The Smith Surname and Homeopathy
February 11, 2008
The Smith
Surname is one of our
most common surnames, and of course, many of them became American
homeopaths. Some of them became very famous and the others just worked
hard and lived their lives as jobbing homeopathic physicians and their
stories have not yet been recorded.
Abraham Lincoln Smith was a graduate from the Boston University Medical School in 1893.
Albert Smith from Kansas graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College ?year unknown.
Anna Margaret Lee Furber Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1883 and from the Boston University Medical School in 1885.
Asa Dennis Smith was a graduate from the Boston University Medical School in 1877.
Caroline F Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1893.
C C Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1884.
C Rozelle Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1903.
Charles William Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1883, and he was a member of Beta theta pi in 1917.
Conrad Smith was a graduate from the Boston University Medical School in 1899.
David Sheppard
Smith 1816
But it was no sparsely settled region into which Dr. David Sheppard Smith ventured and first dispensed the little doses in 1843, for even then the city of Chicago laid just claim to importance, although then its population was less than twenty thousand inhabitants.
However, in the year mentioned, Dr. Smith was hardly a stranger in the city of which we write ; he had first gone there in 1836, fresh from the associations of an allopathic college in Philadelphia, the city of “brotherly love,” and he was the proud possessor of a “regular” sheepskin ; and he had lived and practiced in the city a full year before he returned to his native town in New Jersey and there incidentally investigated the principles of homœopathy just to gratify certain of his Camden friends ; but investigation led to serious consideration and finally resulted in his full conversion to the new medical system and a determination to promulgate its doctrines in the western city in which his professional life had been begun.
It was not Dr. Smith’s good fortune to be the sole occupant of the new field for a considerable length of time, for he was soon joined by Dr. R. E. W. Adams, an allopath, but who entered practice in partnership with the pioneer and soon laid aside the old system for the new.
Later on he removed to Springfield, where his subsequent useful life was spent. Dr. Smith, the pioneer, seems to have been a close observor of homœopathic development in the west and particularly in this state, and he also was something of a chronicler of its history.
He mentioned homeopath Aaron Pitney as being an excellent physician, and spoke with zeal regarding the style and equipage always maintained by him.
Smith also gives us an account of the splendid service to homœopathy rendered by Zabina Eastman, editor and publisher of the ”Western Citizen,” a strong anti-slavery newspaper, and an open advocate of homœopathy, its pages always being open to the champions of our school.
Thus with at least one good and reliable “organ” to defend its principles against the wanton attacks of an unscrupulous enemy, the early practitioners of homœopathy were not compelled to run the gauntlet of allopathic abuse as in many less favored localities ; and with the foundations of the system thus firmly laid during the period of its early history in the west and in the state, it is not surprising that homœopathy early became one of the fixed institutions in the region in advance of states where settlement and development were of much earlier origin.
David was the President of the Illinois State Homeopathic Medical Association.
On June 26, 1849, the invitation was accepted and Doctor Storm Rosa, of Painesville, Ohio, was unanimously chosen to fill the position, and Doctor David Sheppard Smith, of Bainbridge, Ohio, was selected as editor of a Homeopathic Department in the Eclectic Medical Journal, the successor of the Western Medical Reformer.
Dr. D. S. Smith began the practice of medicine in this city in 1836. As early as 1837 and ‘38 his attention was attracted to homœopathy, to which after a careful investigation extending over a period of four or five years he became a complete convert.
Dr. Smith was the founder and first president of the Illinois Homœopathic Association, and during his life received all the honors that local and national societies could confer upon him.
He was largely instrumental in securing the liberal charter of Hahnemann College, was elected to the presidency of its first board of trustees, secured for the benefit of the school the first Hahnemann Hospital and was an earnest supporter of the institution up to the time of his death.
David treated Jonathan Young Scammon, a wealthy and public spirited philanthropist and the first lay person known to have received homeopathic treatment in Chicago. Jonathan Young Scammon became a significant patron of the Hahnemannian Medical College in Chicago
During the early years of its history, at the present time and indeed during the whole period of its existence, Hahnemann Medical College has been fortunate in having as its trustees gentlemen of education, of social prominence and of wealth. Without the influence of, these gentlemen the rapid advancement of our institution would have been impossible.
Looking into the past history of Chicago it would indeed be difficult to select a stronger list of names than Norman B. Judd, J. P. Doggett, Temple S Hoyne, Jonathan Young Scammon, Benjamin Lombard, (Judge) Van H. Higgins, Edson Keith, E. H. Sheldon and Henry M. Smith, all of whom served upon our board.
What is true of the past is equally true of the present, and we point with pride at such names as H. N. Higinbotham, John James Mitchell, Erskine M Phelps, R. R. Cable, Henry A. Rust, Chauncy Keep, Henry J. Macfarland and R. T. Crane, Jr. They have all been loyal supporters and will continue such.
The first written reference to the founding of this institution is the following sentence published in the transactions of the local Homœopathic Society for the years 1849, and 1850 :
"Your committee thinks that the time is not yet ripe for the establishment of a Homœopathic College in Chicago."
In spite of the decision of this committee the idea kept brewing and in 1852-3 we find that Dr. Edward Augustus Guilbert of Elgin drafted a charter for the establishment of a homœopathic school.
Owing to the violent opposition of old-school physicians, the bill providing for this charter was never presented to the legislature. It was so successfully pigeon holed that when in 1854-5 Dr. David S. Smith went personally to Springfield to urge its passage no trace of the bill could be discovered.
Dr. Smith, with the aid of Jonathan Young Scammon, and, if reports may be relied upon, under the supervision of Abraham Lincoln, had a new charter drafted, presented by friends to the legislature, and granted on February 14, 1855, giving to The Hahnemann Medical College
“all rights, privileges and powers which may have been, or may at this time be, conferred upon or enjoyed by any medical institution heretofore or at this time incorporated by an act of the legislature of this state, shall be taken and enjoyed by this institution, said institution to be placed upon as favorable a footing in all respects as the most favored medical institution heretofore or at this time incorporated by an act of the legislature of this state.”
Dr. David S. Smith was recommended as president of the board of trustees…
Dr. Smith was the pioneer of homœopathy in Illinois, but he was more than that ; he was the nestor of the school in the west, its zealous missionary and its faithful exemplar.
He was known by his works, and by reputation he was known to his professional brethren throughout the country ; and he was constantly in receipt of letters of inquiry from physicians who were desirous to locate in the growing city and the rapidly developing country about it and to the westward.
Della F Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1904.
A Dwight Smith 1885 - Homeopath in Glendale for sixty years, graduate of Hahnemann College Chicago and studied under James Tyler Kent. President of IHA and editor of Homeopathic Recorder and the Pacific Coast Homeopathic Bulletin for twenty five years.
Edwin Wallace Smith was a graduate from the Boston University Medical School in 1901.
Ella Gertrude Smith was a graduate from the Boston University Medical School in 1884.
Electa R Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1877.
Elijah S Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College ?year unknown.
Emily L Smith
Harriette Keatinge was Clemence Lozier’s successor, and her mother was the cousin of homeopath Carroll Dunham, and both her aunt Clemence Lozier and her uncle William Harned were homeopaths. Other members of Harriette’s immediate family were also homeopaths, Anna Manning Comfort, Amelia A Comfort, Jennie V H Baker, Emily L Smith and Charlotte H Wooley. Clemence Lozier’s daughter in law Charlotte Denman Lozier was also a homeopath.
Ezra Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1872.
F B Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1879.
Florence Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1901.
Frank Clinton Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1893.
George E Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1880.
George H Smith
1843 - 1908 was a Brooklyn Homeopath for thirty eight years. Born in
Milton Uster County, his parents were farmers, and in his early years he
worked as a street car
conductor.
In 1869, he graduated from the New York Homeopathic
College, was a member of
the Union League Club, the Masonic Veteran Association and several other
Fraternities. He died in 1908 after contracting blood poisoning after an
operation and he leaves a widow, three daughters and two sons.
George Rufus Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1888.
George Thomas Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1897.
George W P Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1882.
Gerritt Smith was a widely
known philanthropist and social reformer who ran for President in 1848.
He was born in Utica, New York in 1797 and lived in nearby Peterboro.
He was Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s first cousin. It was at Smith’s home in Peterboro, New York that Elizabeth Cady met fellow abolitionist and future husband Henry Stanton. Elizabeth Cady Stanton met many other people at Smith’s home, including his daughter, Elizabeth Smith Miller.
Gerrit Smith was a financial supporter of John Brown, and was implicated in the raid on Harper’s Ferry. He denied that his intent was to promote insurrection among Southern slaves, but rather to arm for self defense those who would escape, and thereby inspire others to do so.
Though Smith and several of Brown’s other co-conspirators (The Secret Six) reportedly avoided knowledge of the specifics, there is little doubt that Smith was aware of, and helped to finance, Brown’s plans for military action in Virginia.
Gerrit and his wife were close friends with homeopath Susan B Anthony and Clemence Lozier. Gerritt and his wife helped to found the New York Medical College for Women.
Grace Gardiner Smith was a graduate from the Boston University Medical School in 1895.
Hamilton H Smith was a Faculty Member of the Western Homeopathic Medical College.** **
Henry M. Smith 1835 - 1901 was a good man, a faithful homeopath, and, above all, a true friend. The cause of his sudden demise we know not; but we hope that it was … graduate of the New York Homeopathic Medical College, secretary of the Hahnemann Monument Committee, and co editor with Carroll Dunham of the _American Homeopathic Review_. His father John T S Smith founded Smith’s Pharmacy in 1844 and elected as a trustee of the Hahnemannian Homeopathic College.
Herbert O Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1881.
Ida E Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1887.
Jane Devereux Smith was a graduate of the Boston University School on Medicine in 1880.
J K Smith was the editor of The Carlisle Journal of Homeopathy in 1851.
J Heber Smith 1842 - 1898 graduate of the Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania and editor of the New England Medical Gazette. Adjunct Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics at Boston University School of Medicine. Heber Smith taught Evangeline Adams her astrology in an eight year apprenticeship.
Jonathan Miller Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1869.
Joseph Arthur Smith was a graduate from the Boston University Medical School in 1898.
Julia Howard Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1864.
Julia Holmes Smith 1838 -
1929 was Susan B
Anthony’s
homeopath and an activist in the social reform movement.
Julia Ward Howe appointed Holmes Smith to the board of Woman’s Committee at the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans in 1884-85, and Josephine Griffing, homeopathic advocate Belva Lockwood (the first woman candidate for the Presidency of America), homeopath Mary Edwards Walker and Holmes Smith together formed the Universal Franchise Association and campaigned for Women’s Suffrage, where many others came to offer support.
Holmes Smith worked at the Frances Willard Temperance Hospital as a Consulting Physician and she:
established the first kindergarten, in New Haven, Connecticut, was the first woman elected to a deanship of a coeducational medical school (the National Medical College of Chicago in 1898), the first woman to be appointed trustee at the University of Illinois, and the first woman to be placed on a political ticket in Illinois.
In 1885, Dr. Julia Holmes Abbot Smith, a physician, suffragist and club woman, helped organize IWPA. Her model was the National Woman’s Press Association, founded at the New Orleans Exposition, where women journalists found it difficult to get publicity for the woman’s events.
Born December 23, 1838, to a rich cotton broker in Savannah, GA, she lived in luxury. The family moved to New Orleans in 1847 where Julia and her four brothers had fun sliding down the carpeted staircase on heavy silver trays, rode horseback, and she was tutored in Latin, Greek, algebra, calculus and the classics.
She graduated in 1856 from Abbot Collegiate Institute for Young Ladies in New York where she met Waldo Abbot, the nephew of the principal, and married him in 1860. The young couple struggled because of Waldo’s ill health, a series of failed business ventures and her father’s wartime financial ruin. Her husband died of yellow fever in 1864.
Julia and her two children moved to Connecticut to be near her husband’s family. When her infant daughter died, she left her 16-month-old son with his grandfather and returned with her mother to New Orleans where she became a drama writer for the New Orleans Picayune.
In 1872, Julia married Sabin Smith, a merchant with two grown daughters. They had a daughter together the following year.
Smith paid her tuition to Boston University Medical School in 1873. When she was transferred to New York, she studied with a private doctor and treated women textile workers without charge.
The Smiths moved to Chicago in 1876; Julia became involved in the Association for the Advancement of Women to improve economic, educational and social conditions for women. She completed her medical education at the Chicago Homeopathic College in 1877 and practiced homeopathic family medicine in Chicago for the next 40 years.
Julia founded a clinic for poor women at Dwight Moody’s Chicago Avenue Church, assisting them in learning to help themselves. She became a lecturer and director of the Illinois Training School for Nurses and was a professor, then dean, of the National Medical College. She also served as consulting physician at the Frances Willard Temperance Hospital.
She gained a reputation as an authority of diseases and lifestyles of women and children through her practice and writings. Her active club life provided her with contacts to advance her medical career and her reformist philosophy.
Illinois Governor John Altgeld appointed her the first woman trustee at the University of Illinois in 1895. She served on the instruction and financial committees and was chair of the Student’s Welfare Committee.
Julia retired at age 78 in 1917, but remained active in many professional, literary and medical societies. She died of myocarditis and senility at age 91 in North Shore Nursing Home, Winnetka, and was cremated at Graceland cemetery in Chicago.
JULIA HOLMES SMITH, Chicago, Illinois, is a native of Savannah, Georgia, born in 1839, daughter of Willis Holmes and Margaret Manning Turner, his wife. William Holmes of England, father of Willis, came to America in 1800 and settled in South Carolina with his wife, Mildred Pardon.
Captain George Turner married in Cork, Ireland, Elizabeth … He was a captain of artillery in 1776. His son, George Turner, married Abagail McNeill, daughter of Commodore McNeill, and their fourth child, a daughter, Margaret Manning Turner, married Willis Holmes, father of Julia Holmes Smith.
Dr. Smith was educated chiefly at her home in the south under the supervision of her aunt, Charlotte Turner, who laid a splendid foundation for her subsequent higher education in the Abbott Institute, New York, where she graduated cum laude in 1858, degree A. M.
She was a student of medicine in the Boston University School of Medicine, 1873-75, later under the preceptorship of Dr. Schenck of Fishkill until 1876, and graduated with the Boston University School of Medicine tickets after one term in the Chicago Homeopathic College, in 1877, taking her degree of M. D. from the latter institute, in which she afterward held a lectureship until women were debarred from the student corps.
Subsequently she did no college work, except post-graduate study, until 1898, when she became dean of the National Medical College, Chicago, resigning that office in 1900.
In connection with professional work, Dr. Smith has been somewhat prominently identified with various institutions ; lecturer in Chicago Homeopathic College for three years from 1877 ; lecturer in the Illinois training school for nurses from its inception ; physician to Frances Willard Hospital, the National Medical Hospital and founder of the clinic of diseases of women in Moody Mission.
She was the first woman trustee of the University of Illinois, the appointee of Governor Altgeld ; was three times president of the Chicago Woman’s Club, and once secretary of the Fortnightly; was vice-president of the committee of organization of the World’s Homeopathic Congress held in Chicago in 1893, and chairman of the local woman’s committee of homeopathic medicine and surgery ; was member of the board of directors of Congress of Woman’s World’s Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893.
Dr. Smith was a member and for three years was a censor of the American Institute of Homeopathy, member of the Illinois State, the Chicago and also the Southern Homeopathic Medical societies.
She contributed one hundred pages to Arndt’s System of Medicine, and has been a constant contributor to many homeopathic medical journals.
In 1873 Holmes Smith was a member of The Philosophical Society of Chicago, and she was also a campaigner for public health programs, and club women (career volunteers) raised funds to establish nursing schools and hospitals where women doctors could practice. She was also a member of the Queen Isabella Association (members were known as Isabellas):
Holmes Smith, when the Isabellas lost their argument, organized a model hospital and emergency clinic for women and children at the exposition. This exhibit had a building of its own with a model hospital, up-to-date operating room, diet kitchen, office and reception room, a section of a children’s ward and women’s ward, and a private room for patients.
Julia Smith, Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson and others recruited volunteer women homeopathic, allopathic, and eclectic doctors, as well as nurses from the Illinois Training School for Nurses to staff the clinic, which treated more than three thousand patients during the exposition (World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893).
Every attempt to penetrate male-dominated organizations forced women into the creation of separate associations.
Julia Smith was the only woman on the committee that was organizing the Homeopathic Physicians and Surgeons Congress and eventually became the head of the Woman’s Committee of the same congress.
Holmes Smith presented a paper at the THE WORLD’S HOMEOPATHIC CONVENTION of 1876:
This was the first meeting at which women physician speakers were listed on the program. They included Sarah J. Millsop, M.D., Bowling Green, Kentucky, “The Hygienic Aspects of Gyneacology”; Lucy Waite, M.D., Chicago, Illinois, “The Mechanical Treatment of Uterine Displacement”; M. Ellen Keller, M.D., Ft. Worth, Texas, “Clinical Cases in Gynecology: Their Diagnosis and Treatment”; Clara C. Plimpton, M.D., Nashville, Tennessee, “A Peculiar Case of Abortion”; Julia Holmes Smith, M.D., Chicago, Illinois, “Leucorrhea in Virgins. Some of its Causes. Suggestions as to Treatment.”
Review of the newspaper accounts contained in the Minutes Book reveals that the papers by Dr. Lucy Waite and Dr. Julia Holmes Smith were read by others as they were not actually in attendance.
She was Vice President of the Committee of Organization of the World’s Homeopathic Congress convened in Chicago in 1893.
Holmes Smith contributed to A System of Medicine, The Clinique _and The North American Journal of Homoeopathy_, and she wrote The Butterflies’ Ball: A Spectacular Drama. In Two Parts.
J Wesley Smith signed the enactment for the foundation of the Charter of the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women.
Laura May Smith was a graduate from the Boston University Medical School in 1894.
M D Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1884.
Marie R Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1894.
Moses Edwin Smith was a graduate from the Boston University Medical School in 1875.
Myron Walker Smith was a graduate from the Boston University Medical School in 1895.
Norman F Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1902.
Norman P Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1881.
Orin L Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1891.
Pauline S Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1904.
Ralph N Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1903.
Raymond L Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1903.
Robert M Smith from New Jersey graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College ?year unknown.
S Darwin Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College ?year unknown.
Samuel Gilbert Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1894.
Sarah A Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1887.
Virginia Tenney Smith was a graduate from the Boston University Medical School in 1888.
Warren A Smith graduated from the Hahnemannian Medical College in 1903. Warren was the editor of the Medical Current in Chicago in 1886 - 1896 and the The Medical Visitor in Chicago in 1885 - 1905.
William L Smith was a homeopathic practitioner in Dennison Texas in 1872.
Winfield Scott Smith was a graduate from the Boston University Medical School in 1883 and became Professor of Operative Surgery at the Boston University School of Medicine.