Dr. J. H. Mclean’s Peace Makers (June 1963 | Volume: 14, Issue: 4)

Dr. J. H. Mclean’s Peace Makers

AH article image

Authors: Richard M. Ketchum

Historic Era:

Historic Theme:

Subject:

June 1963 | Volume 14, Issue 4

At almost any moment during the decade that began in 1870 a thoughtful man could be forgiven for thinking the world was going up the spout. On this side of the Atlantic carpetbaggers and scalawags swarmed over a beaten South; other enlightened Americans were liberating the Great Plains by exterminating the resident Indians and buffalo. Across the water an older civilization verged on the abyss. Statesmen pondered what Bismarck, the German strong man, would do next. The Balkan cauldron bubbled angrily; there were dark hints of secret pacts; Austria and Russia were squabbling over the Near East; fighting broke out between Russia and Turkey; and a British fleet sailed to support the Turks while the music halls resounded to: “ We don’t want to fight, but by jingo, if we do, We’ve got the men, we’ve got the ships, we’ve got the money too .” Day after day, month upon month, tension mounted. If ever a great man was needed, it was now.

Help, fortunately, was on the way … as conveniently announced in the pages of a thin but imperative volume published in 1880. (Its title page is reproduced in part above.) In every previous crisis, an introduction observed, a MAN had been at hand, waiting in the wings, as it were. France had had her Napoleon, England her Wellington, America her Washington and Grant. And now an eager, anxious world was “peering through the mists of the future, waiting and watching for another coming man, who, by the power of his great intellect, the force of his determined purpose, may stay the onrushing tide of tyranny and bloodshed, and prove to be A SAVIOR AND LIBERATOR OF HIS RACE . Such a man is … DR. JAMES HENRY MC LEAN , of St. Louis, Mo., whose name will soon be heralded from one end of the earth to the other.”

This shrink-proof violet, who would cause swords to be beaten into plowshares, whose motto was “Save the Lives of the People,” had begun life in Scotland in 1829. Later he had moved with his parents to Nova Scotia, to whose invigorating climate he owed the “great vital strength” which sustained the demands on his powerful brain. In 1849 ne arrived in St. Louis—at the same time as a cholera epidemic. A young man of “snap” and “push,” he was so little daunted by the plague that he bought and sold a piece of real estate at a profit on his first day in town. Sometime later he went into partnership with Dr. Addison G. Bragg, known far and wide for his Mexican Mustang Liniment, his Volcanic Oil Liniment, and his Indian Queen Vegetable Anti-Bilious Tonic Pills. The alliance was short-lived, however, for McLean soon struck out on his own, opened a store, and sent agents travelling through the countryside to peddle such products as McLean’s Volcanic Oil Liniment, McLean’s Strengthening Cordial and