Hicksville flourished from the 1880s through the 1910s, largely due to its prosperous and skilled German immigrants. Among them was Edward G. Rave, apothecary and doctor. His day-to-day life offers insight into the years that some regard as Hicksville's Golden Age.
Introduction
In 1866, Edward Rave - pronounced rahv·e - left his native Lower Saxony for the United States. He had concluded his studies at Georg August Universität, famous for its research into the medicinal use of plants. Now he settled in New Jersey, so that he could further his medical studies across the Hudson at NYU, while working as an apothecary. After he earned his Doctorate in 1877, he and his family relocated to Hicksville, where he would practice both as a doctor and an apothecary. As time went by, his apothecary shop would become Hicksville's Union Drug Store, and he would eventually be known as "Old Doctor Rave,"for there was now a "Young Dr. Rave," Edward's son Adolph G. Rave.
Dr. Edward G. Rave
Huntington Long-Islander, July 27, 1917
"Dedicated small town doctor" was only one of the many roles he played, for his professional qualifications were extensive, and he was in demand. This list of Dr. Rave's affiliations and appointed posts is likely incomplete:
- Health Officer, Town of Oyster Bay (Southern District)
- Chief Physician and Surgeon, Long Island Railroad
- Member, National Association of Railroad Surgeons
- Consulting Doctor, St. Mary's Hospital, Jamaica
- Fellow, New York Obstetric Society
- Professor of Obstetrics, NYU Post-Graduate School and Hospital
- Commissioner in Lunacy*
- Member, New York State Society of Medical Jurisprudence
- Vice-President, German Medical Society
- Member New York State Medical Pharmaceutical Association
- Vice-President, College of Brooklyn Pharmacy Association**
Notes:
* It is not clear from the sources I have found whether this position relates to the New York State Commission in Lunacy, or to another organization that was mandated to improve the conditions in which mental patients lived.
** Note that Dr. Rave kept a botanical garden at his home in Hicksville, in which he grew medicinal plants. Students and members of the Pharmacy Association were welcome to visit the garden and learn-first hand about growing the plants they would use in making some of their medicines.
Apothecaries or Pharmacists?
When we think of pharmacists, we picture trained, licensed professionals who are authorized to dispense medicines prescribed by doctors. They are able to advise us on potential conflicts among the medications (both prescribed and over-the-counter) which we take. That picture was not necessarily accurate in America for much of the nineteenth century. At that time, no license or training was required to sell drugs, or to call yourself a pharmacist.
However, there also were apothecaries - people who had studied, often in German schools, the scientific use of plants to make medicines. They shared their experiences and research through professional associations (e.g., in the second half of the nineteenth century, New York City alone had multiple German apothecary societies). Through these associations, apothecaries learned about standard medications which reliably treated given ailments.
At first, American pharmacists (the real ones, not the "pretenders" who just sold drugs and snake oil) were disadvantaged - the U.S. had no centuries-old universities or professional organizations to guide them. But by the late 1800s, the apothecaries and pharmacists were merging into one licensed profession. Thus, E.G Rave's Apothecary gave way to his Drug Store, which later became the Pharmacy of another son, Albert. C. Rave:
A.C. Rave's Pharmacy, formerly E. G. Rave's Union Drug
Store, northwest corner of Nicholai Street and Broadway;
part of the E. G. Rave home is visible on the right
"digitally restored" version of online image found in the
Hicksville Public Library Collection atnyheritage.org
The large lettering on the sign appears to read "Pharmacist
and Chemist." This picture must date no earlier than 1906,
as in October 1905, contractor Charles Voigt had just finished
erecting the newest thing in storefronts: plate glass windows.
E.G. Rave's entries in the annual Graduate Directory of NYU Medical list him as an Allopath - someone who used scientific, evidence-based treatments - rather than a Homeopath. He regularly studied developments in both American and German medical literature. When the need was acute, and standard treatment failed, he could be an early adopter of new treatments, as described below:
Ironically, the lives of the "foreigners" who were sick
due to their "filthy habits" were saved by an immigrant.
Yonkers Statesman, June 14, 1889
CAUTION: DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS AT HOME. INGESTING OR INJECTING CARBOLIC ACID CAN CAUSE SERIOUS AND IRREVERSIBLE ORGAN DAMAGE. THE TREATMENT COULD ONLY HAVE BEEN SAFELY INJECTED INTO A VERY SPECIFIC AREA OF THE THROAT. WE DO NOT KNOW THE DOSAGE ADMINISTERED.
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With all the spare time he had on his hands ☺, Edward Rave was able to belong to many non-medical organizations. He was an active Mason and Knight Templar, and an Odd Fellow. He served as President of the Board of Education. He was active in the local chapter of the Royal Arcanum, and he was one of the founders of Hicksville's Citizens Protection Association. When Nassau County split away from Queens, he participated in the discussions that led to the choice of the new County Seat.
One aspect of the era's stereotype of German immigrants was that they loved music, and that definitely was true of Dr. Rave. He was part of, and at times headed, the Hicksville Sängerrunde, a traditional German male choral society. Among the many places at which it performed was Sagamore Hill, where in 1908 its members (including Dr. Rave) sang for and met President Theodore Roosevelt. More information about the local Sängerrunde, including the names of the Hicksvillians who sang for President Roosevelt, appears in the Appendix to this article.
Although not affiliated with the national Sængerbund,
the Hicksville Sängerrunde performed as an
independent group at this six-day event.
Rave also headed The United Singers of Nassau County, a group of seventy men from Hempstead, Hicksville, and Rockville Centre, which gave concerts of American as well as German songs. In 1912, it performed at the annual Mineola Fair.
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Life in Hicksville, as Experienced by a Village Doctor
Today, it may seem like Hicksville's Golden Age, but one wonders if Edward Rave thought that at the time. He spent most his work time far from elegance and beauty, for every day he tended to the needs of the working people, the elderly, and perhaps the indigent. We do not have logs of his appointments and emergency calls, but from scattered articles in old newspapers, we can learn a fair bit about village life in this era. It will not be a complete picture, but rather a mosaic, with plenty of tiles now missing.
Some of the news items we discover may at first seem insignificant. For example, Brooklyn Life regularly tracked the spread of the automobile across Long Island, and in the third week of May, 1910, it told its readers that Edward G. Rave, M.D. had registered his Maxwell. (Yes, fellow old-timers, that is the kind of automobile that Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson hypothetically drove for too many years on behalf of Jack Benny.)
Advertisement for 1909 Maxwell D-A
Starting any car of the era meant hand-cranking it, and driving it was arduous - power steering would not be invented until the 1950s. Edward Rave was 66 years old in 1910. After each visit, he had to crank up the Maxwell again, and wrangle it to wherever the next patient was. Frequently called to consult on difficult cases, he often drove to Queens, or Suffolk. Being a doctor in this particular Golden Age took determination and stamina.
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Note that many Long Island newspapers printed earlier than, say, 1885 either have not survived, or are not available online. Here are some glimpses of Long Island life as Edward Rave knew it, starting with 1888:
- In July 1888, Dr. Rave and his wife returned to Europe for a vacation. Among the things they did there was go to Carlsbad for the mineral baths. During their absence, his young assistant, Dr. Taliaferro (who would soon have his own local practice) looked after Dr. Rave's patients.
- In December 1888, Dr. Rave was called to Breslau (now Lindenhurst). The horse-drawn stage coach that ran between Hicksville and the south shore had overturned, badly injuring five people. He would travel there repeatedly for more than a week, continuing to treat the most seriously injured.
- A few months later, the newspaper announced that Dr. Rave was importing clean cotton from Germany, for local doctors who needed it to staunch blood during surgeries.
- Not long after that, Hicksville and the surrounding area were hit by simultaneous waves of scarlet fever and diphtheria. The newspapers commented on how busy Dr. Rave was in consequence, mentioning his great success in treating the latter.
- In June of 1891, in his capacity as LIRR surgeon, Dr. Rave was called a short distance to his hometown depot, where a freight train awaited him. Some miles back, a crew member had been partially scalped by a malfunctioning lever on a track switch; the train hurried to Hicksville to get Dr. Rave's help as soon as possible. Fortunately, he was able to reattach the man's scalp.
- That July - and probably in every July - he set many broken limbs and sprains, because young people climbed trees to pick ripe cherries, slipped, and fell to the ground all over Hicksville and Plainview. That year, Hicksville also saw a spate of feverish young boys' passing out for hours at a time in the summer heat. The likely cause was said to be their feasting on unwashed cherries, and drinking lots of nearby stagnant water.
- By 1894, Rave's Union Drug Store was offering smallpox vaccinations for infants on every Tuesday.
- Just before Easter 1895, Rave was summoned to Bellmore, to treat an attempted suicide. A man had both taken poison and shot himself in the head, but he had survived. Dr. Rave successfully removed the bullet from the man's brain. I have found no report on the attempt's long-term effect upon the unfortunate man.
- The following month, the Union Drug Store opened its soda fountain for its second season.
Huntington Long-Islander, May 16, 1894
Huntington Long-Islander, May 24, 1895
Frankly, I am not certain why a soda fountain could not open until the nearby ponds were thawing. Could it be that local spring water was offered as refreshment?
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Thus far, we have learned some things about life in old Hicksville. Because the LIRR did not directly link Hicksville to either shore, the village was still served by a stage coach that went north and south. Kids were kids even back then, and sometimes they did stupid things. Nineteenth century medicine had limitations and strengths. Soda fountains were a new fad. All of these things seem perfectly ordinary.
Also ordinary, but nonetheless disturbing, were the problems of the age, which were as rampant and serious in Hicksville as they were anywhere. Due to rail and farm accidents, serious wounds and loss of limbs were commonplace - yet before Dr. Rave took action, clean bandage material apparently was not readily available in the village. Attempted and completed suicides were not rare; most weekly editions of the Long-Islander newspaper reported one's having occurred in the area.
I am not suggesting that the village was a bad place at this time. Rather, I mean to point out that the era that some call its Golden Age was not especially golden for the majority of Hicksvillians. To them, it was just an Ordinary Age.
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Let's look now at some of the more gripping news items that mention Edward Rave:
- In February 1896, during a sustained period of frigid weather, the Town's Overseer of the Poor told Dr. Rave to check on two elderly siblings who had not been seen around Hicksville for some time. In their unheated cabin, the doctor found a man who sat next to a stove without fuel, in a kitchen without food. Upstairs lay the body of the man's sister, literally frozen solid. Her brother refused to let anyone else into the cabin, and he refused to leave, not wanting to abandon his deceased sister's body.
- The next winter brought a similar call. A homeless woman, in her twenties, had lain down next to a road and fallen asleep. She froze to death.
- In August 1902, he went to check on a young mother. Her three little children were waiting for her to awaken, and the youngest cuddled close against her. Alas, she had starved to death, at the age of thirty-two.
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In 1897, Dr. Rave, his family, and some of their neighbors endured a horrible experience.
New York Herald, June 23, 1897
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By 1900, bicycling was, to use 21st century lingo, definitely trending. One June night, a number of young cyclists were racing down Broadway in the dark. None of them used lights or sounded warning bells, as required after dark by local ordinance. They did not slow as they approached Manetto Hill Road (now Old Country Road). As they raced across it, six of them were struck sideways by a horse-drawn cart. One of the cart's shafts - a pole that juts forward from a cart, to which the horse's harness is attached - impaled one of the cyclists. The cart's driver quickly fetched Dr. Rave, but the young man had already died. The cart driver was exonerated, and the surviving cyclists were assessed fines.
During 1901's quail hunting season, Edward Rave was called to tend to a hunter, shot when a hunting companion tripped and accidentally discharged his gun. The man had died instantly. I must note that this was a fairly regular occurrence; even Young Doctor Rave once wounded a friend while climbing over a fence in search of game.
In 1902, the Southern New York Volunteer Firemens Association held its annual convention in Hicksville. Arriving delegates at the railroad station were so excited that they rushed forward, accidentally pushing a visiting Deputy Chief in front of the departing train. Both his legs were severed - and no one in the crowd administered first aid. The man sat in shock, staring ahead blankly, and expired just as Dr. Rave arrived to try to save him.
One June day in 1908, physicians from surrounding towns, including both of Hicksville's Drs. Rave, were called to the site of a collision southwest of Hicksville. Two autos had been racing along Bethpage Turnpike. One kicked up so much dust behind it that its competitor could not be seen by other traffic. An approaching car drove into the dust cloud, colliding with it head-on. One person died; six others sustained serious injuries. The other car in the race just kept going.
These events make Hicksville seem a darker place. Even with an Overseer of the Poor, people regularly starved and froze to death. The chloroform incident left the victims, and for that matter, most townspeople, terrified. Thoughtless and reckless behavior abounded, often with gruesome and fatal consequences.
I do not mention these events to demean Hicksville - but when we wax nostalgic for the past, we sometimes need to be reminded that life then was complex, and at times far from picture-perfect.
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Conclusion
Early in 1915, Old Doctor Rave resigned as Town Health Officer. He was 71 then, and the Long-Islander took the opportunity to thank him for all he had done during his nearly four decades of service to Hicksville. It was clear that he soon would also step back from his other duties, and thereafter be content to watch the efforts of a new generation of doctors. He died eighteen months later.
A few years ago, I stood in Plainlawn Cemetery, gazing at the impressive older grave markers, at first not seeing some of the names I had expected to find. As I took a few steps to try a different vantage point, I felt something hard beneath my foot. It was a small, flat rectangular stone, its edges overgrown by grass, large enough for only eight carved letters: DR. E.G. RAVE. Compared to the elaborate markers I had been looking over, Edward Rave's is incredibly modest. It is, in its way, perfect for the grave of a dedicated man, someone who strove not to aggrandize himself, but to be the best doctor possible for all who needed him.
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Appendix: Odds and Ends about the Hicksville Sängerrunde
The names of those who sang at Sagamore Hill are listed in the penultimate paragraph of the following excerpt.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 18, 1908
FYI, the remainder of the article, not shown here, deals with a complaint made by an attendee that the Town Supervisor had "jostled" her while trying to get into the event.
Zeal to preserve history can sometimes lead to careless errors. When I find that such an error - even my own - is relevant to Ancient Hixtory, I take a moment to tell readers about it.
This photograph of the Sängerrunde is found online in the Hicksville Public Library Collection at NYS Digital Images. Unfortunately, the text which accompanies it identifies these men as "Staehle's Brewery Singers." In addition, like several other pictures in the online collection, this one was erroneously scanned as a mirror image of the original.
Staehle's Brewery Singers - not!
The Hicksville Sängerrunde
Don't be misled by the fellow on the right; his jacket's "button side"
is in front of its "button-hole" side. A look at the other men shows
clearly show that their jacket buttons all appear to be on the wrong
side. Hence, this must be a mirror image of the original photograph.
Hicksville Public Library Historic Photographs at nyheritage.org
We can see the picture in its correct orientation in Richard and Anne Evers' book about Hicksville.
Sängerrunde, or at least some of it; date unknown
Seven of the men here who were identified by the Evers had no connection to the Staehle Brewery. One of the others is Eugene Staehle, the proprietor of the Brewery Hotel. His presence may explain why the society was able to use his hotel space for rehearsals, but it certainly does not imply that this group was "Staehle's Brewery Singers." Incidentally, the society's musical director, Ludwig Birseck, was not a Hicksvillian. He was a professional music teacher who lived in Queens, and presumably had been hired by the Sängerrunde.
Although the Evers' book says the singing society was "active from 1900 to 1910," its roots go further back. The Queens County Sentinel for May 20, 1875 announced that the Hicksville Sangerunde [sic] was going to have its second annual concert in the New Cassel Woods on June 7, 1875. We live and learn.
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Well, that's about it.
I wish you all a healthy and joyous December!
