Although San José is one of the newest of cities, it is one of the oldest of communities in the State of California. It has a history both rich and varied. From the Spanish Conquistadors to the Mission padres to the mountain men voyageurs’ to the 49’ers, San José has been a glowing hope for the future. And so it remains. Here in this beautiful valley one group of travellers after another have found a tremendous opportunity to fulfill their dreams. It has provided a vision of a better life to those who arrived as overland emigrants in covered wagons or in tempest-tossed boats from lands at the other side of the Pacific Rim. It has always stood for things simple and profound: freedom and hope.

Those things that occurred in our past are more valuable to the present than any other commodity This has been a rapid and at times dizzying journey from the Llano de los robles to the Valley of Heart’s Delight to Silicon Valley, but it has been a journey filled with certain constants. The pueblo of San José is quite visible in the agricultural hub of early Twentieth century San José , just as that entrepreneurial place is present in the rising metropolitan high technology center of our own time. Whether it was cattle on the mission pasture or cherries and prunes in a crate or information onto a chip, San José has always been innovating, and improving. We remain so today. As we reap the benefits of a preeminent City of the future, we must never forget the lessons and values of our past. For generations San José has been the destination of choice and a wonderful home for my family and hundreds of thousands of others. In these pages we will relive the founding and emergence of our City as recounted by one who knows it better than any other. Enjoy the trip.

Though California had an interesting medical history throughout the Spanish and Mexican periods, San José, with one microscopic exception, found no place in it. Under Spain, the surgeon general was usually the only physician in the entire province, and seldom, if ever, came inland more than half a day’s horseback ride from Monterey. And except for Dr. Edward Bale who became a Mexican citizen and acquired a rancho in what is now Napa County, no surgeon general serving under México showed any-thing resembling a consuming interest in the pais interior. Even visiting scientists, ship surgeons, and the earliest medical adventurers with suspicious credentials preferred to hug the coastline.

Thus isolated, San Joséans did not get their first glimpse of a medical practitioner of any kind until 1845, when an American expatriate who styled him-self Dr. John Marsh came here expressly to prescribe for the fatally ill wife of Antonio Suñol.62 Marsh, grantee of Rancho Los Méganos in the hills cast of Mt. Diablo, was a Harvard graduate who had taken a few units of anatomy during his senior year with intent to become a physician. He received the degree of Bachelor of Arts, but he never took the medical courses that would have justified his putting the prefix “Dr.” in front of his name. He was no “M.D.”

A few San Joséans might have received emergency treatment from the surgeon of some military outfit that might have been passing through or camping nearby. The transient Dr. Isaac Chauncey Isbell, lying sick abed at Mission Santa Clara, might have left his bed long enough to come over to San José to administer a pill or two. But there is little conclusive evidence of either.

San José did not get a resident physician of any kind until Benjamin Cory, M. D., rode into town late in the afternoon of December 1, 1847. He was not only the first physician to settle in San José , but also the first to settle in Santa Clara County.

A son of a physician, Cory was born in Oxford, Ohio, November 17, 1822. He graduated from Miami University in his hometown in 1842, and from the Medical College of Ohio in Cincinnati in 1845. He had studied a while under his father before going to medical college, which gave him something of a head start. After receiving his medical degree he joined his father’s office for about a year-and-a-half of joint practice to “knock the sharp edges off his academic teaming.”

On May 1, 1847, he headed overland in a wagon train bound for Oregon City, and from there he came down to San Francisco by ship. Finding San Francisco overrun with physicians—Drs. John Townsend and Victor J. Fourgeaud—he pressed on to San José. Word of Cory’s arrival here got around fast, and, according to family tradition, he soon had a practice ranging from Martinez on the north to Monterey on the south. In covering this area by horseback, he had time to jot down enough Spanish words to give him a good command of that language when attending Spanish-speaking patients.

This also facilitated his learning that the Californian o method of paying for his services differed radically from that of Ohio. After receiving treatment in the doctor’s office, the Californio would rise, pick up his hat, and back slowly toward the door, bowing and thanking the doctor at almost every step. On reaching the door, he would bow a final time, saying, “Thank you doctor, thank you a thousand times. God will pay you.”

As the native women became aware of his skills, he became their favorite obstetrician. Time and again after delivering a poverty stricken mother of a child, he left a gold coin in her hand.

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