Occasionally when I am doing Ackley research I run across a character who is not in my direct line, but they are so interesting that I take some time to learn something about them. Dr. Horace A. Ackley is one such person; he lived in Akron for a time while my 2nd great grandfather, Gibbons Jewett Ackley, lived there, so his name pops up frequently when I am doing research in that area. Dr. Ackley was somewhat of a medical pioneer, and had a huge impact on medicine in the Cleveland area.
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| Dr. Horace A. Ackley [1] |
Horace was born in August 1810 in Genesee County to James Erasmus Ackley and Hannah J. Cadman. He is a descendant of Nicholas Ackley, and his line of descent is as follows:
Nicholas --> Samuel --> Bezaleel --> James Erasmus --> Horace
Horace attended lectures at the College of Physicians & Surgeons of the Western District of the State of New York in Fairfield, Herkimer County, from 1833-34. He moved to Akron, Ohio in 1834 after being licensed, and shortly thereafter went to Toledo. It was in Toledo that he married his wife, Sophia S. Howell of Willoughby in 1937 [6]. Horace and Sophia had one son, Horace Hall Ackley, born in 1846 [2]. By 1839 he was in Cleveland, and it was there that he established himself as a pioneer of surgical procedures and became known across the country [2], [3].
A Career of Firsts
In 1841, Dr. Ackley was the first doctor in Northern Ohio to restrict his practice to surgery. [8]
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| From The Summit County Beacon, Dec. 22, 1841, p. 1 |
In 1843, Dr. Ackley, along with several of his colleagues from nearby Willoughby University, approached Western Reserve College with an offer to establish a medical department. The offer was accepted, and Dr. Ackley became the first professor at the new school. [3]
In 1847, Dr. Ackley was the first to use ether as an anesthetic during surgery in the Western Reserve, only 3 months after it was first publicly demonstrated in Boston. [2]
In 1855, Dr. Ackley became the first chairman and superintendent of the Northern Ohio Lunatic Asylum. The hospital was built in Newburgh on land donated by the family of future president James A. Garfield. [9]
Cantankerous Yet Compassionate
In an address by Dr. D.H. Beckwith to the Early Settlers Association of Cuyahoga County in 1904, he recalled his teacher Dr. Ackley like this:
"Abrupt in his conversation, he often impressed his hearers as a man devoid of sympathy, but this was an error, for he was good to the poor, giving them his services freely, and he loved children, caring for them with gentleness." [7]
Examples of his bad behavior are easy to find. In one case, an angry mob cornered him at the medical school in Willoughby because they had heard he was operating on humans. Dr. Ackley brought out a small cannon, aimed it at the crowd and threatened to fire it at them if they did not leave him alone. The crowd dispersed. [4]
Stories of Dr. Ackley's good deeds are abundant as well. One fine example: In 1849, when a cholera epidemic was ravaging the city of Sandusky, Ohio, an urgent call went out for medical aid. Dr. Ackley shuttered his practice, organized a group of doctors to join in, and went to Sandusky to offer his assistance [6].
Body Snatcher?
Being a scientist as well as a physician, Dr. Ackley spent a good deal of time looking for ways to improve the body of knowledge around surgery. In 1855, when an instructor and some medical students were caught robbing a grave at Woodland Cemetery in Cleveland to get a body to practice on, Dr. Ackley went to bat for them and introduced a bill that would allow the bodies of "friendless paupers and persons found dead" to be used by medical colleges for dissections [1]. Dr. Ackley was no stranger to this activity; at one point the police had raided his office looking for a body that he was practicing on. He had received a tip about the impending raid and had placed the body in a barrel and rolled it out to the street in front of his office in an attempt to hide it. None the wiser, the police walked right past the barrel into his office and never found the body [4].
Stealing dead bodies to practice on sounds like a macabre thing to do, but in those days finding cadavers to work on (rather than live patients) was a real problem. Ohio had no established method for medical schools to procure bodies to be practiced on, so doctors and students had to resort to snatching bodies from local cemeteries or the city infirmary. Dr. Ackley's bill was designed to provide a legal way for doctors and students to refine their skills without putting a live patient's life at risk, and after much debate and many revisions, the City Council passed an ordnance allowing infirmaries to distribute dead bodies to medical schools if they were not claimed by relatives [1].
A Famous Patient
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| From Cincinnati Post, February 11, 1943, p. 17 [4] |
Stephen A. Douglas, senator from Illinois and presidential candidate several times, came to Dr. Ackley in late 1855 after falling ill and becoming so hoarse he could not speak. At a campaign event in Paris, Illinois on October 27, 1855, he could only muster a bow to the crowd, and someone else was enlisted to speak in his place. Some of his friends thought he was so sick that he might die. He was first taken to a Dr. Reed in Terre Haute, Inidana, but after a month with little improvement he was convinced that surgery was required and made his way to Cleveland and Dr. Ackley, who was acknowledged as "one of the foremost surgeons on the Western Reserve" [5].
"The day after Christmas, Dr. Ackley performed the first of a series of operations, passing an instrument down the throat and into the windpipe and injecting nitrate of silver into the parts affected. A couple of days later, he operated on 'the uvula or lower palate,' removed the patient's tonsils and put him to bed to recuperate." [5]
An Untimely Death
Dr. Horace Ackley died at just 49 years of age on April 26, 1859. His obituary appeared in the Summit County Beacon (Akron, Ohio) on April 27, 1859:
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| Obituary from Summit County Beacon, April 27, 1859, p. 3 [10] |
Although the obituary states that his death was sudden, other sources imply that Dr. Ackley's health may have been slipping for some time due to some bad habits. From the American Medical Biographies:
"...the truth of history demands further the brief and sad statement that Dr. Ackley in his later years fell into habits of intemperance, which not only obscured the honorable records of a strenuous life, but contributed in no slight degree to his premature death, April 24, 1859." [6]
Sources
1. Osborne, Catherine. College of Arts and Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, "A Grave Matter: Legislating Dissection". Website, accessed 19 Feb 2023.
2. Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University, "Ackley, Horace A." Website, accessed 19 Feb 2023.
3. College of Arts and Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, "No. 8 Horace A. Ackley". Website, accessed 19 Feb 2023.
4. "Ohio Forges the Nail, Cleveland Doctor's Skill Helped Put Lincoln in Presidency." February 11, 1943. The Cincinnati Post. p. 17.
5. Milton, George Fort. The Eve of Conflict: Stephen A. Douglas and the Needless War. New York: Octagon Books, 1963, p. 209.
6. Kelly, Howard A., and Walter L. Burrage. American Medical Biographies. Baltimore: The Norman, Remington Company, 1920, p. 2-3.
7. Annals of the Early Settlers Association of Cuyahoga County. United States: The Association, 1904, p. 564-565.
8. "Surgery." December 22, 1841. The Summit County Beacon. p. 1.
9. Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University, "Cleveland State Hospital." Website, accessed 21 Feb 2023.
10. "Death of Dr. Ackley." April 27, 1859. The Summit County Beacon. p. 3.
Quote of the Day
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
Absolutely fascinating story, well told. Thanks, Mike!
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