Finding Aid: Mitchell and Bouchelle Account Books, 1820-1845, PC.AB.83

[Identification of item], Private Collections: Account Books, PC.AB.83, Mitchell and Bouchelle Account Books, 1820-1845, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC, USA.

These account books record daily transactions of Mitchell and Bouchelle's medical practice. Mitchell started the practice in Salisbury in 1823. Bouchelle joined him in 1834. Although the partnership was dissolved on 1 May 1837, Bouchelle apparently continued to practice in Salisbury until 1839.
Mitchell and Bouchelle treated visitors from Rowan County, from other nearby counties, and occasionally from other states. Their patients represented a variety of social classes and occupations, including barbers, blacksmiths, cabinetmakers, stage drivers, stone cutters, teachers, tailors, prisoners, planters, overseers, slaves, apprentices, judges, lawyers, and housewives. The ledgers sometimes included diagnoses, though most of the remarks are brief. Patients suffered from diseases such as scarlet fever, measles, gonorrhea, and syphilis. They also experienced apoplexy and fits, generic diagnoses which covered a range of unspecified causes in nineteenth-century medicine.
Mitchell and Bouchelle paid house calls, generally charging $1-2 per visit, depending upon the severity of the case and sometimes the severity of the weather. Occasionally they allowed patients to barter with them. In one case, a mattress was listed as payment; in another case, the promise of paying the account in fish was extracted. The doctors prescribed a variety of herbal cures, fungi, chemicals, distilled liquids, and patent medicines. These included hydrangea, sarsaparilla, digitalis, Epsom, cream of tartar, sulfur, chalk powder, quinine, iodine, silver nitrate, ointment, purging pills, shop pills, cough drops, opium and its derivatives such as paregoric and laudanum, anodyne drops, French brandy, wine, Henry's Calcium Magnesia, and Barton's Brown Mixture. Mitchell and Bouchelle performed complex surgeries such as removing tumors from a neck to simpler treatments such as opening abscesses, pulling teeth, and removing splinters from eyes. Cupping and bloodletting procedures were often performed.

Physician. Also lectures on "Materia Medica and Botany," 1820. Ledgers and daybooks.

The day book (Volume 83.2) is arranged by date (month and year), then by name. Numbers in the left column correspond to page numbers where patients' names are recorded in the ledgers.
The three ledgers are arranged by name, then date. Alphabetical indexes of names can be found near the front of Ledger B (Volume 83.3) and the last ledger (Volume 83.4).

In 1880, a somewhat inaccurate Salisbury newspaper account claimed that Lueco Mitchell served as a surgeon aboard the schooner in the Battle of New Orleans, during the War of 1812. Official naval documents do list one Leuco Mitchell as a surgeon's mate, i.e. not a surgeon, during the War of 1812. However, the first name is spelled differently and the index does not list birthplace or any other evidence that would help to substantiate the information or establish a clear connection to the Salisbury doctor.
What can be documented with certainty is that Lueco Mitchell received his doctor of medicine degree in April 1821 from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the City of New York [later Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons]. There he studied dyspepsia while attending lectures by Dr. David Hosack (1769-1835) and Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill (1764-1831). Notes from these lectures can be found in Volume 83.1.
Although Dr. Bouchelle's first name is not identified in the account books, the evidence strongly suggests that Mitchell's younger partner was Robert M. Bouchelle of North Carolina, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a medical degree in March 1834. Dr. Bouchelle, who focused on pneumonia during his studies, joined the Salisbury practice on 15 May 1834. This was corroborated by a brief item in the , announcing the partnership of Doctors L. Mitchell and R. M. Bouchelle. Their office was located in Dr. Mitchell's former house, across from Slaughter's Hotel.
Both men married Salisbury natives. Mitchell married Sarah Jane Henderson [later Boyden] (1805-1884) on 24 December 1835, with Robert M. Bouchelle serving as bondsman. Bouchelle married Jane G. Polk (1814-1841) on 1 May 1838.
In May 1837, the announced that the men had agreed to dissolve their partnership. Within a year, Mitchell had died on a plantation near Hayneville, Alabama. By August 1838, Dr. Pleasant Henderson (died 21 October 1851) had announced his acquisition of Mitchell's brick office space for his own medical practice. Dr. Bouchelle continued to practice elsewhere in Salisbury until 1839. Presumably, he and his wife moved to LaGrange, Tennessee, where they are both buried.

Collection Contents

Mitchell, Lueco

Bouchell, _____

Mitchell and Bouchell

Account books

Herbs--Therapeutic use

Medicine--Practice--Accounting

Medicine--Practice--North Carolina

Patent medicines

Physicians

"Materia Medica and Botany"

Medicine

Botany

Traditional medicine

Herbs

Rowan County (N.C.)

Salisbury (N.C.)

Physicians--North Carolina--History--19th century

Unknown

Finding aid prepared by Lea Walker, April 2013. Revised by Fran Tracy-Walls, July 2019, for publication in Discover Online Catalog (DOC).