FILSON CLUB PUBLICATIONS No. 20

THE HISTORY

OF

The Medical Department

OF

Transylvania University

BY

DOCTOR ROBERT PETER

Prepared for Publication by his Daughter, Miss Johanna Peter
Member of The Filson Club

Illustrated

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

JOHN P. MORTON & COMPANY

Printers to The Filson Club

1905

COPYRIGHTED BY

The Filson Club

and All Rights Reserved

1905

DOCTOR ROBERT PETER.

PREFACE

In preparing for publication the following sketch of the famous Transylvania Medical Department and its professors, I have placed in foot-notes, as far as practicable, my own additions to the text, so as to avoid making any radical change in my father's manuscript.

Portions of the history may seem fragmentary; some of the lives of the professors may be incomplete; some, no doubt, are insufficiently noticed, but this is easily understood when it is considered that my father wrote this narrative at irregular intervals of leisure in the years from 1873 to 1878, when some of the professors were still living; and that the writing was left by him in a yet uncompleted state and lacking those finishing touches which no other hand could so well give. In what I have done I have striven for accuracy. My father's reminiscences will have due weight as coming from one most intimately associated with Transylvania and her medical teachers—from the one colleague of all the brilliant company who could best transcribe them. The notice of Doctor Eberle I have copied from the Transylvania Journal of Medicine of 1838, as the nearest I could get to the estimation in which he was held in the Transylvania School. The sketch of Doctor Bruce is gathered mainly from obituaries by his colleagues. That of Doctor Chipley—oftenest described, by those who knew him, as nature's nobleman—was written by his daughter, Mrs. Boykin Jones, in answer to my letter to her. I have added a few words about Doctor Marshall, and Doctor Skillman, "the beloved physician," the last survivor of the Transylvania Medical Faculty. And I have given as best I could a description of the last declining years of Transylvania, with some account of the Medical Hall and its ultimate fate. Any biography of Doctor Peter, I fear, must be unsatisfactory unless written at length. The brief summary of his life introductory to The History of Transylvania University, published by The Filson Club in 1896, was called "insufficient," "far too modest," etc. Such the story of a life so long, so full, and so many-sided must ever be unless a volume be devoted to it. In what I now say of my father I feel, even more than I did then, that I can not do justice. It is a mere itinerary of a life-journey. The same thing is true in varying degree of all the Transylvania professors, and I repeat here what I said of the former History of Transylvania—that all errors or faults must be ascribed to my own insufficiency to cope with the subject.

Nevertheless, with all its shortcomings, this is a record not unworthy of preservation, and while biographers point us to the fact that in the United States Senate there sat at one and the same time no fewer than eight graduates of Transylvania University, including Jefferson Davis, afterward President of the Southern Confederacy, the student of these pages will remark that Transylvania's Medical Department had already won as abundant laurels in the field of science.

My grateful acknowledgments are due, first and for many kindnesses, to our invaluable President, Colonel Reuben T. Durrett, through whose unfailing interest, literary judgment, and tactful encouragement so many gems of Kentucky history have been preserved which otherwise had perished, and to the many friends of old Transylvania who have bid me Godspeed in my undertaking. I am indebted to Mrs. Thomas H. Clay for letters and documents bearing upon my subject; to Miss Mary Mason Brown for a copy of Jouett's admirable portrait of Doctor Brown which hangs in the old Brown homestead at Frankfort; to Mrs. Lawrence Dade Fitzhugh for data and the permission to use the beautiful portrait by Jouett of her ancestor, Doctor Richardson; to Mrs. Sallie Overton Bullock for the picture of Doctor Overton; to Mrs. Anderson Berry for the picture of Doctor Cooke; to Mr. William Short, of Louisville, for valuable suggestions and the fine likeness of Doctor Short; and to Doctor A. M. Peter for some of the illustrations. The several descendants of Doctor Ridgely to whom I applied have, without exception, aided me most courteously and patiently in my search for a picture of Doctor Ridgely: a search which I abandoned with the utmost reluctance and with the feeling that his portrait, could I have found it, must have adorned this history as his life had adorned the times to which it belonged, and therefore be sadly missed from its place with Doctor Brown. To Doctor John W. Whitney, who was prosector of Surgery and Anatomy in the Transylvania Medical School in 1854–55, and is now the sole surviving representative of that school, I am indebted for a number of facts and suggestions.

Johanna Peter.

INTRODUCTION

The late Doctor Robert Peter, one of the most distinguished analytical chemists of his times, was a member of the Medical Faculty of Transylvania University from 1833 to the time of the dissolution of that institution, and afterward occupied chairs in the different colleges into which Transylvania was merged. He was one of the most active of the professors, and did as much as any one else to raise the university to the lofty heights it attained as a school of literature, law, and medicine. It occurred to him after the merger of the Transylvania into the Kentucky University that an institution which had led the way and done so much for literature, law, and medicine should not be permitted to vanish and leave nothing but a name and memory behind. He, therefore, went to work, after the weight of years was gathering fast upon him, to write the history of Transylvania University, and got his work almost finished in 1894, when death, which alone could have arrested him in his undertaking, relieved him of the task at the age of eighty-nine. His daughter, Miss Johanna Peter, with filial affection worthy of so excellent a father, and public spirit equal to the occasion, rightly estimating so good a work if it should be published and put into the hands of the public, undertook to prepare his manuscripts for publication. One of these manuscripts prepared by her embraced the literary department of Transylvania, and was published by The Filson Club in 1896 as its eleventh publication. When this publication was made, it was intimated, if not promised, that it would be followed in the near future by one of the medical department. Miss Peter, therefore, prepared this second manuscript of her father for publication, and The Filson Club now presents it in the pages which follow as the twentieth number in its regular annual series.

The medical department of the Transylvania University no longer exists. Indeed, nothing of the Transylvania University exists except its name. Its learned professors have gone the way of all flesh. The last one of them recently went down to his grave. Its buildings have been swept away by fire or have passed to other institutions with its library and apparatus. Yet all of this renowned University has not passed away. Its fame yet lives, and will not perish while the memory of the living holds sacred the good deeds of predecessors. The distinguished professors made Transylvania University famous, and made history at the same time, and they themselves are now entitled to a place in history. It is the purpose of The Filson Club, by this publication, to assist in securing for them the place they deserve in the memory of mankind. Doctor Peter, the author, was the fittest of men to sketch these professors and to present life pictures of them. His work, however, if it had remained in manuscript, as he left it, would have been seen but by few, and could have done but little good. In this twentieth publication of The Filson Club, the manuscript will make its way to many and present them with likenesses of those who devoted their lives to instructing the young of our land in the art of administering to the sick and afflicted. The author knew all of his contemporary professors, and the likeness which he has given of some of them will be the ones by which they will be known in after years. Pen pictures are sometimes as efficient as likenesses in oil, and the characteristic of Doctor Peter's pictures is fidelity so executed that they seem to be the originals standing in life before us. In a work like this the essence of its history is biographic, and Doctor Peter has made his work to consist chiefly of biographical sketches of those who made Transylvania University what it was. He gives the leading facts in the life of each of the professors he sketches, and enumerates the other colleges in which they occupied chairs, and gives the titles of the works they published either in book form or magazine articles. He omits nothing in the sketch that is necessary in forming a just idea of the character portrayed.

In the long career of Transylvania University she did not fail to make enemies, but she made more friends than enemies to remember her. A few of the living students and the many descendants of the deceased professors and graduates now scattered broadcast over the land will be glad to read what is here said of old Transylvania, and the work will thus be widely known and read. All who see it will be thankful to Doctor Peter for his manuscript, and to Miss Johanna Peter for preparing it for the press, and to The Filson Club for publishing it.

There is in our nature something like the love of the relic which makes us revere the memory of Transylvania University. Early in the year 1799 a medical department was attached to this University which was the first medical college in the great Mississippi Valley and the second in the whole United States. The medical department of the University of Pennsylvania antedated it, but it antedated all others afterward established in any part of our vast domain. We can not, like our English cousins, go back along the pathway of centuries to the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge and revere them for their age; we have nothing in our new country that partakes of such age. We are a young people in a young country, and our Transylvania Medical College was old enough from our standpoint to be crowned with hoary years. We revere it as the first medical college on this side of the Alleghanies. We revere it for the efforts it made to prepare our young physicians to cope with the diseases that afflicted our people. We revere it for the good name it gave our State in the fame it acquired. We revere it for the success of Professor Brown in introducing vaccination in advance of its discoverer, for the brilliant and numerous operations in lithotomy by Professor Dudley, and for the noble efforts of others of its professors in prolonging human life and mitigating its pains. What it did in the day of its glory is set forth in the pages which follow, and he who reads them will hardly doubt that the medical department of Transylvania University is worthy of the record here made for it.

R. T. Durrett,

President of The Filson Club.

ILLUSTRATIONS

MEDICAL DEPARTMENT

OF

TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY

The history of medicine and of the earliest medical men in Kentucky clusters around the name of Transylvania University.

The State of Virginia, in 1780—when "Kan-tuck-ee" or "Kentuckee," as this country was then called, was only a little-explored portion of that State—placed eight thousand acres of escheated lands within that county into the hands of thirteen trustees "for the purposes of a public school or seminary of learning," that they "might at a future day be a valuable fund for the maintenance and education of youth; it being the interest of this Commonwealth always to promote and encourage every design which might tend to the improvement of the mind and the diffusion of knowledge, even amongst the most remote citizens, whose situation a barbarous neighborhood and a savage intercourse might otherwise render unfriendly to science."

Three years thereafter (1783), when Kentucky had become a district of Virginia, the General Assembly, by a new amendatory Act, re-endowed this "public school" with twelve thousand acres more of escheated lands and gave to it all the privileges, powers, and immunities of "any college or university in the State," under the name of "Transylvania Seminary."

In the wild and sparsely settled country this seminary began a feeble existence under the special fostering care and patronage of the Presbyterians, who were then a leading religious body, aided by individual subscriptions and by additional State endowments.

The Reverend James Mitchel, a Presbyterian minister, was its first "Grammar Master," in 1785. In 1789 it was placed under the charge of Mr. Isaac Wilson and located in Lexington, with no more than thirteen pupils all told. The Reverend James Moore, educated for the Presbyterian ministry but subsequently an Episcopalian and first Rector of Christ Church, Lexington, was appointed "Director," or the first acting President of the Transylvania Seminary, in 1791.[1] He taught in his own house for want of a proper seminary building, with the aid of a small library and collection of philosophical apparatus. This library and apparatus had been donated by the Reverend John Todd, of Virginia, who, with other influential Presbyterians, had been mainly instrumental in procuring the charters and endowments from the General Assembly of Virginia.

The offer of a lot of ground in the town of Lexington[2] to the trustees of Transylvania Seminary, by a company of gentlemen calling themselves the "Transylvania Land Company," induced the trustees to permanently locate the seminary in that place in 1793. On that lot the first school and college buildings were placed, and on it was afterward erected the more commodious University edifice in which taught the learned and celebrated President, Doctor Horace Holley. This first University building was destroyed by fire May 9, 1829. In later years (1879) this old "College lot" was beautified and improved by tree-planting and otherwise by liberal citizens of Lexington, moved by the efforts of Mr. H. H. Gratz, and designated first "Centennial Park,"[3] and afterward "Gratz Park," in honor of Benjamin Gratz, being not now utilized for special educational purposes.

With limited success the first "Director of Transylvania Seminary" taught in Lexington until 1794, when he was superseded by the election by the Board of Trustees of Mr. Harry Toulmin as first President of the Seminary.

This gentleman, a learned Unitarian minister of the school of Doctor Priestly, and a native of England, resigned the Presidency in 1796, and was Secretary of State of Kentucky under Governor Garrard. (See Collins' History of Kentucky, volume 2, page 184.)

Intense feeling at the election of Mr. Toulmin on the part of the leading Presbyterians, who claimed the Seminary as their own peculiar institution, caused them to obtain in 1796 a charter from the Legislature of Kentucky—now a State—for a new institution of learning which they could more exclusively control. This was the "Kentucky Academy," of which the Reverend James Blythe, of their communion, was made President.[4]

On the establishment of the Kentucky Academy by the dissatisfied Presbyterians in 1796, an active rivalry between that school and Transylvania Seminary operated to the injury of both institutions as well as to the cause of education in general. Therefore, after two years of separate existence these two institutions, with the consent of the trustees of both, were united in 1798 by Act of the General Assembly of Kentucky into one, "for the promotion of public good and learning," under the title of Transylvania University. The consolidation was made under the original laws which governed the Transylvania Seminary as enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia.

Transylvania University.

Under the act of consolidation of December 22, 1798, this University was organized by the appointment of Reverend James Moore, of the Episcopal Church, as first acting President, with a corps of professors. And now, for the first time in the Mississippi Valley, was the effort made to establish a medical college.

Early in 1799, at the first meeting of the trustees of the new Transylvania University,[5] they instituted "The Medical Department" or College of Transylvania—which subsequently became so prosperous and so celebrated—by the appointment of Doctor Samuel Brown as Professor of Chemistry, Anatomy, and Surgery, and Doctor Frederick Ridgely as Professor of Materia Medica, Midwifery, and Practice of Physic. Doctor Brown qualified as Professor October 26, 1799, and Doctor Ridgely the following November.

Doctor Brown was authorized by the Board to import books and other means of instruction for the use of the medical professors to the amount of five hundred dollars[6]—a considerable sum in those days—and he and his colleague were made salaried officers of the University.

A Law College was also organized at this time in the University by the appointment of Colonel George Nicholas, soldier of the Revolution and member of the Virginia Convention, as Professor of Law and Politics.

Doctor Samuel Brown,

The first Medical Professor of Transylvania University and of the great Western country, was born in Augusta, or Rockbridge County, Virginia, January 30, 1769, and died near Huntsville, Alabama, at the residence of Colonel Thomas G. Percy, January 12, 1830. He was the son of Reverend John Brown, a Presbyterian minister of great learning and piety, and Margaret Preston—a woman of remarkable energy of character and vigor of mind—second daughter of John Preston and Elizabeth Patton.[7] He was the third of four distinguished brothers—Honorable John Brown, Honorable James Brown, Doctor Samuel Brown, and Doctor Preston Brown.

After graduating at Carlisle College, Pennsylvania, where he had been sent by his elder brother, he studied medicine for two years in Edinburgh, Scotland. Doctor Hosack, of New York, and Doctor E. McDowell, of Danville, Kentucky, were of the same class. Returning to the United States, he commenced practice in Bladensburg, but soon removed to Lexington, Kentucky, where he was made Professor of Chemistry, Anatomy, and Surgery in Transylvania University in 1799, as above stated. In 1806, he removed to Fort Adams, Mississippi, where he married Miss Percy, of Alabama.[8] Afterward returning to Lexington he was re-appointed in 1819 to a chair in the Medical Department of Transylvania, that of Theory and Practice. Here he was a distinguished colleague of Professors B. W. Dudley, Charles Caldwell, Daniel Drake, William Richardson, and James Blythe until 1825, when he finally left Kentucky.

Doctor Brown was a man of fine personal appearance and manners; an accomplished scholar, gifted with a natural eloquence and humor that made him one of the most fascinating lecturers of his day. Learned in many branches, he was an enthusiast in his own profession, scrupulous in regard to etiquette and exceedingly benevolent and liberal of his time and services to the poor. Although active in scientific pursuits he left no extensive work, and but a few detached writings to perpetuate his fame.

DOCTOR SAMUEL BROWN.
From Jouett's Portrait at Frankfort.

His name appears among those of the contributors to the American Philosophical Transactions, and to the medical and scientific periodicals of the day, both in this country and in Europe. In those Transactions and in Bruce's Journal of Mineralogy, etc., he described a remarkably large nitre cavern on Crooked Creek in Madison County (now Rockcastle County), Kentucky. In this and in a subsequent communication in Volume I of Silliman's Journal he described the process of nitre manufacture in caves, and gave the best theory of its formation, according to the science of the day. In various other journals he described several interesting cases which occurred in his own practice, and in the renowned Medical Logic, by the distinguished Gilbert Blane, of London, Doctor Samuel Brown, of Lexington, is quoted as authority for a certain scientific fact. "To him we are indebted for the first introduction in the West of the prophylactic use of the cow-pox. As early as 1802 he had vaccinated upwards of five hundred persons, when in New York and Philadelphia physicians were only just making their first experimental attempts. The virus he used was taken from its original source, the teats of the cow, and used in Lexington even before Jenner could gain the confidence of the people of his own country."[9]

A curious anecdote, illustrating progress, was told of Doctor Samuel Brown by his nephew, the late Orlando Brown, Esquire, of Frankfort, in a letter to the present writer:

"I remember once when talking of calomel, he said he never would forget the first dose of it he gave a patient. It was looked upon as 'the Hercules,' and he used it accordingly. The case was desperate and he resolved to venture upon calomel and give a strong dose. He accordingly weighed out with scrupulous accuracy four grains—gave it to his patient, and sat up all night to watch its effects. The man got well and the Doctor afterwards used calomel more freely."

What would he have thought of the heaping tablespoonful doses—quickly repeated pro re nata—or the pound of calomel taken in a day—and survived—which characterized the cholera treatment of one of the later Professors of Transylvania Medical School?

Doctor Frederick Ridgely,

Of a well-known family in Maryland,[10] and one of the most celebrated of the early physicians of the West, studied medicine in Delaware, and attended medical lectures in Philadelphia.

He was appointed Surgeon to a rifle corps in Virginia when only nineteen years of age, and served in different positions as Surgeon throughout the Revolutionary War. He came to Kentucky in 1790, was Surgeon-General in General Wayne's army in 1794, and after that decisive campaign was ended returned to Kentucky in 1799 and was made Professor of Materia Medica, Midwifery, and the Practice of Physic in the same year in the Medical Department of Transylvania University at the first organization of this department.

Widely known as a successful practitioner and a gentleman of great benevolence, disinterestedness, and affability, he was also one of the medical preceptors of Kentucky's distinguished surgeon, Benjamin W. Dudley, and for many years gave active support to Transylvania University as a member of the Board of Trustees. In 1799–1800, he delivered to the small class of medical students then in attendance a course of public instruction which did him much credit—a fact of peculiar interest, "as it proves him to have been," with his able colleague, Doctor Samuel Brown, "the first who taught medicine by lecture in Western America." He died at the age of sixty-eight at Dayton, Ohio, December 21, 1824.

These first medical professors in Transylvania University were no doubt the first in the promotion of medical education in the West. Medical and Law societies were soon established and were in active operation—as we learn from the columns of the Kentucky Gazette, published at the time. How many pupils they attracted and taught we can not now definitely ascertain.

In 1801, the meager existing records of the University show a reorganization, in which the Reverend James Moore—who had been replaced in 1799 by a Presbyterian clergyman, the Reverend James Welsh—was restored to the Presidency. "Doctor Frederick Ridgely was made Professor of Medicine, and Doctor Walter Warfield was made Professor of Midwifery, in addition to Doctor Samuel Brown." Doctor Warfield, a physician of Lexington, did not long occupy this chair, and appears not to have lectured in it.

In 1804, the Reverend James Blythe, D. D., of the Presbyterian church, who had been President of Kentucky Academy, was made acting President of Transylvania University, which position he held until 1816. He was subsequently, in 1817, under Doctor Holley's administration, appointed Professor of Chemistry, etc., in the Medical Department. This position he retained until, in 1831, he accepted the Presidency of Hanover College, Indiana.

Doctor Blythe died in 1842, aged seventy-seven, having devoted his life mainly to religion; having been one of the pioneers of the Presbyterian church in Kentucky. He made no distinguished reputation as a chemical professor in the Medical School, for chemistry in those days had few advocates, but he did good service in the University as a teacher of what was called "Natural Philosophy" in early times.

The Medical College of Transylvania University seems not to have attracted many students in this early period of its history, nor were its means of instruction or its organization complete.

In 1805, Doctor James Fishback, D. D., was made Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic in this department.[11] He was characterized as an eloquent, learned, though erratic divine; an able writer; a physician in good practice; an influential lawyer, and an upright man. He was the son of Jacob Fishback,[12] who came to Kentucky from Virginia in 1783.

He resigned this chair in 1806, having given lectures to such small medical classes as were present. In 1808, he was elected Representative to the General Assembly of Kentucky. In 1813, he published The Philosophy of the Mind in Respect to Religion, and, in 1834, Essays and Dialogues on the Powers and Susceptibilities of the Human Mind to Religion. He was also preceptor in medicine, and for a time partner in the practice, of the celebrated surgeon, Benjamin W. Dudley. He died at an advanced age in 1854.

An effort was again made to organize a full Faculty and establish a medical school in Transylvania University in the year 1809, when Doctor Benjamin W. Dudley was appointed to the chair of Anatomy and Physiology, Doctor Elisha Warfield to Surgery and Obstetrics, Joseph Buchanan, A. M., to the Institutes of Medicine, and Doctor James Overton to Materia Medica and Botany.[13] But Doctor Warfield resigned in the same year, and Doctor Buchanan in 1810. The late Lewis Rogers, M. D., of Louisville, thus mentioned Doctor Buchanan in his inaugural address as President of the Kentucky State Medical Society in 1873: "He died in Louisville in 1829: and I call up from the memories of my boyhood with great distinctness his slender form, massive head, and thoughtful, intellectual face. He was a man of great and varied powers of mind. He was a mechanical, medical, and political philosopher. His 'spiral' steam-boiler—the prototype of the exploding and exploded tubular boiler—and his steam land-carriage were among the wonders of the day. As a physician his papers attracted distinguished notice from the medical savants of Philadelphia, then the center of medical science."

As a political writer he ably discussed the most weighty problems of the times, he being editor of the Louisville Focus. Want of concentration of his wonderful mind prevented him from becoming eminent in medicine as in other pursuits which divided his mental powers.[14]

No systematic medical instruction seems to have resulted from this imperfect organization of the Medical School in 1809, although occasional lectures may have been delivered and private instruction given.

Doctor Dudley, after having graduated in medicine in the University of Pennsylvania, visited Europe in 1810, spending four years in Paris and London in the arduous pursuit of medical and surgical information and experience under the celebrated teachers of that day. Returning then to Lexington he began a career as a practical surgeon and teacher, in which his name became distinguished throughout the civilized world.

Doctor Benjamin Winslow Dudley

Was born in Spottsylvania County, Virginia, April 12, 1785. His father, a leading Baptist minister in Kentucky, Ambrose Dudley, had commanded a company in the Revolutionary War, and removed to the neighborhood of Lexington, Kentucky, when his son Benjamin was little more than a year old, and to that city in 1797. Here, reared with such tuition as the schools of the day and the country afforded, Benjamin was placed while yet very young under the medical tutelage of Doctor Frederick Ridgely, then an eminent physician in large practice in Lexington, under whose instruction his ardent taste for medical knowledge was largely gratified. In the autumn of 1804 he went to the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, and was there fellow-student with Daniel Drake, John Esten Cooke, and William H. Richardson, his subsequent colleagues in the Medical Department of Transylvania University.

Returning to Lexington at the close of the medical lectures at Philadelphia, he engaged in the practice of physic and surgery with Doctor Fishback during the spring and summer months of 1805. He returned to the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania in the fall, receiving the degree of Doctor of Medicine from that institution March, 1806, just two weeks before he was twenty-one years of age.

Desirous of perfecting his medical education in Europe, after a few years' further practice in Lexington he descended the Ohio River on a flatboat to New Orleans in 1810, just one year before the first experimental steamboat was launched upon those waters. At New Orleans he purchased a cargo of flour and sailed on a prosperous voyage to Gibraltar, and after advantageously disposing of his cargo at that place and at Lisbon, he made his way through Spain to Paris. After four years spent in Europe zealously and industriously employing all the great facilities of the hospitals, dissecting-rooms, and eminent instructors of Paris and London, and after traveling six months in Italy and Switzerland, he finally returned to Lexington in the summer of 1814, conscious of innate powers and ardently devoted to his profession.

DOCTOR BENJAMIN W. DUDLEY.
From a Portrait by Jouett owned by Mrs. Robert Peter.

Professor Dudley continued to lecture until 1850, when he resigned and was appointed Professor Emeritus. Doctor James M. Bush succeeded him in the chair of Anatomy, and Dudley's nephew, Ethelbert L. Dudley, took that of Surgery, which he filled with great success.

A schedule of the succession of the Professors of this Medical School will best illustrate the changes which occurred since 1819. (See Schedule A.)

Professor B. W. Dudley remained in the regular performance of the duties of his double chair—Anatomy and Surgery[15]—with the able assistance of Doctor J. M. Bush, until 1844, when Doctor Bush was regularly appointed Professor of Anatomy. Doctor Dudley, as above mentioned, retained the chair of Surgery until 1850. In that year the Medical Faculty intermitted the winter session in Lexington, with the consent of the Trustees, in order to establish the "Kentucky School of Medicine" in Louisville as a winter school, retaining the Transylvania Medical College as a summer school. Doctor Dudley's last course of lectures was delivered in the session of 1849–50.

Simultaneously with the resignation of his professorship, he withdrew from his extensive practice and retired to his beautiful suburban residence, "Fairlawn," in the vicinity of Lexington.[16] His death occurred in Lexington on the twentieth of January, 1870, in the eighty-fifth year of his age.

Doctor Dudley was an earnest and laborious practical man. His whole time and energies were devoted to his profession, in which, like the celebrated John Hunter—the one of his early preceptors Dudley most admired—he sought instruction in the book of nature—in his practice—rather than in the written archives of science.

As a teacher and lecturer he was admirably clear and impressive. While no attempt at eloquence was ever made by him, and no early training or later readings in the classics gave ornament to his style, his terse and impressive sentences, as they were delivered apparently without the slightest effort or premeditation as also without hesitation or interruption, were the embodiment of the ideas to be conveyed, in the most lucid and concise language. It seemed impossible to use fewer or more appropriate words to convey to the least appreciative student the subject to be taught.

This, with his great practical skill as a surgeon, his minute and ready knowledge, his great experience, his unequaled success in his numerous operations, his suavity and dignity of manner, the magnanimity and liberality of his character, and his eminent devotedness to his profession, made his students most earnest admirers and followers and aided greatly in the establishment and maintenance of our Medical College.

Although possessed of the firmest nerves, so that his hand never faltered in the severest operation,[17] his sensibility was so keen that he sometimes suffered from nervous prostration after the strain was over. Many of his pupils no doubt recollect with what feeling—manifested even by tears—he recited the sufferings and dangers of a patient of his who was the subject of obstinate secondary hemorrhage.

It was as a practical surgeon that Doctor Dudley justly attained a world-wide reputation, and especially as a successful operator in lithotomy. This operation he performed two hundred and twenty-five times, without losing a single patient until after his one hundredth operation, losing in the whole of his operations only about two per cent. So celebrated had he become for this operation as early as 1827 that the Kentucky Gazette for April 11, of that year, records that he operated three times for stone in one day.

He always performed the lateral operation with the gorget, and never until by previous preparation—by diet and medicine—he had brought the system of his patient to a proper state.[18]

Then, with good nursing under his immediate direction in wholesome private lodging, the incision healed up by the first intention. Although the stone may have been so large that much effort was required to withdraw it through the incision—sometimes even attended with laceration—the patient was on his feet again in a surprisingly short period of time. The Doctor justly attached great importance to the preliminary constitutional preparation of his surgical patients.

A notice of two of his earliest operations of this kind is given in the Kentucky Gazette for Saturday, November 19, 1817. The one—the first he performed in Lexington—on Mr. S. Owen, of that place, and the other, "some time ago," on a little boy in Paris, Kentucky, which, according to Doctor C. C. Graham—who was his pupil at that time—was the first operation for stone performed by Doctor Dudley. He never used lithotrity or seemed to approve of that operation.

Another surgical specialty was his great use of judicious and regulated pressure by means of the roller bandage in the cure of abscesses, in the control of inflammation, in the treatment of fractures, aneurisms, etc. No surgeon probably ever used it so extensively or so successfully. Few, even of his pupils, seemed to be able to apply it with the skill and judgment which characterized their preceptor.

He was also an earnest advocate of the patient use of hot water—as hot as could be borne—in the control of inflammation. Where other surgeons resorted to poultices he applied hot water.

He was not ready with his pen; because, probably, of early neglect in the practice of composition. What he wrote was mostly at the urgent solicitation of his colleagues, and for the columns of The Transylvania Journal of Medicine, a quarterly which first appeared in Lexington February, 1828.[19] It was then edited by his colleagues, Professors Cooke and Short; subsequently by Professor Yandell, then by Professor Peter, more lately by Professor T. D. Mitchell, and lastly by Professor Ethelbert L. Dudley.

In the first volume of this Journal appeared Doctor Dudley's first paper, a most remarkable article, showing by cases in his practice that epilepsy may be caused by pressure on the brain, the consequence of fracture of the skull, and, as demonstrated by five successive operations, might be cured by trephining, a fact and experience in surgery then entirely new, for which Doctor Dudley is entitled to the honor of discovery and demonstration.

In the same paper is communicated a novel and successful method of treatment of fungus cerebri, by means of dried sponge compresses. Doctor Dudley stated that by this means he had cured fungus cerebri within the space of five days.

In a second paper, in the next number of this volume, he gives an original and successful operation for hydrocele. In the fourth number he began an extensive article on his peculiar uses of the roller bandage in gunshot wounds, fractures, etc., which he continued through several volumes of the Journal. In the second volume he had given an interesting article on the use of the roller bandage in the treatment of ulcers, contusions, lacerations, effusions, etc. In the fifth volume he continued his remarks on epilepsy as treated by the trephine. In volume sixth he published a record of his experience in the treatment of Asiatic cholera in Lexington. In the ninth he continued his observations on the bandage and its very successful application in the treatment of fractures. A most interesting and valuable article on Calculous Diseases from his pen appeared in the same volume, illustrating not only his great practical skill but his courage and quick and clear judgment in cases of emergency. Volumes ten and twelve contained reports of his operations in lithotomy; volume eleven, a paper on Fractures and Calculous Diseases.

In the elegant and generally correct Memoir of Doctor Benjamin W. Dudley, published by the late Lunsford P. Yandell, M. D., in the American Practitioner, 1870, these are stated to be the only writings of our late distinguished surgeon; but Doctor Dudley subsequently published three elaborate and highly valuable surgical papers, to wit:

1. On the Treatment of Aneurism, published in the Transylvania Journal of Medicine, edited by Professor Ethelbert L. Dudley, July, 1849.

2. On the Treatment of Gunshot Wounds. Ibid., December, 1849.

3. On the Treatment of Fractures by the Roller Bandage. Ibid., 1850.

This journal was a bi-weekly publication, the successor of the old Transylvania Medical Journal above mentioned.

These were the latest productions of Doctor B. W. Dudley. Engaged as he continually was in a daily round of engrossing surgical and medical practice, lecturing twice a day in the Medical School during its sessions, there was left to him but little time for the record or promulgation of his ample experience by his pen.

As a medical practitioner also he was original. He was among the first to discard the lancet in his treatment of disease. He used instead small doses of tartar emetic, or more recently, of ipecacuanha frequently repeated, with low diet; or cholagogue purgatives combined with ipecacuanha, etc. He confined himself to but few medicines, but in the application of these, and of diet and regimen, his clear and correct judgment was usually apparent. Polypharmacy he despised. New remedies were looked upon by him with incredulity and suspicion. Quinine, iodine, and other novelties in his time never were accorded approbation by him.

As a man and a citizen he was eminently liberal, charitable, magnanimous, public-spirited, and energetic. He bound his friends to him with the strongest ties and treated his hostile enemies—who were few—with a cordial hatred. His sense of honor and personal dignity was very delicate and high. No one so deeply despised a mean action. No one so readily forgave an injury which was confessed.

An exemplification of his character was given in 1817–18. A difficulty having originated between himself and Doctor Drake, in relation to the resignation of the latter and some matters connected with a post-mortem examination of an Irishman who had been killed in a quarrel, sharp pamphlets passed between them and a challenge to mortal combat from Dudley to Drake, which the latter declined, but which was vicariously accepted by his next friend, Doctor William H. Richardson. A duel resulted in which, at the first fire, Richardson was seriously wounded in the groin by the ball of Dudley, severing the inguinal artery. Richardson would have speedily bled to death—as it could not be controlled by the tourniquet—but for the ready skill and magnanimity of Dudley. He immediately asked permission of his adversary to arrest the hemorrhage, and by the pressure with his thumb over the ilium gave time for the application of the ligature by the surgeon of Richardson—thus converting his deadly antagonist into a lifelong friend.

Notwithstanding Doctor Dudley had contributed tens of thousands to public improvement and to private charities, and never regularly kept accounts against his patients, he acquired a considerable fortune. His latter days were passed in the society of his children and grandchildren in the household of his son, the late William A. Dudley, surrounded by all the comforts which a large competency and a devoted family could provide. Thus, in the quiet of domestic retirement, passed away the last days of a most active and eminently useful and distinguished life.[20]

The annals of the earlier efforts to establish medical education and a medical college in connection with Transylvania University—the first in the whole West and the second in the United States—are meager and unsatisfactory.

As already stated, the first Medical Professors in this University—Doctors Samuel Brown and Frederick Ridgely (1799)—no doubt taught and lectured occasionally to such students as were present. The files of the old Kentucky Gazette show that Doctor James Fishback, who was unanimously appointed to the chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine in Transylvania in 1805, advertised to lecture, and did probably lecture on these subjects. But he resigned in 1806. Doctor James Overton, who had been appointed to the chair of Materia Medica and Botany in 1809, said in his letter of acceptance (on the occasion of his reappointment in the reorganization of the Medical Faculty in 1817) that he "had engaged for some time in giving lectures on Theory and Practice in this town," etc.

According to the best recollection of the late Doctor Coleman Rogers—for a long time before his death a resident in Louisville—the Medical College of Transylvania University was reorganized in 1815 by the appointment of the following Faculty:

Doctor Benjamin W. Dudley, Professor of Anatomy and Surgery.

Doctor Coleman Rogers, adjunct to this chair.

Doctor James Overton, Theory and Practice.

Doctor William H. Richardson, Obstetrics, etc.

Doctor Thomas Cooper (Judge Cooper), of Pennsylvania, to the chair of Chemistry, Mineralogy, etc.

Doctor James Blythe, then acting President of the University, was to give chemical instruction. Doctor Cooper and Doctor Rogers did not accept this appointment. According to Doctor Rogers' recollection a regular course of lectures was not delivered by this Faculty, although Doctors Dudley and Overton probably both lectured or taught "as they previously had done."[21]

Doctor Dudley's own recollection, as detailed to the present writer, was also that he and Doctor Overton, as well as Doctor Blythe, lectured in 1815–16 to about twenty students, of whom the late Doctor Ayres and the yet surviving Nestor of Transylvania graduates, Doctor Christopher C. Graham, of Louisville—now almost a centenarian[22]—were in attendance as pupils. Very little can now be ascertained, from existing records, of the character of Professor James Overton, M. D. Doctor Christopher C. Graham, in a recent letter to the writer, gives some of his reminiscences of him in the following language: "Doctor Overton was a small, black-eyed man, very hypochondrical and sarcastic (notoriously so), and yet quite chatty, humorous, and agreeable; telling his class many funny things.... He was well educated for his day and plumed himself especially on his Greek." Doctor Overton removed from Lexington to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1818.[23]

DOCTOR JAMES OVERTON.
From a Portrait made in Philadelphia before 1815.

The late Doctor Ayres, of Danville, and latterly of Lexington, informed the writer that, in 1815, Doctor Dudley, having recently returned from Europe, was invited by himself and other medical students to demonstrate to them in anatomy and surgery. Learning that he would lecture to them if a class were formed, they made up one of from twenty to twenty-five, and Doctor Dudley lectured to them on anatomy and surgery in "Trotter's Warehouse,"[24] a house situated on the south-east corner of Main and Mill streets, opposite the site[25] of the old original Lexington block-house. In the next winter, he recounts, he lectured to about fifty or sixty students, some of whom were from Ohio. Doctors Overton and Blythe, one or both, also lectured in both winters.

This may be said to be the real beginning of the successful career of the Medical Department of Transylvania University, and of that of Doctor Dudley as a medical professor.

The Kentucky Gazette of March 10, 1817, contains a card published by a committee of the medical students of Transylvania, signed David J. Ayres, Thomas J. Garden, and Charles H. Warfield (committee of the medical class), headed a "Tribute of Gratitude," in which they return grateful thanks to their professors, Doctors B. W. Dudley, James Overton, and the Reverend Doctor Blythe, for the ability, fidelity, and perseverance with which they had taught. A further proof that a medical session was held in the Transylvania School in 1816–17.

Many circumstances in these early times favored the establishment of a medical college in Lexington. Not only had that city been recognized for many years as a great center of public education for the whole State—made so by the location in it of the State's University, "Transylvania"—but it was also at that time the great metropolis of the West. The country around it, though fast becoming settled and improved by enterprising pioneers, had not as yet been provided with roads, or good means of communication with older settlements. To ascend the Ohio River and cross the Alleghany Mountains to Philadelphia, where the only other medical school then existed, was a tedious and laborious undertaking, not devoid of danger.

The celebrated French botanist, F. A. Michaux, who visited this country in 1802, was obliged to walk most of the way over the mountains to Pittsburg. Descending the Ohio River in a canoe and landing at Limestone (now Maysville), he consumed two days and a half on horseback on his journey from that place to Lexington, having been obliged to leave his baggage behind. The late Professor Charles Caldwell records, in his remarkable Autobiography, that as late as 1820, when he set out from Lexington for Europe to purchase books and apparatus for the Medical Department of Transylvania, he was compelled to travel from Lexington to Maysville on horseback, with his baggage on a pack-horse conducted by a servant on a third horse. "The animals were all powerful and active," but "so deep and adhesive was the mud that they did not reach Maysville—only sixty miles distant—until an early hour on the fourth day," although diligence on his part was not wanting. Students of this region had to overcome very great difficulties when they set out in search of instruction in the medical schools of Philadelphia.

On March 2, 1816, one thousand dollars were appropriated by the Trustees of Transylvania and placed in the hands of Doctor Blythe and John D. Clifford for the immediate purchase of chemical apparatus. Doctor Blythe, who had been acting President of the University up to this time, resigned and accepted the position of Professor of Chemistry in the Medical Department.

In 1817 the Medical Faculty was further reorganized by the appointment of the late celebrated, talented Doctor Daniel Drake to the chair of Materia Medica and Medical Botany. The organization was then as follows:

Doctor Benjamin W. Dudley, Professor of Anatomy and Surgery.

Doctor James Overton, Professor of Theory and Practice.

Doctor Daniel Drake, Professor of Materia Medica and Medical Botany.

Doctor William H. Richardson, Professor of Obstetrics, etc.

Doctor James Blythe, Professor of Chemistry, etc.

Doctor Drake has stated that twenty pupils attended this course of lectures, and the degree of M. D. was—for the first time in Lexington—conferred on John Lawson McCullough of this city.

DOCTOR WILLIAM H. RICHARDSON.
From a Portrait by Jouett.

Each professor lectured three times a week, and his ticket was fifteen dollars. During this session ill feelings arose between Doctors Dudley and Drake, leading to the duel between Doctors Dudley and Richardson already described.[26]

Doctor Drake resigned his professorship and returned to Cincinnati at the end of this session, returning subsequently in 1823 to occupy the same chair, to resign it again in 1827. Professor Richardson did not lecture this session. He, not having yet received the degree of M. D., was allowed to be absent.[27]

Professor William Hall Richardson

Taught in the Medical Department of Transylvania until the time of his death in 1844, and was highly respected by his pupils as a practical teacher in his especial chair, notwithstanding he had not the advantage of early educational training. He was a man of great energy and of many admirable traits of character. His pupil, the late Lewis Rogers, M. D., in his address as President of the Kentucky State Medical Society in 1873, thus spoke of his old preceptor and friend:

"Few men ever had nobler traits of character. He was warm-hearted, brave, and a sincere friend. I knew him from my earliest boyhood, and have passed away many happy and instructive hours at his magnificent home in Fayette County.[28] His hospitality was profuse and elegant. I listened to his public teachings as a professor with interest and care, because I knew he taught the truth as far as he possessed it. He was not scholarly or graceful and fluent as a lecturer, but he was ardent and impressive, sufficiently learned in his special branch, and had at his command a large stock of ripe experience. I honor his memory beyond most men I have known."

In 1819, a new and brilliant era for the University, and for the Medical Department of Transylvania, was inaugurated by the appointment of Reverend Horace Holley, LL. D., to the Presidency of the University. Doctor Samuel Brown was recalled to the chair of the Theory and Practice of Medicine, which he retained until 1825. Doctor Charles Caldwell was induced to remove from Philadelphia, where he had an official connection with the University of Pennsylvania, and to accept the chair of the Institutes of Medicine and Materia Medica here, thus completing the organization with the existing professors, Benjamin W. Dudley and William H. Richardson, and the election of Reverend James Blythe to the chair of Chemistry. The celebrated naturalist, C. S. Rafinesque, was advertised to lecture on Botany and Natural History in this and the following year.[29]

Constantine Samuel Rafinesque,[30]

A naturalist, antiquarian, etc., who stated in 1836 "that in knowledge he had been a botanist, naturalist, conchologist, zoologist, geographer, esentographer, physiologist, historian, antiquary, poet, philosopher, economist, and philanthropist; and by profession a traveler, merchant, manufacturer, collector, improver, professor, teacher, surveyor, draftsman, architect, engineer, author, editor, bookseller, librarian, secretary, chancellor, etc."—and believed he could have been any thing, as he "always succeeded in whatever he undertook." This statement gives a key to his life, which was one of great and untiring activity, as well as to his mental character, which enabled him to acquire the reputation of being one of the most learned men of his day. Born in Galata, Constantinople, the son of a merchant, in 1784, after living in France and Italy he came to America in 1802, returning to France in 1805, with a very large botanical collection. Spending ten years in Sicily in making natural history collections and writing various essays, he published in 1815 his Analysis of Nature. The same year he sailed for America, but was wrecked on Long Island, losing most of his collections and effects. Induced to come West from Philadelphia by John D. Clifford, of Lexington, in 1818, he was elected Professor of Botany and Natural History in Transylvania University in 1819, lectured to the students in the Medical College, was librarian, and taught French, Spanish, and Italian.[31] He also traveled and made collections in botany, natural history, etc., publishing various papers and pamphlets and preparing materials for his proposed great work, Tellus, or the History of the Earth and Mankind, Chiefly in America, of which in ten years he had, he said, prepared five thousand pages of manuscript and five hundred maps and figures. An idea of what this work might have been may be gathered from a remarkable essay—Ancient History or Annals of Kentucky—which was published in 1824 as an introduction to Marshall's History of Kentucky, in which, in twenty-eight small octavo pages, he professes to give not only the migrations, changes, filiations, annals, and descriptions of all the various tribes and peoples which inhabited Kentucky since the creation of man, but gives also a history of all the changes of geology and natural history, according to his views and in accordance with Mosaic cosmogony, substituting epochs for days, however. An essay which may be characterized as a very terse and dry recital of numerous doubtful statements, woven in a web of very audacious speculation. His success as a teacher in Transylvania was not great. He died in Philadelphia September 18, 1840, having published in 1836 his life, travels, and researches in North America and Europe from 1802 to 1835, and several small works on natural history, botany, etc.

A project inaugurated by Rafinesque while professor in Transylvania was that of a botanic garden at Lexington called "The Botanical Garden of Transylvania University." A company was chartered by Act of Legislature January 7, 1824, with a capital stock of twenty-five thousand dollars, five hundred shares of fifty dollars each. William H. Richardson, President; Thomas Smith, Joseph Ficklin, John M. McCalla, Thomas L. Caldwell, Directors; William A. Leavy, Treasurer; C. S. Rafinesque, Secretary. Other members were William Leavy, senior, Elisha Warfield, J. Harper, James W. Palmer, Horace Holley, Charles Caldwell, Benjamin W. Dudley, Charles Humphreys, Gabriel Slaughter, Thomas Wallace, John Roche, Charles Wilkins, Benjamin Gratz, Richard Higgins, John W. Hunt, B. R. McIlvaine, Joseph Boswell, Samuel Brown, and Daniel Drake. We gather from the prospectus (1824) that this garden was intended to be a charming resort for the elite of Lexington, who were expected to stroll at eve, perchance, through sylvan bowers; it was also to benefit farmers and "the whole Western country" by supplying "the best kinds of fruit trees and grape vines, mountain rice, madder, senna, opium, ginseng, rhubarb, castor oil, new kinds of grain and pulse, etc." It was to be valuable especially to the medical students of Transylvania by affording opportunity to study the plants used in medicine. The single product of opium, it was judged, could be made to cover the annual expense of the garden. There was to be "a small but elegant building, with a portico, green-house, aviaries, bowers, museum, library, and many other suitable ornaments." Lectures and "practical demonstrations" were to be given there in Botany, Agriculture, Horticulture, Domestic Economy, etc. "Every individual admitted in the garden to hear a course of lectures" to pay "at least one dollar." To these ends a lot was procured on the south side of East Main Street,[32] within the city limits, and gardening operations commenced; but the garden was not a success. Though patronized for a time, as in duty bound, by its influential shareholders and diligently strolled in by the friends, principally, of the medical students, it was, after the departure from Lexington of Rafinesque, finally pronounced to be nothing more than a weed-patch and abandoned before any building was erected on it. In fact, from the testimony of old citizens, it would appear that no improvements were ever made there except the laying out of wide walks and the planting of various shrubs and wild flowers, chiefly such as were common upon the highways in Kentucky, but which unquestionably seemed remarkable to Rafinesque, who viewed them with the eye of a botanist exclusively.

The organization of the Medical Faculty of 1819, already described, remained unchanged until 1823, when Doctor Daniel Drake was recalled to the chair of Materia Medica and Medical Botany, Doctor Caldwell retaining that of the Institutes of Medicine. The chair of Chemistry was also strengthened by the appointment of Doctor Robert Best[33] as adjunct professor, who resigned, however, at the end of two years. Doctor Drake was transferred in 1825 to the chair of Theory and Practice on the resignation of Doctor Samuel Brown, and Doctor Charles Wilkins Short was called to that vacated by Doctor Drake. Doctor Drake resigned finally in 1826, to be replaced by Doctor John Esten Cooke. We will not in this place note all the changes which occurred in the Faculty up to the time of its dissolution, but will append them in the form of a schedule. (See Schedule A.)

Daniel Drake, M. D.

DANIEL DRAKE, M. D.

Born at Plainfield, New Jersey, October 20, 1785, and brought to Mason County, Kentucky, in 1788, was, in 1800, the first medical student in Cincinnati. He began to practice in 1804, when he was only nineteen years old. He spent the winter of 1805–6 as a student in Philadelphia, and the succeeding year in practice at his old home in Mayslick, removing for life to Cincinnati in 1807.

He was made Professor of Materia Medica and Medical Botany in Transylvania University in 1817, but returned to Cincinnati to found the Medical College of Ohio in 1818, from which, however, his connection was suddenly severed, after a bitter controversy, May, 1822. He resumed a professorship at Lexington 1823–27, being Dean of the Faculty, and declined a chair in the University of Virginia in 1830. He accepted one in the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, 1830–31, and again in the Medical College of Ohio in 1831–32. He founded a new school as a department of Cincinnati College and taught in it 1835–39; was professor in the Louisville Medical Institute 1839–49, and afterward accepted a chair in the Medical College again in 1849–50. In 1827 he was editor of the Western Medical and Physical Journal, etc., but his chief work is his Treatise on the Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of America, published in 1850—a wonderful tribute to American medical science. His contributions to scientific journals were numerous, and many of his medical lectures and scientific and historical addresses have been published.[34] He died at Cincinnati November 5, 1852, aged sixty-seven years.[35]

Doctor David W. Yandell says: "As a lecturer Doctor Drake had few equals. He was never dull. His was an alert and masculine mind. His words are full of vitality. His manner was earnest and impressive. His eloquence was fervid." Soon after Doctor Yandell had entered the practice of medicine Doctor Drake told him: "I have never seen a great and permanent practice the foundations of which were not laid in the hearts of the poor. Therefore cultivate the poor. If you need another though sordid reason, the poor of to-day are the rich of to-morrow in this country. The poor will be the most grateful of all your patients. Lend a willing ear to all their calls."

Such enthusiasm in the establishment of the Medical Department of Transylvania existed at this time (1819) that liberal citizens of Lexington freely subscribed money to the amount of more than three thousand dollars to guarantee to Professors Caldwell and Brown each an annual sum of a thousand dollars for three years, and this salary was paid to them accordingly. Professor Caldwell visiting the Legislature of Kentucky in 1820, induced that body to give five thousand dollars for the express purpose of the purchase of books and apparatus for the Medical College in Transylvania University, which, as declared in the Act, was to remain "the property of the State of Kentucky."

Moreover, the city of Lexington at the same time loaned to the college, for the same specified purpose, six thousand dollars, reserving a lien on the books. This loan subsequently became a donation. In addition many physicians of the South, of Kentucky, and of Lexington made further subscriptions, making altogether a gross sum of about thirteen thousand dollars, with which Professor Caldwell was enabled to purchase in Europe, in 1820, the foundation of the library, apparatus, and museum of the Medical Department.[36]

Again, in 1827, certain citizens of Lexington and medical professors, forming a joint-stock company, furnished the means to build the first Medical Hall for the special uses of this department, on which, until 1839, when a new Medical Hall was erected, the medical professors paid an annual interest of six per cent on the cost. This old hall stood, before it was destroyed by fire (in 1854, while being used as a City Hall, etc.), on the site of the Lexington City Library, corner of Market and Church streets. It is thus described in the Transylvania Journal of Medicine, Volume I, 1828: "This building, a vignette view of which is seen on the cover of this Journal, was erected by the private munificence of citizens of Lexington during the last season. The corner-stone was laid with Masonic ceremonies on the fifteenth day of April, and the edifice was complete and in readiness for the reception of the medical class at the commencement of the session the first of November.

"In an excavation made in the corner-stone was deposited a glass bottle enclosing a parchment roll on which were written the name of the President of the United States, those of the heads of departments, the Trustees of Transylvania University, the medical professors, trustees of the town, officers of the Grand Lodge who assisted at the ceremony, building committee, architect, etc. On a marble tablet over the front door of the house is the following inscription:

COLL. TRANSYL. MEDIC.
FUND. A. D. MDCCCXVII.

"Though plain and unostentatious, the style of its architecture is chaste and neat, its execution is solid and substantial, and its interior arrangements are of the most convenient, comfortable, and commodious kind.

"The basement story of the building is chiefly appropriated to the chemical professorship and contains a lecture-room forty-five by fifty feet in dimensions, in which the seats and lecturing stand are arranged in the best manner for perfect vision, a lobby, an anti-room, a chemical laboratory well supplied with all necessary apparatus, and a dormitory for a resident pupil who acts as librarian.

"These in connection with the very handsome and commodious anatomical amphitheater which was built during the preceding season, together with its preparing- and dissecting-rooms, present a suit of lecture-rooms, apartments, etc., not surpassed in point of excellence of light for demonstration, or in ease, comfort, and convenience to the pupil by any similar institution in America. The whole is situated in a pleasant and central part of the town, easily accessible from the chief boarding-houses in the worst weather."[37] [38]

From the time of the reorganization in 1819, the classes in the Medical College increased rapidly—from only twenty, with a single graduate in 1817–18, to two hundred students and fifty-six graduates in the session of 1823–24. A rapid increase in patronage almost unparalleled in the history of medical schools, owing, no doubt, largely to the great increasing demand for medical instruction in this fast improving country and to the temporary extreme difficulty of the journey to the great medical school of Philadelphia, but also to the eclat of the University under the administration of Doctor Holley,[39] to the just fame of Doctor Dudley as a surgeon and medical teacher, to the reputation of Doctor Samuel Brown as a popular and cultivated physician and professor, and to the brilliant and popular talents of Doctor Charles Caldwell.

Doctor Charles Caldwell.

The association of this distinguished professor with the fortunes of the Medical Department of Transylvania, which extended from 1819 to 1837, marked the era of its most rapid development, and embraced a large portion of the time of its greatest prosperity.

The life, character, and writings of Doctor Caldwell are no doubt now well known to the medical profession through the numerous biographical notices which have appeared, especially those by the late Professor Lunsford P. Yandell, M. D., in Lindley's Medical Annals of Tennessee, and as amplified in the Transactions of the Kentucky State Medical Society in its twenty-first annual session in 1876, and other published sketches. But it may also be studied in his somewhat unfortunate Autobiography, which was published in Philadelphia in 1855, two years after his death, edited by the sister of his widow, Miss Harriet W. Warner.

It is said of Titian, that when in his old age he took it into his head to improve some of his best pictures by retouching them, his judicious pupils mixed his paints with olive oil so they would not dry and could be easily washed off again, thus restraining him from marring or destroying his finest works and his fame together. Fortunate would it have been for the venerable Doctor Caldwell had much of this senile production—written only seven or eight years before his death—been canceled by a friendly hand. The too harsh criticisms in which he indulged, which placed some of his late colleagues sharply on the defensive and which also gave them powerful weapons of offense, as well as defense, had then been suppressed!

On Page 315 of this autobiography he characterized the time-honored maxim, "De mortuis nil nisi bonum," as "an ill-founded and dangerous precept." Hence Doctor Yandell, whom he had denounced in this work in the most opprobrious terms, felt justified in his notice of this autobiography in his paper on the Medical Literature of Kentucky, published in the Transactions of the Kentucky State Medical Society, 1876, Page 62, in the following terms: "It is not only egotistical and vainglorious beyond anything, I believe, to be found in the English language, but it is at the same time defamatory. The author holds himself up to admiration on all occasions and everywhere from boyhood to old age a very hero of romance." And literal quotations from the unfortunate volume give support to these allegations.

CHARLES CALDWELL, M. D.

Under the provocation of Doctor Caldwell's posthumous attack, Doctor Yandell defended himself and retorted with the weapons which Doctor Caldwell himself had supplied. But, in later years, not long before his death, Doctor Yandell expressed to the writer, in a friendly letter, something like regret that he had not in this case adhered more closely to that maxim in relation to the dead, above quoted, which Doctor Caldwell had condemned as "ill-founded and dangerous." It must be admitted, however, that the provocation was great.[40]

Doctor Caldwell was born, the youngest son of a large family, May 14, 1772, in Caswell County, North Carolina, and died in Louisville July 9, 1853, in his eighty-third year. His parents had emigrated from Ireland. His father—who was described by Doctor James Blythe, who knew him, as "very poor, and very, very pious"—destined Charles for the Presbyterian ministry. Accordingly he was measurably released from the labor of the farm on which the family lived and was allowed to pursue his studies in a solitary log hut which he had built for himself for the purpose—"his books his chief companions."

He says he commenced to learn the ancient languages at twelve, and was already principal of a literary academy at eighteen. He says further of himself: "From an early period of my life I was actuated by a form of ambition and a love of disquisition and mental contest, which not only marked in me somewhat of a peculiarity of native mind and spirit, but tended also to strengthen them." In his subsequent life he delighted in debates, discussions, and mental contests. He acknowledges (Page 53) an early propensity to array himself in argument "on the wrong side of the question under consideration, in order the more certainly to produce discussion by my advocacy of a paradox, and to make a show of my ingenuity and ability in defense of error."

But, as he acknowledged, "this kind of gladiatorship began to blunt his appreciation of truth as distinguished from error, and hence he endeavored to restrain this impulse"—not always successfully, perhaps.

Although his taste and talents inclined him to the legal profession he was induced to study medicine, somewhat against his own judgment. His medical education was obtained in Philadelphia, in the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, then the only medical college in America, which he entered in 1792, and from which he graduated. While there he industriously employed his time and faculties in study, debate, and discussion, and his pen in numerous publications, the principal of which was a translation of Blumenbach's Elements of Physiology—which he completed before graduation. He managed to antagonize, amongst many others, his medical preceptor, the celebrated Doctor Rush, much to his own detriment, as he in his autobiography acknowledges.

In the following year, 1793, on the outbreak of the yellow fever in Philadelphia, he distinguished himself by his courage and self-sacrifice in voluntarily attending and nursing the sick. And again, by his pen and otherwise, in theoretical discussions on the origin of the pestilence.

According to his own representations and the testimony of his friends, he was exceedingly methodical in his habits, dividing his time with rigorous system; but we may well feel a little skeptical as to his assertion that he "rarely slept more than four hours," and at one time but three hours and a half. His mental activity and labor, however, in his youth, must have been very great. Apart from his necessary studies and his active and constant participation in the discussions of the Medical Society, he delivered more public addresses, for the Society and on other occasions, "than all the other members of the institution united" (Page 254), besides employing his pen in numerous ephemeral productions for the press.

In speaking of his early life in Philadelphia (Page 330) he says: "I was a young man for the scenes in which I had acted; proud and ambitious certainly, and probably not altogether untinctured with vanity.... In truth it is hardly to be denied that, for a time at least, I was somewhat spoiled [by the compliments paid him] on account of my attributes and performances, both mental and corporal.... No wonder, therefore, that I felt, or conceited I felt, a decided superiority to most medical pupils, as well as the ordinary cast of young physicians.... I certainly did both indulge and manifest it to the extent, at times, of giving serious offense." This was not the worst. His bold self-confidence and assertion having placed him in a position of antagonism toward his friend and preceptor, Doctor Rush, as well as toward other influential medical men of Philadelphia, defeated the great ambition of his life—that of occupying the chair of the Institutes of Medicine in the Medical College of the University of Pennsylvania.

When informed by Doctor Rush (Page 290, autobiography) that although his friends spoke in flattering terms of "your talents, attainments, and powers in lecturing and instruction ... they are reluctant to recommend you to the Board of Trustees in the light of a professor," he indignantly declared that "if the door of the University of Pennsylvania was thus closed to him he would soon occupy a chair equally honorable with that of Doctor Rush in some other school." And he shortly thereafter was induced to push his fortunes in the great and growing West.

Coming to Lexington with his shining and commanding talents, his determination to conquer success, and the brilliant reputation he then had as an independent writer and lecturer; to become associated with the yet more brilliant President Holley, and the already well-known and appreciated medical teachers, Doctors Dudley and Brown; at an auspicious time when the rapidly improving country felt the want of medical instruction at home—the rapid success of the Medical Department of Transylvania (to which he materially contributed by his able efforts before the public) might well excuse him in his belief[41] that he had come to Lexington to be the "premier of the school,"[42] that he had come to train and induct his colleagues ("a most miserable Faculty," he calls them) into efficiency and fame, and that the success of medical education in Lexington was due mainly to his individual efforts. Candor obliges us to admit, however, that there is some truth in the statement of the late Professor Yandell, in the memoir above quoted. Doctor Yandell was a student in the Medical Department of Transylvania in 1823, and a most ardent admirer of the brilliant talents of Professor Caldwell, yet he found that both Professors Dudley and Drake were more popular with the students, as teachers, than he. He says (Page 56): "Students, in truth, generally turned listlessly away from his polished discourses on Sympathy, Phrenology,[43] the Vital Principle, and other kindred themes, and hurried off to the lectures on Materia Medica and Anatomy."[44]

In short, Doctor Caldwell excelled in the brilliant discussion of speculative and theoretical subjects. The extent of his positive knowledge, as remarked by Doctor Yandell, was greater in superficial area than in depth; whilst in the terse and lucid exposition of definite facts, which characterized the instruction of Professor Dudley, the student felt he was acquiring knowledge which not only was real but was of practical utility.

The history of the rise and fall of this school of medicine is illustrated in the detailed list of its classes and graduates as shown in the annexed Schedule B.

The total number of students in the Medical School of Transylvania during the term of its existence was, as far as can now be ascertained, more than six thousand four hundred (6,456); the total number of its medical graduates eighteen hundred and eighty-one (1,881).[45] During the late civil war the commodious Medical Hall of Transylvania, built in 1839 by the munificence of the city of Lexington, and which had been seized by the United States Government for use as a United States General Hospital, was destroyed by fire while occupied for that purpose.[46] But the medical library,[47] apparatus and museum, etc., were mainly preserved, and are now in the custody of the Curators of Kentucky University, with which institution old Transylvania University was consolidated in 1865, "all the trusts and conditions" of her property being preserved in the Act of Consolidation.

The Medical Department may yet be resuscitated when in the course of events our city again becomes an eligible site for modern medical instruction, and when special means can be obtained properly to equip and re-establish it on a basis suited to the existing times.

The gradual decline of this school, like its rapid rise, was due greatly to the changing conditions of the country. When, shortly after 1812, steamboat navigation began to manifest its superiority and influence on the channels of commerce, population and business deserted measurably the interior routes and locations and transferred themselves to the river valleys and neighborhoods. Gradually during this change—notwithstanding the talents, ability, and fame of our Brown, Dudley, Caldwell, Cooke, Short, Yandell, Bartlett, Mitchell, Smith, and others, and the generous support of the city—the school declined; more especially because of the establishment of rival colleges at more eligible points, in growing and populous cities. Lexington lost its pre-eminence as the "Metropolis of the Western Country," and Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and other places which had been villages supplied with her manufactures, rapidly became great cities; while she declined from a population of about eight thousand in 1814, down to a little over four thousand in 1820, with an immense loss to her citizens in the value of her property and the destruction of her industries. In this year (1820) the population of Cincinnati, which in 1810 had been only two thousand, three hundred and twenty, had risen to nine thousand, six hundred and forty-four; and in 1830, when the population of Lexington was yet only five thousand, six hundred and sixty-two, that of Cincinnati was twenty-four thousand, eight hundred and thirty-one. When the present writer came to Lexington in 1832 the population had remained nearly the same, and an era of decrepitude and decline of all her industries still prevailed. Lexington had not yet finished her first railroad.

This railroad, the "Lexington & Ohio," was begun in 1831 and completed as far as Frankfort—twenty-eight miles—in 1835. It was composed of stone sills laid side by side, with a dressed surface on the portion upon which the wheels were to run. The cars resembled an old pattern of street car and were drawn by horses.

The imposing ceremony of laying the first "stone sill" took place on Water Street, October 21, 1831, "amid a vast throng of people." Indeed, it was made a very great occasion, which might have been marked with still greater pomp and circumstance, as the newspapers inform us, had "more notice been given beforehand." As it was, a large procession, civic and military, was formed, marshaled by General Leslie Combs, the renowned "boy-captain of 1812," assisted by handsome James B. Coleman. Three military companies, including "Hunt's Artillery" and "Captain Neet's Rifle Guards," were on parade with a fine military band playing "Yankee Doodle," "Hail, Columbia," and other patriotic airs. Major-General Pendleton and staff, on horseback, led the march. Governor Metcalfe and Reverend Nathan H. Hall supported the orator of the day. The Trustees of the town, the President and Directors of the railroad, the President and all the officers and Trustees of Transylvania University, and all the societies of the University and of the town, were in line. "At eleven o'clock," says the Lexington Reporter, "the three military companies which formed the escort marched from the place of rendezvous to the college lawn, where they were met by the various societies and individuals. For many years we have not witnessed such a pageant, and never a more interesting.

"The procession first moved in a circle around the lawn where it was formed, at which time the bells in the various churches in town commenced a merry peal which continued till the procession reached the place where the ceremony was performed. The military escort then formed a hollow square, within which the whole civic procession was enclosed. Thousands of anxious and delighted spectators were on the outside, among whom we were gratified to see a large concourse of ladies, for whose accommodation the marshal had directed the adjacent market-house to be appropriated.

"Doctor Caldwell then delivered a highly interesting and appropriate address.

"A Federal salute was fired at sunrise, and seven guns when the first stone sill was laid, indicating the seven sections of the road under contract."

Doctor Caldwell spoke in polished and eloquent phrase of the advantages accruing to Lexington and the whole adjacent country from the establishment of this road. He prophesied also great benefit to Louisville therefrom.

We learn from the same old newspaper that Doctor Caldwell was announced to deliver a lecture, a few evenings later, at the first meeting of the "Lexington Lyceum," at the court house. The subject of the lecture was "The Moral and Incidental Influences of Railroads." "Ladies and strangers" were invited to attend.

But in later days, in competition with the steamboat, the newer and swifter mode of transportation—the railroad—has been gradually but surely restoring to the inland regions, and to Lexington, their lost prosperity. Our city has steadily risen to about seventeen thousand (1873), with a good prospect of a further increase of prosperity and population as railroads centering here may be extended. Then may we hope to put into active operation once more our time-honored Medical College, and to attract to it a creditable number of students. More particularly if, with the co-operation of the more enlightened members of our profession, an effort be faithfully made in the renovated college to bring about the much-needed reform in medical education, the necessity for which is now generally recognized. So that the mere fact of a student attending two courses of lectures, with other somewhat easy requisitions, may not entitle him to the degree of Doctor of Medicine, as has been too frequently the case amongst competing medical colleges. That full preparation and training, in a sufficient period of time, shall be required of the candidates into whose hands the health and lives of communities are to be committed. On such a basis—when our city may have acquired increased facilities for clinical instruction, and when anatomical studies will not be cramped for want of means of demonstration—the old Medical College of Transylvania may revive under the wing of a people's educational institution such as Transylvania is and always was—a "State University."

Difficulties in the procurement of a sufficient supply of material for anatomical instruction, coupled with the demand for clinical teaching which was beginning to be urged by the profession, forced themselves on the attention of the Medical Faculty of Transylvania before the year 1836–37. But in that year a determined effort was made, engineered and led by Professor Caldwell, to remove the Medical College to Louisville, that city having been induced by the earnest and eloquent appeals of Caldwell to offer it a large bonus. But for the early withdrawal of Doctor Dudley from this promising scheme, toward which he was at first inclined—because mainly of his difficulties in the supply of anatomical material—it would have been successful. But Doctor Dudley finally declined to remove, much to the mortification of Doctor Caldwell, who, in his last valedictory to the graduates of 1837, indulged in a very bitter impersonal-personal tirade against deception and mendacity, aimed at Doctor Dudley—not saying openly to his colleague "thou art the man"—but hoping "the cap would fit him" and find its place. The Trustees of the University, of course, and influential citizens, violently opposed the proposed change. Doctor Caldwell was arraigned before the Board on charges preferred by Doctor Dudley, the principal of which was that he had been engaged in the enterprise of originating a rival medical college in Louisville while he was yet a professor in the Transylvania College and under oath to support it. Doctor Caldwell, disdaining to answer the summons of the Board, was, after a long and full investigation of the evidence, dismissed from his chair in Transylvania. The Medical Faculty was then dissolved and reorganized.[48]

Doctors Cooke and Yandell, and finally Doctor Short, joined Doctor Caldwell to aid in the establishment of the Louisville Medical Institute. Professors Dudley and Richardson and the assistant professors, Bush and Peter, remained in Lexington. The celebrated Professor John Eberle was called to the chair of Theory and Practice, but he died shortly after the delivery of his introductory lecture. Professor Thomas D. Mitchell was appointed to the chair of Chemistry, etc., and Doctor James C. Cross to that of the Institutes of Medicine.[49]

Doctor John Esten Cooke

Removed from Virginia in 1827 to fill the chair of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in Transylvania University, which had just been vacated by Doctor Drake. He had already acquired a high reputation as a practitioner of medicine; he had published an able essay on autumnal fever in the Medical Recorder for 1824, and had in the same year produced the first volume of his very remarkable Treatise on Pathology and Therapeutics, the second volume of which he published in Lexington in 1828. The promised third volume, which was to complete the work, never appeared. He remained in Transylvania Medical School until 1837, when, under the leadership of Doctor Caldwell, he with Doctor Yandell, removed to Louisville to engage in originating a new medical college, the "Louisville Medical Institute." In this and in its successor, the "Medical Department of the Louisville University," he remained until a few years before his death, which occurred on his farm on the Ohio River above Louisville, October 19, 1853, in the seventy-first year of his age.

DOCTOR JOHN ESTEN COOKE.
From a Photograph.

Doctor Cooke was in many respects a remarkable man, who acquired a widespread reputation in this country, especially in the Mississippi Valley. His fame was mainly built on his celebrated theory of the universal origin of disease, which was, that disease was caused by cold or malaria. That especially it commenced in weakened action of the heart, resulting in congestion of the vena cava, its branches and capillary distribution, and that fever was but the reaction of the vital force to overcome this condition, which unrelieved would result in death. According to him, all autumnal and malarial fevers were but variations of one diseased condition, and even those fearful scourges the plague, cholera, yellow fever, dysentery, etc., were simply varied forms and conditions of congestion of the vena cava.

To destroy this many-headed hydra—while he would use cold water to reduce too great febrile excitement and even sometimes give antimonial wine[50]—his main reliance was on blood-letting and cholagogue purgatives, as he believed it was by increasing the secretion of the liver and causing it to pour out consistent "black bile" that the venous congestion was to be relieved and the patient cured.

Amongst all these remedies calomel was his chief reliance, and was given by him in doses not measured by the balance but by the effect they produced; so that in the latter days of practice—notably during the epidemic of cholera in Lexington in 1833—he absolutely resorted to tablespoonful doses of this mercurial, repeated pro re nata; actually giving about one pound in one day to a young patient, without fatal result.

Two cases may be quoted from his own paper in the Transylvania Medical Journal, and from Doctor Yandell's Memoir of Doctor Cooke in the American Practitioner for July, 1875. "William Douglass, a student of theology, nineteen years of age, took a tablespoonful (about two ounces) every six hours for three days in succession, having taken the same quantity the evening before; in all, thirteen tablespoonfuls. He was in collapse when he took the first dose. On the third morning after beginning this treatment his discharges were found to have become thick and green, and Doctor Cooke thought he would have recovered but for the indiscretion of his attendant, who had him to walk across a large room from one bed to another more than once. Hiccough came on, the patient became delirious, and died on the sixth day. But another patient recovered about this time under similar treatment, and still lives, I believe—a useful Episcopal clergyman, and an illustration of the extent to which calomel may be employed in some diseases without injury to health. Mr. Brittan, a young theological student, took a tablespoonful of calomel soon after having had several copious watery discharges. He was advised to repeat the dose every six hours, until the watery discharges ceased. He took, that day, four and on the next, three of these doses; the discharges not ceasing until some time after the seventh dose had been taken. He took, moreover, three similar doses during the same time—having thrown up three. The repeated doses were given immediately after the regular ones were thrown up. Bilious discharges appeared on the evening of the second day, and were kept up by tincture of aloes and occasionally pills of aloes and rhubarb for a week. The patient was somewhat salivated, but recovered. I saw him a number of years afterwards in perfect health."

Doctor Yandell asserts in this memoir that in this "extraordinary practice, Doctor Cooke was not less successful in the treatment of cholera than his medical brethren in Lexington." But the fact was that none were very successful and that as many as fifty died in a day of a population of a little over six thousand.[51] The writer recollects that Doctor Cooke only practiced in the earlier period of this famous epidemic, having been disabled by a fall in attempting, in his hurry to attend a professional call, to put on his coat while running down stairs.

In another case of cholera which occurred at this time, as the present writer was informed by the intelligent and truthful brother of the young lady patient of Doctor Cooke, these large tablespoonful doses passed through the bowels apparently unchanged, being discharged in lumps as large as pullets' eggs, without being even dissolved. This patient did not recover.

Calomel is well known to be practically insoluble in pure water at the common temperature. It is decomposed to a certain extent by the action of light, or by a moderate heat in the presence of water, and especially by the aid of acids of various kinds, and by certain salts such as alkaline and other soluble chlorides—especially potassium, sodium, and ammonium chlorides.

In all these cases of partial decomposition some of the mercurous chloride—the calomel—is changed into soluble mercuric chloride and metallic mercury. This decomposition is supposed to result from the action of the alkaline chlorides and the chloro-hydric and other acids of the gastric juice when calomel is taken into the stomach under ordinary circumstances. It is believed that the activity of the calomel depends mainly on the amount of this decomposition which takes place in the body.

Especially does this partial decomposition of calomel into corrosive sublimate occur, to a great extent, when it is mixed in water with sal-ammoniac (ammonium chloride), as has been experienced in cases of poisoning by the administration of even moderate doses of calomel which had been mixed with this salt. In an experiment by the present writer in which three tenths of a gram of calomel and one and two tenths of a gram of sal-ammoniac with ten grams of water were allowed to react at the common temperature for twenty-four hours, as much as 0.019 of a gram of corrosive sublimate was found.

No doubt these facts throw much light on the very irregular action of calomel in different persons and under various conditions, in doses which may be very small or very large. We can easily understand how, when the stomach secretes no gastric juice and when the salts of the blood have been greatly reduced in quantity by watery purging as in cholera, the calomel may pass through the alimentary canal unchanged, insoluble and inactive, or exert a doubtful topical action only.

The present writer's own experience—when he was a medical student, and when fully impressed by the sincere and logical teachings of Doctor Cooke, who, however halting and hesitating may have been his manner or unadorned his style of lecturing, always commanded the fixed attention and highest respect of his pupils—soon opened his eyes to the faults in the theory of the professor.

On one occasion, having been brought into a somewhat febrile condition by fatigue in a botanical excursion in hot weather, and having full faith in the statements of Doctor Cooke to the effect that calomel was of all antifebrile remedies the best, and that while a small dose of calomel might prove irritating a good large dose "would sometimes act like an opiate," he took a one drachm dose in full confidence. But instead of the soothing, curative effect he had been led to expect, vomiting and severe irritation of the stomach resulted, so much so that no food but boiled milk could be tolerated for a week or so afterward. Shaken in his faith by his first experience, but not yet convinced of the error of the doctrine of his respected preceptor, the second trial of a drachm dose on a similar occasion completely satisfied him that something wrong had crept into the theory and practice of the honored professor.

Doctor Cooke's only fear in his heroic use of calomel was that it would salivate. But for this untoward influence, he said, one might do almost anything with it. That this substance which, in cases of cholera, he administered so largely with no signs of irritation or salivation, until the patient was in a convalescent state, should sometimes in much smaller doses prove an irritant poison, he did not understand. A quotation from Doctor Yandell's Memoir, Page 7, illustrates this: "In some cases of fever Doctor Cooke administered a drachm of calomel at a dose, and repeated it until the patient had taken in twenty-four hours as much as two hundred and forty grains. A young lady was thus treated in 1826. After this quantity had been given she seemed much relieved, but to avert the danger of salivation he thought it prudent to administer jalap and cream of tartar. At night they were thrown up, without producing any purgative effect. She then took a drachm of calomel, and repeated it until she had taken five doses in the course of the night and morning, with the same fine effect in producing abundant bilious discharges, and a remarkably good effect on the symptoms generally." Still uneasy about ptyalism, he gave her cream of tartar all day, but at night it was thrown up as before, without moving the bowels. "My fears of the consequence of giving the only medicine which offered any prospect of saving her," he adds, "held my hand, and she continued to vomit till death relieved her. I reproached myself on her account afterward, and felt conscious that fear of a remote and uncertain evil had induced me to stand and see her die without doing all I might have done. I was convinced she would not have died had the calomel been continued."

After she had thus taken more than an ounce of calomel he honestly believed that he had not given her enough of this medicine! Entirely ignoring the action of the cream of tartar in bringing this substance partly into the condition of a soluble irritant poison!

To convince myself of this decomposing action of cream of tartar on calomel, I placed about a drachm of calomel in each of two small beaker glasses. In the one I put pure distilled water, in the other I added to the water about a drachm of cream of tartar. Heating them to about blood heat and allowing them to stand for a few hours, I filtered both liquids from the undissolved calomel. Ammonium sulphide, added to the filtered fluids, threw down from that which contained the cream of tartar a sensible amount of dark mercurial sulphide, while that which contained pure water gave no notable reaction. Evidently the cream of tartar had caused the decomposition of some of the insoluble calomel and had produced a soluble mercurial compound. All soluble compounds of mercury are active poisons in small doses, while, as was fully proven by Doctor Cooke's extraordinary practice with this substance, pure unchanged calomel is one of the most insoluble substances. Consequently it sometimes proved harmless in very large doses, as was the case when the copious watery discharges of cholera had removed most of the salts of the blood.

The Doctor took no note of possible agencies which might make his master remedy occasionally poisonous, and scouted the careful practice of some of the older physicians in causing their patients to abstain from the use of common salt while taking calomel, a recommendation based upon valid experience, no doubt, which science has verified.

The Doctor rose to two ounces, or tablespoonful doses, during the prevalence of Asiatic cholera in Lexington, but he did not confine this treatment to that fearful disease. The present writer has preserved one of the last of his mammoth doses—one of a dozen of the same weight (about an ounce)—which he prescribed for a medical student of the session of 1836–37, the subject of pneumonia, and who took eleven such doses in regular succession before he died.

In Doctor Cooke's earlier practice, and in the treatment of less severe cases, he relied greatly on his famous pills—well known in the region of Lexington as "Cooke's Pills"—composed of equal parts of calomel, aloes, and rhubarb; or on tincture of aloes and the lancet, with the occasional use of a few other remedies. These constituted his sole armament with which to encounter disease. For he was a man of the strictest and most earnest honesty, sincerity, and zeal, and withal so wedded to his logical convictions that he would at any time have died a martyr to his well-matured beliefs. Indeed, according to the testimony of his friend, the late Lunsford P. Yandell, he seems thus to have been to some extent a martyr to his own theory and practice.

On Page 22 of Doctor Yandell's Memoir of Doctor Cooke, we are informed that "his practice on himself was of the same heroic character that he pursued with his patients. He bled himself at once copiously and repeated the operation again and again as symptoms appeared to him to demand it, at the same time keeping up purgation with calomel. Exposed as he was on his farm, these attacks became frequent and his constitution, naturally enfeebled by increasing years, at length gave way under them."

Again, on Page 27 of the same Memoir, Doctor Yandell says: "The perfect sincerity with which he held his opinions was evinced by his carrying out his practice in his own case. On one occasion this was near costing him his life. He was seized with intermittent fever, on his farm near Louisville in the fall of 1844, and for several days took his pills—composed of calomel, rhubarb, and aloes—in the confident belief that they would arrest the disease; but the chills continued to recur with an increasing tendency to congestion until at last his case became alarming. His old friend, General Mercer, of Virginia, who happened to be on a visit to him at the time, called on me and gave me an account of his situation, asking me to visit him. Doctor Cooke was reluctant to take quinine, but finally consented and was relieved, and afterward, I believe, used the remedy in his practice."

A characteristic anecdote is recorded of him in Collins' History of Kentucky. "One Sunday morning, waiting on some of his family to get ready for church—the Methodist church, of which he and they were members—he picked up a discourse by the Reverend Doctor Chapman, then Episcopal clergyman of Lexington. The argument for the Old Church of England attracted his attention. He perused and studied it fully, sent for all the available authorities on the subject; studied them with such effect that at once he changed his communion to the Episcopal Church and was ever after a rigid and zealous pillar to that church, and an industrious student of the writings of the theological fathers."

His logic, on which he based his medical theory and practice, is most elaborately set forth in his only large work, already mentioned—A Treatise of Pathology and Therapeutics—and was tersely summed up by a most zealous believer and pupil of his[52] as follows: "If all diseases result from congestion of the vena cava, and if calomel is the best and most reliable remedy, what is the use of applying to any other means?"

Because of its simplicity and its apparently logical basis, the system of Doctor Cooke was very attractive to students of medicine. If true—and they could not doubt it—it was a great new discovery of a royal road to medical practice which avoided all the drudgery over pathology, chemistry, the materia medica and therapeutics of the old school. All ordinary diseases were a unit produced by a common cause, and calomel was the principal panacea!

But alas! the logical system of Doctor Cooke, like many other beautiful and well-laid superstructures, failed in this essential thing—the foundation on which it was raised was not true.

Logical minds too often willingly lay down or accept assumptions, or uncertain facts, as axioms, and are satisfied if the deductions from these are logically accurate and perfect. Doctor Cooke, in a slow and laborious way, took infinite pains to build up his logical superstructure. The writer recollects his illustration of logical connections, by means of certain pieces of wood united by strings; and, notwithstanding his unadorned style and slow and hesitating manner, his students—carried away by his well-known truthfulness, sincerity, and earnest zeal, and incapable of judging for themselves of the validity of his premises—accepted his doctrine as a new revelation and were almost unanimously his ardent followers until experience or more ample knowledge opened their eyes to its faults.

Before he removed from Transylvania School to the new one in Louisville in 1837, severe criticisms of his teachings had been published. Indeed it had begun to be believed by some that these teachings were marring the prosperity of that old college. Soon after his removal to Louisville, we are told by Doctor Yandell, "the current which from the first had set in against his theory and practice grew every year more formidable" until "assailed on all sides, and from within as well as from without, his theory steadily lost ground, his practice grew more unpopular and his influence as a teacher visibly declined from the day he began to lecture in Louisville."[53] So that in 1843 he was, on petition of the students, retired on a three years' pension of two thousand dollars per annum.

Besides the two volumes of his Pathology and Therapeutics he published a small work on Autumnal Diseases, and a number of medical papers in The Transylvania Journal of Medicine, of which he was one of the original editors. The congestive theory of disease had its short day, like many others which have floated like bubbles on the stream of medical progress. We remember it as one of the curiosities of medical literature.[54]

Doctor Charles Wilkins Short

Was born in Woodford County, Kentucky, at "Greenfields," October 6, 1794. He connected himself with the Medical Department of Transylvania University in 1825. He had been called by the Trustees in a previous year to the chair of Materia Medica and Medical Botany, but did not at once accept.

Doctor Short was a most upright, conscientious, modest, undemonstrative gentleman of great delicacy of feeling. He was a most zealous and industrious botanist, and was possessed of artistic tastes and ability.

One of his greatest pleasures was in his extensive herbarium, rich with the native plants of Kentucky collected by himself, as well as with those from other regions obtained by the exchange of specimens with the various botanists of the world, with whom he corresponded individually and extensively. He, in conjunction with Professors H. H. Eaton, H. A. Griswold, and R. Peter, contributed to the Transylvania Journal of Medicine several papers on the plants of Kentucky,[55] and wrote for that periodical several papers on this subject and on medical topics, as well as numerous obituary notices of medical men. He was not the author of any large treatise.

In addition to his notices and catalogues of Kentucky plants he published in the Transylvania Medical Journal:

"Instructions for Gathering and Preservation of Plants in Herbaria."

"Botanical Bibliography." 1835.

"A Brief Historical Sketch of the Origin and Progress of Cholera Asphyxia." 1835.

"A Sketch of the Progress of Botany in Western America."

In 1845, he wrote "Observations of the Botany of Illinois," published in the Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery.

In the early volumes of the Transylvania Journal also appeared his notices of two remarkable cases which occurred in Lexington. One, of supposed spontaneous combustion of the human body, and the other of paralysis of the kidneys.

At his death his vast collection of botanical specimens, in the formation of which he took such delight, and to which he had devoted so great a portion of his life, was bequeathed to the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, but there was no appropriate place there in which to display so large a collection. It is now in possession of the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia. During his life no less than five of the distinguished botanists of the age honored his name by attaching it to six new genera and species of plants.

DOCTOR CHARLES WILKINS SHORT.

His lectures to the medical students on Materia Medica and Medical Botany he always read from his manuscript, which detracted somewhat from his impressiveness. He was too modest to trust himself to oral discourses.[56] Yet his pupils were always closely attentive and respectful, holding him and his teachings in high esteem.[57]

He was Dean of the Medical Faculty in Transylvania for about ten years.

For some years he was co-editor of the Transylvania Journal of Medicine with Doctor Cooke. This quarterly they founded in Lexington in 1828.

Doctor Short severed his connection with the Transylvania Medical School in 1838 to be allied with Doctors Caldwell, Cooke, and Yandell in the Medical Institute of Louisville,[58] in which he remained until 1849, when his colleagues elected him Emeritus Professor of Materia Medica and Botany. He died at his beautiful country residence, "Hayfield," near Louisville, on March 7, 1863, aged sixty-nine years.

Doctor Short's father was Peyton Short, who came to Kentucky from Surry County, Virginia, and whose mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Skipwith, Baronet. His mother was Mary, daughter of John Cleves Symmes, formerly of Long Island, who filled various offices of honor and trust in Cincinnati. His sister was the wife of Doctor Benjamin Winslow Dudley. His brother was the late Judge John Cleves Short, of North Bend, Ohio. He married Mary Henry Churchill, only daughter of Armistead and Jane Henry Churchill. Of his six children—one son and five daughters—all were prosperous in life.

The early education of Doctor Short was in the school of the celebrated Joshua Fry, and, in 1810, he graduated with honor in the Academical Department of Transylvania University, beginning soon afterward the study of medicine with his uncle, Professor Frederick Ridgely. He repaired to Philadelphia in 1813 and became a private pupil of Doctor Casper Wistar, Professor of Anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania, in which university Doctor Short received the degree of Doctor of Medicine in the spring of 1815, returning shortly after to Kentucky. Doctor Short was a consistent member of the Presbyterian church.[59]

Professor Lunsford Pitts Yandell, Senior, M. D.

Was called to the chair of Chemistry and Pharmacy in the Medical Department of Transylvania University, March 16, 1831.[60] He had attended the course of lectures in that school in 1822–23, having previously acquired a good general and classical education in the Bradley Academy, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and having studied medicine some time with his father, Doctor Wilson Yandell, a physician of high standing.

While attending the lectures in the Transylvania Medical College he became favorably known as a young man of industry, good attainments, and ability, and of popular manners. Especially was he a favorite pupil of Professor Charles Caldwell, who became his ardent friend, and through whose active influence, mainly, he was called in 1831—after he had received the degree of M. D. from the University of Maryland—to occupy the Chemical chair in the Transylvania School.

Although he had been a good and apt scholar in his preliminary education, he had never devoted especial attention to chemistry, which at that time, notwithstanding the neglect or opposition of the older medical teachers—notably the ridicule of Professor Caldwell and others—was beginning to be recognized as an essential element of a good medical education.

This want of special training and experience in this branch of science on his part naturally caused opposition to his appointment to this chair, which was allayed by making the late Hezekiah Hulbert Eaton, A. M., professor adjunct to the Chemical chair, and giving him one third of the tuition fees.

Professor Eaton was a young man of fine attainments and thorough practical training in chemistry and natural science generally; a graduate of Rensselaer Institute of Troy, New York, under the administration of his father, the celebrated Amos Eaton.[61]

Adjunct Professor Eaton died of consumption at the age of twenty-three, before the end of the first year; but during the short term of his service he had, by his industry and practical knowledge, greatly improved the means of instruction in the Chemical Department by a complete reorganization of the laboratory and the procurement of much new apparatus, etc.[62]

DOCTOR LUNSFORD P. YANDELL, SENIOR.

After the death of Professor Eaton, August 16, 1832, the present writer, then residing in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, who had also been a student in the Rensselaer Institute and consequently known to Professor Eaton, was persuaded by the late Reverend Benjamin Orr Peers to visit Lexington, Kentucky, to deliver a course of chemical lectures in the Eclectic Institute, of which Mr. Peers was principal and of which young Professor Eaton had been a professor. During this course, in 1832, the writer was induced by Professor Yandell, by private arrangement, to assist him in his next course of lectures to the medical students of Transylvania and to commence the regular study of medicine with a view to graduation.

Under this arrangement, which continued until the disruption of the Medical Faculty in 1837, Doctor Yandell, in his usual able and brilliant manner, delivered the chemical lectures to the students, while to the writer was committed the preparation and performance of the demonstrative experimental part.

On his removal to Louisville in 1837, to join in the establishment of the rival school, the Louisville Medical Institute, Doctor Yandell taught in the combined chairs of Chemistry and Materia Medica, never failing ably and impressively to perform this arduous duty. Not having any particular taste for so severe a study as practical chemistry, although no one was more impressed with the philosophical beauty and wide practical value of the science, he naturally sought a transfer to a chair more congenial with his tastes and the character of his mind than that of chemistry. This, circumstances prevented until, in 1849, the Trustees of the school—having come to the conclusion that Professor Caldwell had become superannuated—placed Doctor Yandell in the chair of Physiology, for which subject he had a decided taste. This change procured him the animosity of his whilom friend, Doctor Caldwell, who, in his rather unfortunate Autobiography written in his last declining years, indulged in much bitter denunciation of his late colleague. It is much to the credit of Doctor Yandell that, although when this angry publication was fresh from the press he retaliated by showing in ample quotations from the Autobiography some of the weak points in Doctor Caldwell's character, he was disposed in following years, as the writer knows, to extend over these weaknesses the mantle of kindness.

Doctor Yandell occupied this chair of Physiology with great credit until he resigned, in 1859, to accept a chair in the Medical School of Memphis, Tennessee. During the Civil War he devoted himself to hospital service. In 1862, he was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Memphis, and in 1864 was ordained pastor of the Dancyville Presbyterian church. He resigned his pastorship in 1867, and returned to Louisville to resume the practice of medicine, which he had never entirely abandoned during the whole of his professional life.

While resident in Lexington he was for some years sole editor of the Transylvania Journal of Medicine, to which he contributed several able papers. In Louisville he was editor for some time of the Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery, in both cases filling the editorial chair with characteristic activity and ability. He was always a contributor to the medical literature of his day in numerous papers, especially in biographical sketches and obituary memoirs of medical men of Kentucky and Tennessee, a more complete collection of which he was said to be preparing at the time of his last illness. He held a facile pen; few writers of our times have produced more classical and graceful essays. As a public speaker and lecturer he was ever impressive, graceful, and chaste. His social qualities made him always welcome and prominent in all public assemblies of his medical brethren. In 1872, he was elected President of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Louisville, and at the time of his death he was President of the Medical Society of Kentucky. His decease occurred February 4, 1878, in the seventy-third year of his age.

Doctor Robert Peter,

Though of foreign birth, came of that same class of British ancestry which has given the United States her representative Americans, Virginia her great men, our own State her typical Kentuckians. Born at Launceston, Cornwall, January 21, 1805, he was a member of the Peter family of Devon and Essex, which produced in former times the remarkable Sir William Peter or Petre, to which has been ascribed the noted Hugh Peter or Peters, and from which collaterally are descended the present Lords Bathurst and Petre. Robert Peter came to America with his parents, Robert and Johanna Dawe Peter, and their six other children, when twelve years old, landing at Baltimore and later settling at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. The father, it seems, succeeded in none of his money-making enterprises in the new country, and Robert had early to support himself and to contribute something to the maintenance of the family. He was placed in Charles Avery's wholesale drug store at Pittsburg and there received a first-rate business education, while diligently cultivating his decided taste for chemistry. In 1828, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. The same year, after attending one session (by especial request) at the Rensselaer Institute Scientific School at Troy, New York, he acquired the title of "Lecturer on the Natural Sciences,"[63] and delivered a course of chemical lectures to a small class in Pittsburg, was a member of the Hesperian Society and contributed to its organ, The Hesperus, numerous papers, scientific, literary, and poetical. In 1829, as member of the Pittsburg Philosophical Society, he gave a course of lectures on the Natural Sciences before that Society. In 1830–31, he lectured on Chemistry in the Western University of Pennsylvania. In 1832, he came to Lexington, Kentucky, somewhat reluctantly, at the urgent insistence of Reverend Benjamin O. Peers, to be associated with him in the proprietorship of his "Eclectic Institute," at that place, and to deliver a course of lectures in the Institute.[64]