Barker, Jeremiah (1752–1835)
As pioneer medical writer in Maine, Jeremiah Barker stands almost unique in its medical history. He was the son of Samuel and Patience Howland Barker, and was born at Scituate, Massachusetts, March 31, 1752. After a most excellent common school education, he studied medicine with Dr. Bela Lincoln, Harvard University, 1751, and Aberdeen, 1788, member of the Massachusetts Medical Society and a surgeon of the Revolution. Soon after beginning practice, Dr. Barker met with an accident confining him to the house for several weeks. During this enforced imprisonment he developed great skill in medical writing, composing a "Vade Mecum" based on several text-books of medical practice, and a hand-book of anatomy with drawings of his own. He first practised in Gorham, Maine, but finding the field well occupied by Dr. Stephen Swett, he moved to Barnstable, Massachusetts, where he practised chiefly between 1772 and 1779. During the revolution he served actively once or twice, and was a surgeon on a privateer, in which he was captured but soon released. He also took part in the ill-fated Bagaduce (Castine) expedition in 1779. Being now near Gorham again, and his brother-in-law, William Gorham, then living there, Dr. Barker tried the place once more and soon gained an extensive practice along the coast of Maine including all that district now known as Portland. Ten years later he built a house at Stroudwater, two miles from Portland, practised from that center with great success, and when a little over sixty retired to Gorham for the rest of his life.
Dr. Barker's chief service to medical history consists in a large number of interesting accounts of epidemics of scarlatina, malignant fever, measles and putrid sore throat occurring in Maine between 1790 and 1810. He also published meteorological sketches of great value to the historian. In those days much stress was laid upon the weather in the causation of epidemics, and these papers besides describing such conditions year after year contained hygienic advice of value. If it were not for this writer we should be without data of former epidemics. He was exceedingly interested in the use of alkalies in the treatment of disease, and experimented steadily with such substances, chemically and practically, until he had assured himself that in lime-water he had found one of the most valuable remedies ever used in medicine. At one time he planned a history of epidemics in Maine, and strove to interest his fellow physicians in his scheme, but no printed material or even manuscript remains to prove that his work was ever given to the public. He intended also to write the lives of his medical friends, and we can only regret that he was unable to prosecute this work.
Besides writing for publication, Dr. Barker corresponded actively with the learned medical men of his time among whom may first be mentioned Dr. Benjamin Rush (q.v.), the discoverer of forced feeding, fresh air in phthisis, and the rest cure, afterwards developed by other men in later times. Others of his friends were Samuel Latham Mitchill (q.v.), physician, philosopher and politician, Lyman Spalding (q.v.) the founder of the "United States Pharmacopoeia," Gov. (and Doctor) John Brooks (q.v.), Benjamin Waterhouse (q.v.), and numerous others including the well-known Portland surgeons, Nathaniel Coffin, father and son (q.v.), and at Hallowell, Maine, the exiled member of Parliament, Dr. Benjamin Vaughan (q.v.), and Maj-Gen. (and Doctor) Henry Dearborn (q.v.).
He was an active temperance man and, although at times prescribing stimulants, believed that the doctor should be the one to decide when they were really needed. He was one of the famous "sixty-niners" of the year 1818, with which title he goes down into Maine liquor law history, meaning that he was one of the sixty-nine persons who attended in the Friends' Chapel in Portland the first temperance meeting ever held in Maine, the purpose of which was to prohibit the drinking of rum sold on the premises. An amusing anecdote is told of his consulting with Dr. Nathaniel Coffin in a case of tetanus in which two clergymen protested personally at the bedside of the patient against the proposal of the doctors to give a mixture of rum and laudanum. The clergy said that it was sinful to the last degree that the dying man should meet his Creator drunk with rum and poisoned with laudanum. The physicians listened respectfully, but persisted and the patient recovered. The man never forgave Dr. Barker, and as if in perpetual protest was found drowned, ultimately, in a pond of fresh water. Dr. Barker was a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society, a constant student, an omnivorous reader of everything medical, he read French easily, and beginning his medical library at the age of seventeen, left nearly two thousand volumes at his death. Of his literary favorites, it is said that he always carried about with him a well-thumbed copy of "Rush on Fevers" and would lecture from it at the bedside. During one epidemic he did not enter his house for more than four weeks, traveling from patient to patient, eating and sleeping where he had the chance. Occupied with his books and his plans for future medical work, he kept on to the last, dying of old age, October 4, 1835.