Fiat Flux: The Writings of Wilson R. Bachelor, Nineteenth-Century Country Doctor and Philosopher

328 Pages·2013·4.072 MB·English

by  William D. Lindsey, Tom Bruce, Jonathan Wolfe

Fiat Flux

Fiat Flux
THEWRITINGS OFWILSON R. BACHELOR,
NINETEENTH-CENTURY COUNTRY DOCTOR
AND PHILOSOPHER
Edited and Introduced by William D. Lindsey
With a Foreword by Thomas A. Bruce
and an Afterword by Jonathan Wolfe
THE UNIVERSITY OFARKANSAS PRESS
FAYETTEVILLE • 2013
Copyright © 2013 by The University of Arkansas Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN-10: 1–55728–636–1
ISBN-13: 978–1–55728–636–9
17 16 15 14 13 5 4 3 2 1
Text design by Ellen Beeler
∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials
Z39.48–1984.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013936905
Thanks to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), Mary Ryan, direc-
tor of the UAMS Library, to the Dolores F. and Thomas A. Bruce Endowment Fund at
the Arkansas Community Foundation, and to the Ash Grove Charitable Foundation,
whose generous financial support to UAMS made this publication possible.
Time is change. It is as limitless as space. Cycles of time have wrought nature as
we see it. Cycles will still make future changes.
Time is as deathless as eternity. It is eternity. It never had a beginning: it will
never have an ending. Its silence is eloquent with colliding suns, grating worlds and
hissing orbs.
Its pathway is strewn with wrecks. The Sphinx still gazes, while Balbec, Memphis
and Thebes lie in ruins. The pyramids of the Toltecs are sinking in the sand, and
Cholua is crumbling to dust. Where the priest offered sacrifice and chanted the weired
[sic]rites of the Aztecs, the scorpion now rears her behind. Cortez has passed away,
and the halls of the Montezumas are silent.
Human life is an electric sunbeam. Let us improve every moment. Good acts
and kind words will never die. Let us not think of self, but for future humanity, and
welcome 1893.
—Wilson R. Bachelor, “Midnight [1892]”

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Foreword by Sen. Dale Bumpers xvii
Foreword by Thomas A. Bruce xix
“Bringing This Fine Man Back to Light”:
Life and Work ofWilson R. Bachelor
INTRODUCTION BYWILLIAM D. LINDSEY 3
WILSON R. BACHELOR, WHYSANDWHEREFORES
1. DIARY OFWILSON R. BACHELOR (1870–1902) 39
2. OCCASIONAL PIECES FROMTHE SCRAPBOOK OF
WILSON R. BACHELOR (1890S) 93
3. LETTERS OFWILSON R. BACHELOR (1890S) 133
Afterword by Jonathan Wolfe 139
Medicine in the Arkansas River Valley, 1865–1890
Appendix I. Goodspeed Autobiography ofWilson R. Bachelor (1889) 151
Appendix II. Masonic Eulogy ofWilson R. Bachelor (1903) 153
Appendix III. Report ofWilson R. and Sarah Bachelor’s Golden
Wedding Anniversary (1897) 155
Appendix IV. Letter ofWilson R. Bachelor to Zion’s Ensign
(4 February 1893) 157
Appendix V. Genealogical Charts 159
Notes 163
Works Cited 267
Index 283

Acknowledgments
The biblical Wisdom-tradition writer Ecclesiastes says that of making books
there is no end, and this is true in part because there’s no end to the number of
people through whose hands the text of a book passes before it’s published,
hands that help weave the strands that fashion the final text. Text,through its
etymology, points to the metaphor of weaving on which I’m relying here to
describe how a text, a book, is composed.
What’s true in general of all books is true a fortiori of this particular book,
which has been years in the making, and which draws on the concerted and
patient research (and generous sharing) of individuals too numerous to men-
tion, without whom the book would not ever have come to publication. The
book publishes the work of an Arkansas country doctor-philosopher of the
nineteenth century, after all, who labored for years to tend to the medical needs
of his community in the upper Arkansas River Valley while farming. And then,
as his diary published here for the first time notes, he spent many lonely nights
in his study reading and writing, perhaps never dreaming that a day might
come when his private thoughts in the diary would be published along with a
collection of the occasional pieces he routinely sent to his local newspaper in
his “retirement” years.
And in preparing Wilson Bachelor’s diary, occasional pieces, and letters for
publication in this volume in collaboration with Bill Russell, I’m painfully
aware—and humbly and gratefully so—that my primary role in this book has
been that of amanuensis. Literally so: throughout the composition of the text,
I had the strong impression that in putting pen to paper, I was merely lending
my hands to this impressive and wide-ranging nineteenth-century Arkansas
thinker, whose work first came to my attention due to family connections that
led to more family connections. And more documents, pictures, stories, arti-
facts: many hands, all of them acting as amanuenses for the man who is the pri-
mary author of this book, Wilson R. Bachelor.
That network of cousin-researchers includes a number of wonderful,
thoughtful, intelligent, altruistic human beings who, unfortunately, didn’t
remain to see the book to completion, though several of these cousins envi-
sioned this volume and worked toward its production. These include
Bachelor’s granddaughter Ruby Jefferson of Riverside, California, who safe-
guarded his diary, shared photocopies of it with interested relatives, and then
ix