A TRIBUTE TO DR. J. T. ROTHROCK 



FORESTERS all know and honor Dr. Rothrock for 

 his life-long devotion to forestry and to public 

 service. 



The State of Pennsylvania owes to him the original 

 establishment of a free sanatorium at Mont Alto for 

 the open-air treatment of tuberculosis. This project, 

 dating from 1902, has grown under the encouragement 

 of the State into a large and efficient hospital, and is 

 being managed and supported by the State, through the 

 Department of Health. 



Dr. Rothrock's fellow-members in the Chester County 

 Medical Association, with the co-operation and support 

 of the State Department of Health, arranged for the 

 placing of a bronze tablet on a large boulder in front of 

 the ward for children at the sanatorium, and appropriate 

 exercises were held at the sanatorium on Thursday, 

 October 9, 191 9. 



There were present at this meeting a number of Dr. 

 Rothrock's friends and admirers and addresses appre- 

 ciative of his great record of altruistic and self-denying 

 devotion to public service were made by Colonel (Dr.) 

 Edward Martin, Commissioner of Health of Pennsyl- 

 vania ; Dr. Henry S. Drinker, President of the Pennsyl- 

 vania Forestry Association ; Dr. Lewis H. Taylor, of 

 Wilkes-Barre, and Dr. Joseph Scattergood, Chairman of 

 the delegation from Chester County, who presided at 

 the ceremonies. 



The inscription on the tablet reads as follows : 



Joseph Trimble Rothrock, M. D., 



Botanist, Soldier, Explorer, Pioneer in the cause of Forest 



conservation in this Country 



established the first free Sanatorium 



for the open-air treatment 



of Tuberculosis in Pennsylvania 



at Mont Alto in 1902. 



This tablet was placed here 



as a token of Honor and 



affection by his fellow-members 



of the Chester County Medical 



Society in 1919. 



In responding Dr. Rothrock spoke as follows : 



Few, if any, public institutions, which have achieved success, 

 owe their origin to those in whose hands they came before the 

 world. This great sanatorium is no exception to the rule. 



In 1877 a legacy left by F. Andre Michaux to the American 

 Philosophical Society, for the promotion of Forestry in America, 

 became available. There was in Philadelphia, still active and 

 vigorous, a venerable, distinguished member of the Philadelphia 

 bar, a life-long, public-spirited citizen, the Hon. Eli K. Price, 

 who had for years witnessed with anxiety the ruthless waste of 

 our forests. He had recognized the fact, as few others had 

 done, that we were destroying the proper proportion of forest 

 to cleared land, and dooming a large portion of the state to a 

 barren condition. He, at once, called that legacy into use. and 

 had instituted a course of lectures in Horticultural Park in 

 Philadelphia, which became popular under the name of the 

 Michaux Forestry Lectures. It is well to note that at that time 

 the word "forestry" hardly appeared in our American diction- 

 aries. Those lectures became one of the most active forces in 

 leading up to the Pennsylvania Forestry Association, which was 

 the direct cause of the creation of the State Forest Reservation 

 Commission in 1893, which Commission has developed, or led, to 

 the development of our splendid State Forest Reserves. The 

 original impulse was due to the Hon. Eli K. Price. 



Your speaker was, in 1901, the head of the Forestry Com- 

 mission. The fresh air treatment of tuberculosis was then partly 

 possessing the public mind. It was nothing new to me. I had 

 imbibed it from my youth up, for my father, an honored country 

 doctor, had, a half century earlier, made the discovery that those 

 of his tubercular patients who lived most in the open-air, lived 



MM 



longest. I had noted, in 1873-74, the effect of open air upon 

 two tubercular patients under my care in an exploring expedition 

 operating in the mountains of Colorado. The thought flashed 

 upon me that I had under my control, as Commissioner of For- 

 estry, 600,000 acres of State land, which by right of purchase 

 belonged to the citizens of this State! Why, therefore, should 

 any of them be deprived of a chance for life because he could 

 not go to Colorado? In my travels I had learned the common 

 report that on this mountain no case of tuberculosis had ever 

 developed, though on the other side of the valley it was rife. 

 Was it true? If so, what was the cause? 



Without warrant of law I determined to make a trial here 

 of a camping ground, to which the sufferers might come, board 

 themselves, and drink our pure water and inhale, without cost, 

 the fresh air that belonged to them. Such, in 1903, was the 

 origin of this camp. There is still here, in the capacity of 

 matron, one of the two first owners, a lady whose husband, 

 Mr. Andrew Klee, was restored to fair health, only to die several 

 years later by a heart trouble. The success and the popularity 

 of the camp led to the question — how was it to be maintained? 

 We had not a penny of aid from the State. There was none 

 in sight from any source! 



"In 1903 there was a meeting of the State Federation of 

 Pennsylvania Women in Carlisle, at the close of which a large 

 number of delegates visited the camp." As a result of this 

 visit, Mrs. Scarlett, then vice-president of the Eastern District, 

 was enabled to contribute from that District sufficient funds to 

 prevent the closing of the camp, which, at one time (from lack 

 of fuel) seemed inevitable. I wish here to add my grateful 

 acknowledgment of that timely assistance, and to say that one 

 of the representatives of the Federation, Miss Mira L. Dock, is 

 with us today. Her constant, effective assistance, her interest 

 in the camp, has never ceased. Without it we would have 

 fared hard. 



So far as I am aware, no sufferer was ever allowed to leave 

 camp for want of aid to keep him here. In 1907, on the request 

 of the Forestry Department, the care of the infant sanatorium 

 was transferred to the Department of Health. A new, larger 

 career for it became possible. The then Commissioner of Health, 

 the late Dr. Samuel Dixon, recognized at once the peculiar 

 advantages of the situation and the vast importance of the work 

 begun and possible here. I am not sure that any extensive plans 

 relative to sanatoria similar to this, under state direction, had 

 been earlier considered by him— but I do know that he promptly 

 resolved to push the work on a larger scale. The country was 

 then in the flush of the open-air treatment. 



The policy of Dr. Dixon was abreast of our knowledge at the 

 time. He and his able coadjutor. Dr. Johnson, built up a great 

 institution here, the fame of which rendered the creation of tin- 

 sanatoria at Cresson and Hamburg not only easy, but necessary. 



This institution has safely passed through its period of pro- 

 bation and with new life, with a saner policy which has grown 

 out of past experience, it starts upon its career under its new, 

 distinguished chief, Colonel Martin, whose record yields abundant 

 promise of larger usefulness in the era upon which the world 

 seems about to enter. His keen vision of possibilities centers 

 upon the young cases — many of those may be saved and may be 

 re-created, and restored to perfect health. 



It is a disgrace that the children of a vigorous ancestry should 

 in this land of wealth, abundance and opportunity, have degene- 

 rated physically until they were only fifty per cent fit to defend 

 the country in its hour of need. It is intolerable that such a 

 condition be allowed to continue. There is but one help for it, 

 namely, to make obedience to the laws of health a rule of 

 life. This can only be brought about by training from childhood 

 up. Our State Departments of Health and Education have 

 this vision in full view and they never before were in such 

 perfect co-ordination to realize this great desire. 



May I make a brief personal statement? I would be a strange 

 man, indeed, if I did not appreciate the honor the Chester County 

 Medical Society and the State Department of Health have con- 

 ferred upon me and upon my family name. I sincerely thank 

 you, and gratefully accept it, with the reservation that I can claim 

 no share in the results shown within the sanatorium enclosure, 

 further than to have recognized the value and the promise of 

 the location, and to have had, without warrant of law, enough 

 courage of my convictions to invite Pennsylvania tubercular 

 sufferers out on to their own land to get relief ; and that I 

 helped beg enough money to keep the camp alive during its 

 three years of infancy, until the State adopted and cared for it. 



As I look over the State charitable institutions, I can set 

 that this one is especially fortunate. It is located on a great 

 State forest reserve where, as the generations come and go, itl 

 inmates will breathe air filtered and purified by miles of living 

 foliage, and drink water from the very fountain heads of 

 streams, as these issue, uncontaminated, from the mountain heart. 



