Dr Ferdinand Hasbrouck, Jim's great grandfather. Photography by Dawn Van Ness.
Sometimes an honor can turn into dishonor, even undeserving. And sometimes it takes decades for information to be corrected and reputations to be redeemed. That was the case when a secrete surgery was dug out by a journalist when he was given a tip about the then president, Grover Cleveland.
Dr. Ferdinand Hasbrouck’s handsome portrait hangs in the parlor of The Grey Swan Inn in Blackstone, Virginia. The inn is now owned and operated by Christina Myles Hasbrouck, and her husband, Jim Hasbrouck, the grandson of Dr. Ferdinand Hasbrouck.
“He was credited with being one of the first skilled physicians to use nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, to perform dental surgery,” says Christina Hasbrouck. ”But there are a lot of negative things written about him, too.”
Not a Laughing Matter
It only takes a few searches on the internet to understand the events that passed so long ago. By reading 1893 newspaper clippings from Dr. Hasbrouck’s period and newspaper clippings from the late 1950s, along with articles and books from today, you can see with hindsight that what seemed like an honor and recognition of skill was really an awful burden with a large price to pay.
In 1893, President Grover Cleveland discovered he had a tumor in his mouth. It was the size of a quarter. And economically, the United States was fragile and struggling. For a President to come forth and say he had cancer and needed serious surgery while the nation was in a fragile state was viewed by his advisers as very dangerous. So a plan was made; the surgery would be done quickly and quietly on a yacht under the pretense of being a vacation.
The best of the best were summoned to perform the surgery, and this included the leading expert with nitrous oxide, Dr. Ferdinand Hasbrouck.
