If Temperance Hartman Pocock Kinsey was not the first female physician in Cincinnati, she was certainly among the first of that rare breed. As early as 1856, she was complimented as a fine physician by one of her professors, the formidable W. Byrd Powell, a titan of the eclectic medical movement. In the first edition of his masterwork, “The Natural History of Human Temperaments,” Powell describes Dr. Kinsey as an exemplar of the “bilious-encephalic” temperament:

“We will conclude this article by presenting the portrait of a female illustration, Mrs. T. Hartman Kinsey, M. D. This lady merits a place in a work of this kind. She is essentially feminine in all the outlines of her person and feelings, and yet her intellect has a masculine grasp. She has been a student upon this subject for several years, under our guidance. She is now familiarly and practically acquainted with it. She designates temperaments readily ; and those who may desire information upon the very important subject of marriage compatibility of constitution, may safely obtain it from her. In this department of the subject she is, and has been, deeply interested; and with reference to it she has rendered us important service in procuring the illustrations of this work. We have also a very favorable opinion of her abilities as a medical practitioner. She has labored to make herself useful, and has succeeded, but will succeed in a more eminent degree, if industry can effect it. She is now doing a lucrative business in medical practice.”

So taken was Dr. Powell with the bilious-encephalic Dr. Kinsey, that he included in his will a most unusual bequest. Dr. Powell died, aged 67, in 1866, and one can only imagine the reaction when the following item was read in probate:

“Furthermore, I give and bequeath to Mrs. T.H. Kinsey, of Cincinnati, Ohio, my head, to be removed from my body, for her use, by A.T. Keckeler, or his agents.”

You see, W. Byrd Powell was a noted phrenologist and was much invested in studying how the inner essence of human beings was expressed through the shape of their heads. It was rather common for phrenologists to donate their heads to science.

It is essential to note here that, almost simultaneously with Dr. Powell’s demise, Mrs. Kinsey became Mrs. Keckeler, by marrying the Adolphus Turner Keckeler authorized to remove Dr. Powell’s head. Keckeler was also a doctor and also a student of Dr. Powell’s. His wife died a few years prior to Powell’s death. Mrs. Kinsey was a widow; her husband, a silversmith had died a year before she remarried.

Shortly after W. Byrd Powell was consigned to his grave in Covington’s Linden Grove Cemetery, his eternal rest was disturbed, his body exhumed and his head removed by Dr. Alva Curtis, dean of Cincinnati’s Physio-Medical College, from which Mrs. Kinsey earned her M.D. in 1855.

A modern reader cannot escape the suspicion that A.T. Keckeler married T.H. Kinsey to gain access to Dr. Powell’s bequeathed cranium. She was 44; he was 10 years younger. Both Keckeler and Kinsey were trained as phrenologists, obsessed with skulls and heads. A contemporary news item relates that Dr. Keckeler’s scientific collection of heads exceeded 400 crania. One wonders where he kept them. At least one observer pondered the motivation behind this matrimonial union. A letter writer signing himself as “Poor Kentucky” in the Enquirer [26 July 1866] had this to say:

“Thus it transpires that if Dr. Keckeler possesses the head of the lamented Professor, his right of property has been established by his having sought and procured the hand of the fair legatee, with, also, the heart of the lady it is to be hoped; and also the head of the celebrated philosopher as a marriage portion contributed by the legatee herself.”

No one at the time recorded how many heads Dr. Kinsey-Keckeler had in her own collection, but it appears that the marriage was a reasonably happy one. The Drs. Keckeler published a second edition of W. Byrd Powell’s magnum opus (taking care to insert a new and presumably preferable woodcut of Temperance). They also promoted Temperance’s own 1869 book “Thaleia: Woman: Her Physiology and Pathology,” a popularly written handbook on obstetrics and gynecology. In the introduction to that book, we get a brief biography of this pioneering woman doctor:

“She was born near the city of Terre Haute, Indiana; was left an orphan at an early age, and passed her childhood and girlhood in Butler County, Ohio, under the adoption and care of a family whose members were particular friends of her father. Her first marriage was to Edward Kinsey, Esq., of Cincinnati, who was at that time, and for many years after, the only extensive manufacturer of silverware in the West. A most desirable, but unexpected opportunity presented itself in 1850, and, with the cordial approval, encouragement, and aid of her husband, but against the wishes and advice of every other relative, and with very little sympathy from most of her acquaintances, she commenced a regular course of medical study, her name having been enrolled as that of the first Western woman in the first Western college that had the liberality to acknowledge the right of woman to receive a full medical education, and, at the same time, to afford her an opportunity to obtain it. She pursued her studies in all the requisite branches, during five years, and graduated with honor.”

It appears that Temperance practiced medicine with an exclusively feminine clientele until her death in 1893. She is buried at Spring Grove.

Also buried at Spring Grove is her widower, A.T. Keckeler, who survived her until 1911, gaining some renown as a colleague and ally of Charles Darwin and an early practitioner of what we would now call cultural anthropology. No mention, at his death, where his 400 heads ended up.

As a footnote, it is a fact that, through his daughter by his first marriage, A.T. Keckeler is the great-great-grandfather of musician Ry Cooder.