Dr Theodatus Garlick

GARLICK, THEODATUS, physician, surgeon and scientist, born March 30th, 1805, in Middlebury, Addison county, Vermont, was the son of Daniel Garlick, a farmer, who married Sabra Starkweather Kirby, daughter of Abraham Kirby, of Litchfield, Connecticut, and sister of the Hon. Ephraim Kirby, who in 1804 was appointed United States judge for the territorial district of Louisiana, by President Jefferson. In 1816 he left his native State for the Western country, traveling on foot, carrying a knapsack, and arrived at Elk Creek (now Girard), in Erie county, Pennsylvania, where he remained two years. He then removed to Cleveland, Ohio, where he had a brother who was by trade a stone cutter. With this brother he spent some years, and became proficient in the art of carving and lettering on stone. After returning to his home in Vermont to finish his education, which had been irregularly received at the common schools and under private tutors, in 1823 he again returned to Ohio, accompanied by his father and family. His medical studies were commenced in 1829, when he entered the office of Dr. Ezra W. Glezen as a student of medicine, and were continued with Dr. Elijah Flower, a prominent physician and surgeon of Brookfield, Ohio. After some four years of assiduous study, and after attending full courses of medical and clinical lectures, he graduated at the University of Maryland, in the city of Baltimore, in 1834. For many months thereafter he had the benefit of close social and professional relations with Professor N. R. Smith, who occupied the chair of surgery in the Maryland University at that date. Declining flattering inducements to remain in Baltimore, he returned to Ohio and settled in what became the city of Youngstown, where he immediately engaged in the practice of medicine and surgery, making the latter science a specialty. After a successful practice of about eighteen years he removed to Cleveland, formed a partnership in surgery with Professor Horace A. Ackley, and soon took high rank among the profession in that city. He was elected a member of the Board of Censors ' of the Cleveland Medical College, and vice president of the Cleveland Academy of Natural Sciences. As a surgeon he excelled, and had probably no superior in that most difficult branch of the art known as plastic surgery. His operations of this class in the Cleveland Medical College and elsewhere were numerous and important. In the case of a young lady who had lost nearly all of one side of her face and two-thirds of the upper and lower lips by sloughing of the parts, he performed one of the most remarkable and successful operations. The whole side of the face was restored, and the deformity removed by the perfect fitting of the flaps, which were cut up to supply the lost parts. Professor John Delamater declared that there was not a more difficult or a more successful case of plastic surgery on record, and placed its value in money at $10,000. He performed the operation of lithotomy with unusual skill and success, in one case fracturing first and then extracting a stone which measured three and a half by four and a half inches; in shape like a cocoanut. He successfully removed the half of the under jaw twice, disarticulating in each case, and twice tied successfully the carotid artery. He made some valuable improvements in the methods of operation for harelip and for Fistula in ano; introduced new splints and dressings for fractures, and applied the principle of anatomical models to animals and parts of animals, and especially to fishes. In 1853, in connection with Professor Ackley, he entered with great zeal upon the artificial propagation of brook trout and other fish, and in 1857 published his work entitled " Fish Culture," which was the standard authority on the subject. Early in his college career he displayed decided talent as a sculptor, and subsequently made most creditable additions to this branch of American art. While at the Maryland Medical University he produced bas-reliefs in wax of five of the professors of the college, which were pronounced excellent likenesses. The statuettes in basso-relievo of General Jackson and Henry Clay, both of whom gave him sittings, were soon after completed, and were followed by a full length miniature in the same style of Chief Justice Marshall, from a portrait by Waugh. This work was pronounced by Mr. Bullock, the English virtuoso, as equal to the productions of Thorwaldsen. A life size bust of Judge George Tod, of Ohio, was another of his productions, admired for accuracy and artistic merit. He also applied his talent as an artist to the making of over sixty anatomical models which‘ represent all the important surgical parts of the human body; also numerous pathological models representing rare formsof disease. Duplicates of these models are to be found in the medical colleges of Cleveland, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Toronto, Charleston, and many others. These models are considered superior to those of the celebrated Auzoux of Paris. His last work of art, completed in 1874, was a life-size bust of Professor J. P. Kirtland, at the age of sixty years. It is probably his masterpiece, and was modeled partly from an alto-relievo, which he produced in 1850, and partly from sittings by the professor given in 1874. The excellence of this work is remarkable from the fact that it was attained under the most trying circumstances. A disease of the spinal nerves of more than ten years‘ duration, and which incapacitated him from standing without the aid of crutches, kept him closely confined to a lounge, and in a recumbent position, and while suffering acute pain he modeled this admirable bust. This work was a labor of love. No pecuniary consideration would have induced him to undertake it. His deep affection for the subject of it enabled him to persevere in its completion. He mad the first daguerrotype picture (a landscape) taken int he United States, and himself constructed the instrument and apparatus to take it in December 1839, besides making a 1840 the first daguerrotype likeness ever taken anywhere without requiring the rays of the sun to fall directly on the sitter's face -- in other words, in the shade. The artificial propagation of fish was also first successfully practiced in this country by him in 1853. He was a skillful surgeon, an artist of such promise that he had exclusively followed that profession, he would probably have won renown, and was a diligent student of natural history and other kindred sciences. Professor J. P. Kirtland was his first and only preceptor in natural history and was his inmate friend and associate for more than forty years. He was a man of great versatility and undoubtedly of some genius as an artist. A remarkable constitution, and an even, genial temperament, enable him to perform an unusual amount of work requiring endurance and patience. He married Miss Mary M Chittenden, his third wife in 1846, by whom he has one daughter. His first and second wives were sisters and daughters of Dr Elijah Flower, his medical preceptor. He had two children by his second wife, one son, Dr Wilmoth H Garlick, and one daughter.

Source: A Biographical Cyclopædia and Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Men, Part 2. By J. Fletcher Brennan, Egbert Cleave. Page 200- 201

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GARLICK, THEODATUS A.

GARLICK, THEODATUS A. (30 Mar. 1805-9 Dec. 1884), surgeon, sculptor, photographer, and fish breeder, was born in Middlebury, Vt., to Sabra S. Kirby and Daniel Garlick. In 1818 he joined his brother Abel, producing Cleveland's first shipped goods, burr millstones. He worked as a blacksmith and tombstone carver in Cleveland, NEWBURGH, and Brookfield (Trumbull Co.) while studying medicine with local physicians. He graduated from the University of Maryland in 1834 and practiced surgery in Youngstown until 1852, when he became a partner of Dr. HORACE A. ACKLEY† at the Cleveland Medical College. Garlick developed new procedures in plastic and facial surgery and operative midwifery, and invented splints and instruments for amputation, trepanning, and obstetrics. His skill in surgery and sculpture made him an adept portraitist: Pres. Jackson, Henry Clay, and JARED KIRTLAND† posed for him. He also made precise painted plaster anatomy models for medical schools.

Garlick and his brother excavated a Cleveland Indian mound in 1820. Following Daguerre's methods, Garlick built a camera and, in Dec. 1839, made the first photograph in the WESTERN RESERVE using a silvered brass plate, producing Cleveland's first daguerreotype on 9 Sept. 1841. Garlick fished, coauthored essays on angling, and in 1853 successfully artificially fertilized trout eggs in vitro and built the country's first fish hatchery. At 75, Garlick took up Greek, translating the Bible within 2 years. He died in Bedford. He married 3 times: his first 2 wives, Amanda and Sylvia Flower, were daughters of Brookfield mentor, Dr. Elijah Flower; he married Mary M. Chittenden in 1845. He had two children with Sylvia: a daughter, Frances, and a son, Wilmot, a physician and co-founder of the CLEVELAND ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. Garlick had one child with Mary, a daughter, Marietta.

Source: The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=GTA