Medicine’s Primitive Beginnings

By Sharon Manthei

The city of Ashland today has a modern up to date medical center. When Ashland’s first doctor, Dr. Edwin Ellis arrived in the winter of 1855-56, there were few houses and no hospitals. Dr. Ellis was present as Ashland’s pioneers arrived. One of his first good works was stitching up the ugly gash on the head of young Jean (later to become Mrs. W.R. Durfee) who had fallen on the hearth of the kitchen stove. Her father had to tramp over the narrow trail, from their home near Beaser Avenue, through the woods to Bay city and bring Dr. Ellis back to care for Jean. Dr. Ellis was more than a physician, he was also a judge, teacher, merchant and business man. He organized the Masonic Lodge and was treasurer of Northland College in its early years. He laid claim to and platted the eastern end of Ashland which was formerly known as Bay City. He was a very benevolent man. Many schools, churches, depots, dock frontages, hotels and industrial locations received their beginning with a donation of land from Dr. Ellis.

As Ashland grew, many doctors came and went. They averaged several new doctors each year. Some of the doctors stayed and made their homes here while others moved on in search of a more suitable environment and opportunities. Many early doctors died of blood poisoning because of the primitive medical practices.

Some of the early doctors followed the lumbermen into the pineries where it was the custom in those years to sell a sort of hospital insurance which provided the lumberjack with medical and surgical treatment and board and nursing care in a hospital which in most cases was a cheap boarding house with convalescent lumberjacks as nurses. A progressive medical profession soon changed this and in a few years the hospital ticket business played out. After an interval of a few years, the prepaid medical and hospital plan “Vogue” was instituted on much the same plan.

Dr. George W. Harrison arrived in Ashland at the end of the terrible epidemic of measles. He took hold with a will and saved many lives. Fresh from his studies and work in the big city hospitals, he was wonderfully successful in his treatment of its evil after effects. Dr. Harrison was Ashland’s second Mayor and was General Manager of the Ashland Light and Street Railway for several years. Of his four sons, two followed in their fathers footsteps and became doctors. David practiced medicine in Mason, WI while George II practiced in Ashland, as did his son George III. The Harrison family still lives in the home that the first Dr. George Harrison built on the corner of Fifield Row and Front Street.

In 1889 the Drs. Hosmer were running a hospital known as the Wisconsin and Michigan Hospital and selling tickets to the lumberjacks in the woods. Dr. Rinehart , a representative of the American Hospital Aid Association had a hospital in the same block with the Hosmers. The Hosmers sold their larger hospital to Dr Rinehart. The Hosmers assistant, Dr. Bonneville, induced a woman of some means to go in with him to build a new hospital. Their hospital failed and their building later became the Gordon Business College. Dr. Rinehart did a flourishing business with his hospital. He brought the first X-ray machine to Ashland.

Dr. John Morris Dodd came to Ashland to work with Dr. Rinehart and soon moved on to open his own hospital. He secured a building at 610 Ellis which had been a dance hall with “fringe benefits”. It worked well as a hospital as there was plenty of room for examining rooms, laboratory, kitchen, patient rooms and living space for his family. He realized the importance of nursing as an adjunct to the work of the physician and surgeon and in 1895 started the first training school for nurses at his hospital. When his practice grew, he closed his hospital, built a clinic downtown (the present American Legion Building) and became chief surgeon at St. Joseph’s Hospital where he saw to it that a training school for nurses was established.  Not feeling comfortable at St. Joseph’s, he formed a group that purchased the Wilmarth Mansion and built the addition which became the Ashland General Hospital. A training school was incorporated at this hospital also. By this time he had outgrown his first clinic and built another clinic which later became known as the Medical Arts Building. When Dr. Dodd closed his first hospital, he tore the hospital building down and erected a new home for his family. Today it is home to Frost Home for Funerals. Dr. Dodd was very civic minded. He was one of Ashland’s Mayors, instrumental in the founding of Northland College, and was a prominent member of the Elks and Masonic Lodge as well as other fraternal societies.

The medical profession in Ashland has progressed, from its primitive beginnings, keeping pace with the advances in medical and surgical science and art.