Lasting impression: A living history of medicine

Although he died nearly 100 years ago, Dr. Edward E. Stonestreet is still a very real presence in the suburban District of Columbia community that preserves his memory and his clinic to maintain an important link to the past.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Dec. 16, 2002.

"Dr. Stonestreet practiced his profession in this town for over 50 years, and no man in the community has filled a greater measure of usefullness (sic). Of a kind and pleasant disposition, and endeavoring to look upon the bright side of life, he always brought a ray of sunshine into the sick room. He was noted for his charity, and calls to the bedside of the poor and needy were never unheeded. His life was pure and sustained the highest standards in every relation, and his death is regarded as a public bereavement."

So says the obituary of the much-respected Edward E. Stonestreet, MD, who practiced in what was then the small, rural farming community of Rockville, Md., until his death on Thursday, Oct. 15, 1903. He was 73, the oldest man in town.

"If we could all live our lives such that our passings were public bereavements, think what a community we would have today," marvels Clarence Hickey, who once a month dons frock coat and top hat to portray Dr. Stonestreet in the very same freestanding clinic that was used by the doctor to treat patients.

The Montgomery County (Md.) Historical Society operates the restored clinic as the Stonestreet Museum of 19th Century Medicine.

Dr. Stonestreet's clinic was moved about a half mile from its original site to become part of a small complex of buildings preserved by the county to serve as a tangible tie to a time when there were 30,000 people spread across the county, instead of the 870,000 Montgomery County holds today. [...]