Shobal Vail Clevenger Papers

Clevenger was a surveyer, editor, reformer, psychiatrist and author. His medical contributions were chiefly in the field of neuro-pathology. A biography by Victor Robinson, Don Quixote of Psychiatry, was published in 1919.

Son of a Cincinnati stonecutter-turned-sculptor, Shobal Vail Clevenger, Jr. (1843-1920) was born during a family visit to Italy. He grew up in various places – Ohio, Alabama, New Orleans and St.Louis. He became a surveyor for the U.S. Engineer Corps during the Civil War. After the war he continued as a civil engineer, building the first telegraph terminus in the Dakota Territory at Yankton before becoming Chief engineer for the Dakota Southern Railway. When he tried to expose western land and Indian Department misdeeds in Washington, D.C. he became disillusioned with politicians and corruption and abandoned engineering for an education in medicine.

In 1879 he graduated from the Chicago Medical College (now Northwestern University) and pursued an interest in neuro-pathological studies. Hired as a pathologist at the Insane Asylum of Cook County at Dunning, Illinois, Clevenger agitated to end criminal use of facilities and funds by officials and the consequent mistreatment and neglect of patients. Attempts on his life persuaded him to resign his position in 1884, although his continued campaign for reform resulted in some convictions. In 1893, Clevenger was appointed medical superintendent of the Illinois Eastern Hospital for the Insane in Kankakee. He again opposed state and county officials who stole from the institution and abused patients. His tenure in Kankakee lasted only three months. He was appointed professor of neurology and psychiatry at the Harvey Medical College in 1900, and later taught at the Chicago College of Medicine.