Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1151

NAME TENNENT 1129 TENNENT Tennent, John John Tennent, exponent of the virtues of Seneca, (rattlesnake root), as a specific for many diseases, and especially for pleurisy, was a native of England who came to the United Stales about 1725 and practised medicine in what shortly became known as Caroline Coun- ty, Virginia. "He held a medical correspon- dence with Dr. Mead (Richard Mead, Lon- don) for many years, and it was to him that he first communicated his account of Seneca." (Thacher). He is said to Lave been a family connection of Mead's. In 1735-1736 Tennent visited England, where he reccied a written endorsement from Mon- ro and Mead for a doctor's degree at the Uni- versity of Edinburgh. The records show that he did not obtain a degree. He returned to America and published what appears to be the first work on medicine printed in Virginia, "An Essay on I'le Pleurisy," printed by Will- iam Parks in Wiliamsburg, in 1736. In 1738 Tennent published in the Virginia Gazette pro- posals for printing by subscription "A Treatise on the Diseases of Virginia and the Neigh- boring Colonies.'' "It is not believed, how- ever, that this work, which would have been of great interest, was ever printed. The same year the General Assembly voted him one hun- dred pounds in recognition of his discovery of the virtues of the rattlesnake root, but the poor physician reaped no pecuniary benefit from the gift, as his creditors seized upon it." (Ty- ler). This year ( 1738) saw the publication in Edin- burgh (again in 1742), of "An Epistle to Dr. Richard Mead Concerning the Epidemical Dis- eases of Virginia, Particularly a Pleurisy and Peripneuniony wherein is Shown the Surpris- ing Efficacy of the Seneca Rattlesnake Root . . . . Demonstrating the Highest Prob- ability That This Root Will Be of More Ex- tensive Use Than Any Medicine in the Whole Materia Medica." Another publication was "Physical Enquiries ..." (1742). He notes the seasonal diseases of Virginia; de- scribes its marshes, creeks, and rivers and tlie state of the air calculated "to bring on a relaxation of the solids and consequently a viscidity of blood." "The diseases of Vir- ginia arise from viscidities and coagulations of the blood." By questioning the natives, Tennent found that among the Seneca Indians rattlesnake root was used as a remedy for snake-bite. They carried it powdered in shot bags for imme- diate use. He administered it with purity of reasoning to patients ill with pleurisy and pneumonia, and he says : "This vegetable, I do aver, is more efficacious and extensively useful than any other medicine yet discovered, whether in or out of the Materia Medica, whether Mineral, Vegetable or Animal." "The improvement of the art of medicine is at a stand," says Teiment ; there were two great remedies — cinchona and mercury, — • while snake-root was a great cure for pleurisy, gout, pneumonia, intermittent fever; the mo- dus in gout being the attenuation of the fluids, the disease being due, he thought, to gritty particles in the blood which by the medicine is reduced to a sufficient degree of minuteness and fluidity; and so by snake-root, tolerc no- dosam nunc scit medicina podagrani. Tennent engaged in a philippic against the London profession, and especially against Ward's patent pills, which seem to have killed many people. When he speaks of fever, we must remember that there were no thermometers in those days and that simple fever even meant an augmentation of velocity of blood, induced by anger, exercise, or drinking. Pitcairn cites legitimate fever and sympathetic fever; legiti- mate fever being due to rarefaction of the blood, and depending on some matter retained in the body. An important note in this little book of sixty-nine pages ("Physical Enquir- ies'') lies in an advertisement on the last page, where our author declares that he proposes to publish in July a dissertation showing rea- sons for regulating the practice of physic for the general good, urging that all prescriptions be written in plain English. He insists, also, "that all secret efficacious Medicines be made public; religion and Morality demand that conduct." Tennent married Dorothy Paul in 1730; the John Tennent, physician in Port Royal, Vir- ginia, supposed to have been their son, went to the grammar school at William and Mary College in 1753, married Anna, daughter of Archibald Campbell, of Westmoreland County, Virginia, and was the father of Washington Campbell Tennent, himself a physician. Howard A. Kelly. Biog. Inform, fiirn. by Pres. Lynn G. Tyler, oi William and Mary Coll. Amer. Med. Biog. James Thacher, M. D., Bost., 1828. Tennent, John Van Brugh ( 1737-1770). John Van Brugh Tennent, a pioneer obste- trician and first professor of midwifery at King's College (Columbia), New York, caiue of a family remarkable in the early religious and medical history of America. His grand- father, William Tennent, born in Ireland, in 1673, graduated at the University of Dublin,