Dr. Jacob Stillman

Dr. Jacob Stillman arrived in San Francisco on August 5, 1849. Although he intended to accompany two shipboard acquaintances to the gold fields, he never made it. Instead, he settled in Sacramento, where he and Dr. John F. Morse established the city's first hospital in one of the few substantial buildings available.

Dr. Stillman's prior experience on the staff of Bellevue Hospital in New York City was undoubtedly insufficient to prepare him for the difficulties of frontier medicine. Writing home to his family, Dr. Stillman described all manner of death and destruction, much of which he was forced simply to endure rather than alleviate. The following excerpts from his collected letters offer but a few of the many calamities faced by this frontier physician.

December 23d.—We are at last in our new hospital building. It is, without doubt...