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Dr. John W. Monette: The Pioneer Historian

of the Mississippi Valley

BY FRANKLIN L. RILEY,

Professor of History in University of Mississippi

John Wesley Monette was born at Staunton, Va., April 5, 1803. In his infancy his family removed to Chillicothe, Ohio, where he was reared and educated. In his eighteenth year he completed his academic education in the Chillicothe Academy, which was then recognized as "the first institution of its grade northwest of the Ohio." He showed an early fondness for all kinds of literary work. In fact he was so much attached to all of his studies that it is impossible to say which of them afforded him the greatest pleasure. He was no less proficient in literature and the classics than in mathematics and the natural sciences. He prized his "Iliad" and other text books which he used at Chillicothe so highly that they remained in his library throughout his life, some of them being used by his son at college in 1862.

In 1821, a few months after the completion of his academic course, his family settled in the then important town of Washington, six miles east of Natchez, Miss. Having decided to become a physician, he began his professional studies at once under the direction of his father. Four years later he was graduated in medicine from Transylvania University. He then returned home to enter upon his life work.

Dr. Monette was a student by nature, and, although he was actively and successfully engaged in an exacting profession, he never lost interest in literary work. He had a large and well selected library, composed principally of works on medicine, history, geography, geology and theology. In order to gratify his taste for research he found it necessary to economize the spare moments which are often wasted by other people without any thought of their value in the aggregate. To him idleness was almost a crime.

His temperament seemed to combine traits that are more or less contradictory. He was warm-hearted, courteous and

genial, yet at times reserved, austere, and exacting. He was not irascible, but was strenuous in a just cause. His habits were most exemplary. He lived at a time when the use of tobacco and intoxicating drinks was widespread, yet he abstained from both. He was strictly religious, being for years a steward in the Methodist church. His fondness for his home and his strong attachment to his large family made his domestic life a source of constant pleasure. He cared little for formal social functions, and found little time for social intercourse of any kind. He enjoyed public debate, and when engaged therein, drew liberally upon his great fund of information to the pleasure and profit of his hearers. As he was not fond of any kind of sport, he usually spent his limited periods of recreation in his garden or orchard, where he combined physical exertion with study of plant life.

Dr. Monette was also a man of affairs and touched life at many points. He was a successful financier, as is shown by the fact that he accumulated large property interests and was successfully engaged in cotton culture. He cared little for public life, but felt a deep interest in the administration of public affairs.

Two fatal epidemics of yellow fever which occurred in Natchez and Washington in 1823 and 1825 gave Dr. Monette his first opportunity to acquire distinction in his profession. The published results of his investigations soon gave him widespread recognition as a yellow fever expert, and placed his name among those of the best contributors to the medical literature of his day. In one of his contributions, published in 1837, he suggested the use of quarantines in restricting the disease. This suggestion was followed by the officials at Natchez with most gratifying results in the epidemic of 1841. It is claimed that this was the first time that an attempt was ever made to prevent the spread of yellow fever by means of a quarantine, and that to Dr. Monette alone is due the credit of originating this idea. In 1851 a writer in DeBow's Review says that as a result of Dr. Monette's quarantine method Natchez has not had an epidemic of yellow fever since 1839, "while all the villages above and below, small and great, have been several times severely scourged by it." Dr.

Monette made, from time to time, many other valuable contributions to medical science, too numerous and technical

to give in this connection.

Besides his professional contributions, Dr. Monette's earlier literary efforts were directed principally to the subject of natural history. Among his papers is found a carefully written "essay" of 249 manuscript pages of letter size paper on the "Causes of the Variety of the Complexion and the Form of the Human Species." In this essay he attempts to show the primitive unity of the human race and to prove that racial differences can be accounted for by the influence of environment. He shows the effect of climate and natural surroundings on complexion, corporeal development, language, hair, etc., and fortifies his contention by citing parallel effects upon the lower animals. He also traces the influences of "state of society and manner of living," "fashion," and other "artificial" conditions upon different races and compares them to analogous influences resulting from the domestication of animals and plants. He admits that there are at rare intervals certain "aberrations of nature," regardless of the uniformity of surrounding conditions.

In his recognition of climate as a potent factor in working changes and affecting varieties, Dr. Monette anticipated by more than eighty years an important phase of biological study, known as ecology. He classified the peoples of the earth according to climatic zones or belts. To aid him in the study of the effects of climate on color, he had a series of maps prepared which embraced all countries and the islands of the sea. Each body of land was colored so as to show the exact complexion of its native inhabitants at the beginning of its history.

His view that variations of the human stature become obliterated by inter-marriage, unless accentuated by peculiarities of environment, is probably an independent statement of a conclusion scientifically arrived at by Galton and others during the seventies. Dr. Monette, like Dr. W. C. Wells, recognized the theory of natural selection long before the publication of Darwin's great work. Although he seemed to show that faith in environmental influences so strongly held

by Herbert Spencer a quarter of a century later, he was not at all lacking in appreciation of what Darwin calls "spontaneous variations." It is clear that other scientific principles published by Darwin in 1869 in the widely recognized literary prize of the last century, "The Origin of Species," were stated by Dr. Monette in a hypothetical way thirty-five years earlier. One of these writers based his conclusion on deductive and the other on inductive reasoning. Darwin's book was the result of twenty years of the most painstaking efforts, the product of a profound study of nature; and the principles which he presented are more definite, convincing, and scientific than are those given by Dr. Monette. This comparison is made merely to show that Dr. Monette, at the age of twenty-one, possessed many correct and profound conceptions of nature and her laws and had acquired the power of logical reasoning and keen discrimination, as well as the ability to draw accurate scientific conclusions. His patience, industry, logical acumen, and open-mindedness are manifest on almost every page of this interesting production.

Another paper belonging to the earlier period of Dr. Monette's literary activity bears the title, "Essay on the Improbability of Spontaneous Productions of Animals and Plants." This contribution is also found in manuscript form, and was probably never published. In order to appreciate it, the reader must bear in mind the fact that when it was written, the science of biology was not in existence and natural history held the field. The advocates of spontaneous generation were then enthusiastic and persistent in their belief that the lower forms of life owe their origin to equivocal or fortuitous production. The spirit of the naturalist in Dr. Monette, as shown in this interesting paper, is as valuable, nay necessary, today as it was eighty years ago. Indeed, fairly educated people still gape in wonder over the "spontaneous" origin of plants in a burned over district, the raining down of fish, and the like.

The introduction to this paper shows that the author had an accurate conception of the principles and laws underlying and governing the various forms of animal and plant life. Although he does not argue the question from the experi

mental standpoint, he presents a strong, accurate, and logical array of facts based on observation and deduction. The paper is written in a popular style, and is, in the light of the time, rather a remarkable production. Although Tyndale proved by a series of careful experiments the utter fallacy of the theory of spontaneous production the same conclusion had been reached by Dr. Monette twenty-five or thirty years earlier. This essay is a beautiful illustration of the logical and scientific attitude of the writers of the field-naturalist type before the development of experimental science.

The least valuable of Dr. Monette's scientific writings was probably a series of articles on the geology of the Mississippi Valley published in Volume III of DeBow's Review.

The striking similarity between his earlier subjects of investigation and those of Dr. John Mitchell, who lived a century earlier in Dr. Monette's native State (Virginia), is interesting. There is, however, no evidence to show that Dr. Monette was aware of this fact.

Dr. Monette's place in the scientific history of our country must of necessity be an obscure one. As none of his most important scientific productions were ever published, his researches produced little influence outside the circle of his personal friends. He felt that "thirst for natural sciences," which, in the words of Eaton, the pioneer geologist of America, pervaded "the United States like the progress of an epidemic," but, unfortunately, he was deprived of association with the scientific men of his day. In order to overcome this misfortune, he spent money for books, more lavishly perhaps than discriminatingly.

Dr. Monette also wrote, from time to time, a number of anonymous articles, humorous and satirical. Perhaps the most vigorous of his anonymous writings is a series of essays on "Empiricism." These essays were directed principally against the pretensions and practices of the "steam doctors," the disciples of Samuel Thompson, Samuel Wilcox, and Wharton Howard. The concluding paragraph of this series is worthy of reproduction in this connection. It is as follows: "Quackery and empiricism in every age has been essentially the A quack is a demagogue; he relies for success upon the same

same.

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