiesof the town, who could not indulge him in his opposition to atax because any part of it might go to support the militia;so they twice [sic] shut him up in the jail, from whence hisfriends took him by paying his tax against his protest.His published works are full of knowledge of the secrets ofnature, and are enlivened by much quaint humor, and warmed withkindness towards all living beings. Those who knew Thoreaubest loved and appreciated him most.


This is on page 70.







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Here is the famous scientist and originator posing for his official Daguerreotype at the Boston Society of Natural History attired in all his medals, including just next to his lapel the Gold Medal of Merit which he had been granted perhaps without due consideration by the French Academy:






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July 15, day: In New-York, William Thomas Green Morton died at age 49 on of a stroke. His gravestone would term him something like “the discoverer of ether-narcosis.”

Charles T. Jackson, upon visiting Morton’s graveside to view its inscription crediting the dearly departed as the founder of ether and of modern anesthesia, would become agitated.11

1868






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Charles T. Jackson, who had been having paralytic attacks for many years, finally became so disturbed as to be no longer able to function without institutional assistance.

Having claimed that he had developed the use of ether and having become agitated upon visiting the grave of a competitor, with its gravestone’s competitive assertions –and having previously been laying the claim that

11. Charles was prone to some sort of “attack” and the word “paralytic” which was used, although not clinically definitive, suggests that they involved some sort of temporary paralysis. Per a letter from Ellen Emerson to Edith Emerson Forbes dated June 22, 1873:

When it was nearly over, came the little Lidian to take leave,for at noon had come a most alarming telegram saying UncleCharles had had a paralytic shock. At first Mother was indespair, afterward remembering those times which he has oftenhad, she became more hopeful. Since then, Father has seen him,and we have better news. He can speak. This is far more seriousthan previous attacks.Friday morning. Aunt Susan wrote yesterday, more anxiously. Shethinks him worse. Mother may go down today to see him.

Per a letter from Lidian Emerson to Ellen Emerson dated August 6, 1873:

Uncle C[harles] will I trust come to himself to find himselfmaster of his own affairs.... They do not say that C[harles]will get well but every account is better and better.

1873






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he had been the one, not Morse, to have invented the electric telegraph– should have been a warning to his relatives: he would need to spend the last seven years of his life at the MacLean Asylum. Ellen Emerson, in her private biography of her mother Lidian Emerson, wrote about the event and how her mother believed that his “Coesion of the brain” must have been related to his previous experience with his claim to have been the one who had discovered anesthesia:

That was Uncle Charles's last visit to Mother. Lidian[Lidian Jackson, Charles and Susan Jackson’s daughter] stayedto the reception, he [Charles Jackson] and Aunt Susan [Mrs.Susan Jackson] went home, she meaning to return the next day,but instead she telegraphed to Lidian to follow, Uncle Charleshad fallen down in his study and remained unconscious. Motherwas anxious about him but we had our reception just the same....The next day Mother went to see Uncles Charles. He was consciousbut could not talk any intelligible language, he made some newwords and used old ones out of their meaning, and as days wenton it was evident that his mind was deranged. He never recovered.The trustees or the corporation of the MacLean Asylum atSomerville voted to receive him and keep him withoutcompensation as a recognition of his services to the medicalprofession.... He lived there for several years. Mother [LidianEmerson] and Aunt Susan visited him when the authorities saidhe could bear it. She said he recognized them and was alwaysoverjoyed to see them ... Mother always believed that it wassuffering about the ether discovery that brought on this Coesionof the brain. He was only 67.






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August 28: Charles T. Jackson died. He would be interred in Mount Auburn Cemetery where his tombstone –not to be outdone in the grandiosity of its claims by the claims that had been made in the inscription on the W.T.G. Morton grave in New-York– would be grandiloquently crammed with an inscription that reads as follows:

Charles Thomas Jackson M.D.Son of

Charles & Lucy C. Jackson

1880

DENTISTRY






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June 21, 1805 - Aug. 28, 1880Eminent as a chemist,mineralogist, geologistand investigator in alldepartments of naturalscience. Through his

observations of the peculiareffects of sulfuric ether

on the nerves of sensation,and his bold deductiontherefrom the benigndiscovery of painless

surgery was made.Godlike crime was to be kind

to render with thy precepts lessthe sum of human wretchedness

and strengthen man with his own mind.

January: E.R. Landa’s “Physician/chemist/geologist; Charles Thomas Jackson’s life of conflict and controversy.” Journal of Geological Education. Volume 5, Number 1, pages 20-25.

Richard J. Wolf’s CHARLES THOMAS JACKSON, “THE HEAD BEHIND THE HANDS”: APPLYING SCIENCE TO IMPLEMENT DISCOVERY AND INVENTION IN EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA (Novato, California: Jeremy Norman & Company).

Arthur Freeman’s and Janet Ing Freeman’s JOHN PAYNE COLLIER: SCHOLARSHIP AND FORGERY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (New Haven and London: Yale UP) was reviewed by Nick Groom of the University of Exeter in Victorian Studies 49.2: 372-374.

John Payne Collier was one of the most prodigious men of lettersof the nineteenth century. His HISTORY OF ENGLISH DRAMATIC POETRY (3volumes, 1831) was a standard work of the period, and hesubsequently proved himself a tireless editor of Shakespeare:Collier first edited the works in eight volumes (1842-1844) andpublished his final edition (1875-1878), just before hisninetieth birthday. Collier was, moreover, variously treasurer

1995

2007

Jackson’s Morton’s






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and vice-president of the Society of Antiquaries and a foundingmember of the Camden, Percy, and Shakespeare societies, for whomhe edited a total of thirty-six works. He was still engaged inissuing reprints of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century works inhis eighties — no fewer than eighty-one volumes appeared in1871. Notwithstanding this, he also edited Edmond Spenser (5volumes, 1862), several volumes of ballads –some penned byhimself– an autobiography, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’slectures on Shakespeare (1856), which he had attended and madeshorthand transcripts of in 1811 and 1812.Yet today Collier’s fame –or rather, his notoriety– rests uponhis reputation as a literary forger. Central to this morewayward corpus is the “Perkins Folio,” a second folio editionof Shakespeare’s plays heavily annotated in what appeared to bea seventeenth-century hand. This “Old Corrector” was arguably acontemporary of Shakespeare’s — arguably being the key word.Collier published the corrections (1853) and used them as thebasis for two new editions (1853, 1858). In doing so he raiseda gigantic rumpus. When the Perkins Folio was eventuallyinspected by Frederic Madden, keeper of manuscripts at theBritish Museum, he declared that the annotations had beenforged. Collier maintained that the annotations had been in thebook when he acquired it and continued his researches. But theaccusation stuck and cast serious doubt over all of Collier’swork, with, it transpires, complete justification. In this extraordinarily dogged account of Collier, ArthurFreeman and Janet Ing Freeman reveal that Collier’s fabricationsbegan early, drifting into forgery from the mischievous hoaxesand jeux d’esprit of his earliest work, such as the fancifuladditions he made to his history of Punch and Judy (1828,illustrated by George Cruikshank). Collier’s HISTORY OF ENGLISHDRAMATIC POETRY, for instance, contains dozens of often ratherpointless fabrications, while for his life of Edward Alleyn(1841), Collier interpolated material into the manuscriptsources he discovered at Dulwich College, actually writing onthe manuscripts in the same pseudo-seventeenth-century hand helater deployed for the Perkins Folio. The Freemans’ untangling of Collier’s vast legacy ofmisrepresentation is unerringly meticulous and completelyconvincing. The last monograph on Collier, Dewey Ganzel’s FORTUNEAND MEN’S EYES (1982) argued that Collier had been set up bycharacters such as Madden, who planted the Perkins Folio on himto exact some sort of revenge. The enormous extent of Collier’sdeceptions exposed by the Freemans, however, make Ganzel’sthesis entirely untenable. Instead of a victim of a conspiracy,we are left with a much more complex figure: a precocious student(he was first admitted to the reading room of the British Libraryaged just fourteen) who devoted his entire life and boundlessreserves of intellectual energy both to scholarship and to itsperversion. In the ringing tones that open the book, “Whatdistinguishes him ... is not the intrinsic merit or originalityof his work (although much of it exhibits both, as well asprodigious labour), but the large-scale, pernicious, andpervasive corruption of literary history it has engendered,through a lifetime’s supply of misinformation, false evidence,forgery, and fabrication” (xi). The Freemans cover all this in the most scrupulous, and, it must






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be said, mind-numbing detail. JOHN PAYNE COLLIER: SCHOLARSHIP AND

FORGERY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY is a remarkable, invaluable studyand reference work, and simultaneously a staggeringly futilerecord of fifteen years academic hard labour. There is overlygenerous quoting of Collier’s tedious Romantic period verse,laboriously comprehensive accounts of the reviews Collier’s workelicited, and a persistent fascination with the book sales andauctions of the period. Hence, almost 600 pages are coveredbefore we arrive at the Perkins Folio, “the most important eventin the life of [Collier], and one of the key dates in the entirehistory of Shakespeare studies” (583), and thereafter another400 pages pass before Collier finally dies. Even so, thismarathon account is still barely two-thirds done. An epiloguecovers the dispersal of his library and posthumous notices, andthere follows almost 400 pages of closely-set appendices andbibliographies of Collier’s works. The authors describe this asa “bio-bibliography,” an unfortunate term that does not reallydo this compendious work justice, while indicating its ambitionsto cover everything. There’s material here for at least threeseparate books — a biography, an account of the Perkins Foliocontroversy, and an annotated bibliography; there’s also a greatdeal that could have been confined to specialist articles. Amongsuch a mass of information one might hope that authors would beselective and analytical, but the Freemans are neither.Admittedly they remark at the outset that there are “undoubtedlycomplex motives for a lifetime of intermittent perversity”(xiii) and even bewail the fact that Collier was not a merevictim; indeed, one of the more engaging qualities of this studyis the Freemans’ indulgent fondness for Collier, despite histextual misdemeanors. There are also some pointed personalobservations: Collier’s ballad imitations, for example, aredescribed as “throwback ballads [that] allowed him to air hisown sentiments about women, sexual freedom, matrimony, thenuisance of fatherhood, and the like” (509). But at the end ofthis juggernaut of a book one is still left wondering why Collierfabricated so much material. In an attempt to distance themselves from what they perceive tobe the “new school” of literary forgery studies (172n), then,the Freemans have produced a determinedly forensic scrutiny ofCollier’s work. Although we might be thankful that there islittle supposition about the psychology of the forger, there islikewise an almost complete lack of curiosity about the natureof literary forgery in the period: how Collier’s activities werefundamentally different from the sorts of literary forgerydebated in the eighteenth century (and not so different,apparently, from some of the games played by the more reputablescholars of that earlier time); what the threat and detectionof forgery entailed for textual research methods in thenineteenth century (microscopy was, for example, used toidentify contemporary pencil annotations beneath thoseattributed to the “Old Corrector”); and why literary forgeryheld such a persistent fascination for the writers, poets, andartists of the period. Of course, pursuing any or all of thesequestions would have increased the size of what is already anunwieldy book. As it is, Arthur Freeman and Janet Ing Freemanhave produced a study that will stand as a major and enduringcontribution to nineteenth-century literary studies and






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bibliography. What one should hope for now is that thismonumental work will provide the raw material for reconsideringscholarship and forgery in the period, and present opportunitiesto tell the tantalizing story of Collier in new ways.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <[email protected]>.

Prepared: April 29, 2013

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

mailto:[email protected]

Well, tomorrow is such and such a date and so it began on that date in like 8000BC? Why 8000BC, because it was the beginning of the current interglacial -- or what?

Bearing in mind that this is America, "where everything belongs," the primary intent of such a notice is to prevent some person or corporate entity from misappropriating the materials and sequestering them as property for censorship or for profit.






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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone’s request wehave pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out ofthe shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). Whatthese chronological lists are: they are research reportscompiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data moduleswhich we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining.To respond to such a request for information, we merely push abutton.






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Commonly, the first output of the program has obviousdeficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modulesstored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, andthen we need to punch that button again and do a recompile ofthe chronology — but there is nothing here that remotelyresembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know andlove. As the contents of this originating contexture improve,and as the programming improves, and as funding becomesavailable (to date no funding whatever has been needed in thecreation of this facility, the entire operation being run outof pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweakingand recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation ofa generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward andupward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place your requests with <[email protected]>.Arrgh.

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DID DRUG USE AT HARVARD START ANESTHESIOLOGY• Horace Wells, 1817-1849 — this Boston dentist...

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