Fagerstjerna, Peter W.

FAGERSTJERNA

Posted By: Joyce Hickman (email)
Date: 1/11/2009 at 19:39:58

Peter W. Fagerstjerna

(From the 1883 History of Pottawattamie County, Iowa, by J. H. Keatley, p.42, Council Bluffs)
Dr. Peter Wilhelm Poulson-Fagerstjerna. He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, December 14, 1831. His father was born in Denmark, but of Swedish parents, and belongs to a prominent old Swedish family, of military distinction and nobility, the Counts Fagerstjerna. His mother was also born in Denmark, but her parents were of German descent, and lost their great wealth when the Danish Government, bankrupt, repudiated the national debt in 1808, and many of the bond-holders were financially ruined. His grandfather Poul Svendson Fagerstjerna, retired from military service, as his father, Svend Nielson Fagerstjerna, also did when at the age of forty, and Poul sold his property in Sweden and settled in Denmark, where he bought large farms near Copenhagen, and also an extensive brickyard, but five years later he died suddenly from pneumonia and left the children as minors. His widow married again, and the Doctor's father, as the youngest son, was given a military education in the Danish Army. His great love for mathematics and architecture made him, however, make it his favorite study. The long line of his mother's ancestors were ministers of the Lutheran Church. His mother's father, Johan Peter Gudenschrager, lived on the island of Moen where he howned much land and two grist mills. His father, Ole Poulson Fagerstjerna, became an architect and builder by profession, and when the Doctor was only five months old his father accepted the management of a large manufacturing company at Copenhagen. By moving, the baby took a cold, and a congestion of the lungs. Dr. Berg, the family physician, declared it fatal, and told the mother to call next day and get the death certificate, but when he stopped his visits the child got well. When five years old, the boy was sent to the Royal Military Elementary School. There he remained six years, and graduated when eleven years old. He was then put in the Royal School of Education, where he remained four years, and graduated at the age of fifteen. Only one and a half years later the war broke out between Denmark and Prussia, and the rebellion of Schleswig and Holstein and Lunenburg made it hot for the country to save itself. He became filled with patriotism, and volunteered, much against his father's will, and entered the Danish Army as Corporal; finished the first campaign with distinction, and was, in the fall of 1848, sent to Copenhagen to enter the graduating class of the military academy, and was appointed Sergeant. After graduation, he was sent back to his regiment and made his second campaign of 1849 as Quartermaster of the army, and the youngest on record. After the battle at Colding he was among the 2,000 men whom the main body of the army left behind as a garrison at Fort Fredericia. In ten weeks it was terrifically bombarded day and night, but defended with courage and tenacity against the 20,000 enemies which surrounded it. A re-enforcement of 16,000 men arrived by sea, and July 6, 1849, the battle of Fredericia was fought, leaving 6,000 dead and wounded on the field, but the German army was entirely defeated, the entire siege artillery, two hundred pieces of field artillery, and two thousand prisoners were taken. The soldiers came to Copenhagen as the victorious army, and held the entry under a rain of flowers and the most deafening enthusiasm of the nation. According to his father's express wish, he resigned a few months later from active service in the army, and studied the two following years at the university of Copenhagen. In the summer of 1852, he entered the Royal Jonstrup College, where he remained three years and graduated in 1855. He commenced again his study at the university, devoted especial care to medicine, and was apointed one of the Professors at St. Anna's Citizens' School. At the same time, he pushed on his studies at the Royal Military High School, which he graduated from in 1860, and attained the rank of First Lieutenant of Artillery. During the same year, he entered the Royal Common Hospital as Volunteer Surgeon, and retained that position for three years till 1863, when he conluded to emigrate to the United States, and received his professional testimonials from the hospital and the university. The King granted him a permit of absencefor two years from military duty, and bid him good-by. In June, 1863, he landed at New York, and was cordially received by the medical profession. July 3, he finished an eight days' rigid examination before the New York Academy of Medicine, and the New York County Medical Society of Homeopathy awarded him their diploma and right hand of fellowship. He strated then for the West, with intention to locate at Kansas City, but it as during the war, and arriving at St. Joseph, he embarked on a steamer for Council Bluffs, Iowa. Before leaving New York, the Doctor had some idea of going to practice in Charleston and entered the Southern Army as a Surgeon or officer, but his medical friends got him to abstain from such an intention, and on his journey through Missouri Quantrell's band make a raid on the Hannibal & St. Joe Railroad, and killed a large number of Union soldiers not armed and on a visit home. This horror of civil war disgusted him much with the Confederate warfare, and he consoled himself later with the study of the Council Bluffs "Bugle." On his arrival in this city July 21, 1863, Mr. Burke was the editor of the "Nonpareil," and he became soon the Doctor's friend, patient and patron, and made him a good, black Republican, and a great admirer of Abraham Lincoln. Very soon a large practice greeted him, and he built a residence on Upper Broadway, but, in 1865, his health was shaken by too much work, and he concluded to leave, and was too exhausted to undertake a sea voyage for home. He sent a petition to the King of Denmark for resignation, which was granted him with royal grace as First Lieutenant of the artillery, and with rank as Captain of Infantry and the royal war medal for services rendered the country was later conferred on him. On his arrival in New York, he was about dying from nervous prostration, but being relieved from practice he studied and recuperated slowly, and in March, 1866, he graduated from the New York Homeopathic Medical College. Wishing for a more congenial climate, he went to sea to Aspinwall and across the Isthmus to Panama, and sailed for san Francisco, Cal. During his voyage from Council Bluffs, he had the misfortuned to suffer shiprwreck twice. First on the Missouri River, fifteen miles belos St. Joseph, where the steamer Deer Lodge struck a snag and sunk; the passengers were saved, but all his books brought along from Europe, a sixteen years' careful collection, were lost, and a value of more than $5,000 consigned, not insured to the depths. The passengers happened to come ashore on the Missouri side, and spent a night among bushwhackers, and all that saved them was probably that the bandits were ashamed to rob and kill shipwrecked people; next day they got teams hired for St. Joseph; the second shipwreck happened on board the Panama mail steamer Constitution, when in a terrific gale she ran ashore in the Gulf of Tehuantepec, off the coast of Guatamala, and, in a sinking condition, she arrived at San Francisco several weeks too late. In the Golden City, health and strength was regained, and aside from the dreary sea fogs, he had no reason to dislike San Francisco. During 1869, the overland railway was finished, and he went on a visit to Council Bluffs partly of curiosity of seeing the new scenery, and to visit his brother at that place. When he entered Council Bluffs in August, epidemics of diphtheria and dysentery prevailed, and very soon he was busy in a large practice, in which he remained to 1874, when an accident was the cause of his second exodus to California. At a curve near the Union Pacific depot, street cars were frequently thrown from the track. One morning in January, after a hard night's frost, the car rushed down hill with a lightning speed, and the horses approached the curve in a gallop; the passengers were screaming, and he jumped the car, knocking his knee against the rail and inflicting a very severe wound. The cold weather and want of rest made the wound very painful, and he left on the Union Pacific Railroad for Salt Lake City. There he was laid up for weeks, and recovered slowly, and left June 24, for San Francisco. In Utah as well as in California, he did some practice, but left again for Iowa during 1875. During the winter of 1876 and 1877, he practiced at San Francisco, and returned in the spring to Council Bluffs, where he has been in practice since. In 1866, at a meeting held at St. Louis, Mo., the National Medical Convention of the United STates, the American Institute of Homeopathy, showed him the honor of electing him a member of that body. A few weeks after his arrival at Council Bluffs in 1869, he bought the Kirkwood Bamford farm, Willow Creek, one mile east of Crescent City. There he has built a new addition to the house, and planted twelve acres of a now bearing orchard. The Iowa State Medical Society of Homeopathy elected him, 1870, a member and also censor of the society. During 1873, he bought 120 acres new land adjoining his farm, and had it fenced and cultivated and built a new home in it, and created a new farm by the name of Timberdale. On a central plateau between the two farms, it is the Doctor's intention very soon to raise his long projected Sanitarium, called Petershof, which will be open for patients from May to October every year. Several years in succession, he has been a State Delegate to the National Medical Convention, and at that Convention, held at New York in 1881, he was elected a delegate from the United States to the International Medical Convention of Homeopathy held at London that year. Only a severe illness prevented him from sailing for England, and he missed a pleasant and interesting journey to Europe. During his young days, he studied at the aesthetic department at the University of Copenhagen, the ancient and modern classic literature, and wrote, at the age of eighteen, his first dramatic work called "Magnus the Good, King of Norway." His next work as "A Night in the North," an epic poem of 100 pages. Next, he issued a volume of poems. In 1860, he published a translation from German to Danish of Dr. Arthur Lutruee, "The Chronic Diseases." During his years in America, he published, in 1869, a pamphlet, "The Duchies and the Policy of Germany." This political brochure was written in Danish and published at Copenhagen. It was followed in 1870 with another, which caused the greatest sensation at home, and a newspaper discussion for months, and was called, "The Diplomacy of Germany and Scandinavia and Russia." Even the Government organ, the "Berlin Times," had its columns open in defense of its diplomacy and teh editor of the "People's Times" called attention to the pamphlet in the loudest terms as a national necessity. During his visit to California in 1876, he wrote a new dramatical work of 226 pages of print, called "Kay Lyrre," printed at San Francisco. Besides general newspaper articles, he has published numerous essays on medical and surgical topics, which the readers of the Chicago "Medical Investigator" are familiar with. During the winter of 1881-82, he translated and wrote many new additions, translated from Danish to English the "Great Drama of Henry Hertz, called Svend During's House." with intention to have it played during the coming winter on the American stage. At present, he is working on three different books. A new original drama, "Olag Tryggason, King of Norway," is about written. A medical domestic hand-book is he going on with, and a work on the philosophy of the Ethics of Messiah is also ready for print. Prof. Dr. Carsten Hauch was his teacher in Esthetics at the University of Copenhagen. In eight years, he was a puppil of that distinguished dramatist. When he had finished his manuscript for Kay Lyrre, at San Francisco, he sent it for Prof. Hauch's perusal, and several hints of value were given. Dr. Hauch praised especially the scene where the Queen thinks she is betrayed, in these words: "That scene is written with a master's pen." Prof. Dr. Heiberg, known as an eminent critic of dramatic literature, read his drama "Magnus the Good," and gave especial scenical and technnical points, and said, "Keep up good courage to sing with as to fight by." In June, 1879, he graduated from the American Health College at Cincinnati, Ohio, and is now only anxious to get means sufficient to disposition, by which his great hospital and sanitarium can be built and completed in the neighborhood of Crescent City. It will be a national institution, treating only nervous and chronic diseases, and open only during the summer months, and receiving its patients mostlly from the Atlantic States of the Union.