Thomas Miner was born in Westfield, Connecticut, October 15th, 1777. His father was a Congregational minister, and personally superintended the elementary education of his children. In September 1792, young Miner entered Yale College, where he was graduated in 1796. He spent the next six years, when not interrupted by illness, in teaching and the study of law, and it was not until he was twenty-five that he commenced the study of medicine, which he did with the late Dr. Osborn, of Middletown. In 1807 he began to practice under a license from the Medical Society, and, after spending short periods in several places, he finally settled in Middletown, where he spent the remainder of his life.
Dr. Miner’s constitution had always been delicate, and, in 1819, he contracted a disease of the heart from which he never recovered. His professional career may be said to have ended at this time, though he was frequently called upon for consultation, and he contributed quite largely to medical literature. He was an accomplished linguist, and made many translations from the French and German for the medical journals. In 1823 he published, in connection with William Tully, M.D., a work, entitled “Essays on Fevers and Other Medical Subjects,” which created a great sensation among the profession. Two years later he published an account of Typhus Syncopalis, which was several times republished, wholly or as an abridgment, in other medical publications.
In 1819 Dr. Miner received the honorary degree of M.D. from Yale College. He was afterward a member of the committee for devising ways and means, and forming the plan for the Retreat for the Insane, and, in 1834, was elected president of the Medical Society of Connecticut, having already served two years as its vice-president. He was remarkable for ripe scholarship and active intellect. He died in 1841, at the age of 64 years.
Source
Whittemore, Henry, History of Middlesex county, Connecticut, with biographical sketches of its prominent men, New York : J. B. Beers & Co., 1884.
American Medical Biography
Dr. Thomas Miner. The following short notice of this distinguished physician is from the pen of his intimate friend. Dr. Woodward of the Worcester Insane Hospital, in a letter to Dr. Smith, editor of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, and is published in the 24th volume of that Journal. A few years ago, in connection with Dr. Tully, he published a most valuable and interesting work on typhus fever, which caused a great deal of controversy and hypercriticism at the time. Whatever may be the merits of the doctrines he advanced, whether they were true or false, it is not my intention to canvass them here. It is certain that the work was most severely criticised; from that time it obtained a greater celebrity than it ever before had, and the public, although divided on the subject of the real worth of the work, were generally satisfied that it was one of deep erudition and research. At any rate it was one that gave the author great notoriety as a writer, and great fame as a practitioner. It is often so with those who are most abused by caviling criticism. For some time after this he held the office of President of the Connecticut Medical Society, one of the most distinguished institutions of the kind in the Union.
‘ Dear Sir : — Our mutual friend, Thomas Miner, M. D., died at my residence this morning at half past 3 o’clock. The doctor, as you probably knew, had for twenty years or more, been affected with a disease of the heart, which had prevented his engaging in active business. During the last winter he suffered extremely with this disease. Early in March he came on to Worcester to see what could be done to alleviate his sufferings, and, as he said, — ‘If he could not be relieved, to die with his friend.’ Soon after he arrived here, we discovered oedema of his feet and ankles, which pointed too clearly to be mistaken, to the fatal mischief that was lurking within the chest. The symptoms of dropsy were rapidly developed. He was unable to he down, and spent a large part of each night in his chair. Three weeks ago he took cold, which resulted in pneumonia. This disease was severe, and for some days threatened his life. Quite unexpectedly he got better, and for a week indulged hopes that he could return to his friends in Connecticut. He did not probably, from the first appearance of dropsy, expect to recover. The acute disease of the lungs was soon followed by great increase of the action of the heart and general dropsy, which terminated fatally this morning.
Dr. Miner was a remarkable man. He has left behind him few as ripe scholars, profound philosophers and philanthropists in the medical profession. Ill health having for some years precluded active engagement in professional duties, he has devoted his whole time to study and reflection. His mind was very active to the last. He was, perhaps, one ot the most learned physicians in New England — not only in professional attainments, but in foreign languages and theology. He was acquainted with the French, Italian, Spanish, and German languages, and was often employed by publishers in the country to translate them. He was particularly fond of the German, and read works on medicine, theology and philosophy in that language with great pleasure.
You well know his estimable and moral qualities. His heart was benevolent, his feelings kind. In his life he exemphfied the christian character; in sickness and death he bore testimony of unshaken confidence in the christian hope of a joyful resurrection. Dr. Miner was 64 years of age. — S. B. Woodward, Worcester, April 23, 1841.
An account of his last sickness and post mortem appearances may be found in the 24th vol. of the Bost. Med. and Surg. Jour. p. 207.
The principal incidents of the life of Dr. Miner are given in the following sketch from his own pen, addressed to his fellow townsman, Joseph Barrett, M. D.; who has obligingly furnished us with a copy for publication. — New Englander, Jan. 1844.
Autobiography of Dr. Miner
Middletown, Conn. Mch. 9th, 1837.
Dr. Joseph Barrett : — Dear Sir, — I thank you for the sohcitude which you have been so obliging as, at various times, to express, to obtain a few memoranda of the principal events of my hfe. H you survive me it may, perhaps, be a satisfaction to have a record upon which you may depend for your own information, though it may be so barren as to contain little, if any thing, which may be of interest beyond the limited sphere of a few personal friends.
I am now fifty-nine years old, and in one respect may be considered as having lived but a small part of that time. I was originally a weakly child, so that a considerable part of the time, till I was fourteen years old, I was unable to go from home to school. In the years 1798 and 1799, I had the intermittent fever two seasons in succession, and in 1801, I was unable to walk for three months at a time, from rheumatism. Finally, about the year 1819, while fully employed in professional business, I suddenly broke down from a subacute inflammation of the lungs, attended with hectic fever, and a severe palpitation of the heart, arising probably from an organic lesion of that viscus. From this latter affection, I have never completely recovered, but have remained a valetudinarian the last eighteen or twenty years, a large portion of the time, being unfit for active exertion of body or mind.
On the whole, therefore, there have been but about twenty or twenty-five years in my life, which I have been able to employ much for the benefit of myself or others; this is what I mean by saying, that I have lived but a small part of the time since 1 was born.
I was born in Westfield, the north-west parish of this town, where my father was the Congregational clergyman, Oct. 15, 1777. I received my elementary education principally at home from my father, till I was fourteen years of age, though about two years of the time I was able to attend a very excellent common school, kept by the late Rev. Joseph Washburn, who afterwards was the minister of Farmington. After having made some progress in Latin and Greek under my father, in the spring of 1792, I went to Chatham to complete fitting for college, under the tuition of the late Cyprian Strong, D. D., and joined Yale College in September of that year. In September, 1776, I took the degree of A. B., and within a month, being then nineteen years of age, I went to Goshen, Orange county, state of New York, to take charge of an Academy. After remaining in that county three years, and having my constitution much impaired by the two periods of intermittent, to which I have referred, I returned in December, 1799. In the course of the next year, I entered myself as a law student in Judge Hosmer’s office; but within a few weeks, remaining still at my father’s, I had a serious attack of rheumatism, which disabled me from doing much during 1801. However, in the autumn of that year I took charge of an academy at Berlin, which I kept about two years, till I was interrupted by loss of health. The school flourished very well while I was able to attend to it, and Mrs. Emma Willard of Troy, then Emma Hart of Berlin, and Prof. E. A. Andrews, now teacher in Boston, were among my most distinguished pupils. I was then interrupted by ill health both in my attempt to study law, and as a teacher. However, when I was about twenty-five years old, I commenced the study of medicine with the late Dr. Osborne, of this city, engaging a part of the time in instruction. Here William L. Storrs, Esq., was one of my most promising pupils. At that time. Dr. Osborne had probably much the best medical library in the State, and I continued reading under his direction about three years. The winter of 1806 and 1807, I spent with Dr. Smith Clark of Haddam, visiting his patients with him, and seeing his practice. In the spring of 1807,1 returned to my father’s and began practice; but in the autumn removed into the city and remained until the middle of the next summer. After looking about me for a permanent residence, during which time I spent a few weeks at Southington, in August, 1808, I settled at Lynn Massachusetts. There I continued in full practice till May 8th, 1810. I married Phebe Mather, daughter of Samuel Mather, Esq. She died February 5th, 1811. In this city and vicinity, I soon had as much professional business as I could attend to, and more than my health would bear. In February, 1819, I was seized with an aflection of the lungs and heart, which suddenly ended in a great degree my professional career, and left me a confirmed valetudinarian at the premature age of forty-one.
Since 1819, the little that I have done has been of a very various and desultory character, my infirm health preventing continued application to any thing of importance. For several years I practised some in consultation, and amused myself in reading two or three foreign languages, besides writing occasional medical and literary essays. For two or three years before the Medical Recorder of Philadelphia ceased, I made most of the selections, abridgments and translations from the French, which appeared in that work. In 1823, in connection with Dr. Tully, I published Essays on Fevers and other Medical subjects; and in 1825 an account of Typhus Syncopalis. The latter has been several times republished entire, or abridged in other works, as in the Medical Recorder, Boston Medical Journal, Potter and Calhoun’s edition of Gregory’s Practice, and Thatcher’s Modern Practice.
As there was no public medical school in Connecticut when I studied physic, of course I began to practice under a license from the Medical Society, and it was not till 1819 that I received the honorary degree of M. D. from Yale College. The following are the principal specimens of the attention with which I have been honored by my professional brethren. Since the organization of the Medical School of Yale College, perhaps three tenths of the time I have been one of the Censors or members of the committee. I was a member of the committee for devising ways and means, and forming the plan for the Retreat for the Insane, as a colleague with Dr. Todd, Dr. Woodward, Dr. Tully, Dr. Ives, and others, and with the assistance of Dr. Tully wrote the committee’s address to the public, which preceded our soliciting donations. My name was at the head of the committee, and I was therefore chairman of the body; not from any merit of mine, but from the modesty of Dr. Todd, who did not wish to appear as the official leader of an Institution, over which it was expected he would soon preside. In 1832 I was elected Vice President of the Medical Society of Connecticut, and in 1834, President. Having held the latter place three years, it is my intention to dechne being a candidate at the ensuing meeting of the medical convention, in May next. Many of my fugitive Medical Essays, besides what I wrote for the Medical Recorder, have been published under the signature of Senex or Celsus, in the Boston Medical Journal, or the United States Medical and Surgical Journal, though a few others have sometimes appeared in different periodicals. The article on the varioloid and small pox, and on the moral effects of prevalent malignant diseases, in the Christian Spectator for March, 1830, was written by me; and I have translated a few articles from the French and from the German, for Silhman’s Journal.
A few farther particulars may perhaps be worth stating. Like many other young men in early life, I entered pretty ardently into politics, reading not only party productions, but treatises on the law of nations, and various things of the kind. But as early as 1800 I became heartily disgusted with the subject, and gradually got out of its reach, so that for more than twenty years I have not voted at a single election. In my rehgious views I am a Christian, and, as far as I understand the subject, I am nearer a Quaker in sentiment than any other sect. I am in favor of defensive war, and consider it as much a duty to arm against a band of robbers or pirates, as against a flock of wolves or tigers; and I do not consider it as a virtue to refuse customary titles to respect, or to use thee and thou, or to wear a broad-brimmed hat and a drab coat, or to number the months or the days of the week instead of naming them. With these exceptions, and perhaps a few others of the kind, I think I must be considered as in sentiment a Quaker. This may perhaps account satisfactorily to you, for some peculiarities in my habits, which you may have noticed. As to mental philosophy, though here my acquirements are rather limited, I am nearer a Kantian than any thing else. In medicine in general, I coincide with the views of the school of the Vitahsts. My early medical reading was pretty extensive; but of late I have attended but little to the subject, and in fact have lost much of my taste for medicine. From the state of my health, being unable to attend closely to any one thing for a long time, a great portion of my information is but little more than smattering, scarcely going deeper than the surface. Perhaps it more nearly resembles the superficial knowledge which we occasionally meet with in an old bookseller, who has picked up here and there a little upon almost every thing, about which his customers converse.
My father, in common with most country clergymen of his day, besides a slender salary, had a small farm of his own, upon which he generally labored more or less, every day through the summer. In the winter he often had a small school composed of twelve or fifteen young men who were the sons of farmers, or young mechanics, who had just gone through their apprenticeship. My mother was a woman of uncommonly good management in her domestic affairs. With the small salary, the little farm, and the school, the family (which usually consisted of my father and mother, three children, and a female domestic, who in many particulars performed the affairs of a boy and girl) hved very comfortably and decently. My father had not many books, but he had a share in a good public library in the city, and we had access to a small library in the parish. The family frequeritly spent their winter evenings in listening to some one who was reading a book of travels, the Spectator, the history of our country and revolution, foreign history, or some interesting book of the kind. Besides attending daily to the duties common to religious families, Saturday evening was spent principally in reading the Bible, and learning or repeating the catechism. After going to church twice on Sunday, the rest of the time* was spent in reading the scriptures or such writers as Watts and Doddridge. In the evening some of our neighbors generally called in, and the time passed in pleasant conversation upon the events of tlie past week, and other topics of the day.
Except that my father, from the difficulty of procuring sufficient assistance in the management of his little farm, had occasionally to labor rather too hard, in addition to his regular weekly preparation for the pulpit, our family may be considered during the first fourteen years of my life, while I remained at home, as living very comfortably, rationally, and pleasantly. My parents, in common with most of their day, knew very little of the nature and necessity of a proper physical education; consequently, as I was always a feeble child, I was probably injured greatly, by illdirected kindness. I was unable to go very much to the common school, and never became familiar with the common athletic sports of boys. I well recollect, when I was a large boy, I had been so much confined within doors, that my countenance was as pale and white as milk, resembling those plants which have vegetated in the cellar without the light of the sun. Some attempts were made to teach me to labor on the farm, but these were rather injudiciously managed. The common tools on the farm were too heavy and clumsy for one so feeble as I to use to advantage. My father seems never to have thought how easy it might have been to furnish me with a light hatchet, hoe, fork or rake. I beheve this is rather a common oversight with farmers in their first attempts to teach their boys to labor. Those who are sturdy soon overcome the difficulty of using heavy instruments; but they are a great embarrassment to the slender. As I kept tolerably busy within doors with my books, my deficiency in labor and other exercises that tend to strengthen and harden the constitution, was not much thought of. The consequence was, that I early contracted a tender and effeminate habit, which continues to this day, and has been the great burden of my hfe. Every boy in New England that is born and brought up in the country, ought to be early and habitually taught the use of the axe, the hoe, the spade and the rake, so that if occasion should require, it would be no great task for him to cut his own wood, and make his own garden, whatever might be his future condition, or profession, or situation in life. Such knowledge is often of great convenience, but its greatest benefit is in giving strength and firmness to the system.
In addition to the great and irremediable mistake which was made in my physical education, as great or a greater blunder was made in the literary and scientific department. I was sent to college before I was quite fifteen years old, which was one year at least, and probably two years too early for me to receive the full benefit of the institution. My miscellaneous information from reading history, travels, essays, and such books as are usually found in social hbraries, together with a pretty familiar acquaintance with Salmon’s and Guthrie’s geographies, as well as with the early editions of Morse, was tolerably extensive for a lad of my age, but I was not very well grounded in Latin and Greek, and had no foundation laid in the mathematics. The consequence was, though I passed regularly through the course without a single publie or private censure from any of the faculty, and with even some small tokens of approbation, yet I made no figure as a scholar. I had some standing from the amount of my former miscellaneous and general information; but that was all for which I was in any way distinguished. Except learning the elementary parts of the mathematics so as to be able to teach surveying and navigation tolerably well for that day, I knew nothing further of that science.
My mind was not so closely disciplined, and my habits of attention were not so accurately formed, as to have enabled me to make much progress in mathematics during the rapid manner in which the science was studied by the class. I believe the same was the fact with all the younger part of my associates. They made but little progress in a study for which they either were not ripe, or were not previously prepared. My acquirements in the languages were merely decent, and not such as to merit any peculiar notice, either for eminence or defect. On the whole the four years of my college life, though they were far from being trifled away or lost, were spent under very great and permanent disadvantages, and I did not acquire half the solid learning that I might have done had I been two years older, and proportionably better prepared. Many with a real or affected modesty, blame themselves for their misimprovement of early advantages. I have very little of this lamentation to make. The error consisted principally in the mistaken judgment of my friends, in estimating my early acquirements greater than they actually were, and supposing me to have a ripeness of mind, to which I had not attained on entering college.
These are the common mistakes of parents, guardians and teachers. If the memory is capacious and tolerably stored with facts — as was the case with mine — the inquiry too often is made, to ascertain how far the other faculties of the mind are developed. The judgment may be still in embryo. But if the other faculties are tolerably developed, they have probably not been disciphned, so that they can be applied with facility and rapidity to the higher branches of education in the manner in which they are usually studied in a common academical course. This is a statement of facts rather than an apology.
The principal object in almost all my literary, philosophical, biblical and scientific pursuits has been my own amusement for the time being, taking but little pains to arrange it so as to be serviceable to others. The Rev. Henry Channing, now of New York, Prof Tully, Dr. J. P. Kirtland, of Poland, Ohio, Dr. Comstock of Lebanon, Dr. Hooker of New Haven, Dr. Bronson of Waterbury, and Dr. Woodward of Worcester, have been among my principal correspondents. To these I might add Dr. McGregor of Rochester, Dr. Swann of Tennessee, Dr. Calhoun of Philadelphia, Dr. Cartwright of Natchez, and Dr. Fisk of Salisbury, as occasional correspondents. The venerable Noah Webster, LL. D., is among my most respected correspondents. He possesses letters from me upon criticism, etymology and other philosophical subjects. He also did me the honor, occasionally to send me his manuscripts, soliciting my remarks upon them previous to publication. Among the physicians with whom I have been most intimate, are the names of Coggswell, Todd, Ives, Tully, Woodward, Hough, Ward, Hooker, Comstock, North, Bronson and various others. My friend, Chester Whittlesey, Esq., of Southington, possessed more of my letters than any other man. Judge Hosmer and tile late Richard Alsop, Esq., were among my earliest and permanent friends in this city. Asahel H. Strong, Esq., Charles Denison, Esq., the Rev. Thomas Robbins and Prof. Silliman, are among my most distinguished college classmates.
The above is the outline of all that I recollect concerning myself, which you would probably feel much interest in knowing. I am conscious of having omitted several names of gentlemen to whom I have been under much obligation; others have undoubtedly slipped my memory. Thomas Miner.
Source
Williams, Stephen W., American medical biography; or, Memoirs of eminent physicians; embracing principally those who have died since the publication of Dr. Thacher’s initial work on the same subject, Greenfield, Mass. : L. Merriam and co., 1845.
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