Free Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted by Gerald Imber Md Page A

the postwar population surge seen elsewhere in the East.
    Johns Hopkins had spent his lifetime in and around Baltimore, never traveling farther from home than Cape Ann, New Jersey. It was the world he knew, the city where he had amassed his wealth, and it was not surprising that the millionaire bachelor would earmark the bulk of his fortune for the civic good.
    Hopkins was born in 1795, at Whitehall, his family’s 500-acre tobacco farm in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. His early life of rural southern ease was interrupted in 1807, when his abolitionist Quakerfather freed hundreds of slaves and radically changed the family’s economic circumstances. Johns’s formal education ended immediately, and the 12-year-old was sent to work in the tobacco fields alongside his siblings. There was little he enjoyed about tending tobacco, and his father arranged for him to move to Baltimore when he was 17 and work in his Uncle Gerard’s wholesale grocery store. An ill-fated, youthful romance with his cousin Elizabeth ended with Johns being denied her hand. His religious uncle considered the romance incestuous and ousted his nephew from both his home and his grocery. But Johns had learned his financial lessons well. Backed by his family, including $10,000 from Uncle Gerard, he set out on his own and had little difficulty building a thriving mercantile business. Johns was soon supplying dry goods and tobacco to the surrounding states, often bartering for whiskey, which he marketed under the name Hopkins’ Best. Trading in alcohol caused his temporary expulsion from the “Meeting,” his Quaker religious order, but this was soon resolved and he retained a long, if not close, relationship with the sect. By all accounts, Hopkins was a hard-driving businessman—so much so that his original partner, Benjamin Moore, left the successful firm saying, “I just don’t love money as much as he does.”
    Hopkins bragged to a nephew that in his first year of business, “I sold $200,000 worth of goods.”
    He soon enlisted three of his brothers as salesmen in the thriving business, renaming it Hopkins Brothers. He remained at the helm for 25 years, and at age 50, as his business interests expanded, he ceded the company to his siblings. He remained close to his extended family, and his home was always filled with relatives, including his old flame, cousin Elizabeth, who had, like Hopkins, honored their pledge never to marry others.
    Hopkins had invested wisely and had become a very wealthy man. In addition to being a director of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad during a period of rapid and successful expansion, he became its largest individual stockholder, with holdings exceeded only by those ofthe State of Maryland and the City of Baltimore. Among several of his banking interests was the Merchant’s National Bank of Baltimore, where he held the presidency. His influence in business and civic circles was substantial and, Hopkins being in a position to come to the aid of the city he loved, Hopkins lent $500,000 to Baltimore to bridge a financial crisis brought about by the Civil War. After the war, railroads expanded the reach of economic life and were often a source of great wealth for investors and operators. But the opportunity for enrichment also fostered a highly competitive, often cutthroat environment. The fortunes of the highly leveraged railroad industry were subject to many variables, not the least of which were competition for routes, rising interest rates, and financial gossip. In this volatile environment, great fortunes were made and lost quickly.
    In the fall of 1872 an equine viral epidemic, called the Great Epizootic, infected nearly 90 percent of the horses in the country. Four million horses died before the disease ran its course, leaving the country at a virtual standstill. Every industry was affected. Goods could not be produced or delivered, and financial panic engulfed the nation. Coal could not be transported from the mines