Submitted By: Christine Jankowski, MA (Lloyd Library)
It’s a cold winter’s night on December 23, 1839. In Worthington, Ohio, a mob of townspeople carrying rifles and torches hurries towards Worthington Medical College, located near the center of the town. Students and faculty had an hour’s notice before the townsfolk burst into the Medical Department, looting the space before setting the building ablaze. Even the college president, Dr. Thomas Vaughan Morrow, received threats ahead of a raid at his home, where an even more horrifying discovery was made. The college had only been there for nine years. What could have caused this unrest? And how did this incident launch the Eclectics in Cincinnati?
Dr. Wooster Beach started the medical movement known as Reformed Medicine in New York during the 1820s, with a focus on treating patients with non-invasive methods. Instead of practicing bleeding, leeching, or purging, its medical students learned about herbal remedies to treat patients. With a desire to spread this education westward, Beach’s colleague Dr. John J. Steele founded the Medical Department at Worthington Medical College in 1830, the precursor to the Eclectic Medical Institute, later known as the Eclectic Medical College, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Shortly after, Dr. Thomas Vaughan Morrow would become the college president.
At Worthington, students learned subjects like anatomy, botany, chemistry, obstetrics, surgery, and physiology and were taught by doctors Steele, Ichabod G. Jones, J.R. Paddock, J.E. Riddle, T.E. Mason, J.D. Day, and Morrow. However, there was a macabre side to their schooling. Medical education at this time relied on the commonplace use of cadavers, and Worthington Medical College was no exception. Further understanding the functions of the human body and its contents required autopsies on the recently deceased, but sourcing these “specimens” could be difficult. Utilizing paupers’ graves in local cemeteries, medical students, instructors, and occasionally shady characters known as “resurrection men,” exhumed freshly buried bodies for use in medical education. The questionable ethics of that practice did not go unnoticed by the Worthington community, causing rumors to spread around town about the college and students. And it was one rumor about one body that would cause such an uproar.
Her name was Sally Dodge Cram. Originally from Marietta, Ohio, she was a patient at the State Insane Asylum in Columbus when she died on November 18, 1839, aged 56. Her family did not arrive in time to collect her remains for burial back home, so she was buried outside Columbus’s city limits in a pauper’s field. When her family arrived at the cemetery, they noticed her gravesite was disturbed, as were others nearby. Word quickly went around town, alleging that Worthington Medical students retrieved her body for a future autopsy. A meeting was held, and townsfolk resolved to raid the Medical College and the college president’s home. Dr. Morrow, standing outside his house with his family, witnessed the rioters enter their home. The townspeople discovered in the backyard and partially concealed in a corn stock the body of an African American man. This atrocious discovery was the final nail in the coffin for the college’s operations.
Before the horrors of December 1839, the college was still reeling from the Panic of 1837. The national depression brought job uncertainty, failed businesses and banks, and affected the attendance and finances of the school. Another damning circumstance was their battle of words with the Thomsonians in nearby Columbus, each faction accusing the other of plagiarism and poor science. The combination of the above situations caused the school’s charter to be revoked in March 1840.
Dr. Morrow continued to hold classes at his home. He rebranded the school as the Reformed Medical School, chartered in 1842 and operated until 1845. Relocating to Cincinnati, his new school and charter were established on March 10, 1845: the Eclectic Medical College. The topics taught were the same, and Dr. Morrow brought previous instructors to the new college. Despite the macabre past practices, the Eclectic Medical College evolved with time and had thousands of graduates while it was open. Later known as the Eclectic Medical Institute, they would hold classes until 1939 and close in 1942.
Today, the Lloyd Library still holds most of the Eclectic Medical College’s records for the curious to learn more.