Leaving a Legacy

Book Title: Leaving a Legacy

Book Author: Philip Diller

Publication Information: Cincinnati, OH, University of Cincinnati Press, 2019, 271 pp., $34.95, hardcover

Leaving a Legacy is a collection of excerpts from various writings of Dr Daniel Drake (1785-1852), a physician who lived and worked in and around Cincinnati, Ohio, attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, and played not only a pivotal role in shaping Cincinnati, Ohio, but also a more subtle role in shaping modern medicine. Each passage in the volume is chosen for its specific message from Daniel Drake to his children, his fellow citizens, his colleagues, and the world. The passages are all followed by questions formulated and put forth by Dr Diller and designed to help the reader digest, ponder, and then imagine how they might apply each piece of Drakean wisdom in their own lives to improve themselves, their families, and their communities. The book is organized into five main parts focused on Dr Drake the man, citizen, writer, educator, and physician.

Raised in Ohio, Philip Diller, MD, PhD, is an avid medical historian and family doctor. It is clear that he believes a good physician is also a good citizen of the world, and his love for both medical history and community involvement is evident in his writing, as is his devout interest in the details of Dr Drake’s life and teaching.

Dr Drake was born into a working-class farming family and grew up being only intermittently able to attend school. However, it was his father‘s lifelong dream for him to become a doctor, and at the age of 18 he was sent out into the world to become a doctor’s apprentice. This would be his launching point onto the long, winding road of becoming a physician for both individual patients and families and communities. Dr Drake left Ohio to be trained at a world-renowned institution, but quickly found his way back to his Ohio roots and home soon after graduating.

This is certainly not a high-yield book; it is not a page turner. This book is not a comprehensive biography of Dr Daniel Drake, nor is it a comprehensive description of medicine in the 1800s, or of life in the 1800s in Cincinnati, Ohio. Rather, it is a collection of life lessons on how to be a good physician and an exemplary citizen, that will endure over the centuries, and can be passed on from generation to generation of physicians, teachers, and historians.

Two examples of Drake’s writings that are still applicable today are his thoughts on the importance of the physician’s place in their community, and his advocating for the role of communities in taking care of immigrants:

Medicine is a physical science, but a social profession. What skeletons are to the comparative anatomist, and plants to the botanist, people in health and disease are to the physician. Both his elementary studies and his after duties are prosecuted in their midst, and can be pursued no where else. He may be in feeling a cynic, or in taste a recluse, but practically, he must be ever present among the masses, acting, and being reacted on by them. Thus, per necessitatem, he is made a member of the community in which he follows his vocation, and becomes more or less colored by its characteristic dyes.

…With the design of extending charity to the needy who in consequence of their recent arrival here can demand nothing from the overseers of the poor, and to those citizens who are, through misfortune, and in want of temporary assistance, a number of charitable persons associated themselves in 1814, under the name of the Cincinnati Benevolent Society. They appointed two managers in each ward of the town, and by the voluntary contribution of a respectable portion of the inhabitants, a sum was obtained that has enabled the society to dispense relief to a number of suffering immigrants...

One example of Drake’s writings that highlights his thoughts on slavery, although thankfully not directly applicable today, and certainly embedded with the error of thought that one race is superior to another, still includes one aspect of truth: if you feel someone is lesser than you, the next logical step is to help them, not to push them down further.

… This natural inferiority to the white man has been given as a reason for reducing [the slave] to bondage. But the heartlessness of such an argument is only equaled by its logical absurdity; for where there is a disparity, in mental and moral power, the legitimate conclusion is that the stronger should help, not prey, upon the weaker. To reverse this is to set aside the laws of the moral world, and establish a reign of force and anarchy. [Letter Two]

For anyone particularly interested in medical history, life, and medicine during the 1800s, or the history of Ohio, and Cincinnati specifically, the book will be of particular interest. For this family physician who also spent a significant amount of time living and working in Ohio, it was fascinating to learn about the incredibly different path a doctor in the 1800s would have taken to arrive in the profession, compared to our current experience. Despite the stark contrast of the day-to-day details of what a physician’s life looked like then compared to now, it is impressive how much of Dr Drake’s advice is still applicable today.