PLAINFIELD — Less than 200 years ago, Western medical practices still followed a 1,500-year-old textbook.
When diagnosed with an illness ranging from seizures to pneumonia, patients could be bled. Medicine cabinets were loaded with herbal concoctions. Did they work? It was unclear.
Want to live a healthy life? The prescription was simple and surprisingly familiar: leave the city behind for fresh air and clean water, advice that dates to ancient Greek physicians.
It was an era before germ theory, when the same doctors would perform autopsies in the morning and assist with births in the afternoon, both without gloves, washing their hands or, many times, changing linens.
A rare, untouched glimpse into a 19th-century doctor’s office can be viewed in a small room in Plainfield, where Dr. Samuel Shaw, the town’s physician from 1821 to 1854, practiced.
When he died in 1870, the room remained undisturbed for almost a century.
“When he died, his family just locked the door to the office out of respect for him,” said Dr. Robert Miller, a former solo practitioner in Shelburne Falls who retired in 2018. Miller began practicing in 1973 and reflected on how far medicine had advanced in the century after Shaw’s death.
The room, located in the Shaw-Hudson House on Main Street, had largely been kept closed by the town’s historical society. But a couple of weeks ago, Miller gave a presentation and allowed a couple dozen interested people to take a peek inside.
Dr. Robert Miller, a former solo practitioner in Shelburne Falls who retired in 2018. Miller began practicing in 1973 and reflected on how far medicine had advanced in the century after Shaw’s death.
There are no computers, machines or modern medical devices in the office. Only a couple of lamps are not original.
Instead, the walls are lined with books, almost exclusively on medicine, along with several books on U.S. history. A large mortar and pestle for crushing herbs sits on a shelf, while more than 100 vials of herbs are displayed behind glass in a cabinet. Notably, there is no sink in the room, but there is a small wood stove.
Shaw was born in Abington in 1790 and moved with his family to Plainfield as a toddler. After surviving two bouts of typhoid fever, he pursued medicine, and studied in Plainfield’s community school under Parson Moses Hallock. He later trained with Cummington’s Dr. Peter Bryant, father of William Cullen Bryant, the acclaimed poet and editor of the New-York Evening Post.
Miller explained that being a medical practitioner in that era was a “vague” status because essentially anyone could pass as a doctor.
“Anyone could heal, anyone could provide care,” he said.
To become a Doctor of Medicine, the requirements were much more streamlined, to put it lightly. A couple of rounds of eight-week lectures needed to be completed before receiving the title of M.D. Doctors would then receive a certificate to become an apprentice.
Shaw partnered with Bryant and attended medical lectures in Boston, where he earned recognition from prominent professors. Shaw married Sarah Bryant in 1821 and, after her death in 1824, married Elizabeth Owen Clarke of Northampton.
He returned to Plainfield in 1824 as the town physician. In 1833, he built the house that still stands today. A front door on the right hand side leads directly into his office. The center entrance leads to his two-story residence.
Shaw continued practicing medicine until a 1854 carriage accident in Cummington left him seriously injured and unable to fully recover.
He and Elizabeth had six children, though their eldest daughter died in childhood. In his later years, Shaw was cared for by his wife and daughters. Elizabeth died in 1863.
The house stayed in the family as a summer home, undergoing minimal changes. The last family resident, Clara Shaw Hudson, left the property and its contents in a charitable trust in 1960 to benefit the Plainfield Congregational Church and community.
Miller noted that Shaw was a large, imposing figure. In the room, Shaw’s custom-made Shaker-style chair is 30 inches wide.
Lori Austin of the Plainfield Historical Society has a project she’d like to pursue: determining the countries of origin for all the different herbs in Shaw’s drug cabinet. She said that may be a job for a younger person, perhaps someone in medical school.
“We’re talking the 1700s, the 1800s,” said Austin, a member of the Plainfield Historical Society. “Who was gathering cinnamon from Ceylon [which is now Sri Lanka] at that time, knowing it ends up here?”
