Of those who served otherwise than as surgeons, Dr. J. P. Coulter was lieutenant colonel of the 12th Iowa Infantry. He afterwards was active in city and county politics and held several official positions, and distantly related to him was the late Dr. A. B. Coulter, in whose untimely passing away the community lost one of its most promising professional men.
Dr. G. R. Skinner, who came to Cedar Rapids in 1871, spent four years in the Civil war, leaving the service with a captain's commission.
Dr. W. H. French served through the war in the 89th Illinois Infantry.
THE LATE DR. J. S. LOVE, SPRINGVILLE
Of those men whose distinctly professional work brought them especial esteem, space will allow for the mention of only a few.
Perhaps for no other one of their brethren did the Linn county profession award so universal preference as to Dr. Henry Ristine. Pioneer, patriot, and public-spirited citizen, he was first and before all a doctor, combining in generous measure the traits and faculties that make an eminently successful surgeon, with culture and genial sympathies. It could be truly said of him that he adorned his profession. His portrait hangs in St. Luke's Hospital along with that of the late Judge Greene, whom he ably seconded in the work of founding that institution. Jurist and surgeon alike believed in the hospital as the workshop without which the doctor could not do his best work, and their efforts accomplished much toward the establishment of medical and surgical justice to the physically afflicted, a form of service that deserves more and more public recognition in every community where moral justice to the criminally accused is so amply facilitated by the courts of law.
Among other well remembered physicians were Dr. J. S. Love, of Springville, Dr. James Carson, of Mt. Vernon, Dr. D. McClenahan, of Cedar Rapids, and Dr. G. L. Carhardt, of Marion. Beginning at an early date and devoting themselves exclusively to their practice till advancing age forced retirement, they all four typically exemplified in their respective communities the life of the family physician. They were, none of them, modern doctors, but they lived not only to see but to rejoice in the day of modern medicine. Long after they had ceased from practice they kept up attendance at medical society meetings, keenly alive to the advancements of medical art and scientific research there discussed. They were resourceful men, and they had labored faithfully and well with the art available in their day, how often futilely none felt more keenly than themselves. The realization that modern methods promised control of much that had baffled them seemed to lighten the burden of their declining years. Their abiding interest and faith in the future things of medicine was an inspiration to their successors.