American Medical Biographies/Pitcher, Zina
Pitcher, Zina (1797–1872)
Zina Pitcher, son of Nathaniel Pitcher and Margaret Stevenson, was born April 12, 1797, on a farm in Washington County, New York. When five years old his father died, leaving the mother with four young sons and an unattractive farm. Being Scotch, she had learned the value of education and determined to provide the best possible for her children. Zina worked hard during spring, summer and fall that he might study during the winter in common school or academy. He began to study medicine at the age of twenty-one with private practitioners and at Castleton Medical College, graduating M. D. from Middlebury College, Vt., in 1822. While studying medicine he tutored in Latin, Greek and natural sciences—the latter with Prof. Eaton, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, New York. Soon after graduating, the Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun, sent him a commission as assistant surgeon, United States Army. The responsibility of this position rapidly developed his self-reliance, so that he was soon made surgeon. During his fifteen years of army service he was stationed at different points on the Northern Lakes (then a savage frontier), on the tributaries of the Arkansas, among the Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws and Osages, and at Fortress Monroe. At these places his leisure hours were spent in study of nature about him, observation of the habits of the Indians, their diseases and the means used for their recovery. The results of these studies may be seen in works on botany, in plants named after him, on fossils bearing his name, and in a letter to Dr. Morton on the existence of consumption among the aborigines, and in his article on "Indian Therapeutics," printed in the fourth volume of Schoolcraft's history of the "Conditions and Prospects of the Indian Tribes." In 1835 he was president of the Army Medical Board.
In 1836 Dr. Pitcher resigned his commission and settled in Detroit. From 1837 to 1852 he was regent of the University and probably planned most details respecting the medical department. With the appointment of the medical faculty he was made emeritus professor. He was mayor of Detroit in 1840–41–43. Long dissatisfied with the educational facilities of the frontier town, he made an exhaustive study of its schools and laid the results before the Common Council and persuaded it to join him in asking the Legislature to enact a law authorizing the establishment of free public schools in Detroit; the petition was granted. He was city physician, 1847; county physician, 1845; and during Buchanan's administration, surgeon of the Marine Hospital in Detroit. He was elected president of the American Medical Association at its meeting in Detroit, 1856, and was editor of the Peninsular Medical Journal, 1855–56–58. He was president of the Old Territorial Medical Society during fourteen years; president of the Michigan State Medical Society, 1855–56; a founder of the Sydenham Society; a founder of the Detroit Medical Society, 1852–58.
Zina Pitcher was versed in the habits of beasts and birds; his contributions to Indian materia medica were classic. His perception of scientific facts was unusually quick and his memory tenacious. In driving through the country he at once detected an unfamiliar plant or animal, secured a specimen and determined its place. While in Texas he collected many fossils and forwarded them to the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. Studies of these and allied collections were the basis of Dr. S. G. Morton's (q. v.) work entitled "Cretaceous System of the United States." One of the specimens is known as "Gryphœa Pitcheri." In "Gray and Torrey's Flora of the United States" several new species are named after Dr. Pitcher in acknowledgment of his service to botany. He was a frequent contributor to medical literature, treating a wide variety of subjects. His home was at the service of the sick; he was known to have taken a stranger suffering from smallpox into his home, and to both nurse and doctor him to recovery. Moreover, to him the Bible was a guide, a counsellor and inspiration.
In 1824 Zina Pitcher married Ann Sheldon, of Kalamazoo, Michigan, and had a son (Nathaniel) and daughter (Rose), the mother dying in 1864. In 1867 he married Emily Backus, granddaughter of Col. Nathaniel Rochester, of Virginia, the founder of Rochester, New York, and on the death of DeWitt Clinton, acting governor of New York.
Dr. Pitcher died April 5, 1872, from unoperated stone in the bladder.