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Library 1994.ERNEST WENDE:
A MEMOIR
BY ADELBERT MOOTERNEST WENDE. M- D.
Erom the painting by E. Berenice, presented to the Buffalo Historical
Society by Grover Wende, M. D.ERNEST WENDE: A MEMOIR1
BY ADELBERT MOOT
Dr. Ernest Wende was born July 23, 1853, and died in
this city February 11, 1910, with an established interna-
tional reputation as a master in the application of the
principles of modern, scientific, preventive medicine to
human life in a great city. Over thirteen years of his pro-
fessional life he was the Health Commissioner of Buffalo,
his first term beginning in 1892, and ending in July, 1902,
and his second term beginning in 1907 and ending with his
death in 1910.
"When he first took office, under one of our most efficient
and respected mayors, Charles Bishop, in 1892, under our
revised charter, as the first health commissioner installed
under it, he took office in a city in which up to that time
the doctor appointed to take charge of medical matters in
the city had always been appointed for political reasons,
and the natural consequence was that the office had been
treated more or less as a political sinecure. Because this
had been so, in the revised charter it was provided that,
for the munificent salary of $4,000 a year, the Health Com-
missioner was to give his whole time to the reorganized
Health Department of the City of Buffalo. Had not the
then Corporation Counsel officially advised the Mayor that
the true construction of the full time condition did not
require the appointed Health Commissioner to give up
private practice altogether, but all that it required was that
he should give the first place to the demands of his office,
1. Paper read at a meeting of the Buffalo Historical Society, Tuesday evening,
April 18, 1916.
127128
ERNEST WENDE: A MEMOIR
even if it should take his full time to discharge the duties
of the office, so that there would be no time left to continue
his private practice, it would have been impossible for
Mayor Bishop to have obtained the consent of Dr. Ernest
Wende, or any other first-class doctor, to become Health
Commissioner; for Dr. Ernest Wende was seeking the ap-
pointment of another prominent doctor, and that prominent
doctor was opposed by still another doctor, equally promi-
nent, with such vigor that Mayor Bishop, with the assent of
all concerned, except Dr. Wende, suggested that the ap-
pointment of Dr. Wende would end all factional differences
in the medical profession, and would at the same time give
the city a first-class, up-to-date Health Commissioner. At
first, Dr. Wende strongly demurred to this suggestion, but
ultimately the Mayor and his friends among the doctors
from both sides finally induced him to withdraw his oppo-
sition and to consent to take the office, on the basis of the
official full-time opinion of the Corporation Counsel, as
stated.
While there has been a general appreciation of the won-
derful preventive medical work done by Dr. Wende in his
two terms of office, perhaps there has been no statement of
it as a whole that has given an adequate view of the per-
manent results of putting this extraordinarily capable and
efficient man and doctor into this office nearly twenty-five
years ago. Few even of his professional brothers in this city
realize that the almost revolutionary, but thoroughly scien-
tific, methods he introduced into the office, the thoroughly
non-political and efficient organization he made of it back in
1892, and the extraordinary vigor he then injected into it,
have continued to dominate it, in the main, during all these
years. It is unfortunately true that, for purely political
reasons, he was not reappointed in 1902, although the best
citizens of all parties urged his reappointment, and since
his death, in recent years outside politicians and officialsERNEST WENDE: A MEMOIR
129
have successfully brought great pressure, even official pres-
sure from his superiors, to bear upon his present successor
in office to find places in the department for their friends
or political adherents. But even today the Commissioner
of Health and the chiefs of bureaus in the main are men
selected and trained by Dr. Wende. His scientific methods
are still employed, and generally the results are still good,
although the unnecessary 'addition of some unfit political
men and women has added to the expense; the expense for
the last fiscal year under Dr. Wende, which ended July 1,
1909, being $91,392.42, while the expense for the fiscal year
ending July 1, 1915, was $195,134.09.
In spite of like political and personal requests in his day,
Dr. Wende rigidly adhered to the Civil Service Law, and
took the first man on the list, regardless of politics. It is
true, the bad preference clause of the Civil Service Act
once compelled Dr. Wende to take the second man, a vet-
eran, with the result that he had to discharge him for good
cause within two years. Still his present successor in office,
and all those under him, when let alone, so thoroughly
appreciate the soundness of the organization first given the
office by Dr. Wende, that they, in turn, are solicitous to
maintain, and even increase, its reputation for efficiency,
a thing that can only be done by rigidly excluding all
personal and political considerations from its administra-
tion; for such considerations have no place when the health
of people is concerned.
The year before Dr. Wende took office, the death rate of
the city was nearly 24 per 1,000, and so efficient was Dr.
Wende’s attack upon diseases along the line of scientific
medicine, that within one year he had substantially reduced
this death rate to about 14 per 1,000, and from that time
down to the last full year Dr. Wende held office as Health
Commissioner, the death rate of Buffalo was firmly held
to from some fraction above 13 per 1,000 to 15 per 1,000.130	ERNEST WENDE: A MEMOIR
\
In other words, upon the basis of the last census before he
took office, the deaths among 255,664 people were 6,001, or
about 23% per 1,000, and the deaths the last year he held
office were 6,111 for 415,532 people, or 14.7 per 1,000.
How did Dr. Wende so suddenly bring about such a groat
decrease in the death rate of Buffalo, and how did he con-
tinue, and how have the men and methods he installed con-
tinued, to maintain such a favorable death rate, in spite of
a very large foreign population, a majority of whom are
very ignorant of laws of health and their application to
caring for human life, when they come to this city? So
generally was it recognized from the beginning that Buffalo
was not a city in which it was probable that any such great
change could be brought about in the health of the city,
that at first statisticians of great universities challenged
these three unrivalled American figures in cutting down
the death rate of a great city; but Dr. Wende gladly wel-
comed such criticisms and arguments, because they gave to
him and his scientific assistants the opportunity to demon-
strate the effectiveness of their scientific methods and the
correctness of their statistical records.
Going over these figures, I have reached the conclusion
that on any reasonable basis of calculation for the substan-
tially twenty-five years since these scientific medical
methods were introduced, they have saved the citizens of
Buffalo substantially 75,000 premature deaths, and have
given to the children since bom, as well as adults, an in-
creased expectancy of life averaging several years in the
case of every citizen. The people in particular who have
profited by this great change have been the great masses
of our population who have not sufficient wealth to employ
the most expert physicians, or to avail themselves of the
most expert nursing in their own homes. To these masses
of people, the reorganized Health Department brought and
has continued to furnish scientific medical treatment andERNEST WEN BE: A MEMOIR
131
advice generally as good as, and often better than, that
enjoyed by wealthy people who have not always shown as
good judgment as the head of the Health Department
showed in selecting medical and nursing aids and applying
modem, scientific, medical methods to the treatment of
disease.
In considering Dr. Wende’s life, I want to point out now
that it was no accident that he accomplished these results,
but that they were the natural result of the most thorough
scientific preparation of a naturally able young man for
the practice of his profession along the most modem and
scientific lines, and the faithful adherence of that man in
office to the principles of Civil Service Reform. Had not
Dr. Wende had natural ability of a very high order, had
he not been thoroughly prepared along the most advanced
scientific lines for his task, and had he not entered upon
the discharge of his official duties with the desire to do his
utmost for the public health of the City of Buffalo, and
with political intelligence enough to know he could not
do that unless he appointed his assistants and subordinates
for merit alone, and, above all, had he not had indomitable
courage and persistence in his great task, the results he
accomplished would have been absolutely impossible for
him or any other man in the same high position.
Dr. Wende’s inheritance, his early life, his education,
and his early professional training and experience, all alike
fitted him most naturally and completely to do for Buffalo
the great and permanent work he did for Buffalo in his
Health Department. His father was a comparatively short
hut sturdy man, who had had a superior education, and
who, preferring the freedom and independence of the
country to any occupation in the city, had become the
owner of a large farm some miles east of Buffalo, at a place
on the New York Central Railroad still known as Wende
Station. The father was of the philosophical, far-sighted,132
ERNEST WENDE: A MEMOIR
broad-minded type, who thoroughly appreciated the impor-
tance of giving each of his children a good education and
a good chance in life. He was not a man to worry over
trifles, although he was not a man who would neglect
important matters. The mother, bom, reared and edu-
cated at a time when there were no colleges for women, and
when anything more than an ordinary education was
thought quite unnecessary for a woman, had not had the
father’s educational advantages. Nevertheless, this mother,
tall, lithe, straight, and possessed of dynamic energy and in-
domitable will, was a woman of very strong character.
Self-reliant, industrious, energetic, frugal, resourceful, and
a person who drove work instead of letting work drive her,
it was natural that the children of this mother should in-
herit qualities that would be invaluable to them in after
life, when we add to these qualities the development they
received in the home of such a father and such a mother.
Dr. Ernest Wende was the eldest of their ten children, nine
boys and a girl, all of whom grew to adult years, the mother
and seven of her children still surviving. These children
have all become citizens of unusual character and value in
the communities in which they live. In considering educa-
tional advantages, too often the advantages of such a home
on a large farm in the country are quite overlooked. Much
is now made, and properly made, of vocational education
and training, but I have yet to see any vocational school
equal to a large and busy farm, presided over by the right
father and. the right mother, as a school in which to de-
velop courage, resourcefulness, industry and capacity. The
enervating effect of riches and luxury is entirely removed
from such a farm, and upon it are produced no false dis-
tinctions as to labor, or classes, or either vested or Divine
rights.
In the days of Dr. Wende’s boyhood, many changes that
have since taken place on the farm to make life easier wereERNEST WENDE: A MEMOIR
133
entirely unknown. Then, as soon as the boys were large
enough, they were called, in the busy season from early
Spring until early Fall, at four, or five, or six o’clock, as
the case might be, to get an early start to Buffalo with the
farm produce, or it might be they were even started the
night before, that they might be there in time for the
opening of market in the morning. The market thus gave
them good schooling in salesmanship and business methods,
and then at home there were wood fires to build, cows to
be fed and milked, horses and other live stock to be fed and
cared for, stables to be cleaned, wood to be cut and brought
in, other chores to do, horses to harness, or oxen to be yoked,
fields to plow or harrow or sow, fields to plant or cultivate
or hoe, hay and grain to be gathered into barns or stacks,
threshing to do, potatoes to dig and crops to market, fences
to build or mend, sugar bushes to tap, sap to gather, syrup
or sugar to be prepared and marketed, fruit trees to be
trimmed, fruit to be picked and gathered to cellars or
carried to market, farm animals to be cared for in sickness
or accident, colts or steers to be broken and trained for
service, additional buildings erected, buildings to be re-
paired, ox-bows to make, plow-points to be sharpened, har-
nesses to repair or to oil, and other things, great and small,
to do, small enough for the smallest hands, and large enough
for full physical and mental power. A boy who is trained in
such a school, who knows what it is to contend with a high-
strung colt, not yet fully trained, or how to drive a team
of oxen so they will not pull down a gate, or how to handle
a flock of stupid sheep so as to finally land them in the
enclosure intended, not to mention many other difficult
tasks imposed on him by storm and wind and severe seasons
where he must act alone upon his own courage, resourceful-
ness and responsibility, has learned lessons of self-control,
courage and resourcefulness that are fully equal to any-ERNEST WENDE: A MEMOIR
134
thing he will afterwards learn in school, high school or
college.
Without recounting the things to be done in a farmhouse
equally numerous and equally helpful in the days when
farm produce brought but a small price, and when a farmer
owning a large farm had need of a frugal wife if he was to
raise and educate a large family, it is sufficient to say that
Dr. Wende had this invaluable training in his home and
upon the farm until he entered the Medical School in Buf-
falo. Incidentally, of course, he went to the district school,
which is one of the best schools ever known for children, or
one of the worst, according to the teacher employed. As
soon as he was ready for the city high school, he came to the
only high school in this city, from which he was graduated
in due season. From the high school he went to the Buf-
falo Medical School, which then required only two years,
two comparatively short sessions, and would now be con-
sidered so inadequate that it would not be permitted to
exist in a vast majority of the States of this country, al-
though it was then as good as or better than the majority
of medical schools of this country. But Dr. Wende even
then understood that its training was not sufficient, and
consequently he took a post-graduate course for more than
a year at one of the best medical schools in the country at
that time, the School of Physicians and Surgeons in the
City of New York. Then he came back to Erie County,
went into the practice of medicine with Dr. Cornwell, a
fine old-school physician, in the village of Alden. At that
time, Dr. Wende married a real helpmate, and he soon
prospered in his country practice. After a few years of
this practice and prosperity, considering his medical and
other training still insufficient, he went to Pennsylvania
University, where he greatly distinguished himself in sci-
entific and also medical work in two different Departments
of that University, from which he received an M. D. in 1884,ERNEST WENDE: A MEMOIR
135
the degree of B.S. in 1885, and in addition the George
Woods’ Alumni prize of $500 upon his work and thesis
upon the geology of Western New York.
But he was not content with even that, and he, therefore,
took his wife and went to Germany to spend the balance of
what they had laid aside by frugality, while he studied the
most scientific methods of medicine, under such masters as
Koch, who was then the leader of the medical world in
applying in medicine Pasteur’s discoveries concerning bac-
teria in the vegetable and domestic animal world. As the
result of more than a year spent in studying with Koeh and
other masters in Berlin and Vienna in the then developing
field of the germ theory of disease, Dr. Wende returned to
this country and opened his office for the practice of medi-
cine in Buffalo, in 1887. Down to that time, the vast
majority of the medical profession knew nothing of bac-
teria or germs, and spoke with derision of bug doctors;
indeed, for many years later this was true of the great
majority of the medical profession.
But all this affected Dr. Wende not at all, for he was
sure of his foundation, and always had the courage of his
convictions. At that time, it is very certain there was no
doctor in or near Buffalo so thoroughly or scientifically
trained in the modern history of disease as was Dr. Wende.
It was after practicing his profession in Buffalo from 1887
to 1892, and after showing in the Medical School and in his
hospital connections and consultation work how practical
and valuable his ideas were, that Mayor Bishop chose him
for the important work of Health Commissioner. At the
time he was chosen for this work, his reputation was such
that eminent authorities in Europe were from time to
time sending their patients who came to this country to
Dr. Wende, for consultations and continued treatment,
some of these eminent patients journeying from New York
to Buffalo for the express purpose of consulting Dr.136
ERNEST WENDE: A MEMOIR
Wende, because they were told to do so by their doctors in
Europe.
But how did Dr. Wende so suddenly and so quickly
reduce the death rate in Buffalo l He at once installed
Dr. Bissell as bacteriologist, in spite of the ridicule of
aldermen and others, and when an epidemic of typhoid
fever commenced in the early Spring, he consulted our
imperfect records and found that there had been an epi-
demic of typhoid fever every Spring for many years. His
training told him the water was probably at fault, and he
had Dr. Bissell analyze the water for bacteria and discov-
ered that it was unfit to drink; that it was no better than
the water procured from the harbor, when analyzed; in
fact, water from the harbor and water from the faucets
seemed to be exactly the same water. Being advised by a
legal friend as to the course to pursue, he talked with the
then head of the Water Bureau, discovered that it was the
custom in the Spring to open the Bird Island Inlet, because
of difficulty with anchor-ice in the river tunnel in the
Spring of the year, and thus he learned that the people
were, in fact, drinking harbor water at the time typhoid
fever became epidemic every Spring, for he found this had
been done every Spring. He insisted that this should be
discontinued at once, no matter what the cost because of
anchor-ice, and the Mayor and head of the Water Bureau,
being somewhat reluctant to follow his advice, were more
or less coerced into doing so by his suggestion that he must
appeal to the public through the newspapers, if necessary,
to effect this reform. Not only was the Bird Island Inlet
closed, but it was sealed for all time, and thus disappeared
the cause of a great number of deaths from typhoid fever
each Spring because of this practice, due to ignorance of
medical facts then just becoming generally known. To
make certain that it would disappear, Dr. Wende had the
water turned off in each of the then reservoirs of the city,ERNEST WENDE: A MEMOIR
137
and had these reservoirs most thoroughly cleansed and dis-
infected with most powerful disinfectants before he would
again permit water to be stored in them for drinking
purposes.
But he did not stop here. He knew that all over the
city down to that time were wells, public and private, that
were in common use, that were more or less contaminated
from privy vaults and other sources of disease, and he
knew, furthermore, that there were immense numbers of
privy vaults in use that had no connection whatever with
sewers. The result was, he labored with the Aldermen, the
Council and the Mayor until he got through an ordinance
to correct this state of affairs, and then, inside of the first
year, he caused to be inspected and discontinued more than
15,000 private privy vaults; a necessary part of the work
being putting in and connecting sewers or plumbing, as
necessary, to take the place of the privy vaults. All wells,
public and private, were discontinued at the same time,
that the people might not drink dangerous water.
If scarlet fever, typhoid fever, or any such disease, ap-
peared anywhere, it had to be reported at once, the house
to be placarded, its plumbing and surroundings to be in-
spected, and, if necessary, an inspector went far into the
country to examine into the conditions under which the
milk was produced that was sold along the milk route where
the scarlet fever or other disease he knew likely to follow
contaminated milk, had been discovered.
If diphtheria was discovered, his inspectors were at once
at the place where it was discovered, to ascertain its prob-
able cause, and changes in the premises or plumbing were
required, even if the citizen was as prominent as Mr. Mil-
burn was; for when diphtheria was discovered in Mr.
Milburn’s home, Mr. Milburn facetiously remarked to a
friend that Dr. Wende was a perfect little czar in the way
lie took charge of such matters and in the requirements he138
EBNEST WENDE: A MEMOIR
made. In one case a leading church was the offender as to
the condition of premises owned by it, and its priest, used
to having his own way, appeared at the Commissioner’s
office to turn his requirements aside. The Doctor listened
patiently and good naturedly, and then asked the priest
whether he would obey his requirements. The priest
answered “No.” The Doctor quietly turned to an assist-
ant present and asked if he had heard what the priest said
in answer to the Doctor’s question. The assistant answer-
ing in the affirmative, the Doctor quietly directed him, in
the presence of the priest, to swear out a warrant for the
priest’s arrest. Instantly, the priest, discovering that he
had a type of official quite out of the ordinary to deal with,,
became respectful and obedient, as is the custom of his
church, and began to inquire of the Doctor if they could
not reach some reasonable adjustment of the matter ; the
end naturally being that the priest was convinced the Doc-
tor’s requirements, to begin with, were reasonable; and,
therefore, the priest promised to comply with them within
a reasonable time.
There is not time to go into all the incidents that tell so*
well the common-sense, directness, courage, and sound medi-
cal judgment involved in the reforms that Dr. Wende
brought about, but a few were of such a far-reaching char-
acter that they should be mentioned.
When the Honorable Tom Johnson was Mayor of Cleve-
land, and in the zenith of his popularity and power there,,
it was well known that he was an anti-vaccinationist, the
anti-vaccination doctrine having made great headway at
that time. In due time it became known that there was a
good deal of smallpox in Cleveland during Mayor Johnson’s,
administration, and Dr. Wende thought the matter so seri-
ous that he went there himself to see if the rumors were
well founded. He had a good deal of difficulty in getting
Mayor Johnson’s permission to investigate for himself, butBENE ST WENDS: A MEMOIR
139
the suggestion that he would have to quarantine against
Cleveland unless he was permitted to investigate, finally
caused the Mayor to assent to his investigation. He found
the health officer of Cleveland to be a very good doctor, but
a man quite as lacking in backbone as many such men are.
After Dr. Wende had discovered many, many cases of small-
pox, the Doctor admitted their situation, but confidentially
said he was powerless to do anything with the Mayor.
Thereupon, Dr. Wende returned to Mayor Johnson and told
him what he had seen with his own eyes, and that they had
at that time undoubtedly hundreds of cases of smallpox in
Cleveland; for it was discovered afterwards that during
this epidemic Cleveland had over 2,000 such cases. Still,
Mayor Johnson suggested to Dr. Wende that he was not
Health Commissioner of Cleveland, and the matter was not
within his jurisdiction. To this Dr. Wende answered that
if that was the view that was to be taken in the matter, he
would at once place inspectors on the docks and in the
depots in which trains from Cleveland would arrive; that
he would turn back people, or even boats or trains, if neces-
sary if a clean bill of health could not be given; that he
would himself telegraph to the health officers of other
neighboring cities, like Detroit, what he found the situation
to be; that he would give a full statement of the matter to
the Associated Press, and Cleveland would soon find out
that she could not ignore the rest of the world, if she was
keeping secret the fact that she had smallpox, or yellow
fever, or any other contagious disease dangerous to human
life. Dr. Wende did not find it necessary to do these things,
because Mayor Johnson at once saw the point and agreed
in all Dr. Wende *s reasonable requests about vaccination,
local quarantine, and everything else, to save his city from
such a fate; his anti-vaccination theories going into a state
of suspended animation for the time being.140
ERNEST WENDE: A MEMOIR
Dr. Wende was an expert in the use of the microscope,
and he made much use of it in his work. It was through
the microscope that he first learned that it was impossible
to properly cleanse the tube of the long-necked nursing
bottle then so popular and so universally used. Having
found out another source through which the lives of great
numbers of small children were lost, through milk contami-
nated from the infected long rubber neck of such bottles,
he paid out a considerable sum of his own money to have
slides made from which he could make it perfectly clear
to legislators that the use of such bottles should be pro-
hibited. Of course the manufacturers of such bottles, and
the druggists who sold them, did not view this attack with
complacency, but the Doctor had such a reputation for
understanding his business, and his pictures were so effect-
ive, that he carried the day, and obtained the legislation he
wanted. By this time the germ theory of disease had
ceased to be a novelty, bug-hunting doctors were no longer
sneered at, and the result was that within six months from
the time the Doctor carried his point in legislation, not a
single long-necked nursing bottle could be found in any
drug store in the City of Buffalo, after the most careful
and well-planned attempt of the Doctor to find one. This
reform was not only a local and a State reform, but in a
very short time it was a National, if not an international,
reform, and I dare say it is many years since any person
has seen a long-necked infant’s bottle anywhere for sale.
At first, Dr. Wende encountered opposition from not only
the politicians and the uninformed public, but often a
great majority of his own profession vigorously opposed
his proposed reforms. All this made no difference to him,
for he was absolutely impersonal in his fighting, and friend
or foe had to get out of the way sooner or later, if Dr.
Wende began to push a reform, for he got his material
first, and soon demonstrated that it was of such a scientificEBNEST WENDE: A MEMOIB
141
character that no one could successfully withstand his
attacks.
One of the last of his reforms was that with reference to
contagious diseases. At the time this last reform was com-
menced, no hospital in Buffalo had any accommodations of
any size for contagious diseases. The Doctor, therefore,
began to agitate for a city hospital that would treat nothing
but contagious diseases. He soon got a majority to agree
with him that there should be such a hospital, but when he
began the location of it, whatever ward he proposed it for,
the Aldermen and residents of that ward at once rose up in
all their might and opposed it, on the real ground, of
course, that it would be destructive to the value of their
property, although other grounds were quite as often urged,
while nothing was said about this one. Then it occurred to
Dr. Wende that the schoolhouse of School 41, at Broadway
and Spring Street,- a schoolhouse that had been abandoned
as unfit for school purposes, could be made over into such
a hospital, and an epidemic of scarlet fever occurring at
just this time, gave the Doctor the power to take possession
of this schoolhouse and convert it into a temporary hospital
of the character he wanted. At that time he did not intend
to make this a permanent hospital, but only intended to
clean it and repair it so that it could be used for this tem-
porary purpose. The opposition from the various Aider-
men, however, making it impossible to locate such a hos-
pital anywhere else, the Doctor improved, repaired, and
rebuilt as he could; and the result is, that continuing his
methods to the present day, this old school building, which
remains only as to its walls, has been converted into one of
the most up-to-date contagious-disease hospitals to be found
anywhere in this country. It has beds for 150 patients;
was opened February 19, 1909; and since that time 5,008
eases of contagious diseases have been there treated. The
result is that the people generally, and the masses in par*142
■ERNEST WENDE: A MEMOIR
ticular, now have a hospital to which a member of the
family can be sent, thus saving the rest of the family, or a .
school, it may be, from the danger incident to permitting
a contagious disease to be at large. Transients in hotels,
or wealthy people, too, can go to this hospital, have a pri-
vate room, and receive proper care for a reasonably moder-
ate amount. The various diseases are scientifically isolated
from each other, and now no one on the outside would think
of suggesting that this hospital for contagious diseases
affects the value of property about it. Most appropriately,
since Dr. Wende’s death, his hospital has been named “The
Ernest W'ende Hospital, ’ ’ and in it we have a fitting monu-
ment to his last permanent reform of conditions for the
benefit of the masses of his beloved city.
Of course Dr. Wende’s family and friends will realize
how many important incidents, and even reforms, remain
unmentioned by me, but no one will know better than his
family and friends that to mention them all might require
a volume. Nor have I more than hinted at the way he
carried the duties of his office with him, in season and out
of season, night and day, week days and Sundays, when he
went to other cities, and when he was at home. His ambi-
tion always was to keep Buffalo in the very front of the
procession of great cities in its healthfulness. His constant
study was to prevent premature death, and save more and
more of human suffering and human life. Even when he
knew an as yet incurable malady had seized him, because
the as yet only known remedy, surgery, had been tried and
had failed, he continued to have daily reports made to him,
and he continued to supervise the work of his public office
from his room of sickness. Nor did he abate his interest
or his work for his city until he was removed by death.
This bare sketch of Dr. Wende’s life has been necessarily
confined to a few more or less well-known incidents in his
thorough education and training for his profession, and hisEWE ST WEN EE: A MEMOIB
143
career as a public official that af terwards came to him. The
permanent value of his scientific and often pioneer work for
the health of the public was the natural result of thoroughly
trained native ability working unselfishly along true scien-
tific lines. His methods and his work were soon well
known and often repeated in large cities and towns all
over the civilized world.* In particular, in Germany, where
so much of his valuable scientific training was obtained,
his name, like that of his neighbor and friend, Dr. Park,
became well known to his profession. In this country, in
particular, many of the scientific methods first employed
here by him have been used by other large cities with such
success that many of them, being otherwise favored, are
now sometimes a little ahead of Buffalo in their death rate.
It is doubtful if any of our citizens, even the two distin-
guished citizens who became Presidents, have done public
work of more permanent value, certainly no citizen has
done public work of more permanent value for the masses
of our city. With Dr. Wende, as with all other men, his
true monument is this public work he did to help mankind.
In this sketch I have but barely suggested his scientific
work with the microscope, his helpful work in our Medical
School, his hearty co-operation in the work in our hospitals,
and his learning, skill and judgment in consultations and
private practice. An outline of the chronology of his life,
prepared by Dr. Wende himself for a friend a few years
before his death, outlines his training and career thus:
Ernest Wende, physician; born at Mill Grove, N. Y.,
July 23, 1853; son of Bernard A. and Susan W.; graduate
of the University of Buffalo, Medical Department, 1878;
•special course, Columbia, 1881-2; married Aug. 25, 1881,
Frances Harriet Cutler; graduate of University of Pa.,
M. D., 1884, B. Sc., 1885; special course, Berlin, Vienna,
1885-6; Prof. Dermatology Medical Dep’t, Univ. of Buffalo;
"botany and microscopy, Coll, of Pharmacy, same; Health144
EENEST WENDE: A MEMO IE
Commissioner, Buffalo, 1891-1902; member Am. Micros-
Soc., Pan-Am. Med. Assn., Am. Public Health Assn.; Pel-
low Electro-Therapeutic Assn. (Pres. 1901); Koyal Micros-
Soc., England; N. Y. State Med. Soc.; Supreme Pres. Order
of the Iroquois.
This sketch of his life is necessarily quite inadequate, but
I have at least hinted at the worth of the man and his work-
in private life, Dr. Wende was a man of simple, unpre-
tentious habits, of direct purpose and method. He was a
genial, loyal son and brother; an affectionate, devoted and
loyal husband and father; a loyal, patriotic and public-
spirited citizen. He might have made a fortune in money,
but he cared so much for his profession, his city, and the
welfare of mankind, and was so intent on bettering human
conditions and human healthfulness, that money never
seemed to be any object to him. To his family and his
friends he left, however, a memory and a reputation that
transcends any money value.