April 30, 2023
Last week at a book festival I had a long conversation with an Ellicott City physician about Francophones in the medical field who set up practices in Baltimore in the nineteenth century. The Chatard dynasty and James J. Giraud were just a few to be considered.
In the summer of 1857, a classified ad in the Sun [29 June] announced a “French Medical House” at 16 South Frederick Street:
>>Dr. A Huet has returned to this establishment, founded by him over fifteen years ago, and resumed his former practice. Distant patients and others who were disappointed during his absence may now apply with the certainty of being cured of any of those complaints in which Dr. H. has been so eminently successful for thirty odd years, viz: Consumption, Bronchitis, Disease of the Heart, Premature Decline, and all the train of infirmities arising from improper indulgences, excess or imprudence in youth or adults. See his Book on those complaints, to be had at his office.
>>Those who had their disease palliated or driven into the system by Buchu, &c., or rendered almost incurable by Mercury, or who have been otherwise maltreated, may rely upon having their systems thoroughly cleansed, and every vestige of the disease fully eradicated by a short course of Dr. H.’s treatment. Recollect he still continues his former method of guaranteeing his cures.
>>TO STRANGERS. – Dr. H. is the only regular Physician of the Baltimore Faculty who advertises; is also a member of several other faculties in this country and Europe, and a graduate of the medical school of Paris, as his diploma will show.”
Some time back, Francis O’Neill, the longtime Reference Librarian at the Library of the Maryland Center for History and Culture, passed on to me an article that he had photocopied from a 1913 issue of the Maryland Medical Journal, in which an address by Dr. William J. Todd was read before the Baltimore County Medical Association on the previous 16 July. Dr. Todd was honoring a colleague, Dr. A. V. Cherbonnier, a retired United States Army officer.
A.V. hailed from a medical family. His father Pierre had been a naval medical officer who decided to leave Bonapartist France to seek his fortune first in New York and then in New Orleans. A native of Saintes, in the southwest of France, Pierre settled in Harford County, Maryland, in 1830, where he remarried.1 His son Pierre Ovide was the first of two children to receive medical degrees as well, returning to the States in 1840 after completing his studies at the University of Paris. Pierre Ovide took up residence in Baltimore and then in Talbot County. His younger brother, A. V., was just fourteen years old when Pierre returned. St. Mary’s College in Baltimore records show him enrolled under the name Victor from 1840 to 1842. In 1848, he graduated from the University of Maryland, having “read medicine with Professor Dunbar” before spending a year in New York City hospitals to gain more experience. He established a practice in a rented home on Belair Road and then moved in 1855 to another rental in Mount Washington. That second office, on Falls Road, was owned by Victor Sirata, Rev. Louis Régis Deluol’s nephew who came to America in 1832. A little later, Cherbonnier purchased a stone cottage and three acres in the Slabtown, or Hampden, area and remained there until he joined the Union cause in 1862 as an acting assistant surgeon. A veteran of the devastating battle of Antietam, A. V. served in Frederick, Annapolis, Baltimore, Camp Parole, and Washington, DC. Named a captain in the Army Medical Corps, he was assigned to St. Louis (twice), Santa Fe, San Antonio, and New York, retiring in October 1890.
The doctor had three marriages and was known as a sort of bon vivant and an avid card and chess player.
1 Pierre helped organize the French Citizens’ Association in the Spring of 1854 and served as its first president (Sun, 5 May 1854). He passed away at the age of 85 on 5 Apr 1866 (Sun, 6 Apr 1866).
Source: William J. Todd, MD, “The Medical Fathers of Baltimore County, Maryland,” Maryland Medical Journal, Vo. 56, No. 11 (November, 1913), 287-290.
Francophones in Maryland 