Sappington’s Theory & Treatment of Fevers

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As I have long since departed from the the­ory and prac­tice in which I was prin­ci­pally taught, and am now engaged in writ­ing against them, it may be proper that I should give my rea­sons to the pub­lic for doing so.  —John Sap­ping­ton, The­ory and Treat­ment of Fevers.

The library has recently acquired one of the ear­li­est books pub­lished west of the Mis­sis­sippi and the first med­ical book printed in Mis­souri, John Sappington’s The­ory and Treat­ment of Fevers … Revised and cor­rected by Fer­di­nand Stith, Arrow Rock [Mo.], Pub­lished by the Author, 1844.

The book, Sappington’s first and pub­lished by the author in aproximatey16,000 copies, went against con­tem­po­rary med­ical treat­ment of fevers, which included blood­let­ting, vom­it­ing with the use of emet­ics, and admin­is­ter­ing Calomel or Mer­cury Chlo­ride as a purga­tive, and instead advo­cated the effi­cacy of his own anti-fever pills. Sap­ping­ton had found both med­ical and com­mer­cial suc­cess in fight­ing fevers with the release of his “Dr. Sappington’s Anti-Fever Pills,” which he began to sell in 1832. The ingre­di­ent respon­si­ble for their effi­cacy was qui­nine, a sub­stance derived from the bark of a South Amer­i­can tree. It was soon dis­cov­ered that the pills were highly effec­tive in the treat­ment of malaria (a dreaded and wide-spread dis­ease for south­ern fron­tier set­tlers), and in 1835, Sap­ping­ton founded Sap­ping­ton and Sons to meet demand and widen dis­tri­b­u­tion.  The The­ory and Treat­ment of Fevers, how­ever, was not a com­mer­cial or adver­tise­ment ploy to sell more pills, which Sap­ping­ton had been suc­cess­fully sell­ing for nearly a decade by the time of the book’s pub­li­ca­tion. Rather, the author pro­fessed a benev­o­lent desire and pur­pose for the book and even went so far as to included the ingre­di­ents for his lucra­tive anti-fever pills:

Although the author has vended pills to a large amount, and real­ized con­sid­er­able sums of money by his sales, the peo­ple have also saved a great many dol­lars by using them; been relieved of much pain and suf­fer­ing, and very many lives have no doubt been saved and pro­longed. The author con­sid­ers him­self dri­ven to this alter­na­tive, more from motives of benev­o­lence than from those of self-interest. (79)

Sappington’s Anti-Fever Pills “were sim­ply com­posed of one grain qui­nine each, three-fourths of a grain of liquorice, and one-fourth grain of myrrh, to which was added just so much of the oil of sas­safras as would give to them an agree­able odor” (79).

Princeton’s copy con­tains the book­plate of H. P. Engle, M. D., undoubt­edly the county physi­cian Harry P. Engle of New­ton, Iowa:

A bio­graph­i­cal sketch and pho­to­graph of H. P. Engle, M. D., can be found in the Stan­dard His­tor­i­cal Atlas of Jasper County, Iowa, while Dr. Engle’s early adop­tion of the auto­mo­bile and its ben­e­fit to county physi­cians can be read in “The Most Sat­is­fac­tory Invest­ment for the County Physi­cian Harry P. Engle, M.D. New­ton, Iowa.”

The Sap­ping­tons went on to became a very promi­nent and influ­en­tial Mis­souri fam­ily.  A detailed account of Dr. Sappington’s life and his legacy, includ­ing por­traits of fam­ily mem­bers and pho­tographs of his Anti-Fever Pills and related ephemera, can be found on the State His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety of Missouri’s His­toric Mis­souri­ans, Nurses & Doc­tors, web­site: John S. Sap­ping­ton (1776–1856). The his­tor­i­cal soci­ety also houses the Sap­ping­ton Fam­ily Papers.

Select Bib­li­og­ra­phy:

Eimas, Richard (Ed.). Heirs of Hip­pocrates: The Devel­op­ment of Med­i­cine in a Cat­a­logue of His­toric Books in the Hardin Library for the Health Sci­ences, the Uni­ver­sity of Iowa. Third Edi­tion. Iowa City: Pub­lished for the Uni­ver­sity of Iowa Libraries by the Uni­ver­sity of Iowa Press, 1990. Avail­able online: Heirs of Hip­pocrates.

Mor­row, Lynn. “Dr. John Sap­ping­ton: South­ern Patri­arch in the New West.” Mis­souri His­tor­i­cal Review. Vol 90, no. 1 (Octo­ber 1995): 38–60.

Sap­ping­ton, John. The­ory and Treat­ment of Fevers … Revised and cor­rected by Fer­di­nand Stith.  Arrow Rock [Mo.]: Pub­lished by the Author, 1844.

The American Indian Souvenir Playing Cards, ca. 1900.

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“Fifty-three of the best pho­tographs of the homes and faces of the Pueblo Indi­ans, taken in the last few years by A. C. Vro­man of Pasadena, are inge­niously arranged and excel­lently repro­duced for The Amer­i­can Indian Sou­venir Playing-Cards; and a zarape in col­ors illu­mi­nates the back of each card. It is a hand­some and typ­i­cal col­lec­tion. Lazarus & Melzer, Los Ange­les, $1.”

–Adver­tise­ment from The Land of Sun­shine: The Mag­a­zine of Cal­i­for­nia and the West (Vol­ume XIII, June-December, 1900).

Thanks to a gift of Don­ald Far­ren ’58, the depart­ment recently acquired two sets of sou­venir play­ing cards illus­trated with half-tone repro­duc­tions of pho­tographs taken by noted pho­tog­ra­pher of the South­west, A. C. Vro­man.
Adam Clark Vro­man was born in La Salle, Illi­nois, in 1856, and moved to Pasadena, Cal­i­for­nia, in 1892 in hope of find­ing a bet­ter cli­mate for his wife, Ester H. Gri­est, who was dying of tuber­cu­lo­sis.  Fol­low­ing her death in 1894, Vro­man and an asso­ciate opened a store in Pasadena spe­cial­iz­ing in books, sta­tion­ary, and pho­to­graphic sup­plies.  The suc­cess of the store, which is still in oper­a­tion today as south­ern California’s old­est and largest inde­pen­dent book­store, Vroman’s Book­store, pro­vided Vro­man with the means to pur­sue his many inter­ests, includ­ing ama­teur pur­suits in archae­ol­ogy and his­tor­i­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion of the Amer­i­can Southwest.

In 1895, Vro­man took his first trip through the South­west, vis­it­ing Ari­zona and New Mex­ico, which he doc­u­mented exten­sively through pho­tog­ra­phy.  Between 1895 and 1904, Vro­man con­tin­ued to explore and doc­u­ment the South­west, col­lect­ing South­west­ern Indian arti­facts and pho­tograph­ing Native Amer­i­can vil­lages and the peo­ple and cus­toms of the South­west­ern Indi­ans (Apache, Hopi, Navajo, and Pueblo).

 

The Depart­ment of Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions holds sev­eral indi­vid­ual Vro­man pho­tographs and three pho­to­graph albums, all of which can be viewed online in the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Dig­i­tal Library. Two of the Vro­man albums rep­re­sent (at least in part) the cul­tural stud­ies of the Museum-Gates Expe­di­tion of 1901, led by Peter God­dard Gates, a Cal­i­for­nia phil­an­thropist, and Dr. Wal­ter Hough of the United States National Museum.  Vro­man served as the offi­cial pho­tog­ra­pher of the expedition.

Vro­man was a man of many inter­ests, and after 1904 his atten­tion turned abroad with tours in Japan and Europe, which included col­lect­ing Japan­ese net­suke and pho­tograph­ing Euro­pean archi­tec­ture.  His last tours in North Amer­ica, in 1914, were of the Cana­dian Rock­ies and the East Coast.  Vro­man, who died of can­cer in 1916, left a sub­stan­tial col­lec­tion of Indian arti­facts to the South­west Museum, and his Cal­i­for­ni­ana col­lec­tion and six­teen albums of platino­type prints from his var­i­ous expe­di­tions were given to the Pasadena Pub­lic Library, where they are still avail­able to view by appoint­ment.  Vroman’s col­lec­tion of Japan­ese net­suke is now part of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum of Art, which described the col­lec­tion as one “con­sid­ered to be the finest and largest in the United States at that time [1910].  This group of 2,500 pieces had been assem­bled by A. C. Vro­man of Pasadena, Cal­i­for­nia, and was pur­chased and pre­sented to the Museum by Mrs. Rus­sell Sage, one of the Metropolitan’s first great bene­fac­tors” (Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum of Art Bul­letin, Fall 1980).

Select Bib­li­og­ra­phy

Apos­tol, Jane. Vroman’s of Pasadena: A Cen­tury of Books, 1894–1994. Pasadena: A.C. Vro­man, 1994.

Mautz, Carl. Biogra­phies of West­ern Pho­tog­ra­phers: A Ref­er­ence Guide to Pho­tog­ra­phers Work­ing in the 19th Cen­tury Amer­i­can West. Nevada City, Calif.: Carl Mautz Pub­lish­ing, 1997.

Pow­ell, Lawrence Clark. Vroman’s of Pasadena. Pasadena: [s.n.], 1953.

Vro­man, A. C. Pho­tog­ra­pher of the South­west: Adam Clark Vro­man, 1856–1916. Edited by Ruth L. Mahood with the assis­tance of Robert A. Wein­stein. Intro­duc­tion by Beau­mont Newhall. [Los Ange­les]: Ward Ritchie Press, 1961.

Watts, Jen­nifer and Andrew Smith. Adam Clark Vro­man: Plat­inum Prints, 1895–1904. Los Ange­les: Michael Daw­son Gallery; Santa Fe: Andrew Smith Gallery, Inc., 2005.

Webb, William and Robert A. Wein­stein. Dwellers at the Source: South­west­ern Indian Pho­tographs of A. C. Vro­man, 1895–1904. New York: Gross­man Pub­lish­ers, 1973.

The Early Press in New Mexico

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Lista de los Ciu­dadanos que Deberan Com­poner los Jura­dos de Imprenta, For­mada por el Ayun­tamiento de esta Cap­i­tal, Santa Fe, 1834. Gift of J. M. Thor­ing­ton, Class of 1915.

The ear­li­est sur­viv­ing imprint of the press in what is now New Mex­ico is this broad­side: “List of the Cit­i­zens Who May Serve As Jurors on Tri­als on the Press, Made for the Coun­cil of the Cap­i­tal.”  It was printed on the “Press of Roman Abreu in Charge of Jesus Maria Baca” and is dated August 14, 1834.  The doc­u­ment reflects the 1828 Mex­i­can law passed to pro­tect the free­dom of the press and cit­i­zens against libel.  Law­suits con­cern­ing the press were to be heard by jurors cho­sen by the munic­i­pal coun­cils of every town that sup­ported a news­pa­per.  New Mex­ico, since its first Euro­pean set­tle­ments in 1598, had seen lit­tle need for a press; but the changes wrought by Mex­i­can inde­pen­dence in 1821 and the open­ing of the Santa Fe Trail to the Anglo-American set­tle­ments in the United States quickly made a press and its atten­dant dan­gers a necessity.

For a detailed account of the Lista de los Ciu­dadanos… broad­side, see:

Boyd, E. “The First New Mex­ico Imprint.” Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library Chron­i­cle Vol­ume XXXIII, No. 1 (Autumn 1971): 30–40.

Western Americana in the Classroom and Beyond

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 Dur­ing the fall term of 2011, Pro­fes­sor Martha Sandweiss, His­tory Depart­ment, and Brian Just, Art Museum Cura­tor of the Art of the Ancient Amer­i­cas, co-taught a course enti­tled “Arti­facts, Images, and His­tory: The Amer­i­can South­west.” The course explored Native arts of the Amer­i­can South­west by ana­lyz­ing Princeton’s own col­lec­tions in the hold­ings of the Art Museum, the Depart­ment of Geo­sciences, and the Depart­ment of Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions. The Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Art Museum mag­a­zine high­lighted the course in its Win­ter 2012 issue, also avail­able on the museum’s news page: The Museum in the Class­room.

Pro­fes­sor Sandwiess’s spring course, “His­tory of the Amer­i­can West,” will make use of the department’s strong hold­ings of gold rush and over­land jour­ney mate­r­ial.  Six­teen man­u­script over­land nar­ra­tive collections con­sist­ing of let­ters, jour­nals, diaries, and scrap­books were recently dig­i­tized and placed in the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Dig­i­tal Library, allow­ing stu­dents (and schol­ars world­wide) online access to pri­mary doc­u­ments from the period.

While many of the col­lec­tions are recent addi­tions to the depart­ment, such as the Daniel Gano Gold Rush Scrap­book (C1398) and the David Starr Hoyt Man­u­scripts (C1407) that were acquired by the Man­u­scripts Divi­sion in 2011, over­land nar­ra­tives were a par­tic­u­lar inter­est to Philip Ash­ton Rollins, Class of 1889. While Rollins focused more on printed works, man­u­scripts were often selected as well, such as a forty-miner’s jour­nal writ­ten by M. A. Vio­lette, “Man­u­script Jour­nal of Over­land Jour­ney to Sleepy Hol­low,” 1849 (C0199, no. 1092).

Thorn­ton, Ore­gon and Cal­i­for­nia in 1848 … (Harper & Broth­ers, 1849). Philip Ash­ton Rollins Collection

Rollins early col­lect­ing of printed works was guided by Henry R. Wagner’s  bib­li­og­ra­phy of over­land jour­neys, The Plains and the Rock­ies: A Bib­li­og­ra­phy of Orig­i­nal Nar­ra­tives of Travel and Adven­ture, 1808–1865 (first pub­lished in the 1920s and revised and expanded many times since).  Rollins’ col­lec­tion of over­land nar­ra­tives nat­u­rally cap­tured the Cal­i­for­nia Gold Rush era (1848–53) and marks the begin­ning of the depart­ment’s gold rush col­lec­tions. Many of the printed works col­lected by Rollins can be found online via Google Books or the Hathi Trust Dig­i­tal Library, such as J. Quinn Thornton’s Ore­gon and Cal­i­for­nia in 1848: With an Appen­dix, Includ­ing Recent and Authen­tic Infor­ma­tion on the Sub­ject of the Gold Mines of Cal­i­for­nia, and Other Valu­able Mat­ter of Inter­est to the Emi­grant, Etc. (New York: Harper & Broth­ers, 1849). Rollins, how­ever, soon ven­tured well beyond Wagner’s cut-off point, the close of the Civil War in 1865, which allowed him to con­tinue col­lect­ing over­land nar­ra­tives through­out the rail­road years.