By Celia Hayes
The
practice of medicine in these United States for most of the 19th
century was a pretty hit or miss proposition. Such was the truly dreadful state
of affairs generally when it came to medicine in most places and in all but the
last quarter of the 19th century – patients may have been better off
having a go with the D-I-Y approach. Doctors trained as apprentices to a doctor
with a current practice, or read some books and hung out a shingle. Successful
surgeons possessed two basic skill sets; speed and a couple of strong
assistants to hold the patient down, until he was done cutting and stitching.
But
in South Texas from 1850 on, there was doctor-surgeon who became a legend, for
his skill, advanced ideas, and willingness to go to any patient, anywhere and
operate under any conditions – and most usually with a great deal of success.
Doctor Ferdinand Ludwig von Herff, who dropped the
aristocratic ‘von’ almost immediately upon arriving in Texas, was also an
idealist, and prepared to live in accordance with his publically espoused
principles. He came to Texas in 1847 as part of a circle of young men called
the “Forty”, who had a plan to establish a utopian commune along ideas fashionable
at the time.
Like the 1960 variety of idealists, most of Ferdinand Herff’s
companions were students of various German universities. Originally they were
going to establish their community in Wisconsin, but the Mainzer Adelsverein –
the Society of Noblemen of Mainz, who had taken up what they thought would be a
promising entrepreneur grant in Texas – offered funding and support if they come
to Texas instead. In mid-summer of 1847 the Forty arrived in Texas, led by
Herff, his friend Hermann Spiess and Gustav Schleicher, a trained engineer who
would eventually oversee building of the rail system throughout Texas. They had
brought along a huge train of baggage, supplies and equipment, including seeds
and grapevines, mill machinery, a small cannon, many dogs, one woman - a cook/housekeeper named Julie Herf (no
relation to the doctor), Doctor Herff’s complete collection of surgical
impedimenta … and a good few barrels of whiskey. By late fall, they had moved
all this and a herd of cattle to a site near present-day Castell. They set up
tents, built a long building to use as a sort of barracks and common-room,
planted crops and named their little town Bettina, after Bettina von Arnim – a leading
star-intellectual of the day. They settled in to live their dream of communal
living, close to the land.
It didn’t last beyond a year, of course. The Forty were long on
ideals, enthusiasm and funds, but short on relish for back-breaking
agricultural labor. The community foundered on the rocks of human nature and self-interest,
but not before Doctor Herff performed a single amazing feat of surgery.
This took place within weeks of his and the Forty’s arrival,
during that halcyon period when an Adelsverein-negotiated peace treaty with the
Comanche held between the two peoples – the German settlers brought over by the
Adelsverein, and the Southern or Penateka Comanche. A Comanche warrior with an
advanced case of cataracts appeared at Bettina, asking to be healed. Dr. Herff
had already been treating various Indians who presented themselves, and would
eventually become fluent in Comanche and Apache dialects… but this was a tall
order and a touchy situation. They did not dare turn the Comanche away.
Amazingly enough, Dr. Herff had brought the latest in ophthalmologic instruments
with him and had performed cataract surgery – in Germany.
There were other challenges to be met; they would have to use
ether to anesthetize the patient, and Doctor Herff would have to have
sufficient light to operate. Ether being flammable, there was no way to light
the surgical site with the usual sorts of lamps and candles with reflectors. Dr.
Herff would have to operate outdoors, as would often be the case in his
subsequent medical career on the frontier. Being a fastidiously tidy sort of
man, he insisted on it being a clear, dust-free, windless and insect-free day,
and that only boiled and cooled water be used to irrigate the eyes of his
patient. A dozen commune members stood by, armed with palm-leaf fans to keep
flies away… and Dr. Herff set to work, probably knowing that this was an
operation that could not be botched.
Fortunately the surgery was wildly successful. The patient was
ecstatic at being able to see well again, and as he departed, he promised the
doctor the most generous reward at his command – a woman. One can imagine a
great deal of jollity at Dr. Herff’s expense over the next three months from
the other young men of the Forty – but
at the end of the time, the Comanche appeared again, with a young Mexican girl
in tow, and handed her over to Dr. Herff. Dr. Herff promptly handed her over to
the care of the only other woman in Bettina, the housekeeper/cook, Julie Herf.
The girl’s name was Lena, or Lina; she had been a captive for a long time and
was never able to recall enough about her original family to return to them.
Eventually, she married Hermann Spiess.
Dr. Herff practiced medicine tirelessly for most of the next sixty
years, establishing San Antonio’s first hospital, several medical associations
and serving on the Texas Board of Medical Examiners. Generally, if there is a
surgical “first” anywhere in Texas during the last half of the 19th
century, he was the surgeon responsible for it. There is a historical marker on
San Antonio’s Riverwalk marking the site of one of his homes, and another on a
hill outside the little town of Boerne, where Dr. Herff and his family later
spent the summers.
(The story of the German settlers in mid-19th century
Texas is told in my Adelsverein Trilogy
– and Dr. Herff himself also appears very briefly as a character in Book Two – The Sowing. He will also
appear again in my next book, The Quivera
Trail, which will be released late next year.)
