John Crawford

Background

John Crawford was born on May 03, 1746 in Nothern Ireland. He was the second of four sons of a Protestant clergyman. All four became professional men.

Education

At seventeen John entered Trinity College, Dublin. He took his medical degree at the University of Leyden, in Holland.

Career

Crawford acquired his first practical experience as surgeon and agent in charge of the British Naval Hospital in Barbados, where he had opportunities for studying the reactions of the British to a tropical climate. During a fearful hurricane in 1780 he showed himself a generous friend and devoted physician, giving away his own supplies and his entire stock of medicines. As a result of strain and exposure, he went to England on furlough, his wife dying during the voyage. Leaving his infant children in England, he returned to his post to begin a long period of activity and patient investigation.

About 1790 he was transferred to Demerara, then a Dutch possession, and was given a hospital of from sixty to eighty beds. Here he made frequent autopsies, studied botany and entomology, and laid the foundation for his later theory, of “animal contagion. ” He saw and described many cases of hepatic abscess. In 1794, during a visit to Leyden, he discussed with his old teachers his theory of contagion, but it received little attention. Apparently because of some disappointment or because of an antagonism to British methods, he never returned to Demerara, which in 1796 was taken by the British.

Instead, in that year, he emigrated to Baltimore with his children. For seventeen years he practised and wrote there, becoming one of the best-known members of his profession. Rather didactic and cock-sure, he seems to have aroused a good deal of antagonism, but in such atmosphere he throve and rejoiced.

In the summer of 1800 Crawford received from Dr. Ring in London some vaccine “on a cotton thread, rolled up in paper and covered with a varnish which excluded the air. ” This was the first vaccine received in Maryland, but no record of its use appears to have been kept. In 1809 Crawford published in the Baltimore Medical and Physical Recorder “A Series of Observations on the Seats and Causes of Disease, ” in which he set forth the theory of infection or contagion which was his most important contribution to medical science. This he discussed further in a lecture, Introductory to a Course of Lectures on the Cause, Seat and Cure of Diseases (1811). He stated his belief in a contagimn vivum or animatum. Man, he said, is an animal having many properties in common with any other animal. He then traced the connection between animals and the vegetable world, especially between vegetables and insects. Everywhere he found parasitism. He held that disease was caused by the introduction into the human body of some form of animal life so minute as to escape observation, and he believed that each of these minute organisms produced its own peculiar disease, just as a seed in the vegetable kingdom produces its own type of plant and no other.

In Baltimore he found no interest in his idea, but he said himself in the lecture of 1811: “The difficulties I have met with have only increased my ardour. As long as life and health remain, I shall devote myself strictly to the performance of my duty, and I shall leave the results to the August Being who made nothing in vain. ”

His literary activity was very great, although few of its resuits were printed and many of his manuscripts were lost or destroyed after his death. In addition to the papers mentioned above he published four letters on yellow fever and quarantine; four letters on quarantine; “An Extraordinary Case of Ascites”; “An Account of the Sanícula”; “A Case of Hepatic Infection”. HE also left a manuscript of 175 pages “On the Means of Preventing, the Method of Treating and the Origin of the Diseases most prevalent and which prove most destructive to the natives of Cold Countries visiting or residing in warm countries. ” This study, written about 1807, embodied the results of observations made during his service in the tropics.

Crawford’s vital personality soon overflowed the bounds of professional life into the civic life of Baltimore. He gave public lectures, apparently not very successfully. He was censor, examiner, and orator of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, and member of the committee appointed to publish its Transactions. He was also a member of the board of health.

Crawford died after four days’ illness and was buried with great pomp by his Masonic brethren, in the Presbyterian cemetery at Fayette and Greene Sts.

Achievements

• John Crawford established himself as an innovative medical practitioner. He introduced the practice of vaccination to the citizens of Baltimore during an outbreak of smallpox and was the founder of “animal contagion” theory. He helped to found a Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge, the Baltimore Dispensary, and the Baltimore Library ( 1798); and he was deeply interested in the building and up-keep of Baltimore’s first penitentiary.

Membership

Crawford was an active Free Mason and Grand Master of his Lodge in 1801.

Connections

Crawford married about 1778.

References

• The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Volume 4: 18 June 1811 to 30 April 1812