American Revolutionary Provenance: A Medical Kit

RMC asked a great question. How does someone establish provenance? It seems RMC owns a valuable mahogany Revolutionary Medical Kit containing forceps, probes, a hooked metal key, a group of six-lancets, tweezers, pinchers, scissors, an ivory tourniquet with rope and other frightening medical tools. RMC said his ancestor, Dr. John Morgan, Surgeon General during the American Revolutionary War, carried the box when serving with George Washington. Another “George Washington slept here” story? Let’s find out….

How do we prove this box belonged to Dr. Morgan? First, Morgan is a familiar name in RMC’s family. The middle “M” in his name stands for Morgan. But Morgan is also a common name. Let’s look into the Dr. Morgan who RMC claims owned this box.

A Kit for a Revolutionary Doctor

Dr. Morgan established one of the first two schools of medicine in America at the College (University) of Philadelphia in 1765, and thus became the first medical professor in America. His service with the Revolutionary Army began October 17, 1775 when he was elected by Congress to the post of Director General of the American Hospital, reporting for duty to General Washington at Cambridge. Of his many accomplishments, history credits him with the gift of a well-stocked medical box to each regimental surgeon, much like RMC’s box pictured here.

During the Revolutionary War two kinds of medical care existed, Dr. Morgan’s Army Hospital, and the smaller establishments of Regimental Surgeons. Congress gave control to Dr. Morgan for institutions East of the Hudson. They gave the institutions West of the Hudson to Dr. William Shippen, Morgan’s arch rival known to sell medical “Life Pensions.” Such contestation ensued that congress dismissed Dr. Morgan from the Army in 1777, leaving Dr. Morgan a disappointed and broken man. He died childless at age 54 in 1789.

He published a Discourse Upon the Institution of Medical Schools in America, reflecting on a time in the future when a hospital functioned for 20,000 men with more than four surgeons, as in Dr. Morgan’s day. Among the primitive state of medicine, think leeches and amputations, Dr. Morgan emerged as a visionary.

Let’s now establish if the Revolutionary Medical Kit shown here contains the kind of tools a doctor used in the 1760’s. The case of lancets are marked “Charriere.” The Swiss Joseph-Frederic Benoit Charriere (1803-76) manufacturered surgical instrument in Paris. The Science Museum, London’s catalogue states “an innovator at a time when surgical instruments emerged.” Well, if Dr. Morgan died in 1789 and Charriere was born in 1803, these lancets could not have belonged to Dr. Morgan. But the box contains many other gruesome tools, such as dental implements and unidentified pinchers and hooks.

What about the other tools in this Revolutionary Medical Kit?

I looked at collections online of the Science Museum Group and found two dental tools most often used in the mid-18th century. Although I shudder, I plan to describe their uses, but suffice to say they’re NOT found in Dr. Morgan’s case. One, a Crow’s bill dental forceps, grabs the tooth (no Novocain, in those days), then tightens and yanks it out. This “popular” tool’s absence in Dr. Morgan’s kit doesn’t mean the kit isn’t Dr. Morgan’s. But it makes me suspicious. Are RMC’s tools basically some of Dr. Morgan’s which were then added to, in the early 19th century? Possibly, subsequent ancestors beefed up RMC’s collection.

Now to the box housing the tools

This medical surgery set lives in a hinged mahogany and rosewood case with a lift out tray. A 1770’s Doctor’s Amputee Surgical Field Kit in a custom made box with a field tourniquet, as in Dr. Morgan’s case, sold for almost $9,000. That kit didn’t come with provenance to any famous surgeon. But all the tools therein were proven authentic 18th century.

My suggestion

Really study, RMC, two-sources to date your tools accurately:

1. The Treatises by a contemporary of Dr. Morgan, Dr. Benjamin Bell, surgical author in 1770 who illustrated his books of “how to” medical treatments with period tools,
2. A website for early medical tool collectors called MedicalAntiques.com.

RMC, search your families’ archives for any portraits you might have of Dr. Morgan with such a mahogany medical kit. My search found a portrait of Dr. Morgan on a “Grand Tour” of Europe, done by the foremost female portraitress of the day, Angelica Kauffman. But no box is pictured in that portrait. The University of Pennsylvania has a sample of Dr. Morgan’s writing from a lesson invitation in 1765. If you find some evidence of Dr. Morgan’s writing anywhere in the box or in family archives you can compare penmanship. It worries me that Dr. Morgan had no children. How then are you, RMC, related to him? Send a picture of this box to historian of the Early American Revolutionary War, J. L. Bell, on his Facebook page Boston 1775. The “case” as it were, is still not proven.