Lasting impression: A living history of medicine

Although he died nearly 100 years ago, Dr. Edward E. Stonestreet is still a very real presence in the suburban District of Columbia community that preserves his memory and his clinic to maintain an important link to the past.

By Susan J. Landers, amednews staff. Dec. 16, 2002.

"Dr. Stonestreet practiced his profession in this town for over 50 years, and no man in the community has filled a greater measure of usefullness (sic). Of a kind and pleasant disposition, and endeavoring to look upon the bright side of life, he always brought a ray of sunshine into the sick room. He was noted for his charity, and calls to the bedside of the poor and needy were never unheeded. His life was pure and sustained the highest standards in every relation, and his death is regarded as a public bereavement."

So says the obituary of the much-respected Edward E. Stonestreet, MD, who practiced in what was then the small, rural farming community of Rockville, Md., until his death on Thursday, Oct. 15, 1903. He was 73, the oldest man in town.

Studying medicine's past
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"If we could all live our lives such that our passings were public bereavements, think what a community we would have today," marvels Clarence Hickey, who once a month dons frock coat and top hat to portray Dr. Stonestreet in the very same freestanding clinic that was used by the doctor to treat patients.

The Montgomery County (Md.) Historical Society operates the restored clinic as the Stonestreet Museum of 19th Century Medicine.

Dr. Stonestreet's clinic was moved about a half mile from its original site to become part of a small complex of buildings preserved by the county to serve as a tangible tie to a time when there were 30,000 people spread across the county, instead of the 870,000 Montgomery County holds today.

The tiny, one-room clinic looks much the same as it did when it was constructed by Dr. Stonestreet's parents to encourage him to return to his hometown after his medical school graduation in 1852.

In 19th century medicine, cataracts were not removed, just pushed down.

Never mind that there were two other physicians in town, enough to care for Rockville's population of 400 people. And never mind that Dr. Stonestreet was only 21 -- that wasn't unusual. His training was top-notch. He apprenticed for 3 1/2 years under two different physicians and attended medical school in Baltimore for two years.

Dr. Stonestreet quickly established a reputation for compassionate and competent care by treating the cataract of a woman who had been turned away by others because she could not pay. Cataracts were not surgically removed then, but "couched," or pushed down sufficiently to allow an individual to see colors and shapes.

There is no doubt in Clarence Hickey's mind that the clinic and the memory of Dr. Stonestreet connects people to their past. One resident mentioned that he thought his great uncle had been examined, but rejected, by Dr. Stonestreet for possible service in the Union Army during the Civil War. Hickey was able to look up the great uncle's name in Dr. Stonestreet's records, and "sure enough," there he was.

A man of his time

Photos of Dr. Stonestreet and his family are arranged on the walls of the clinic -- six daughters lived well into adulthood, but a son and daughter died at young ages. A grandson, William Linthicum, MD, became a family physician.

Medical instruments and medicines of the time are also arranged in the clinic. A copy of Don Quixote is in a bookshelf beside the Surgical Complications and Sequels of Typhoid Fever.

The original brass plaque on the exterior of the clinic indicates that Dr. Stonestreet maintained office hours from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. and again from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. But he practiced for many more than four hours a day.

In medicine's evolutionary years, germs were recognized, "vile humours" were discounted, and the x-ray was invented.

Back then, Rockville was a farming community, and many times Dr. Stonestreet rode out on his horse, Grant, to tend those who had been injured or become ill and were unable to travel to the clinic. Saddlebags still hang by the clinic door.

Dr. Stonestreet was fortunate to be a physician at a time that medicine was undergoing a scientific revolution, Hickey notes. At the start of his career, a stethoscope was a simple wooden instrument shaped rather like an eggcup. By the time of his death, stethoscopes more closely resembled those used today.

And there were many more dramatic revelations that shaped the profession. For one, germs were found to cause disease and infection, and the theory of "vile humours" and the necessity for bleedings were discarded. The x-ray was invented in 1895, but for the greater part of Dr. Stonestreet's career he diagnosed fractures by touch, comparing a possible break to the complete set of bones he had at the ready.

In Dr. Stonestreet's era, the latest medical advances generally traveled via word of mouth. And he made sure his community had that knowledge as soon as possible by sponsoring lectures at the Montgomery County Medical Society where he was an officer.

In that manner, this physician's teaching legacy continues. Each month he literally comes alive thanks to Hickey, who is a biologist for the Dept. of Energy. Also a student of Civil War-era medicine, Hickey is happy to share information with the visitors who stop by the clinic.

On a recent Sunday, two boys, Nicholas Campbell and Andrew Spelic, stopped by with their fathers to watch "Dr. Stonestreet" make pills -- there was no pharmacy then. He also used a bullet extractor to remove a bullet from the loaf of bread that was substituting for a wounded arm or leg.

The office's skeleton often attracts the attention of the museum's young visitors, so Hickey asked the two boys if they had ever broken any bones. When told that one boy's mother had broken a "little bit of her leg," Hickey used the teachable moment to draw the boys into the story of the bones, Dr. Stonestreet and medicine in the 19th century.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Studying medicine's past

Located just outside Washington, D.C., the Stonestreet Museum of 19th Century Medicine is operated by the Montgomery County (Md.) Historical Society as part of a complex that includes the Beall-Dawson House, built around 1815. The address is 111 W. Montgomery Ave., Rockville, Md., 20850. Call (301) 340-6534 or (301) 762-1492 for hours and admission charges or consult the society's Web site (http://www.montgomeryhistory.org/).