Our Professional People
The progress achieved in the professions during the last century in our area is worthy of note. After the settlers became more numerous, the doctors were the first professional people to come. Where our first and second physicians had resided earlier is not related, but in 1837 Dr. William C. Anthony, "a regular educated physician," came to Bowling Green. About the same time Dr. Albert Reynolds, Sr., also settled in Bowling Green. These and other early doctors found it difficult to establish their practice because many home practitioners gave their services for nothing, and there were pioneers who had imbibed the doctrine of Dr. Samuel Thomson of Massachusetts, and looked with much suspicion and prejudice upon the "old school" or "calomel" doctors.
Dr. Thomson taught that "minerals were derived from the depths of the earth, being ponderous and tending earthward; their use would drag the patient down and into the grave, but vegetable medicines would raise the body up to life and health, inasmuch as it is the nature of vegetables to spring from the ground and tend upward." Those who gave calomel and let blood as effective in reducing fever, and those who drew blisters were regarded with some distrust and aversion. Dr. Albert Reynolds, Jr., pioneered the way against Thomsonianism, beginning his campaign in 1848. In 1854 Dr. Reynolds built an office and settled in Kappa. In June, 1856, Dr. Samuel L. Kerr started to practice in Kappa, but remained there only one year, moving to El Paso to become its first physician.
Dr. Kerr was a native of Pennsylvania who studied medicine and graduated from a medical school in Ohio. In 1850 he practiced near Fort Wayne, Indiana, but having to ride long distances, the lack of sufficient rest made it necessary for him to retire for two years. Afterward he came to Illinois where he found the settlers much in need of his services. He relates that much of his sleep was on horseback while riding over the prairies before roads were in this area. His riding whip slipping from his hand would awaken him, and one night he dismounted seven times to recover his whip. He describes these rides "across sloughs, muddy and musty, when sometimes for a hundred yards my horse would go knee deep in water and mud. The ponds and
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