More revisions to Barbour bio

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            Barbour became a physician sometime after the Millerite disappointment and is so listed in a Rochester, New York, city directory. He is often called Dr. Barbour.[1] It appears that Temple Hill Academy offered courses related to medicine. A biographical sketch of another graduate mentions his “two year course” at Temple Hill, and says that medicine was “the only profession open to his limited means.”[2] Any course work was followed by training under the guidance of a practicing physician. Another biographical sketch tells of a graduate of Temple Hill following up his education there with a year’s medical reading under a James A. West, M.D.[3] Barbour may have followed a similar course, perhaps studying under Doctor Lewis McCarthy of Throopsville. It is also possible that he trained at the Metropolitan Medical College in New York City. The college provided training in Botanic and Electric medicine. The building that quartered it had a connection to a Second Adventist congregation, and at one point Barbour lived near it.[4]

            In an advertisement Barbour placed in a number the small-village newspapers near Rochester and Auburn, he claimed that painless, low voltage electricity would cure almost everything:

The following are among the numerous diseases which are positively and permanently cured by this treatment, Rheumatism, Tic Doloreaux, Paralysis of the Auditory or Optional Nerves, Palsy, St. Vitus Dance, Neuralgia, Torpid Liver, Dyspepsia, Piles, Bronchitis, Consumption in its early stages, Catarrh, Asthma, Scrofula in all its forms, Hear Disease, Female Weakness and Irregularities, General Debility, Curvature of the Spine, Stiff Joints, Tumours, Goitres, Ulcers, Felons [Today called Whitlow, an infection at the end of the finger], and swelling of all kinds, Cramps, Spasms, Retention of Urine, Strictures [An abnormal narrowing of a body passage], Dropsy, Inflammation and Fevers in all their forms, Costiveness [Constipation], Dysentery, Cholic [Colic], Bleeding at the Lungs, &c. &c., suspended animation by concussion.[5]

           

            As was typical of medical advertisement in this era, Barbour exaggerated the benefits of his treatments, but for someone presenting himself as a Christian exegete, this is disreputable. He added to the misrepresentation by adding to this advertisment the claim of extensive education: “Dr. Barbour has recently returned from Europe, where, after an absence of ten years, he has had the opportunity of perfecting himself in the medical application of Electro-magnetism, as applied on the Continent and in England.” The implication is that he spent ten years learning his profession. This is nonsense. He was in Australia from 1851-1852 until 1859. He was in New York City by late 1860. Misrepresentation of himself and others became a characteristic especially after 1878.    

            Barbour bounced back and forth between Auburn and Rochester. In 1862 he paid tax as a physician resident in Rochester, and the next year he paid tax from his residence in Auburn. According to an advertisement found in the June 17, 1863, Rochester Daily Union & Advertiser “Dr. N. H. Barbour, of Rochester, (Lately from Europe)” commuted between Auburn and Rochester. On each Monday and Saturday he was available for consultation in Rochester “at the residence of Rev. J.(ohn) Parker, No. 2 Elm street.” He could be consulted at 78 Genesee Street in Auburn on Wednesday and Thursday. Consultation was free, but treatment was not. He briefly associated with a Dr. Hill, whose identity is otherwise uncertain.[6]

            Barbour is omitted from the 1864-1865 Auburn directory, but he was still living there in 1865, when he was granted a United States Patent for a Carbonic-Acid Engine, a gas-expansion engine to power street cars.[7]

            Barbour seems to have avoided Civil War service.[8] He attended a meeting of the British Polytechnic Association in 1864 or 1865 to discuss the merits of his Carbonic Engine, and saw an application to lighter-than-air flight. The Utica, New York, Weekly Herald extracted an article from The Journal of Commerce:

At a recent meeting of the British Polytechnic Association, a Mr. Barbour stated by using compressed carbonic acid gas, he had obtained one and a half horse power from an iron engine which weighed with all its auxiliary apparatus only 450 lbs. An engine of aluminum would weigh only one-third as much. The gas reservoir was strong enough to bear 6,000 lbs. to the inch, and the gas that could be forced into it would suffice to drive the engine an hour and twenty minutes. Mr. Barbour proposes to use such an engine in propelling an airship by revolving spiral fans, upon the plan of the one building at Hoboken; and at once gets rid of all the difficulties resulting from a heavy steam engine, furnaces, &c. His scheme was looked upon not unfavorably by some of the English scientific journals.[9]

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[1]               The Rochester Directory Containing a General Directory of the Citizens, a Business Directory, and the City and County Register, No. XXIX, For the Year Commencing July I, 1878, Drew, Allis & Co, Rochester, 1878, page 44. The Metropolitan Medical College, The New York Times, March 12, 1856.

[2]               Biographical sketch of Michael E. Crofoot in American Biographical History of Eminent and Self-Made Men, Michigan Volume, Western Biographical Publishing Co., 1877, page 41.

[3]               Biographical sketch of Edward Graham Folsom in Eldredge, Robert F: Past and Present ofMacomb County, Michigan, Chicago, J. S. Clark Publishing Co., 1905, page 511.

[4]               This is not the modern hospital of the same name. Metropolitan Medical College was founded in 1852, incorporated in 1857, and had its charter revoked in 1863. – Polk’s Medical and Surgical Directory of the United States, 1890, page 115.

[5]               Dr. N. H. Barbour, Electropathic Physician [Advertisement], The Bath, New York, Steuben Courier, September 4, 1861.

[6]               Advertisement found in the June 10, 1863, Canandaigua, New York, Repository and Messenger.

[7]               Tax records: 1862 District 28 Annual IRS Lists, NARA series 603, roll 188; 1863 District 24 Annual Lists; NARA series 603, roll 165. Patent: United States Patent Office: Nelson H. Barbour of Auburn, New York, Improvement in Carbonic Acid Engines. Specifications Forming Part of Letters Patent No. 46,769, Dated March 14, 1865. His patent application is also noted in Scientific American, March 25, 1865, page 200.

[8]               There is an N. H. Barbour listed as a private in Company E of the 40^th Alabama Infantry. This is not Nelson Horatio Barbour, but Nathaniel H. Barbour from Choctaw County, Alabama.

[9]               The Utica, New York, Weekly Herald, July 4, 1865, page 7.