Two Cabinet Card Photographs Possibly Known?

I'll have to look up Walter and see when he was at Bowdoin. My husband is 3rd generation Bowdoin. His great-grandfather graduated in 1876

 

Susan, Great post! I have to say that I didn't realize Frank and Austin were two first names. I thought it was one person named Frank Austin... and then I was wondering why they did not identify the third guy!

 

Haha I as well thought the same!

 

Just shows what useful things commas are!

 

You know, there's a possibility that the physician (Dr. Walter M. Wright) was exposed to and contracted syphilis through a medical procedure he performed (surgery, childbirth????). According to a link already provided in this thread, Dr. Wright apparently began practicing medicine in 1876 and was no longer practicing medicine in 1899 (his death).

The following link (from the National Institute of Health) gives a history of aseptic procedures in the medical field, including here in the USA, and mentions some old and well-thought-of (renowned) medical facilities not practicing such procedures as early as some would think they did.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2943454/

"At Johns Hopkins, Dr. William Halsted didn't start wearing gloves himself at first. They were used by nurses and assistants but rarely by the doctors (except for the open bone and joint operations). Dr. Joseph Bloodgood, Halsted's protege who came to Hopkins in 1892, was later the director of surgical pathology and started using gloves himself during surgery in 1896 (Figure (Figure77). (“Why shouldn't the surgeon use them as well as the nurse?”) In 1899, Bloodgood published a report on over 450 hernia operations with a near 100% drop in the infection rate by using gloves. Halsted said, “Why was I so blind not to have perceived the necessity for wearing them all the time?” Hunter Robb, a gynecologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, was another Halsted associate who was a pioneer of aseptic surgery and sterile gowns and one of the first to wear rubber gloves."

And from the above paragraph: "except for the open bone and joint operations." I would think that the doctors began to wear gloves for bone and joint surgery because of the possibility that a sharp bone fragment could injure a doctor's hand/arm and prevent him from performing further surgeries for however long the injury took to heal.

 

>You know, there's a possibility that the physician (Dr. Walter M. Wright) was exposed to and contracted syphilis through a medical procedure he performed (surgery, childbirth????).<

You are so right, yourturn... According to write-ups on him, he did some surgery as well as being a public heath official. No doubt he came in contact with the disease all through his working days. Syphilis was considered a plague during the Victorian era. Speculation has been that 15%+ of the population in the US had syphilis. I have read of higher percentages across the pond. No doubt the percentage was higher everywhere because most causes were never reported due to fear of being stigmatized. Many folks were unaware of how contagious the disease could be from the sores. Many babies were born with congenital syphilis. It is argued that Columbus and his crew carried the disease back to Spain, Europe.

Help for the disease didn't come about until early 1900. In 1906 the Wassermann reaction, a blood-serum test, was able to determine just who had syphilis. The drug arsphenamine/salvarsan, released in 1910, did help control the spread of syphilis. There was no good cure for the disease until the advent of penicillin in the 1920s. Before these drugs mercury, arsenic, and other poisons were used. It was not unusual to see a pic of city life during the Victorian era showing people with sores and disfigured faces from syphilis.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Victorian+era+syphilis&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=xD_7VLWjGrj_sASfpoCoAg&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1024&bih=589#tbm=isch&q=Victorian+era+"syphilis"+sores&imgdii=_

Locomotor Ataxia was a hard disease to identify. Many attributed the symptoms to rheumatoid arthritis, etc. LA was not given a name under 1868 and at that time I don't think it was associated with syphilis. One of the early medical papers diagnosing the early stages of LA was done in 1881:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM188102241040801

Walter's 2nd wife lived to the age of 94, which no doubt meant she never contracted the syphilis. Syphilis after a time may go into a dormant stage making it non-contagious. As she and Walter were married later in life, His disease probably was dormant. The best families in the land experienced it. Queen Vic's oldest grandson Prince Albert Victor, oldest son of the future King Edward VII, presumably had syphilis. He died at the age of 28. His brother George became King George V. Winston Churchill's father, Lord Randolph Churchill had syphilis also.

--- Susan

 

Booth, that ole sop was a rather handsome looking man.