James Edmund Reeves

Abstract

James Edmund Reeves (1829–1896) presented the article from which these excerpts were taken at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA) in Detroit, Michigan, November 14, 1883. At the time he was the secretary of the newly formed State Board of Health of West Virginia and the second vice president of APHA. He would assume the presidency of APHA in 1885. He is the only West Virginian to hold the APHA presidency. Reeves was a self-taught son of the American frontier and a man of considerable energy and intellect. Unlike many of his better- known colleagues, he never trained in Europe. He apprenticed with two physicians in Virginia and completed his medical studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 1860. He maintained a busy medical practice until 1888, but he also published a medical journal, four books, and 15 medical articles. Reeves’s interest in public health was lifelong, and the excerpts from his speech show the breadth and prescience of his knowledge. He was active at the local level, helping his sister teach hygiene to mothers during the Civil War; at the community level, serving as the first health officer of the city of Wheeling, West Virginia; at the state level, organizing the Medical Society of West Virginia and serving as its president in 1882 as well as secretary of the State Board of Health (1881–1885); and at the national level, serving as an officer of APHA and as a trustee of the American Medical Association. Reeves was the son of a Methodist preacher and, while considering himself a scientist, often referred to biblical ethics. He felt a man’s worth should be judged by his works, and he considered himself a “strict constructionist” of the American Medical Association’s ethical proscription against self-promotion. For example, he refused to send his biography to professional directories and typically referred to his accomplishments in the third person. Reeves did not tolerate quackery because he felt this was a form of theft (or sometimes murder) against society. This view is reflected in his speech and is part of his legacy. Reeves was a coauthor of the 1881 law creating the West Virginia State Board of Health and was charged as secretary for enforcing the law. In 1882, Frank Dent, who had practiced medicine in Newburg, West Virginia, for six years, was required, under the new law, to present a diploma from a reputable school or pass a licensing examination. Dent presented a certificate from a fraudulent “diploma mill.” Reeves’s board did not find that his certificate provided evidence of graduation from a “reputable” school and had him arrested and fined for practicing without a license. Dent and his uncle, Marmaduke Dent, later a West Virginia supreme court justice, challenged this arrest, citing the Fourteenth Amendment’s “due process” clause. Dent’s case was eventually appealed to the US Supreme Court, which ruled in 1889 in favor of the state. Dent v. West Virginia (129 U.S. 114 [1889]) is the landmark case that established the right of states to regulate the health professions.