Levi Myers (1767–1822): An eighteenth century Glasgow medical graduate from South Carolina

Abstract

Levi Myers, a native of Georgetown, South Carolina, was the first Jewish medical graduate at the University of Glasgow, obtaining the MD, in 1787. Myers had been registered for studies at the University of Edinburgh for three years, from 1785/1786 to 1787/1788, after some years of training with a physician in Charleston, South Carolina. Recent studies of Jewish life in Edinburgh have revealed the evidence of a settled group of Jewish inhabitants in the city during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, during the time of Myers’ sojourn in Edinburgh and thirty years before the formal inauguration of Scotland’s first Jewish community. This paper examines the context of Myers’ studies in Edinburgh as an American medical student and as a Jew.

Keywords

Jews in medicine-University of Glasgow-University of Edinburgh

Early history

Levi Myers was born on 26 October 1767 in Jacksonboro, South Carolina, the son of Mordecai and Esther (née Cohen) Myers who had reached America from England. The Cohen family had arrived in Charleston, then known as Charles Town, South Carolina, in 1750 and Esther’s father Moses served as the Rabbi of Charleston’s main synagogue, Beth Elohim.¹

Mordecai Myers (1727–1788) was born in Rhode Island but was already in Georgetown in 1771 after migrating southwards and looking for an appropriate place to set up the business. Mordecai Myers joined Abraham and Solomon Cohen, two brothers in Georgetown, situated in a rice growing area on the Sampit River where they were the first Jewish mercantile traders.² Jews had been settling in Georgetown since the middle of the eighteenth century and the first Jewish cemetery in the town was opened in 1772. By 1800 there were about 80 Jews living in Georgetown, forming about a 10th of the local white population.

Levi Myers’ inclinations towards a Scottish education were perhaps enhanced by one of his early teachers, Mr Wilson, a Scot who gave him a good grounding in Latin,³ then thought to be important for a medical education though its use in Edinburgh was becoming limited outside the Divinity Faculty. After completing his school studies, in 1782 he was sent to Charleston, South Carolina, at the age of 15 years to start his medical training. After a short period as an apprentice with Dr Haynes, he spent four years with Dr David Ramsay, a Philadelphia graduate who was the son of an Irish immigrant. Having proved his medical interest and aptitude, Myers was now ready to embark on formal university-based medical studies. This would enable him to achieve the status of a fully qualified physician rather than working in a humbler role as a medical apothecary.

Choice of medical school

When Myers set out to study medicine in the 1780s there were only three medical schools in the United States of America. The Harvard school had only recently been established, in 1782, though the medical schools at the University of Pennsylvania, known from its founding in 1765 as the College of Philadelphia and Kings’ College, 1767, (now Columbia University) dated back to before the Revolution. The early faculty of these early American medical schools relied heavily on Edinburgh University graduates. Edinburgh was therefore the model for medical education and its growing reputation attracted no fewer than 117 Americans across the Atlantic for their studies between 1749 and 1799 (Figure 1).⁴ Writing in 1765, John Morgan indicated

‘[T]he reputation of [Edinburgh] is raised to such a height, that … it already rivals if not surpasses that of every other school of Physic in Europe’.⁵

The choice of Edinburgh was the commonest choice of Americans from South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia, regions with the largest concentration of Scottish colonists.⁶ Students from South Carolina tended to come immediately after completing their apprenticeship in order to study in Edinburgh for two years, often without taking a degree though some, like Levi Myers, graduated in Glasgow.⁷

Figure 1.

Dr Levi Myers (1767–1822), Courtesy Georgia Historical Society.

Edinburgh, during the Scottish enlightenment, was an attractive place to study. The reputation of the medical school in Edinburgh had grown during the eighteenth century so that it could be regarded as the leading medical school in Europe.⁸ Students came to study and could receive their degrees after examination and the submission of a Latin thesis following three years of prescribed studies. However, the system was both flexible and cheap.⁹ Many students came only for a year or two, using their period in Edinburgh as part of a range of medical studies that could include attendance in Leiden, Padua or another great contemporary centre. Some students therefore did not graduate in Edinburgh while others, like Levi Myers, were able to graduate elsewhere in Scotland after only two years.¹⁰

Edinburgh was expanding as a city with the elegant New Town attracting the prosperous bourgeoisie from the teeming life of the mediaeval city. The second half of the eighteenth century also saw the rapid development of an intellectual activity centred round the arts and philosophy as well as science and medicine. With figures prominent in Edinburgh life including David Hume (1711–1776), Adam Smith (1723–1790) and Adam Fergusson (1723–1816), scientists James Hutton (1726–1797), Benjamin Bell (1749–1806) and Joseph Black (1728–1799) as well as the surgeon Alexander Wood (1726–1807) and physicians including William Cullen (1710–1790), the university was the focus of this cultural and scientific renaissance.¹¹ Cullen was possibly the most influential physician of his generation. He had been responsible for the improvements in the medical curriculum and many of his students became influential figures in their own right. His best-known students included Benjamin Rush (1746–1813), a central figure in the founding of the United States of America, as well as William Shippen (1712–1801) and John Morgan (1735–1789), who founded the Medical School at the College of Philadelphia, initially designed and staffed by Edinburgh graduates. The number of medical students at the University of Edinburgh grew rapidly from only 60 in 1766 to 660 by 1800.¹² Cullen was also a successful medical author and his textbooks were popular in North America with his First Lines of the Practice of Physic, published in a series of editions between 1777 and 1784.

In any case, the Scottish medical schools had little real competition in the English speaking world before the first of the new medical schools in London opened in 1821. Of the university-trained British medical graduates in the period 1751–1800, no less than 87% were trained in Scotland.¹³ For Jewish students like Levi Myers, the Scottish medical schools had an additional benefit. While the ancient English universities of Oxford and Cambridge had religious tests restricting access to conforming members of the Church of England, these restrictions did not apply in Scotland.

Levi Myers in Edinburgh

Myers arrived in Edinburgh in 1785, the first year that his name appears on the University’s matriculation records (Figure 2).¹⁴ He was to undertake private studies with William Cullen and he came to enjoy especially the lectures of the chemist Joseph Black and of John Brown (1735–1788), a physician whose lectures were the focus for direct attacks on existing medical theories including those espoused by Cullen.¹⁵ Brown’s key text Elementa Medicina, published in 1780, put forward his own Brunonian System which, though later discredited, remained a popular text for some decades. Myers was tutored by Mr Conway who took him to visit the House of Commons in London where he was privileged to hear speeches by Burke, Pitt, Fox and Sheridan.

Figure 2.

Plaque in Edinburgh Medical School, Courtesy Iain Macintyre.

The first Jew to obtain a medical degree in Scotland, Jacob de Castro Sarmento (1691–1762), had received the MD from Marischal College in Aberdeen in 1739. At that time the Aberdeen MD was awarded to reputable practitioners on the basis of affidavits from physicians of good standing. Indeed, one of Sarmento’s sponsors was Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), President both of the Royal Society and of the Royal College of Physicians of London. The practice of awarding medical degrees by affidavit fell into disrepute after some notorious quack ‘doctors’ managed to obtain Marischal College MDs.¹⁶

It was the unrelated Joseph Hart Myers (1758–1823) of New York, but with strong family connections in London, who was the first Jew to graduate in Edinburgh, a fact noted by his examiners.¹⁷ Indeed, Joseph Hart Myers was the first Jew to graduate at a British university after a due period of undergraduate studies. He had completed his medical studies in Edinburgh and graduated there in 1779.¹⁸ Following an extensive tour of medical centres in Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Leiden, Myers settled in London where he had a prominent role in Jewish and medical circles. He was physician to the Hebra, the Congregation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews in London and was responsible for the improvements in Jewish elementary education. He was a colleague of John C Lettsom (1744–1815) at the dispensary in Aldersgate Street and served as librarian of the Medical Society of London. The early career of Joseph Hart Myers was likely to have been known to Levi and would likely have served as encouragement for his undergraduate studies and possibly also for a post-graduate European tour.¹⁹

We have no note of what medical societies Levi Myers joined though it is likely that, like Joseph Hart Myers, he would have joined both a Masonic society and the medical students’ body, the Royal Medical Society and probably also the American Medical Society. Neither do we know where he resided during his years in Edinburgh.²⁰ Some students lodged with their professors, who saw this as a useful form of medical patronage, while others, particularly those from poorer backgrounds, would have had to find the cheapest accommodation in the older parts of the city. There was only one other Jewish medical student in Edinburgh during the period of Myers’ studies, Solomon de Leon, who was a native of St Kitts in the West Indies and who matriculated in Edinburgh in 1786/1787 and 1787/1788 before graduating MD in Leiden. Like Joseph Hart Myers, de Leon subsequently served as an honorary physician to the Hebra in London.

Jewish Life in Edinburgh in the 1780s

However, Myers and de Leon were not the only Jews in the city. While the formal establishment of a Jewish community in Edinburgh only took place in 1816, there is evidence of a continuous Jewish presence in the city for a generation or more before that date.²¹ Abraham Barnet, later known as Francis Burline and listed in the directories as a ‘drawing master’, arrived in Edinburgh around 1777 where he was married to a local woman, Alison Chamber. Burline described himself as being the longest residing Jew in Edinburgh and in fact as the leader of the Jews in the city.

However, it is Burline’s involvement in a libel case that sheds some light on Jewish life in the city at this time. In 1790 Burline accused Mrs Daniel of adultery with Herman Lyon (or Lion). Lyon, a chiropodist, was a colourful figure who later tried unsuccessfully to obtain an MD at Edinburgh University, despite five years of undergraduate study, since the University was not prepared to grant their degree to a ‘corn operator’.²² Most of the Jewish residents were called as witnesses but the upshot was that Burline lost the case and was fined.²³

Burline was responsible for arranging another Jewish resident, Henry Daniel, to go to London to be trained as a shochet, to provide kosher meat or at least poultry for Edinburgh’s Jews. These records from around the time of Myers’ studies indicate that Jewish numbers were possibly adequate for forming a prayer quorum, or minyan, of 10 men. It was not until 1794 that identifying foreign Jews in Edinburgh becomes easier with new arrangements for the registration of aliens in 1794, which indicated that most Jews in the city hailed from Central or Eastern Europe.

On the surface, it may seem unlikely that links might have existed between the two Jewish students who hailed from wealthy families and the disputatious artisans who made up Edinburgh’s first Jewish grouping. However, at the very least, Myers and de Leon may have wished familiar companionship on the Jewish festivals, a link with the Jewish life they left behind to come to Edinburgh to study.

Graduation at the University of Glasgow

While the University of Glasgow had its own well-established medical school, its regulations, like those in Edinburgh, permitted it to examine students for the MD degree who had completed their medical studies at one of the other Scottish universities. However, Glasgow permitted graduation after two years and did not insist on a thesis. Latin theses had to be submitted in Edinburgh some weeks before graduation but there were numerous abuses of the system. Few students had good enough Latin to produce a lengthy thesis in that language and would thus have to engage the services of a translator. Some students went even further and paid professional coaches, known as ‘grinders’, to help with the Latin and sometimes even to produce the thesis for them.²⁴ The services of coaches and translators would have added to the costs and so, with a shorter course and the absence of the requirement for a thesis, some medical students were attracted the short distance westwards for the Glasgow degree. Glasgow as a city would have been well known to someone growing up in the southern United States since its commercial wealth was due largely to trans-Atlantic trade in sugar and cotton and subsequently also in tobacco.

Myers merely attended for examination at the University of Glasgow at its mediaeval home in the High Street. There, having given evidence of his medical apprenticeship in America and his medical studies in Edinburgh, he was duly examined on various aspects of medical theory and practice. Subsequently he was pronounced fit to proceed to graduation which was carried out without having to take a religious oath. Myers’ name appears on the Edinburgh matriculation records for a third year of study in 1787 as Dr Levi Myers MD (Glas). However, his name does not appear in the List of Medical Students 1762–1826 held at the Centre for Research Collections at the University of Edinburgh for the year 1787–1788 and it must have occurred to him that, equipped with a Scottish medical degree, further study in Edinburgh, probably arranged before the Glasgow graduation, would have been a superfluous exercise and that he was now ready to travel before returning home.

After graduation

Myers returned to South Carolina in 1789, two years after concluding his studies in Scotland. It was common for Scottish graduates at this time to undertake some further studies in London with John Hunter (1728–1793), the younger and more famous brother of William Hunter.²⁵ Some graduates, including Joseph Hart Myers, travelled further afield. His Jewish contemporary in Edinburgh, Solomon de Leon, spent two years in Leiden after leaving Edinburgh, graduating there in 1790 before returning to Britain to practise in London. While some time spent in Continental Europe is a possibility, we have no record of Myers’ movements between 1787 and 1789. Once back in Georgetown, he quickly built up a successful medical practice which he ran for more than 20 years. He married Frances Minis in February 1794 in Savannah, Georgia, and they had eight children, not all of whom survived into adult life.²⁶

After his marriage Myers returned from Georgia to South Carolina and in 1796, when he was living in Georgetown, he was elected to the State Legislature, one of the first Jews in the United States to hold such a position.²⁷ He was not regarded as a politician but as someone more interested in medicine and general culture, while contemporary records attest to his high moral character. Some time later he was appointed Apothecary General of the state militia, a position he held until his death. This post was usually an honorary one and not necessarily indicating that the holder of the office was involved in active service.²⁸ The position carried the military rank of Major and the Apothecary General was under the direction of the Physician and Surgeon General to receive medication and surgical instruments from the Commissary General and to distribute them as required.²⁹ For many years his colleague as Physician and Surgeon General was Dr John Ramsay, nephew of his early medical teacher.

Around 1813 Myers spent a couple of years in Charleston where he was seriously ill. He was unable to deliver a lecture to the local Medical Society and in 1815 he returned to Georgetown. There he remained too unwell to return to his medical practice yet available to give advice as required. In September 1822 a hurricane devastated the South Carolina coast at Georgetown. Levi, his wife and their four unmarried children with nine members of household staff were at their home at North Inlet, a popular summer resort area, when the hurricane arrived. Their house ‘fell and crushed to death all, who were within’. There was only one survivor, March, the servant of Levi Myers.³⁰ Myers’ body was not found until a month later, identified by his gold watch, and he and his wife were buried in Georgetown though in 1856 their bodies were reinterred in Savannah.³¹

Conclusion

The undergraduate studies of Dr Levi Myers in Edinburgh illustrate the pre-eminence of its medical school during the last decades of the nineteenth century as it attracted students from a wide geographic spread without regard to their religious affiliations. Indeed, Myers’ presence in Edinburgh coincided with the beginnings of Jewish life in the city, a situation similar to that in his native Georgetown. He returned to the United States to pursue a distinguished medical career until illness befell and eventually a tragic storm took his life and the lives of several members of his family.

Footnotes

Author biography

Kenneth Collins was a GP in Glasgow for over thirty years. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of Medicine at the University of Glasgow and is currently Visiting Professor at the Centre for the History of Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the editor of Vesalius: the Journal of the International Society for the History of Medicine.

References

Elzas

. The Jews of South Carolina, Philadelphia: JP Lipincott, 1905, pp. 32–32.

Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities, http://www.isjl.org/history/archive/sc/georgetown.html (accessed 6 February 2013). See also Rogers GC Jr. The history of Georgetown County, South Carolina. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1970, pp.150, 167. Mordecai Myers was noted, p.123, n9, as ‘desirous of becoming British…’ if there taxation only with representation in parliament. After the American independence he was described (p.167) as being among the ‘holdovers from pre-war days’ in the local merchant class.

Myers RP. Biographical sketch of Dr Levi Myers. Published privately, Honolulu, 1903, p.6.

Macintyre I. Enlightenment and science: Scottish medicine c1750-c1850. In: Dingwall H, Hamilton D, Macintyre I, et al. (eds) Scottish medicine: an illustrated history. Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2012, pp.91–151. The account of American students in Edinburgh can be found in pages 141–143.

John Morgan’s comment on the Edinburgh medical school, written in 1765, is quoted in Rosner L. Thistle on the Delaware: Edinburgh Medical Education and Philadelphia Practice, 1800-1825. Society for the History of Medicine 1992; 5: 19–42.

Rosner

. Medical education in the age of improvement: Edinburgh students and apprentices 1760-1826, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991, pp. 17–17.

Rosner L. Medical education in the age of improvement, p.17.

Hamilton

. The healers: a history of medicine in Scotland, Edinburgh: Canongate Press, 1981, pp. 111–111.

Hamilton D. The healers, pp.112–126 details the background to the growth and development of the Edinburgh medical school. Indeed, he records that in the mid-1700s Benjamin Franklin would supply introductions to top Americans studying in Edinburgh. Porter R. The greatest benefit to mankind: a medical history of humanity from antiquity to the present. London: Harper Collins, 1997, pp.290–292, describes how Edinburgh became the ‘British Leiden’, pioneering infirmary-based teaching while providing ‘the elements of anatomy surgery, chemistry, medical theory and practice’. Rosner L. Medical education in the age of improvement, p.17 notes that while studying Edinburgh was cheap, Glasgow was even cheaper.

10.

Rosner L. Medical education in the age of improvement, p.17.

11.

Graham

. The social life of Scotland in the eighteenth century, London: A&C Black, 1937, pp. 115–115.

12.

Graham HG. The social life of Scotland, p.437.

13.

Hamilton D. A history of medicine in Scotland. Edinburgh: Canongate Publishing, 1981, p.138 quoting AHT Robb-Smith in Poynter FNL (ed) The evolution of medical education in Britain. London: Pitman Publishing, 1966. Newman C. In: Poynter FNL (ed) The evolution of medical education in Britain: 49 notes that the figure reached 95% in the first half of the nineteenth century. Besides obtaining a medical degree, there was the option of qualifying through becoming a licentiate of one of the Royal Colleges, probably a less acceptable qualification to overseas students.

14.

University of Edinburgh, Centre for Research Collections, List of Medical Students 1762–1826.

15.

Myers RP. Biographical Sketch 8.

16.

Collins K. Go and learn: the international story of the Jews and medicine in Scotland. Aberdeen University Press, 1987, p.38.

17.

Massil

. Dr Joseph Hart Myers (1758–1823) and his family: public prominence and private losses. Jewish Historical Studies 2012; 44: 180–180.

18.

See especially Chapters 2 and 3 in Collins K. Go and learn: the international story of the Jews and medicine: 1739-1945. Aberdeen University Press, Aberdeen, 1987.

19.

There is an extensive literature on Joseph Hart Myers and his family background. See for example the following papers by Stephen W Massil, Naphtali Hart Myers (1711–1788): New Yorker and Londoner. Jewish Historical Studies 2011; 43: 97–124; Dr Joseph Hart Myers (1758–1823) and his family: public prominence and private losses. Jewish Historical Studies 2012; 44: 179–200; Joseph Hart Myers MD (1758–1823) – First Jewish Graduate (Part I), University of Edinburgh Journal XLV; 1: 34–38; Joseph Hart Myers MD (1758–1823) – First Jewish Graduate (Part II), University of Edinburgh Journal XLV; 2: 110–115. Also, see Rubinstein WD, Jolles M, Rubinstein HL (eds) The Palgrave dictionary of Anglo-Jewish history. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011, p.707.

20.

In later life back in South Carolina he joined the local Literary Society and the Winyah Indigo Society. Kole K. The Minis family of Georgia 1733-1992. Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, 1992: p.43. The Winyah Indigo Society was chartered by King George II in 1758, having grown from the old Convivial Club, organised in 1740, as a result of the prosperous growth of the local indigo plant.

21.

Roth C. In his rise of Provincial Jewry: the Early History of the Jewish communities in the English Countryside. The Jewish Monthly London, 1951, pp.57–59 had noted a reference to a Jewish community in Edinburgh as early as 1780 in reference to an Edinburgh resident buried in that year in the Jewish cemetery at Hoxton in London. A Levy in his The origins of Scottish Jewry, a paper presented to the Jewish Historical Society of England on 13 January 1958 noted the presence of Jewish traders in the city from 1691 (p.8) and further individual Jews in the city from 1750 (p.10). Abel Phillips in A history of the origins of the first Jewish Community in Scotland: Edinburgh 1816, John Donald Publishers, Edinburgh, 1979 refers to some individual Jews in Edinburgh during the 30 years before the establishment of a community in 1816. However, Michael Tobias carried out researches into early Edinburgh records: Scottish post office directories: Edinburgh 1773-1776, 1784-1785; Williamson’s directory for the City of Edinburgh, Canongate, Leith and suburbs: 1784-1785 Edinburgh Business directories: 1773–1795, and all of these have confirmed Roth’s original impressions of a continuous Jewish presence in the city from the 1780s.

22.

Collins

. Go and learn: the international story of Jews and medicine in Scotland, Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, Aberdeen, 1988, pp. 41,43,51,172–41,43,51,172.

23.

Edinburgh Commissary Court, 6 December 1790, Process of Scandal, Rose Nathan and another v Francis Bevillen (Berlin/Burline). Burline was also know as Burnett, Barnett and Berlin. CC8/6/853.

24.

Kenneth Collins, Go and Learn: 24.

25.

John’s older brother William had died in 1783, thus before Myers arrived in Edinburgh, but John continued to lecture and teach until his death in 1793. William had studied under William Cullen in Glasgow and was a major influence on John who ultimately achieved greater fame as a surgeon in London.

26.

Kaye Kole gives the names of Levi and Francis (Minis) Myer’s children as: Mordechai, Anna, Frances Maria, Elizabeth, Hesse, Francis, Theodosia and Julian, The Minis family, p.49.

27.

Marcus JR. United States Jewry, 1776-1985. vol. 1. Wayne State University Press, 1990, p.87. The Jewish encyclopaedia (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13937-south-carolina) records that Francis Salvador was a delegate to the Second Provincial Congress which met in 1775–1776 and in which South Carolina was declared an independent state.

28.

Waring

. Chief Medical Officers of the South Carolina Militia. South Carolina Historical Magazine 1970; 71: 33–35.

29.

Strobel M and Elliott B. The militia system of South Carolina. A E Miller, Charleston. S Carolina, 1835.

30.

Kole K. The Minis family: 48.

31.

Kole K. The Minis family: 49.