Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1135

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
NAME
1113
NAME

STOY 1113 STOY a third, Robert Woodbury, served through- out the Civil War. Dr. Storer was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, member of the Massachusetts Medical Society, President of the American Medical Association, mem- ber of the Obstetrical Society of Boston (of which he was a founder), member of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, and honorary member of the Medical Society of the State of New York. He /was given the degree of LL. D. by Bowdoin in 1876. He was very distinctly a physician of the Old School, wearing till his final illness the "swallowtail" coat so beloved of an earlier generation. He was idolized by his patients and his impetuous and unconcealed intoler- ance of anything he thought mean or little went far to increase the kindly esteem in which his fellow citizens held him. At the Boston Medical Library there is a most excellent portrait of him by Vinton, the cost of which was defrayed by a num- ber of medical friends. Malcolm Storer. Boston of Today. Biographical Notice, S. H. Scudder, Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts and Sciences, vol. xxvii. Universities and Their Sons, vol. ii. History of Bowdoin Coll.. Cleveland. In Memoriam, D. H. S. Meeting, Suffolk District Medical Society, Jan. 20, 1892. Hist. Harvard Medical School, T. F. Harrington, 1905. Commemorative Sketch of Dr. Storer, James C. White, Proc. Boston Soc. of Nat. Hist., Dec. 16, 1891. Dr. Storer's Work on the Fishes, S. Carman. Proc. Boston Soc. of Nat. Hist., Dec. 16, 1891. Appleton's Cyclop. Amer. Biog., New York, 1887. Stoy, Henry William (1726-1801) Henry William Stoy was born in Herborn, Germany, March 14, 1726, and first studied theology, being ordained for that work in America in 1752. He first settled in Lebanon County. Pennsylvania, but in 1756 removed to Philadelphia on account of his health, where he married Maria Elizabeth Maus. The mar- riage caused a great deal of dissatisfaction in the congregation, and resulted in his resigna- tion and removal to Lancaster in October, 1758. In the early part of 1763 he resigned and returned to Europe, the .'Amsterdam classes reporting that he attended their meeting May 3. 1763. It is reported that he went to Ley- den and studied medicine, but the matricula- tion books do not reveal his presence there. As a matter of fact he went to his native town, Herborn, and studied medicine with Prof. John Adam Hoffman, who was profes- sor of the university until 1773. He returned to America, probably in 1767, for in Novem- ber of this year he wrote to Holland that he had returned, had had several calls and con- cluded to accept Tulpehocken, the present Host church in Berks County. He was, however, not in good standing with the church authori- ties in Pennsylvania, who declined again to receive him as a member of the Coetus, or Synod, not for any moral delinquencies, but because of his disputation with many of the ministers and for the further reason that he was regarded as a "stirrer up of strife." He left the Host church about 1772 or 1773 and moved to Lebanon and began the active prac- tice of medicine. While practising, he also preached at vari- ous places, and was pastor to several country congregations. Like some of the physicians of more modern times, he rated himself as a statesman and took an active part in poli- tics. In 1779, during the Revolution, he wrote a letter addressed to Joseph Reed, president of the Supreme Executive Council of Penn- sylvania, on "The Present Mode of Taxation," advocating a single tax on land, and he has the honor of being the first single tax man in the country, though his ideas differed from the single tax theories of the present day and were impracticable. He was elected to the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1784, and wrote frequently on political subjects for the papers. Highly educated, he was fluent in German, Latin, and English, but it was as a physician that he gained greatest prominence and came to be known far and wide, not as a preacher, but as a doctor. His cure for hydrophobia and his hysteric drops, or "mutter tropfen," gave him great notoriety, and people sent long distances for the remedies. In Gen. Washington's account book, sold at Birch's auction sale, in 1890, and bought by Mr. Aldrich for $400, appears this record : "Oct. 18, 1797. Gave my servant, Chris- topher, to bear the expenses to a person at Lebanon in Pennsylvania celebrated for cur- ing persons bit by wild animals, $25,00." Whether Dr. Stoy's success in curing the disease was due to the remedy or to the fact that possibly only a small per cent, of the so-called rabid dogs are afflicted with rabies, we are unable to say, but from the ingredients it contained we are led to believe there was not much virtue in it. The remedy consisted of one ounce of the herb, red chick- weed, four ounces of theriac and one quart of beer, all well digested, the dose being a wine glassful. Red chickweed is supposed to be antivenomous, nervine and stimulating. For the information of the medical frater- nity I can say his noted hysteric drops, or