Leander Firestone sketch, History of Wayne County 1878

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]

Ben Douglass, History of Wayne County, Ohio, from the days of the pioneers and first settlers to the present time (Indianapolis, Ind.: R. Douglass, 1878), 521-527 (Leander Firestone, M. D. in Wooster--Sketches) ; digital images, Hathi Trust, emphasis added below as to genealogically significant items.

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Leander Firestone (1819-)

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LEANDER FIRESTONE, M. D.

The uttered part of a man's life, let us always repeat, bears to the unuttered, unconscious part a small, unknown proportion; he himself never knows it, much less do others.

There are certain proprieties which, in obedience to a code of necessity, are uniform, will prevail and have prevailed for all time. It is proper that we should have astronomers to keep track of the planets and discover new ones; philosophers to dogmatize upon truth and discuss "the science of realities;" geologists to rake the ashes of the past, creep into the fissures of rocks, exhume mummies, ransack catacombs and announce the infancy of time; masters in the realm of ethics; discoverers in the empire of mechanics and mind, to aid muscular energy, economize time, produce wealth, reconcile fact with principle, earth with sky, creation with Creator, and elevate and ameliorate the moral and physical condition of the world.

And since all men can not be discoverers, philosophers, inventors, etc., it is refreshing to know that the world has produced a few. The trees of the forest attain not to the same hight, yet the smaller ones and the undergrowth have each their specific use and sphere. Nature was conscious of her eternal policies when she pronounced or decreed her discriminations with mankind. To each was assigned his weight of talent; to each his sphere of exercise and employment. To this primal arrangement of things she has set her fixed and endless adaptations. Every life, when properly lived out, is supposed to have filled the measure of its possible and prescribed activities, and every trade and profession has its several departments requiring separate and peculiar talents. One man may excel in a given branch of a profession and be wholly inefficient in another.

In medicine there are but few men who combine all the traits indispensable to the true physician. This fact seems to be much better understood with Europeans than in America, where the various branches of medicine are divided into separate and distinct professions. A man may practice skillfully in the materia medica and be but an indifferent surgeon, or he may excel in the science of compounding and be ill-suited to preside over the education of others. Moreover every profession has its literature and morale, and he may wield a pen with elegance, power and point who would prove but a blunderer in the dissecting-room. Dr. Firestone has not only vindicated his claim to an exalted rank in surgery, but in every department of the occult mysteries of medicine. He wields a strong and trenchant pen, talks with the freedom of the gushing brook, and presides over the studies of others with eminent success, and to the fame he has achieved with the scalpel he adds the luster of the teacher.

He was born in Saltcreek township, Wayne county, Ohio, in the year 1819. After he attained his fourteenth year his time was spent in performing such service, during the summer, as a boy of that age was competent of doing upon the farm, while during the winter he had the occasional opportunity of attending the country school. He now went to Columbiana county, near Salem, where he had some sprightly jostling with the world, and where he obtained some scant instruction in a district school from a Mr. Kingsbury and a Mr. Mills. From there he went to Portage county, Ohio, where for three months he indulged in the health-inspiring, muscle-expanding, chest-enlarging, lung-invigorating occupation of chopping cord-wood, and that for three shillings per cord, and hard beech at that.

Whether the Doctor was so successful as to acquire distinction as a cord-wood carpenter and champion of the wedge and maul, we are not at liberty to tell, but fancy, however, that with all his preconceived conceits of the dignity of labor that he did not desire to extend his knowledge of his occupation beyond an exact rudimentary limit.

Adopting the Westonic method of locomotion, he then proceeded to Chester township, Wayne county, making his home with his uncle, John Firestone, two miles north of New Pittsburg, with whom he remained until he was eighteen years of age. On the farm of his uncle he found "ample room and verge enough" for his developing and powerful muscular forces-felling grand old trees, rolling and tumbling logs, plowing among stumps and stubborn roots, an occupation sufficient indeed to test the patience and manly fortitude, not only of the youthful Firestone, but of the sternest Calvinist of the faith of Brown or good old Ebenezer Erskine. In the fields and woods the summer was spent; in the dingy school-room the winter.

He taught his first term in what is now Perry township, Ashland county, then in Wayne county, in what was called the Helman district, receiving for his services twelve dollars per month, and boarding himself. By appropriating the intervals between labor and sleep to hard study, he obtained his education, and laid. the marble on which is built the superstructure of his professional name.

If he did not, like Pope, teach himself to write by copying printed books, he managed to acquire the art by other equally novel methods. He wrung the secrets from Kirkham and the Calculator by the blaze of burning brush-heaps. During this time he made weekly recitations to Rev. Thomas Beer. In addition to such studies that directly qualified him for teaching, he devoted himself to botany, philosophy, chemistry and other branches of natural science. He had no collegiate education. The farm was his academia and university; the teeming fields and valleys, the trees and brooks his tutors. Life was his school, where "the clink of mind against mind" strikes out those brighter intellectual sparks which shine forever, and reflect light in endless irradiations. He studied hard, and had a clear understanding of what he read.

Industry and perseverance are stout levers when fulcrumed upon a resolute will. Possunt quia posse videntur is a maxim full of pith as in any time past. There is a marvel in earnest study. He adopted the idea of Bacon: "Read to weigh and consider"-not too many books but all good ones well. For "some books," adds he, "are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few are to be chewed and digested." Under difficult and adverse conditions he studied and struggled, "unfolding himself out of nothing into something." Or as Carlyle would say, he drew continually toward himself in continual succession and variation the materials of his structure, nay his very plan of it, from the whole realm of accident, you may say, from the whole realm of free-will building his life together, a guess and a problem as yet not to others only but to himself.

On the 26th of August, 1838, he was married to Susan Firestone, and the next year, then but 20 years old, began the study of medicine with Dr. S. F. Day, an eminent practicing physician of the county at that time, and for whose great and consummate skill as a practitioner, to this day, he entertains a profound regard. With him he remained for nearly three years, during which time he took a course of lectures at the Medical College of Philadelphia.

On the 28th of March, 1841, he located at Congress village, Congress township, where he began his first floatings on the abysmal sea of professional life.

His residence and office were in the first house north of the hotel, then kept by James Huston and known as the Homer Stanley property. Here he continued for 13 years, where he had an extensive and lucrative practice and acquired a signal local reputation during which more than a decade, he graduated from the medical department of the Western Reserve College, then located at Cleveland, Ohio. We have said he had now attained to a local celebrity. More than that. He had not only impressed the community that embraced his circumference of visitation of his superior ability and where he had been saving

Some wrecks of life from aches and ails,

But the noise of his skill and the echo of his professional exploits had reached the ear of the broader and more scientific public. The college, from which he had but recently graduated, was in need of an occupant for one of its professional chairs, and in its survey for a suitable man to fill it, the abilities of Dr. Firestone were recognized, and in 1847 he was made Demonstrator of Anatomy in that institution. This position he held until 1853, where his reputation as an anatomist and dissecting-room instructor was established, and when it became evident that honorable distinction awaited him.

He next was appointed Superintendent of the Northern Ohio Lunatic Asylum, located at Newburg, which position he filled with conspicuous fitness until August 6, 1856, when he removed to Wooster, where he has lived ever since, and engaged in a successful and sweeping practice. In 1858 he was elected President of the State Medical Society, then holding its sessions at Columbus.

In the winter of 1864 he was made Professor of Obstetrics and the Diseases of Women in Charity Hospital Medical College at Cleveland, which position he has continuously held ever since, excepting two years, during which he occupied the Chair of Surgery in the same college. In the summer of 1870 this institution was constituted the Medical Department of Wooster University, in which he continues Professor of Obstetrics and the Medical and Surgical Diseases of Women, and Class Lecturer on Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene to the University students at Wooster.

The title of LL.D. was conferred upon Dr. Firestone by the University of Ohio, at Athens, June 24, 1874. This honor was bestowed, not simply in appreciation of his brilliant attainments in the medical profession, but for his distinguished and pre-eminent achievements in the departments of science and literature, and the literature of science.

He has had eight children-three girls and five boys-all of whom are dead, save his two sons, W. W. Firestone, M. D., and M. O. Firestone, M. D.

Dr. L. Firestone is now at the very zenith of his powersstanding on the mainlands of professional eminence. Being yet in the prime, the noon of his years, and considering his past progressive elevations, we have not the courage to forecast his future. We see what he has, but know not what he might have accomplished. He stands over six feet high, is massively built and solid as a forest oak. He is fleshy, but not corpulent, stout-limbed, broadchested, and altogether well proportioned. His face is classic, his forehead is symmetrical, oval and dome-like. Causality, comparison, ideality, are as perceptible as the snow-summits of the Sierras. His countenance is expressive of thought, benignity, reflection, repose. Time has made reprisals upon his hair and what has not been pludered is slightly brushed with gray. He is accessible, sociable and communicative, yet he has the secret of secretiveness. He does nothing by proxy, not even his own thinking; has faith in himself, in his ability to decide for himself. All men do not know his thoughts; he cages them like canaries, and when he lets them out, like carrier pigeons, they perform an errand. He understands himself, and is a skillful tactician. He has perfect control of himself and never does anything in haste. Hurry, rush and run are not in his dictionary. He is cool, imperturbable, self-poised and stands solid on his feet. With him there is time enough for all things. He will amputate your arm in less time than a barber will shave you, and do it with as little concern. He has an exuberance of animal spirits and may well feel discouraged over the prospect of dying of hypochondria. He is as full of mirth as a spring rivulet is of water, and his sense of the ludicrous is as keen as Halliburton's. He can tell a story with the same ease that Tallyrand could turn a coffee-mill or a kingdom. He believes with Sterrre that "laughter, like true Shandeeism, think what you will against it, opens the heart and lungs." He is fond of music and will never die with all of it in him. " He has a strong hand at one end of his arm and a strong head at the other."

He is a mechanic in his profession as he would have been out of it. He would have made a better lawyer than nineteen-twentieths of those already at the bar. In the pulpit he would have been a fire-kindler and segregator of sin, preaching from inspiration, and as all ministers should, without manuscript. His voice is susceptible of immense slides and modulations-is smooth enough for the evening party, strong and bellowing enough for anniversary pageant. He has many friends who are warmly attached to him. His enemies we imagine are few and he will get the best of them in the end. As a public lecturer he is popular. His addresses are eloquent and masterly productions, replete with pathos and sentiment, and chaste and sublime in imagery. His descriptive power is terse and brilliant; his analyzations methodical and thorough; the feeling, of the higher key and reflective. In this field he excels-shines, for the same reason that the sun gives light. As a professional instructor few aspire even to be his equal.

He is indeed a born surgeon, enjoying peculiar adaptation to this branch of his profession. He possesses firmness and dexterity of hand, a calm, cool brain, a quick perceiving eye, a stout nerve, physical endurance and tenacity of will. In his operations he is resolute and decided, and in case of unforeseen complications he is ever guarded against surprises. Like Dr. Mott, his motto is, "Recognize the advance of science with the growth of the world," and hence Dr. Firestone welcomes all valuable discoveries in medicine and surgery.

We may imagine, with his strong and composite elements of character and hardy vigor of intellect, how he has attained to professional distinction and honor. Every power and faculty of mind and brain were subjected and made tributary to his ambition and will. He willed to succeed, and success crowned him. Laborious toil and indefatigable industry are the Doric and Corinthian pillars of the edifice he has built. Day was a host, a besetting legion, in the splendor of his manhood, but on his pupil of 30 years ago has fallen, not only his mantle, but a wider name and a richer munificence of honors.