Nathaniel Burger Shaler
1805-1882
by Alvin Powleit, an abstract from the Autobiography of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
Nathaniel Burger Shaler was born July 21, 1805 and went to school in Lancaster, Massachusetts and then to Harvard College. His combative humor led him into trouble with his teachers; he therefore withdrew at the beginning of his last year and went to the medical school where he had as preceptors, Drs. Channing and Jackson, and was much influenced by Dr. Warren.
After graduating, he went to Havana, where his uncle was consul, with the intention of making his career in that place. He appears to have been successful as a practitioner and to have accumulated some money, but his combative motive was still upon him. In two years, he started in search of some other spot "to locate" in. This he found as by chance in Newport, Kentucky, then a little village with no educated physician and with the Asiatic cholera upon it. He practiced as early as 1834 at Taylor Street in Newport.
His success with the disease, due to his resourcefulness and intrepidity, quickly gave him a place among the people. He married in October 1835 Ann Southgate, granddaughter of Dr. Thomas Hinde and the daughter of Richard and Nancy (Hinde) Southgate. In his medical practice he was successful in difficult cases, those which aroused his combativeness, and often very clever in ruses to gain his ends.
He helped a stout man on the verge of collapse in Asiatic cholera, by reviling him as a coward until the fellow's rage helped the reaction. Again, when a woman who was sinking needed in like manner to be aroused, he became interested in a supposititious dog-fight which he seemed to see from the window, hurried away to observe it, and shortly returned to find her in a fair way to recovery because of her indignation.
In surgery he was dexterous. At 60 years of age, he removed an iron filing from a workman's eye with the point of a common needle and this without glasses. During a larger part of his life he was employed by the government as surgeon at Newport Barracks. This was a convenient place where soldiers were forwarded from a wide area.
Especially during the Civil War, it was a convenient dumping ground for the obstinate cases sent in from the field hospitals; yet, the proportion of recoveries were larger than in any other hospital of that time. His success was in great measure due to his distrust of remedies and his confidence in the use of tents, nutrition and cheerfulness. He was among the first to put aside the singular custom of blood-letting, not having used the lancet after 1832.
When Surgeon General Hammond issued his order concerning the use of calomel in the Army hospitals, he offered to return all the supplies of that drug which he had received unopened. The Civil War roused him strongly. He went security for the first thousand muskets which came into the hands of the Unionist.
As a member of the Covington and Newport Medical and Surgical Society, he was chosen a delegate to the Medical Convention in Baltimore, Maryland in April 1870.
He died January 17, 1882 and was buried in
Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate.