Page 29 - Delaware Medical Journal - September/October 2018
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HISTORY OF MEDICINE
through that year in the battle of Long Island, at White Plains. During the infamous Battle of Trenton, between 1777 and 1778, typhus cut down the Continental Army by nearly half. It was in Trenton that Tilton was able to test his theory that overcrowding was responsible for the high mortality rate in Army hospitals.
Tilton was able to give trial, with considerable success, to his pet scheme of building small, well-ventilated log huts capable of each 6
Dr. Thomas C. Stellwagen, an authority on medical history, wrote: “Probably without Tilton’s devises for cleaning up hospitals, Washington’s army would have been defeated; and we know only too well what great strits the country had been reduced by fever and epidemics. We believe that there would have been no hope of success if this scourage of typhus had not been arrested.7
On April 3, 1777, Tilton was appointed hospital physician; on April 23, Congress passed the following resolution: “Resolved, that Dr. James Tilton be authorized to report to Dumfries in Virginia, there to take charge of all Continental soldiers that are or shall be inoculated against smallpox, and that he shall be 8
While inoculations for smallpox had been largely practiced since the beginning of the war, this resolution and others following, which called for the assembling of troops for inoculation, were the actions taken by Congress on this matter.
During the medical department’s reorganization of 1780, Tilton’s name was, you guessed it, on the list of hospital physicians and surgeons. In this capacity, he conducted a hospital at Williamsburg during the Yorktown campaign. Tilton was largely instrumental in securing an action of Congress on September 20, 1781 that provided for promotion by seniority
above regimental surgeons, who were given the same rank as hospital mates.9
After Yorktown, the Delaware troops were brought back from duty in the Carolinas and went into camp at New Castle, in other states, they formed the Delaware State Society of the Cincinnati on July 4, 1783. Tilton had fought with them on him as the was delegate to the general meetings of the Society of the Cincinnati from 1784 to 1793.10
Original surgery slab of Dr. Tilton. It is located in the basement of the Tilton Mansion, now home to the University and Whist Club.
The College of Philadelphia reorganized in 1791 as the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania. As an alumnus of its graduating class, Tilton was offered and declined the the work he was doing for his country.11
Tilton was elected to the Continental Congress in 1783 along with Gunning Bedford, Jr. Known for never taking “no” for any recognition when he refused to leave the Continental Congress after his term expired. The measure of Tilton’s passion for his newly formed country was evident in his continued attendance
at meetings of Congress, even after he was no longer a delegate. the chamber.12
Tilton went on to serve repeated terms as a member of the Delaware State House of Representatives. And as if there weren’t enough for him, he was Delaware’s Commissioner of Loans under Alexander Hamilton from 1785 to 1801 when the U.S. Treasury Department was created.13
Tilton’s brother Nehemiah had become the Burgess, or Mayor, of Wilmington in 1799 and Tilton joined him by moving to Wilmington. In 1802, he built a house that recently received its is home to The University and Whist Club at Ninth and Broom streets. The original property was 63 acres and was considered hillside.
In February of 1813, while the country was yet again at war with Britain, Tilton published a small treatise entitled, Economical Observations on Military Hospitals and the Prevention and Cure of Diseases Incident to an Army. It was dedicated to General John Armstrong, Secretary of War, and embodied his observations during the Revolutionary War. It also repeated his former recommendations regarding the construction and administration
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