Bonesetter Reese, Baseball’s Unofficial Team Physician

The image of the small-town doctor is embedded in American folklore. Kindly but gruff, with a heart of gold and healing talents beyond those of mere mortals, that doctor is a mythic ideal. As with all myths, this ideal contains a kernel of truth. Television doctors such as Doc Adams of Gunsmoke, “Bones” McCoy of Star Trek, and the eponymous hero of Marcus Welby, M.D., all contribute to it. Judging from what we now know, the citizens of Youngstown, Ohio, and by circumstance, the growing sport of professional baseball, had such a medical paragon in the person of a Welsh immigrant named John D. “Bonesetter” Reese.

Anyone who studies Deadball Era baseball will sooner or later encounter the Bonesetter as a footnote to other subjects. Because he shunned publicity, he was a shadowy figure. But the record is clear. Reese was more than just a mere curiosity. His healing talents had a genuine impact on the game of baseball during the early years of the twentieth century.

An issue of Sporting Life published in April 1924 sums up his career:

Reese has done more for baseball … than anybody else in the country not directly connected to the game. Through his remarkable miracles in bloodless surgery (and restoring muscles and tendons), “Bonesetter” Reese has prolonged the active life of countless baseball stars and preserved them for the fans of the country to cheer.1

A writer for the Cleveland Press ventured in an article of February 5, 1913, that a look at Reese’s hands showed what he could do.

Large, sinewy and knotty, they are the sort you’d expect to see upon a steel worker. The very sight of them creates an impression of power, but gives no hint of the wonderful delicacy of touch that enables them to locate instantly a displaced muscle or a tiny broken bone.2

Such praise would surely warrant a measure of curiosity about Reese on the part of researchers, but little has been published beyond Child of Moriah, a biography written by David L. Strickler, Reese’s grandson-in-law. Several factors explain the dearth of information about Reese. Strickler’ s book is out of print and difficult to obtain. I was able to read the book with the assistance of an interlibrary loan through the University of Notre Dame. Reese himself was publicity-shy and never wrote memoirs. Too, Reese has always been a footnote to larger stories. Most baseball fans have learned of him by reading biographies of stars such as Honus Wagner and Rogers Hornsby.

But even this brief acquaintance is fraught with misconceptions. Baseball authors have described him in a variety of ways. In Dennis and Jeanne Burke DeValeria’s Honus Wagner: A Biography, Reese is depicted as “part chiropractor and part masseuse, treating injuries he diagnosed as wrenched tendons and displaced muscles; he was pronounced a miracle worker after he treated Leach for a leg ailment the previous year [1902].”3 The authors note that Wagner was cured of a leg ailment in late 1903, and Reese accompanied the Pittsburgh club during the 1903 World Series for a fee of $500. Arthur D. Hittner, another biographer, notes Wagner’s first encounter with Reese in 1903:

Bonesetter was not a physician and claimed no medical training. Using massage, manipulation and a touch of mysticism, the former steel worker and oil driller had nevertheless achieved the reputation of a miracle worker throughout professional baseball.4

In his fine biography of Rogers Hornsby, Charles Alexander offers this description:

Hornsby was only one of many ballplayers who visited Reese, an elderly, totally unschooled former Welsh coal miner whose skills at skeletal manipulation were so renowned that the Ohio legislature gave him special medical certification.5

And in his Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball, Jonathan Fraser Light puts it plainly: “Reese was a popular early trainer. He had no medical training but was good at manipulation and massage.”6

All these descriptions provide a glimpse of Reese’s work, but they all include a measure of inaccuracy as well. Yes, he was a Welsh immigrant. He learned the bonesetting trade from a fellow ironworker. But there is no evidence that Reese ever set foot in a coalmine or on an oil rig, or that he was a mystic. As for being totally unschooled, Reese owned an extensive library on anatomy, and his knowledge of the subject guided his practice. He even attended medical school at Case University in Cleveland, if for only three weeks in 1897. Baseball historians, it seems fair to say, have not brought Reese’s life into full focus.

This article aims to shed some light on Reese and his work. Reese’s experience in medical school reveals much about his character and talents. His attempt at obtaining a medical degree was driven by open opposition to his work by the medical establishment. The education of physicians and the practice of medicine at this time were much different from today’s models. Accreditation of medical schools and licensing of physicians were haphazard, and much effort was spent in getting these two important aspects of the profession in control. The actual practice of medicine was substantially different as well. There were no antibiotics, and a minor infection could easily become a life-threatening illness. Modern tools such as MRIs and other forms of imaging were decades away from discovery and use.

Reese himself was not much of a medical student. He could not stand the sight of blood and could not perform surgery, but he astounded his peers and superiors with his ability to manipulate muscles and ligaments. The head of the school told him to leave because they had nothing to teach him, saying,

You’re wasting your time here. I’ve considered all the factors in your equation, and my advice to you is to go back home and continue to work according to your own methods. Who knows? If you were to continue on here you might lose this unique ability. I don’t understand it, but I cannot deny you have it. As for your detractors, my own colleagues, I’m embarrassed to admit, ignore them! Better still, the next time they cry foul, refer them to me. I have a message for them.7

Anyone wanting to know more about Bonesetter Reese is indebted to David L. Strickler. Using family records, Strickler provides a mother lode of material about Reese’s life. In a work of almost four hundred pages, only thirty-three discuss Reese and ballplayers. But the book provides valuable information, including how Reese practiced medicine and his relationship with patients.

Reese was born May 6, 1855, in Rhymney, Wales. His childhood was marred by tragedy. His father died three months after his birth, and his mother died when he was eleven years old. He thereupon went to work in the iron factories of Wales, where his luck changed. Another ironworker named Tom Jones took him in and taught him the trade of “bonesetting,” the informal term for general-practice medicine. Reese seldom set a broken bone, despite that name; instead, his practice mainly involved the manipulation of muscles and tendons. Jones’s children eventually became trained orthopedic physicians, while Reese’s technique and focus is close to osteopathy, a branch of medicine founded by Andrew Taylor Still on the Missouri frontier in 1874. Still believed that the musculo-skeletal system was a key to good health, and his osteopathic manipulative therapy (OMT) is still taught in osteopathic medical schools.

Reese remained an ironworker until mill closings led him to emigrate to the United States in 1887. Sailing to America in steerage class, Reese left his family behind. He first settled in Pittsburgh, where he became a roller’s helper at Jones & Laughlin Steel. Less than six months after his arrival, he had saved enough money to send for his wife and children. Upon their arrival, Reese moved to Youngstown, Ohio, to work at the Brown-Bronnell Mills. Family history says that he treated an injured ironworker sometime during 1889 for a dislocated shoulder. The successful cure changed Reese’s life forever.

Demand for his medical services soon overwhelmed him. Because Reese was paid on a piecework, instead of hourly, basis, management tolerated his medical activities. The company, after all, received the benefit of getting ailing workers back on the line without paying for the service.

Treating fellow workers on the job deprived him of pay, and Reese was not one to try to make up the loss in pay by charging fellow workers. Establishing his long-held policy, Reese charged only what the patient could afford, and his fellow ironworkers could not afford much. That policy was crisp: “Pay me when you get it.”8 It cost Reese money, but he remained loyal to this way of doing things. In his obituary his standards of practice were detailed:

He saw all patients in order no matter what their rank in society. He often charged them directly in the proportion to the greatness or the smallness of their finances. It was said of him that he never charged a widow or an orphan for treatment. Until his death, he held a soft spot in his heart for mill workers, and even at his busiest times, a steel man had little trouble in seeing him, even though other and more profitable appointments had to be delayed.9

As public knowledge of his talents grew, Reese’s avocation came to occupy his off hours. Eventually he abandoned the mills in an attempt to bring order to his life. The decision was not an easy one. He was faced with giving up bonesetting altogether or not doing it at all at the mill, or else quitting the mill and asking for a fee for service. The last alternative had a hitch, for without a license, he could not charge a fee for service. With licensing restricted to school-trained physicians, Reese arrived at the policy of charging patients what they could afford as a means of providing his service without violating state law.

Reese became a full-time medical practitioner in 1894, just two years after he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He immediately faced a major challenge from the medical establishment, which charged him with quackery and threatened arrest if he were to treat a patient. Reese’s attempt to attend medical school was a response to these complaints. He struggled with varying levels of opposition from the medical community until about 1900.

The exact source of Reese’s licensing is not at all clear. No copy of it exists today. Reese’s family claimed that it came from the Ohio legislature, but there was a state law against such individualized awards. It could well have been a proclamation from a state agency or legislative committee.

Reese enjoyed popularity and had the support of influential people. His experience in medical school did not hurt him, and he did not hurt himself by making any outrageous claims. In 1908, Reese further proved his personal and professional responsibility by referring patients with symptoms of typhoid fever to conventional physicians.10

Open opposition from the medical establishment faded as the years went by, but while he may have been grudgingly accepted, he never was quite understood by his more educated colleagues. “He is an enigma to all the physicians of the country,” one remarked, “who cannot understand his natural ability to straighten out twisted bones and replace misplaced muscles and ligaments.”11

If licensed physicians could not understand Reese and his technique, just what kind of doctor was he? Reese described his work simply:

Manipulation is the secret, if there is any, of my treatment. A thorough knowledge of anatomy is necessary, which I have studied and am still studying to acquire. My manipulation is something similar to that of an osteopath. The theory on which it is based is that muscles and ligaments may become displaced and remain so until put back where they belong.12

The medical establishment never accepted Reese, but he overcame that obstacle through his methods. In diagnosing ailments, he relied upon his knowledge of anatomy and highly developed sense of touch. During treatment he used great strength and quick movements and never used terms such as “magical” or “miraculous” to describe his cures. And he knew his limits. Reese was not afraid to admit that a case was beyond his ability.

As Reese’s practice grew, he began to treat many of the famous of the day. Among prominent patients were Charles Evans Hughes, Theodore Roosevelt, former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, evangelist Billy Sunday, Will Rogers, and countless others, great and common alike-as well as showgirls who needed treatment for twisted ankles or leg cramps.

Reese’s ability and fame won him a rare honor in June 1926 when he was given the highest Druidic degree by the Gorsedd, an ancient Celtic institution charged with guarding ancient traditions. The Druidic degree was recognition of good works by alleviating suffering and had little to do with spiritualism or superstition. News reports of the event noted that Reese was the first American to be so honored.13

As with his licensing, the origin of his treatment of ballplayers is not easily traced, except for a diary composed of news clippings kept by the family. This diary is not entirely accurate for a couple of reasons. Many players were reluctant to make it known that they had visited the Bonesetter because they wished to keep injuries secret from opponents and team management. Another obstacle to accuracy was that Reese did not encourage publicity from treating players. A shy man, he was known to tell reporters not to report on his treatments of celebrities. There was another reason why he discouraged publicity. He simply did not need to drum up more business, for at his peak Reese saw as many as eighty patients a day.

The first player he treated was probably Jimmy McAleer, a Youngstown native who suffered from a bad cramp. The treatment occurred when McAleer was with the Cleveland Spiders. McAleer is credited with spreading the word about Bonesetter Reese. In 1894, pitcher George “Nig” Cuppy was treated for a strained arm tendon. By the turn of the century, Reese’s patient list expanded greatly. He treated members of the Pittsburgh Pirates as they prepared for the first modern World Series. Babe Adams, Honus Wagner, and Tommy Leach were among his patients.

Reese’s biography lists fifty-four players whom he treated. Of that number, twenty-eight are members of the Hall of Fame. Reese described his treatments of ballplayers plainly. “The ball players who consult me have no imaginary ailments. They come because they are in trouble and I have treated so many of them that I can tell in a jiffy where the trouble lies.”14

Reese’s assessment of pitching injuries reveals his knowledge of anatomy and of the impact that pitching has on the arm:

Strange as it may seem, most of my patients are pitchers … and it’s not the curve ball pitchers who come the more often either but the boys who try to throw the ball past a batter, the speed ball pitchers. If the soreness is in the elbow it’s a speedball pitcher nine times out of ten; if in the shoulder, a curve ball pitcher …. I can usually locate a problem and fix things up. Once in a great while, an arm fails to yield to treatment and then the pitcher is through.15

Reese’s favorite ballplayer was Wagner.

There’s one ball player I will never forget and that’s Hans [sic] Wagner. I got the surprise of my life when he came to me with his back injured. The big husky! Anyone would think he could stand all kinds of pain. I guess he can, too, but because they call me “bonesetter” he was trembling clear down to his shoes. And the minute I placed my hands on his back he fainted dead away.16

Wagner thought highly of Reese, saying, “He hurts me like the devil but always does the work.” 17

No pain, no gain: that aptly describes Reese’s treatments. Owen “Chief” Wilson of the Pirates tells how a charley horse was treated:

Why, when he grabbed that bunch of congested muscles, I thought I would croak. I did not think I ever before suffered so much pain in my young life. After he had done this, Reese told me to get to the train and hike for St. Louis that I would be all right in a day or two. 18

While baseball fans owe a huge debt to Reese for keeping their favorites in action, the Bonesetter himself was not all that pleased with many of the athletes he treated. He believed many of them would wind up injuring themselves again because they would not follow directions.

Reese also hated football. When George Halas came calling, Papa Bear had to persuade Reese that his bum knee was from a sliding injury on the diamond, not a bone-crunching tackle on the gridiron. University of Illinois Athletic Director George Huff reportedly tried to persuade Reese to come to the Urbana-Champaign campus, but like others before him, he was rebuffed. 19

Reese died of heart failure at the age of seventy-six in 1931. His passing was widely noted. It was in his obituary that a Youngstown Vindicator reporter noted that Reese exacted from him a vow of silence about the identities of the ballplayers he treated. The Bonesetter came to America to seek a better life for himself and family. We sons and daughters of immigrants understand that motive. His adopted nation gave him a productive life, and “productive” best describes the man and his works.

His legacy to baseball can be seen in this all-star team from the patient list in his biography, a twenty-five-man roster that amounts to a pretty good ballclub. In addition, I have added a list of players mentioned in Strickler and names provided me by Steve Steinberg during his research on players of the era.

Uhle apparently suffered chronic arm and elbow pain, which Reese was able to repair.21                             

Another player who could credit Reese with saving his career was shortstop Glenn Wright. Upon Reese’s death, the Youngstown Vindicator reported that Wright had injured his throwing arm in an offseason basketball game. In 1929, Wright quit the game, citing his arm problems. Reese worked on Wright’s arm that fall, and in 1930 Wright reported to the Dodgers with a strong arm that allowed him to “cut down base runners with rifle-like throws from all angles of the short field.”22

This list of players is incomplete, for Reese himself claimed to have treated hundreds of ballplayers. Because of his reluctance to seek attention, it can be safely assumed many other ballplayers visited Reese than are listed here. 

HONORABLE MENTION

Among others treated but not on David Strickler’s list are George Uhle and Jack Pfiester, both of them pitchers. Pfiester’ s treatment is detailed in Sporting Life (October 10, 1908), where it is claimed that Pfiester pitched the Merkle game with a badly injured, if not dislocated, elbow. In Touching Second, Johnny Evers says Pfiester pitched in pain the entire game. It was especially painful for him to throw a curveball. Evers says that Pfiester threw four curveballs, all to Mike Donlin in game situations.20                 

Uhle reportedly went to see Reese yearly. The old-time pitcher credited Reese with lengthening his career.

 

NOTES

1. David L. Strickler, Child of Moriah: A Biography of John D. “Bonesetter” Reese, 1855-1931. (Franklin, Mich.: Four Comers Press, 1984), 181.

2. Cleveland Press, February 5, 1913.

3. Dennis De Valeria and Jeanne Burke De Valeria, Honus Wagner: A Biography (New York: Holt, 1995), 122.

4. Arthur D. Hittner, Honus Wagner: The Life of Baseball’s “Flying Dutchman” (Jefferson, N.C: McFarland, 1996), 118.

5. Charles C. Alexander, Rogers Hornsby: A Biography (New York: Holt, 1995), 113.

6. Jonathan Fraser Light, The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball (Jefferson, N.C: McFarland, 1997), 749.

7. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 103.

8. “Famous Healer Succumbs at 76,” Youngstown Vindicator, November 11, 1931.

9. “Famous Healer Succumbs at 76,” Youngstown Vindicator, November 11, 1931.

10. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 124.

11. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 112.

12. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 344-45.

13. Reese File, Mahoning Valley Historical Society.

14. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 207.

15. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 207.

16. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 162.

17. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 128.

18. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 325.

19. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 288.

20. John J. Evers and Hugh Fullerton, Touching Second: The Science of Baseball (Chicago: Reilly and Britton, 1910), 116.

21. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 290-94.

22. “Famous Healer Succumbs at 76.”