Sappington’s Theory & Treatment of Fevers

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As I have long since departed from the theory and practice in which I was principally taught, and am now engaged in writing against them, it may be proper that I should give my reasons to the public for doing so.  —John Sappington, Theory and Treatment of Fevers.

The library has recently acquired one of the earliest books published west of the Mississippi and the first medical book printed in Missouri, John Sappington’s Theory and Treatment of Fevers … Revised and corrected by Ferdinand Stith, Arrow Rock [Mo.], Published by the Author, 1844.

The book, Sappington’s first and published by the author in aproximatey16,000 copies, went against contemporary medical treatment of fevers, which included bloodletting, vomiting with the use of emetics, and administering Calomel or Mercury Chloride as a purgative, and instead advocated the efficacy of his own anti-fever pills. Sappington had found both medical and commercial success in fighting fevers with the release of his “Dr. Sappington’s Anti-Fever Pills,” which he began to sell in 1832. The ingredient responsible for their efficacy was quinine, a substance derived from the bark of a South American tree. It was soon discovered that the pills were highly effective in the treatment of malaria (a dreaded and wide-spread disease for southern frontier settlers), and in 1835, Sappington founded Sappington and Sons to meet demand and widen distribution.  The Theory and Treatment of Fevers, however, was not a commercial or advertisement ploy to sell more pills, which Sappington had been successfully selling for nearly a decade by the time of the book’s publication. Rather, the author professed a benevolent desire and purpose for the book and even went so far as to included the ingredients for his lucrative anti-fever pills:

Although the author has vended pills to a large amount, and realized considerable sums of money by his sales, the people have also saved a great many dollars by using them; been relieved of much pain and suffering, and very many lives have no doubt been saved and prolonged. The author considers himself driven to this alternative, more from motives of benevolence than from those of self-interest. (79)

Sappington’s Anti-Fever Pills “were simply composed of one grain quinine each, three-fourths of a grain of liquorice, and one-fourth grain of myrrh, to which was added just so much of the oil of sassafras as would give to them an agreeable odor” (79).

Princeton’s copy contains the bookplate of H. P. Engle, M. D., undoubtedly the county physician Harry P. Engle of Newton, Iowa:

A biographical sketch and photograph of H. P. Engle, M. D., can be found in the Standard Historical Atlas of Jasper County, Iowa, while Dr. Engle’s early adoption of the automobile and its benefit to county physicians can be read in “The Most Satisfactory Investment for the County Physician Harry P. Engle, M.D. Newton, Iowa.”

The Sappingtons went on to became a very prominent and influential Missouri family.  A detailed account of Dr. Sappington’s life and his legacy, including portraits of family members and photographs of his Anti-Fever Pills and related ephemera, can be found on the State Historical Society of Missouri’s Historic Missourians, Nurses & Doctors, website: John S. Sappington (1776-1856). The historical society also houses the Sappington Family Papers.

Select Bibliography:

Eimas, Richard (Ed.). Heirs of Hippocrates: The Development of Medicine in a Catalogue of Historic Books in the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, the University of Iowa. Third Edition. Iowa City: Published for the University of Iowa Libraries by the University of Iowa Press, 1990. Available online: Heirs of Hippocrates.

Morrow, Lynn. “Dr. John Sappington: Southern Patriarch in the New West.” Missouri Historical Review. Vol 90, no. 1 (October 1995): 38-60.

Sappington, John. The­ory and Treat­ment of Fevers … Revised and cor­rected by Fer­di­nand Stith.  Arrow Rock [Mo.]: Pub­lished by the Author, 1844.

Adam Clark Vroman

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Adam Clark Vroman was born in La Salle, Illinois, in 1856, and moved to Pasadena, California, in 1892 in hope of finding a better climate for his wife, Ester H. Griest, who was dying of tuberculosis.  Following her death in 1894, Vroman and an associate opened a store in Pasadena specializing in books, stationary, and photographic supplies.  The success of the store, which is still in operation today as southern California’s oldest and largest independent bookstore, Vroman’s Bookstore, provided Vroman with the means to pursue his many interests, including amateur pursuits in archaeology and historical documentation of the American Southwest.

In 1895, Vroman took his first trip through the Southwest, visiting Arizona and New Mexico, which he documented extensively through photography.  Between 1895 and 1904, Vroman continued to explore and document the Southwest, collecting Southwestern Indian artifacts and photographing Native American villages and the people and customs of the Southwestern Indians (Apache, Hopi, Navajo, and Pueblo).

The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections holds several individual Vroman photographs and three photograph albums, all of which can be viewed online in the Princeton University Digital Library. Two of the Vroman albums represent (at least in part) the cultural studies of the Museum-Gates Expedition of 1901, led by Peter Goddard Gates, a California philanthropist, and Dr. Walter Hough of the United States National Museum.  Vroman served as the official photographer of the expedition.

Vroman was a man of many interests, and after 1904 his attention turned abroad with tours in Japan and Europe, which included collecting Japanese netsuke and photographing European architecture.  His last tours in North America, in 1914, were of the Canadian Rockies and the East Coast.  Vroman, who died of cancer in 1916, left a substantial collection of Indian artifacts to the Southwest Museum, and his Californiana collection and sixteen albums of platinotype prints from his various expeditions were given to the Pasadena Public Library, where they are still available to view by appointment.  Vroman’s collection of Japanese netsuke is now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which described the collection as one “considered to be the finest and largest in the United States at that time [1910].  This group of 2,500 pieces had been assembled by A. C. Vroman of Pasadena, California, and was purchased and presented to the Museum by Mrs. Russell Sage, one of the Metropolitan’s first great benefactors” (Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Fall 1980).

Select Bibliography

Apostol, Jane. Vroman’s of Pasadena: A Century of Books, 1894-1994. Pasadena: A.C. Vroman, 1994.

Mautz, Carl. Biographies of Western Photographers: A Reference Guide to Photographers Working in the 19th Century American West. Nevada City, Calif.: Carl Mautz Publishing, 1997.

Powell, Lawrence Clark. Vroman’s of Pasadena. Pasadena: [s.n.], 1953.

Vroman, A. C. Photographer of the Southwest: Adam Clark Vroman, 1856-1916. Edited by Ruth L. Mahood with the assistance of Robert A. Weinstein. Introduction by Beaumont Newhall. [Los Angeles]: Ward Ritchie Press, 1961.

Watts, Jennifer and Andrew Smith. Adam Clark Vroman: Platinum Prints, 1895-1904. Los Angeles: Michael Dawson Gallery; Santa Fe: Andrew Smith Gallery, Inc., 2005.

Webb, William and Robert A. Weinstein. Dwellers at the Source: Southwestern Indian Photographs of A. C. Vroman, 1895-1904. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973.

The Early Press in New Mexico

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Lista de los Ciudadanos que Deberan Componer los Jurados de Imprenta, Formada por el Ayuntamiento de esta Capital, Santa Fe, 1834. Gift of J. M. Thorington, Class of 1915.

The earliest surviving imprint of the press in what is now New Mexico is this broadside: “List of the Citizens Who May Serve As Jurors on Trials on the Press, Made for the Council of the Capital.”  It was printed on the “Press of Roman Abreu in Charge of Jesus Maria Baca” and is dated August 14, 1834.  The document reflects the 1828 Mexican law passed to protect the freedom of the press and citizens against libel.  Lawsuits concerning the press were to be heard by jurors chosen by the municipal councils of every town that supported a newspaper.  New Mexico, since its first European settlements in 1598, had seen little need for a press; but the changes wrought by Mexican independence in 1821 and the opening of the Santa Fe Trail to the Anglo-American settlements in the United States quickly made a press and its attendant dangers a necessity.

For a detailed account of the Lista de los Ciu­dadanos… broadside, see:

Boyd, E. “The First New Mexico Imprint.” Princeton University Library Chronicle Volume XXXIII, No. 1 (Autumn 1971): 30-40.

Western Americana in the Classroom and Beyond

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 During the fall term of 2011, Professor Martha Sandweiss, History Department, and Brian Just, Art Museum Curator of the Art of the Ancient Americas, co-taught a course entitled “Artifacts, Images, and History: The American Southwest.” The course explored Native arts of the American Southwest by analyzing Princeton’s own collections in the holdings of the Art Museum, the Department of Geosciences, and the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. The Princeton University Art Museum magazine highlighted the course in its Winter 2012 issue, also available on the museum’s news page: The Museum in the Classroom.

Professor Sandwiess’s spring course, “History of the American West,” will make use of the department’s strong holdings of gold rush and overland journey material.  Sixteen manuscript overland narrative collections consisting of letters, journals, diaries, and scrapbooks were recently digitized and placed in the Princeton University Digital Library, allowing students (and scholars worldwide) online access to primary documents from the period.

While many of the collections are recent additions to the department, such as the Daniel Gano Gold Rush Scrapbook (C1398) and the David Starr Hoyt Manuscripts (C1407) that were acquired by the Manuscripts Division in 2011, overland narratives were a particular interest to Philip Ashton Rollins, Class of 1889. While Rollins focused more on printed works, manuscripts were often selected as well, such as a forty-miner’s journal written by M. A. Violette, “Manuscript Journal of Overland Journey to Sleepy Hollow,” 1849 (C0199, no. 1092).

Thornton, Oregon and California in 1848 … (Harper & Brothers, 1849). Philip Ashton Rollins Collection

Rollins early col­lect­ing of printed works was guided by Henry R. Wagner’s  bib­li­og­ra­phy of over­land jour­neys, The Plains and the Rock­ies: A Bib­li­og­ra­phy of Orig­i­nal Nar­ra­tives of Travel and Adven­ture, 1808–1865 (first pub­lished in the 1920s and revised and expanded many times since).  Rollins’ col­lec­tion of over­land nar­ra­tives nat­u­rally cap­tured the Cal­i­for­nia Gold Rush era (1848–53) and marks the beginning of the depart­ment’s gold rush col­lec­tions. Many of the printed works collected by Rollins can be found online via Google Books or the Hathi Trust Digital Library, such as J. Quinn Thornton’s Oregon and California in 1848: With an Appendix, Including Recent and Authentic Information on the Subject of the Gold Mines of California, and Other Valuable Matter of Interest to the Emigrant, Etc. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1849). Rollins, how­ever, soon ven­tured well beyond Wagner’s cut-off point, the close of the Civil War in 1865, which allowed him to con­tinue col­lect­ing overland narratives through­out the rail­road years.