Infectious Diseases and Charles Meigs, M.D.

My guest author this week is David Gurmai, a friend who is Weekend Coordinator and unofficial historian at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. Enjoy!

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“Wash your hands!” is a common refrain of mothers everywhere, and one that’s become even more important with a global pandemic on our hands (pun intended). It has long been forgotten that hand washing is a relatively recent habit with contentious beginnings. Before it became widely accepted among the general population, it had to first be accepted by the medical community.

Dr. Charles D. Meigs (1792-1869) was an obstetrician caught in the middle of a paradigm shift in medicine. He went to medical school at a time when miasma theory—the idea that diseases are a product of one’s environment—was the accepted belief. Germ theory was in its infancy, though making demonstrably provable claims, particularly with Louis Pasteur advancing vaccination science and inventing pasteurization in the mid-1800s. Dr. Meigs thought germ theory was hogwash. He insisted on having treatment rooms cleaned thoroughly, removing any traces of miasma and effluvia, but hand washing was absurd to him. As a gentleman, a God-fearing and educated man of high standing, contagion couldn’t possibly be spread by his touch.

That’s the stance that Dr. Meigs obstinately took, despite otherwise excelling in his field. There was no regimen of thorough hand washing as he moved between patients. He didn’t merely ignore the idea, but was actively outspoken and hostile toward it. He would invoke reductio ad absurdum-style arguments against it: suggesting that believers of germ theory shouldn’t touch anyone lest they infect everyone, while pointing out that physicians can’t practice in such a manner. He wasn’t the only doctor opposed to hand washing, but he was among the most prominent. 

By the time of Dr. Meigs’ death, germ theory was prevailing over miasma theory. One has to wonder how many infections he passed among the mothers and newborns who were his patients. As the 19th century closed, germ theory was fully accepted by the medical establishment. Another few decades and society at large had caught on; by 1940 everyone was washing their hands before meals and performing surgery.

So, listen to your mother…and the CDC: Wash your hands.

Epilogue by Ed Snyder

Meigs’ professional embarrassment and widely publicized rebuke by the AMA (1850s) is well-documented in the book, Dr. Mutter’s Marvels (2014, Aptowicz). Dr. Thomas Mutter (of the famed Mutter Museum in Philadelphia), a surgeon and professor at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, was one of medicine’s earliest proponents of aseptic technique. Although he could not prove that infections were transmitted by pathogens and non-sterile technique, he did realize early on in his surgical career that if he washed his hands and instruments before conducting a surgical procedure, there were fewer infectious complications. He and Meigs taught at Jefferson at the same time and were at odds in their opinions and teachings.

David’s statement above, “One has to wonder how many infections he passed among the mothers and newborns who were his patients,” is frighteningly addressed in Apotowicz’ book. She states that “Meigs was unable or unwilling to understand the concept that diseases could even be contagious,” and that as an obstetrician he transmitted infectious and sometimes deadly diseases to hundreds of patients. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., MD, a renowned Harvard anatomy professor in 1855, published a scathing article on infectious disease, calling out Meigs by name as “the pestilence-carrier of the lying-in chamber,” who “must look to God for pardon, for man will never forgive him.”

Meigs inadvertently killed many of his obstetrical patients as a result of his stubbornness and grandstanding. He simply refused to believe what we all now know, that the best way to prevent the transmission of infectious disease is good hand hygiene. As David says above, wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands!

I thank David Gurmai for directions to Meigs’ grave in Laurel Hill Cemetery. I had just finished reading “Dr. Mutter’s Marvels” and was fascinated that the science being discovered during the time of Mutter and Meigs (1840s – 1860s) has such a direct relation to the pandemic we are now experiencing. I went to Meigs’ grave and taunted him with germicidal wipes, gloves, and a mask – items he would have scoffed at, yet items we realize are instrumental in saving lives.

Mom Loved to Fly

Elizabeth Jones, c. 1930

My guest author for this blog post is my Mom's cousin, Cheryl. With all the media focus lately on Amelia Earhart, I asked Cheryl Owens Fox if she would write a memorial blog about her Mom, Elizabeth Esther Jones, my great aunt. She was an airplane pilot at the same time as Earhart, which was astounding, really, as women were seldom allowed in "men's" professions. Hope you enjoy! (PS. I must point out the great photo Cheryl provided of her Mom with my grandfather, Daniel Jones!)


Mom loved to fly.  For as long as I can remember, whenever she heard an airplane overhead she would stop and watch it, smiling, until it flew out of sight.  I don’t know when she was first attracted to flying. Perhaps it stemmed from her admiration of Amelia Earhart, an adventurer and a strong supporter of equal rights for women who refused to be confined by convention.  Mom certainly did her best to be unconventional!  Or maybe it was when she fell in love with an aspiring pilot named Woodie.

Elizabeth with Daniel Jones

My mother, Elizabeth Esther Jones, was born in 1914 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to Welsh immigrants who had arrived in the US in 1905. Her father was a coal miner in Wales, so his skills enabled him to find work in the Anthracite coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania. Working in the mines provided a good living for his family, but it also took away his health.  He died in 1920, when Mom was only 6, just a month after his eldest daughter had passed away because of heart problems.

Mom watched her mother struggle to provide for herself and her 3 children, working as a cook and a maid as she had in Wales before emigrating.  When she was 14, Mom quit school to work and help support her family so that her two brothers could continue their education.  She and her best friend Marion found work in the Wilkes-Barre Lace Mill.  As the mill was owned by a Mr. Smith, they jokingly referred to it as “Smith College.”  Years later, they would still laugh about it.  They both worked at the mill through their early twenties. Apparently wages were reasonably good, as Mom was able to pay for flying lessons and was earning more than my father when they married in the late 1930s.

"Woodie" - Woodrow B. Evans (c. 1935)

I don’t know when Mom first met Woodie, but by 1935, they were engaged to be married.  Woodrow Baden Evans was an electrician at Dorrance Colliery, a coal mine in Wilkes-Barre where Mom’s father had worked years before.  Woodie was learning to fly, and on April 24, 1935, he earned his private pilot’s license.  Sadly, it was only 4 months later that he was electrocuted at work.  He was only 22.  I know Mom mourned him for a long time, as I have found notes among her papers that she had written about him after his death.

By early 1937, Amelia Earhart had already flown solo across both the Atlantic and Pacific.  Just two days before Earhart began her ill-fated trip around the world, Mom took her first flying lesson.

Elizabeth Jones' flight log

I still have her pilot log book, one of my most precious possessions, so I know her lessons were in a Taylor Cub.  She flew out of Wyoming Valley Airport, a small airport just a few miles north of Wilkes-Barre which is still in use and still offering flying  lessons.  She also joined the Wyoming Valley Flying Club which was led by her flight instructor, Bill (Roland) Klisch.  Mom’s friend Marion occasionally accompanied her to her flying lessons, and eventually Bill and Marion fell in love and married.  The three remained close friends for the rest of their lives.

Taylor Cub, like that flown by Elizabeth Jones in 1937

Amelia Earhart’s plane was reported lost in the Pacific just one month after Mom’s first flight.  She was my mother’s idol, and for years Mom saved the many newspaper clippings she had accumulated about Amelia.  I remember reading them when I was young and dreaming about having adventures like she had.

On Sunday, December 12, 1937,  mom flew her first solo flight.  Her flying club newspaper wrote “…She experienced a little difficulty with the stabilizer adjustment on the first landing and as a result bounced around a little, but all who witnessed the second landing agreed it was perfect.”  She was so proud of her “wings”.  When she was older, she had them mounted on a disk that she could wear on a chain around her neck.  She never took it off.

One of mom’s stories about her flying days involved a famous boxer who she had met at Wyoming Valley Airport.  She talked about how big he was, and how her hand disappeared in his when they shook hands.  I had forgotten his name until recently, when I was flipping through her pilot’s log and noticed something handwritten on the second page.  It was an autograph:  “Good luck, Jack Dempsey”. She had met the man who was boxing’s world heavyweight champion from 1919 to 1926.

Boxer Jack Dempsey's autograph in Elizabeth's plane manual

My family moved to Florida in 1958, about a year before my grandmother passed away.  Although she enjoyed her new home, Mom always missed her family in Wilkes-Barre.  She also never forgot Woodie, her first love.  It was over twenty years after my father died that I lost my mother.  She had given me careful instructions that she was to be cremated and her ashes returned to Wilkes-Barre, where I was to spread them on her mother’s grave and on Woodie’s.  I knew my grandmother was buried in Mount Greenwood Cemetery in Trucksville, just a few miles outside of Wilkes-Barre, along with my grandfather and step grandfather.  But where was Woodie buried? Mom couldn’t remember the name of the cemetery.  When I was young, we had visited his grave several times, but I had no idea where it was located.

Elizabeth Jones' mother, Elizabeth's (1880 -1959) grave, Trucksville, PA

Finding Woodie’s grave was almost an impossible task.  I spent many hours on line trying to find him, and even convinced a dear cousin who lived near Wilkes-Barre to help me visit all the cemeteries in the Wilkes-Barre area.  I could not find him.  I spread half of my mother’s ashes on her mother’s grave that year, but, hoping I would find Woodie one day, I saved the rest and returned home to Alabama.

Several years later, I was looking through some of my mother’s papers that had been in storage when I came across a small, yellowed newspaper clipping.  It was about Woodie’s funeral at Fern Knoll Burial Park in Dallas, Pennsylvania, and told how his friends from Wyoming Valley Airport had honored him by circling above and dropping flowers during the ceremony.  I discovered his grave was just a few yards from the graves of my father’s father and step-mother.  That was why I remembered visiting it when I was young.

When I finally stood in front of the Evans family’s tombstone, tears began  streaming down my face.  I had never met Woodie, but I knew how much my mother cared for him for all those years.  I placed a photo of the two of them on his grave marker, along with Mom’s ashes, and told him that he had never been forgotten.  In my mind, I could see Mom smiling.