Doctors Edwin Gillard, Sr. and Jr.

The pencil sketch pictured above was done by Edwin Eugene Gillard in 1889 at around age 16, when he was a student in the Sandusky Public Schools. The son of Dr. Edwin and Ida (Stroud) Gillard, Edwin Eugene Gillard also became a physician. In the 1917 Sandusky City Directory, father and son, both named Dr. Edwin Gillard, shared a medical practice in Sandusky at 503 West Washington Street. Sadly, the elder Dr. Edwin Gillard died in 1917, and the younger Dr. Edwin Gillard died in 1918, at the age of 43.

This photograph of the elder Dr. Edwin Gillard was taken by Sandusky photographer Willard A. Bishop.

The elder Edwin Gillard was born in Venice, Ohio (now the western end of Sandusky) in 1845. He graduated from the Cleveland Homeopathic College in 1872. Dr. Gillard was a physician in Sandusky for many years, and served as Erie County Coroner from 1879 through 1881. Dr. Gillard married Miss Ida Stroud in 1869; her father was area dentist Dr. Charles Stroud. They were the parents of three children, Cora, Edwin, and John Gillard.

In 1884, Dr. Gillard opened the Electro-Medical and Surgical Sanitarium on Washington Street. The January 1, 1884 issue of the Sandusky Daily Register describes the Sanitarium in detail. 

The Sanitarium was “made as complete in all the appointments for a Sanitarium as money and skill could effect.”  Each room and hallway was heated with steam, and the floors were insulated from noise by layers of concrete. The facility featured an electro-thermal bath, and the “Holtz Toepler” electric machine for administering electrotherapeutic treatment for nervous diseases, rheumatism, and neuralgia.

The Electro-Medical and Surgical Sanitarium ceased operating in 1886, though Dr. Gillard continued his practice as a physician. On October 2. 1912, the New York Times featured an article about the doctor and his brave efforts to treat Mrs. Charles Barney, the daughter of Jay Cooke. Dr. Gillard and Mr. C. B. Lockwood took a small motor boat to Gibraltar Island during gale winds. Mrs. Barney did indeed recover. 

In 1896, the building at 609 West Washington Street served as the Lake Erie Sanitarium, and later it was occupied by a boarding house. Helen Hansen tells us in the book At Home in Early Sandusky that for many years the building was known as “The Gillard Hotel.”

Lake Erie Sanitarium in Sandusky

Dr. Burnett Roswell Hubbard was the son of Emmett and Delight Hubbard, born in the state of New York about 1853. On February 12 and 13, 1896, an advertisement for Dr. B. Roswell Hubbard’s “Lake Erie Sanitarium” appeared in a program for a charity opera, “Egypta” that was featured at the Nielsen Opera House in Sandusky. Dr. B. Roswell Hubbard was a physician educated in the field of eclectic medicine, a field of medicine popular for its botanical remedies and use of physical therapy. The Lake Erie Sanitarium, located at 927 West Washington Street, claimed to be “New and complete in all its departments,” and offered patients treatment for medical and surgical cases and provided therapeutic baths of all kinds. The building was complete with heat, an electric bell system, and an elevator.

While living in Sandusky, Dr. B. Roswell Hubbard wrote a paper on “Modern Gynecology” for the Transactions of the National Eclectic Medical Association of the U.S.A., For the Years 1896-1897. By 1913, Dr. Hubbard had moved to California, where he was a professor of surgery at the California Medical College of Los Angeles. In 1911, he authored a book entitled Hubbard's Practical Surgery.

Dr. B. Roswell Hubbard had a brother who also was a physician. Dr. Rockwell B. Hubbard started his medical practice in Sandusky in 1896, and he continued in that practice for more than fifty years. Dr. Rockwell B. Hubbard’s office was in the Graham building for many years, and later he moved to an office on Hancock Street. Dr. R. B. Hubbard was listed as the surgeon for the Big Four Railroad in the 1912 Sandusky City Directory. It is quite easy to confuse the two brothers, as they often went by their initials, Dr. B. R. Hubbard and Dr. R.B. Hubbard.

See Supplement Number 16 in Helen Hansen’s book At Home in Early Sandusky to read more about the building located at what is now 609 West Washington Street in Sandusky. Prior to the Dr. B. Roswell Hubbard’s sanitarium, Dr. Edwin Gillard also had a sanitarium at this location. After Dr. B. Roswell Hubbard moved to California, a boarding house was in operation at the site of the former sanitarium.