Historical November 1986 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
For almost fourteen months, I had been keeping track of a relatively rare document dating from the gold rush era.
A retired museum director from central Illinois had in his possession the three volumes written by his grandfather from the time he came to the United States in 1848 until he returned from the gold rush in California in 1852. August Wilhelm Hoffmeister had gone west to find gold in 1851 and his journal tells of his westward travels.
Not many such journals exist. Those that do exist tell what it was like during this period of wagon trains across the plains and the mountains.
They also chronicle the life of the gold miners in the halcyon days when treasure was said to be waiting for anyone to come and pick it off the ground! Hoffmeister was among that group of westerners, coming to St. Louis in 1850 in preparation of going to California the following year.
His journal was unknown to the historical community until we made a copy of it at the Old Courthouse to add to our collection of such journals.
Because Hoffmeister wrote in German, we will have to have a translation done.
The fact is, we have it now and expect to receive the original as well.
The retired museum director was most curious about the medical school his grandfather attended in St. Louis when he returned from mining gold to marry his childhood sweetheart who had just arrived from Germany in 1852.
All he knew was that it was the best known medical school in St. Louis, one of the most significant west of the Appalachians. That school was originally called the McDowell’s Medical College. Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell came to St. Louis in 1840.
He is best termed an eccentric; some say he was basically insane. Educated in Dr. Daniel Drake’s medical classes at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, he was renowned for his surgical “performances” in those days before general or even local anesthesia.
He was a member of the Cincinnati Medical College from 1825 until he came to St. Louis in 1840.
He married Drake’s daughter in 1826.
He built his first medical building in St. Louis on the southwest corner of Ninth and Cerre Streets in the then fashionable Greek revival style.
On the edge of Chouteau’s pond, that first medical school building was a single-story structure overlooking the pond and a large green space. Happily for the doctor, it was far enough out of the center of the city to be too far to easily walk, but close enough to allow access to the several cemeteries. Dr. McDowell and his students needed bodies to study, and so they simply “resurrected” them shortly after funerals — usually the same evening! Grave robbing was only a misdemeanor; the good doctor was never caught at it, but it was obvious he was at it. Dr. McDowell was an ardent anti-papist until he became a Catholic at the end of his life.
He felt the Catholics and the Germans were out to get him and stop his school and his research.
He kept a substantial arsenal at the college, including three canons and 1400 muskets.
On various national holidays he would parade his students on the lawn and fire his favorite canon, said to be from the pirate ship of Jean Laffite. Needless to say, his neighbors kept a respectful distance on the south side of Chouteau’s Pond.
In 1845, his medical college was not in the best financial shape.
It was affiliated with the state university in that year and was renamed Missouri Medical College.
Two years later, the good doctor began to build a new college at the northwest corner of Eighth and Gratiot Streets, the same neighborhood but a little northeast of the original location.
At the time, it was the largest structure devoted to medical science in the United States. Opening in 1849, its central operating theater was larger than the amphitheater at Padua, said to be the largest in Europe. Its central feature was an octagonal three-story structure originally designed to be eight stories.
The admission to the operating theater for non-students was twenty-five cents, a princely sum in those days. Other medical men and clergy were permitted to watch surgery free!
The Missouri Medical College flourished in the early 1850’s, but began to come on hard times as the Civil War approached.
During the war, the medical school collapsed and the building was abandoned.
By the middle of the war, it was commandeered by the army as a prison for [wording obscured by overprinting in original scan] and was renamed the Gratiot Street Prison.
In the 1870’s it was torn down and the land became part of the railroad yard when the pond had been filled. Dr. McDowell died of pneumonia in 1868.
His medical school, reviving somewhat after the war, merged into the collegiate program at Washington University.
The Washington University Medical School is considered to be the lineal descendant of McDowell’s College. August Wilhelm Hoffmeister went to that school during its heyday about 1853.
After graduation he settled in Iowa and became a substantial member of his community.
His three volumes of journals, written in a very tiny German hand, eventually became the property of a renowned biologist and member of the scientific museum community.
The journals are now with relatives in Germany for their study.
The copy at the Old Courthouse can be studied and translated at leisure.
It will add to the information of the gold rush era when St. Louis was the place to come to leave to the West or learn the medical trade.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, November 1986.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: One overprinted phrase describing the Gratiot prison population is unreadable; explicit source marker retained. Historical medical-school and biography claims remain the author’s period account.
Original source: SD_Times1986_11.pdf, printed page(s) 6; PDF page(s) 6.
