The auto industry and the physicians of America owe each other a cross-country ovation.
Doctors, among professional and executive groups, first championed the horseless carriage over the horse.
And, in response, the car builders eased the burden of making housecalls, when that was still a practice of doctors.
Those pioneering auto pilots knew as much about carburetors, sparking and brake repairs as they did about gallbladders, hernias and appendexes. The medics had to be knowledgeable because mechanics were a rare breed for what was an extremely rare form of transportation.
Horseless Age, in January 1903, recognized the medical fraternity’s contributions to the new industry with an 86-page issue devoted to doctors and their automotive trials and triumphs.
Among those doctors who owned cars in 1903 was auto industry super fan Dr. Carlos Booth of Youngstown, Ohio. He recommended to carmakers that an auto should seat two, offer ample space for satchels, weigh 1,400 pounds and rest on a 72-inch wheelbase. He had a 1895 gasoline engine car built to his specifications by a man named W. Lee Crouch of New Brighton, Pa. Booth sketched the styling and the drive train. Crouch, five years later, produced another car under his own name.
Though the medical fraternity strongly objected to fast personal vehicles (more than 15 miles per hour), Booth entered his custom-built carriage in the second auto race held in America, the 1896 Cosmopolitan from New York City north to Irvington on the Hudson. Booth fared poorly, well behind a quartet of Duryeas, which in 1895 won the first organized race in the U.S. from Jackson Park on Chicago’s South Side to Evanston and back (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
Booth’s attraction to the new transportation may have been fostered several years earlier by a runaway horse that nearly dragged his wife to her death.
“For some unknown reason Dr. Booth gave up the car in 1897 andwent back his horse,” notes James Wren, a charter member of the Society of Automotive Historians.
The Ohio doctor, the first physycian in America to use an auto, probably inspired a number of manufacturers to produce what they called a doctor’s car, mostly small carriages that closely resembled a horse-drawn buggy to take doctors on their rounds.
Maxwell picked up on the idea of the doctor’s car, though, turning out the topless Model N (circa 1904) for $1,250, $1,325 if the doctor wanted a cover. Duryea produced the “doctor’s phaeton,” which would accommodate two adults and two children on weekend spins in the country.
“So-called doctors’ cars had high wheels for better clearance on mud-filled roads,” says archivist Richard Scharchburg, director of the GMI Alumni Foundation Collection of Industrial History in Flint, Mich. “Many cars rode on wheels but doctors wanted rubber tires; solid if they preferred longevity, pneumatic if speed and lightness were desired.”
Steam, electric and gas powered cars were battling for customers. Scharchburg contends that gasoline won because steamers froze in winter and electrics lacked the power to navigate the terrible roads.
“The curved dash Oldsmobile, Jeffrey’s Rambler, Cadillac, Ford, Stevens-Duryea, Winton and Maxwell were leaders in the gasoline field,” Scharchburg says. “White and Stanley competed in the steamer area. Among electrics, the Baker and Columbia were popular. The Columbia had an unusual feature–a steering wheel instead of a tiller.”
The first motorist to cross the U.S. (from San Francisco to New York) was Dr. H. Nelson Jackson of Burlington, Vt., and his chauffeur, Sewall K. Crocker, in a Winton. It took them from May 26 to July 26, 1903.
Dr. A.C. Cluts, an Illinois coroner, typically designed his own enclosed version of a doctor’s car. He seemed to favor steam in 1903 but guessed he needed a heavier gasoline-powered vehicle to drive the muddy roads.
“The automobile has come to stay,” Cluts said in Horseless Age. “I firmly believe it is the coming doctor’s vehicle. When we become educated to use it as well as we do the horse and buggy, our troubles will be of no more consequence than they are now with the horse and buggy.”
Cluts recommended heating the car off the exhaust and urged the industry to devise mud hooks so presumably a horse could pull the vehicles out of a rain-soaked mud road.
In New York City Dr. W.G. Eynon, who tested steam and gasoline vehicles, advised his horse-dependent colleagues: “Expect more or less trouble, but if you possess an average amount of mechanical ability, not too slender a purse and ordinary facilities, you will find that it (gasoline car) will become a
willing friend.”
Another New Yorker, Dr. Irving Haynes, preferred gasoline but complained all gas sold in the city was contaminated by water. Haynes predicted “the perfect machine will come, will be comfortable to ride over average roads in any weather, that it will be a thing of beauty, not a tremendous locomotive. It need not be speedy–15 m.p.h. is sufficiently fast–but it should maintain that speed and climb any hill that a horse does.”
Steam was an early favorite because it was quiet and proved friendly to the horses on the roads. Electrics also weresilent, but they face problems with battery range, which plagues the industry to this day.
In the northern climates, steamers required constant care because they often froze when the water tank was not drained. Steam also demanded a constant awareness of gauges that indicated water pressure and temperature. It was critical to keep an eye on a glass informer that relayed the amount of water in the boiler.
Looking at all three power sources, one doctor said: “A woman can run an electric machine, a man can run a steam engine, but no one can run a gasoline machine.”
Dr. Chauncey Carey of Elmira, N.Y., turned poetic in a 10-stanza effort on the symptoms of his carriage:
An example:
“If its vaso-motor system seems deficient,
And its cardiac impulse slow and weak;
Its electro-motor force is then omniscient,
Unless the mitral valve has sprung a leak.”
Poor tires and terrible roads plagued motoring physicians as well as the others who could afford horseless transportation. The noisy, fume spitting autos were barred from public parks, prompting one observer to predict that automobiles would prove hygienically safer than an animal.
As today, car buyers in 1903 had to determine what company made the most reliable auto. A physician who settled on an electric chastised the gasoline car as “a grimy, unreliable nusiance; a back breaking, cranky ignition apparatus; a stinking, horse frightening noisy exhaust; a filthy, spattering, wasteful oiling system, which clearly marked out the location of home, patients and friends.”
A country internist said any man who can afford a horse can afford an auto. “Any service rendered by a horse can be better given by an automobile, quicker and more economically. The horse must be protected from heat and cold. If an automobile is cheaper in constant service, what about the horse which is idle half the time? The horse expense is the same whether idle or at work.”
A New Englander concurred–with one reservation. The horseless carriage moved faster, could be left unattended and required no “upkeep” when idle, but “the use of the motor carriage every day in our northern climate seems out of the question.”
In one Massachusetts town, Dr. H.H. Cooper was the pioneer autoist and kept an expense account comparison. His horse cost him $240 a year for 15 years not including repairs to harnesses, sleighs and carriages. The gasoline automobile never failed to start or stop in more than 3,500 miles. He spent $1.95 for repairs, $26 for 160 gallons of gasoline and $4.20 for batteries for a total annual outlay of $35. He added: “I never frightened a horse but did compress four dogs.”
From the rugged roads of the Rockies, Dr. F.L. Bartlett offered Horseless Age readers a five-point prescription for performance:
– Understand the principle of the gasoline engine.
– Secure a good set of tools plus extra wire, bolts, screws, nuts, a tire mending kit.
– Keep running parts clean, oil parts exposed to dust.
– Examine the vehicle daily for loose nuts and breaks.
– Drive your auto as you would a valuable horse. Run slowly on rough roads. Speed only on good roads.
