History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

Neuropsychiatry 321years of controversy did the Illinois Legislature authorize the constructionof an asylum in 1879 at Kankakee where Dr. Mt Fai land's plan was actuallyrealized. Its first superintendent was Dr. Richard Dewey who togetherwith his successors continued the application inthis State.principle of the plan inDr. James Stewart Jewell was a splendid example of a man's ability toaccomplish and round out alife of usefulness in the short period of liltyyears. Dr. Jewell, the first presiding officer of the American NeurologicalAssociation, was born near Galena, Illinois, in 1837. He received his generaleducation in the schools of his native town, and at the age of eighteen beganthe study of medicine under Dr. S. M. Mitchell. He attended his firstformal course of instruction at Rush Medical College in 1858, and laterstudied at Lincl University, where he received his M.D. in 1860.For the next two years he practiced in Williamson County, Illinois, andthen returned to Chicago to accept an appointment as Professor of Anatomyat Lind University. This position he retained until 1869, when heresigned with the purpose of studying and teaching Biblical history. Hetraveled abroad for two years in Palestine and Egypt, after having servedduring the Civil War as Contract Surgeon in General Sherman's command.When he reached Chicago in 1871, he resumed his medical practice andgave his attention to nervous and mental diseases. In 1872, he was appointedprofessor of this branch of medicine in the Chicago MedicalCollege, and two years later he founded and became editor of the ChicagoJournal of Nervous and Mental Disease. About one year before his deathhe founded the Neurological Review, but was compelled to discontinueits publication on account of increasing ill health. He contributed manyvaluable papers on neurologic subjects to this publication as well as toother medical periodicals. Probably no man in America at that time hada greater knowledge of the literature of neurology and psychiatry than didDr. Jewell. He had by his own exertions become proficient in French andGerman and was thoroughly at home in the medical literature of theselanguages. He took great pride in his library, which was both choice andlarge and in which was to be found almost every recent journal or bookof value in the branch of medical science to which he was most devoted. 10Dr. Jewell, engaged in promoting neurology as a specialty, was interestedin the formation of the American Neurological Association in June 1875.He served the Association as President for three successive years after itsfounding. He was always deeply interested in its success and regularlyattended its meetings, until failing health rendered this impossible. Dr.Jewell died after a lingering illness, in his fiftieth year, on April 18, 1887. 610For further details concerning Dr. Jewell's library the reader is referred to ChapterXXII on "Medical libraries" in this volume. Editor