What seems to be the earliest date in connection with which there is mention of a physician in the county annals is 1841, in which year Dr. Magnus Holmes came to the town of Marion from Crawfordsville, Indiana. Promising to be of great value to the community, Dr. Holmes passed away a short time after his arrival. Dr. Henry M. Ristine, father of Dr. J. M. Ristine, of Cedar Rapids, was a brother-in-law of Dr. Holmes, and came to Marion from Indiana in 1842. Another of the very earliest practitioners was Dr. Sam Grafton, who was located on the Cedar river at Ivanhoe bridge, on the old military road from Dubuque to Iowa City. Just when he came is not known; this was one of the earliest settlements in the county and he had practiced there for some four years previous to 1847, in which year he fell a victim to a typhoid epidemic. Dr. Amos Witter was one of the first physicians in Mt. Vernon. He passed away in 1862 at the age of fifty-five, having been several years a member of the legislature. In 1886 there was still living in Viola a Dr. S. S. Matson, who had practiced there since 1845. He graduated from the University of Vermont in 1832, the same year in which Dr. Elisha W. Lake, an early Marion physician, graduated from the Ohio Medical College. These two men are in point of graduation the oldest men the county has had. In northeastern Linn the first physician was Dr. Stacy, who lived on the Anamosa and Quasqueton road near Boulder church. He was a brother to the late Judge Stacy, the pioneer promoter of the Dubuque & Southwestern Railroad. Some of the other early practitioners were Dr. E. L. Mansfield, who came to Cedar Rapids or Kingston in 1847; Dr. J. M. Traer, who made Cedar Rapids his home from 1847-51; Dr. J. F. Ely, who came to the same place in 1848; and Dr. S. D. Carpenter, who came in 1849. Dr. Shattuck, of Green's Mills, now Coggon, Drs. Lannin and Byam, of Paris, Drs. Patterson and Mitchell, of Clark's Ford, now Central City, and Dr. Young, of Prairieburg, were all pioneer doctors in their respective communities. Dr. T. S. Bardwell, who became a leading physician of Marion, settled on a farm in that vicinity in 1840, making his residence in the county date back farther than that of any other medical man except S. H. Tryon. A rather incomplete business directory of Cedar Rapids in 1856 gives the following as physicians: S. C. Koontz, J. H. Camburn, W. D. Barclay, J. W. Edes, Smith & Larrabee, R. R. Taylor.