Henry William Stoy was born in Herborn, Germany, March 14, 1726, and first studied theology, being ordained for that work in America in 1752. He first settled in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, but in 1756 removed to Philadelphia on account of his health, where he married Maria Elizabeth Maus. The marriage caused a great deal of dissatisfaction in the congregation, and resulted in his resignation and removal to Lancaster in October, 1758. In the early part of 1763 he resigned and returned to Europe, the Amsterdam classes reporting that he attended their meeting May 3, 1763. It is reported that he went to Leyden and studied medicine, but the matriculation books do not reveal his presence there, but that he went to his native town, Herborn, and studied medicine with Prof. John Adam Hoffman, who was professor of the university until 1773. He returned to America, probably in 1767, for in November of this year he wrote to Holland that he had returned, had had several calls and concluded to accept Tulpehocken, the present Host church in Berks County. He was, however, not in good standing with the church authorities in Pennsylvania, who declined again to receive him as a member of the Coetus, or Synod, not for any moral delinquencies, but because of his disputation with many of the ministers and for the further reason that he was regarded as a "stirrer up of strife." He left the Host church about 1772 or 1773 and moved to Lebanon and began the active practice of medicine.
While practising, he also preached at various places, and was pastor to several country congregations. Like some of the doctors of more modern times, he rated himself as a statesman and took an active part in politics. In 1779, during the Revolution, he wrote a letter addressed to Joseph Reed, president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, on "The Present Mode of Taxation," advocating a single tax on land, and he has the honor of being the first single tax man in the country, though his ideas differed from the single tax theories of the present day and were impracticable. He was elected to the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1784, and wrote frequently on political subjects for the papers. Highly educated, he was fluent in German, Latin, and English, but it was as a physician that he gained greatest prominence and came to be known far and wide, not as a preacher, but as a doctor. His cure for hydrophobia and his hysteric drops, or "mutter tropfen," gave him great notoriety, and people sent long distances for the remedies. In Gen. Washington's account book, sold at Birch's auction sale, in 1890, and bought by Mr. Aldrich for $400, appears this record:
"Oct. 18, 1797. Gave my servant, Christopher, to bear the expenses to a person at Lebanon in Pennsylvania celebrated for curing persons bit by wild animals, $25.00."
Whether Dr. Stoy's success in curing the disease was due to the remedy or to the fact that possibly only a small per cent, of the so-called rabid dogs are afflicted with rabies, we are unable to say, but from the ingredients it contained we are led to believe there was not much virtue in it. The remedy consisted of one ounce of the herb, red chickweed, four ounces of theriac and one quart of beer, all well digested, the dose being a wine glassful. Red chickweed is supposed to be antivenomous, nervine and stimulating.
For the information of the medical fraternity I can say his noted hysteric drops, or "mutter tropfen," were made of opium, castor, saffron and maple seed, each one dram, and Lisbon wine four ounces, and possessing anodyne and antispasmodic properties, were doubtless beneficial in nervous disorders. That Dr. Stoy was a progressive physician, keeping abreast of the times, is shown by the fact that he was active in introducing inoculation for the smallpox, although there was a great prejudice against it as an attempt to thwart Providence.
After an eventful life, he died in Lebanon, September 14, 1801, and was buried at the Host Church, in Berks County.
F.R.P.
From an account read before the Lebanon County Historical Society, October 19, 1900, by J.H. Redsecker, Ph.M.
Source: Howard A. Kelly. A Cyclopedia of American Medical Biography: Comprising the Lives of Eminent Deceased Physicians and Surgeons from 1610 to 1910, vol. 2. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Co., 1912, pp. 421-422.
Contributed by: Nancy.