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Title: The History of the Medical Department of Transylvania University

Author: Robert Peter

Editor: Johanna Peter

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Most recently updated: March 15, 2025

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY
OF THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF TRANSYLVANIA
UNIVERSITY ***

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
PAGE
Doctor
Robert Peter Frontispiece
Doctor
Samuel
Brown 8
Doctor
Benjamin
W. Dudley 16
Doctor
James
Overton 28
Doctor
William H.
Richardson 32
Daniel
Drake, M.
D. 40
Charles
Caldwell,
M. D. 48
Doctor John
Esten Cooke 64
Doctor
Charles
Wilkins
Short 80
Doctor
Lunsford P.
Yandell,
Senior 84

Doctor
James M.
Bush 116
Doctor
Ethelbert L.
Dudley 132
Doctor
Henry
Martyn
Skillman 144
Transylvania
University 156
Absolom
Driver 162

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]

While thus engaged, Professor Peter was induced by Doctor Yandell, Professor of Chemistry, to accept
the duties of adjunct to the chair of Chemistry, a position made vacant by the death of Professor H. H.
Eaton, August 16, 1832.

On March 16, 1833, he was unanimously elected to the chair of Chemistry in Morrison College,
Transylvania University, being installed on the occasion of the dedication of that college, November 4,
1833, when the oath of office was administered to Mr. Peers as Proctor of Morrison College and
President pro tem. of the University. Professor Peter then studied medicine in Transylvania, receiving
his diploma March 18, 1834. He was present during the terrible epidemic of cholera in Lexington in
1833, and with Doctor Yandell attended the first case—that of a Mr. Henry. Though a successful
practitioner, Doctor Peter, like Doctor Short, had a distaste for the life of a physician, and soon retired to
more congenial scientific labors. On October 6, 1835, he married Frances Paca, eldest daughter of
Major William S. Dallam. In 1838,[65] he was elected to the chair of Chemistry and Pharmacy in
Transylvania Medical Department, and, until the close of the school in 1857, was honorably connected
with it. From 1847 to the end, in 1857, he was chosen Dean of the Faculty, being Librarian as well. In
1839, with Doctor James M. Bush, Doctor Peter spent most of the summer in London and Paris
purchasing books, apparatus, and other means of instruction for the Medical Department.[66] After
hearing numerous lectures by famous doctors, and after visiting the model hospitals, etc., of the day, he
writes to his wife (Paris, June 27, 1839): "We can have as great men [in Lexington] as either of those
cities [London and Paris], and neither of them contains a man as eminent in surgery as Doctor Dudley";
and from London, August 11, 1839: "We have bought a great many fine books and a great deal of
excellent apparatus and anatomical and other models. Transylvania will shine. No other institution in
our part of the world will be able to compare with her in the means of instruction. In fact, I have seen
none in Europe that is more completely prepared to teach modern medicine."[67]
Daguerre, in 1839, had just published the process of his wonderful art, and it constituted perhaps the
greatest novelty in Paris at the time of the sojourn there of Doctor Bush and Doctor Peter; so along with
the apparatus for Transylvania was brought to Lexington a daguerreotype outfit which surely must have
been the first ever seen in that city, if not the first ever used in the West. This primitive camera and its
accompaniments, which Doctor Peter showed to his classes many years after, can still be found, it is
supposed, among the old Transylvania possessions preserved at the Kentucky University.
On his return from Europe Doctor Peter engaged in much valuable chemical research for the benefit of
medical science, notably his examinations of calculi, published in 1846.[68] He also, in 1846,
experimented with the then newly discovered explosive, gun-cotton, and with pyroxyline made from
paper and other materials. His chemical research and teachings all were now and invariably along
practical lines. Leaving theory to others, his own endeavors were in anticipation of useful results in
practice. Quick to adopt new views when properly sustained by facts, he was highly appreciative of
improved methods, a trait strikingly displayed when, in his old age, the most radical changes
revolutionized the methods of chemical work. Laying aside the long-familiar doctrines, practiced since
his far-distant youth, he took up the new with an ease—even alacrity—hardly excelled by contemporary
chemists of a younger generation. In his early days he experimented much with electricity—then little
understood. He gave much attention to geology, mineralogy, zoology, and botany. Associated with
Doctor Charles W. Short and Professor Henry A. Griswold, he made important botanical explorations.
[69]
His fine herbarium, including specimens exchanged for with leading European botanists, he gave in
after years to the Kentucky State Agricultural and Mechanical College. Doctor Lewis Rogers, in his
address as President to the Kentucky State Medical Society, 1878, says: "In the interesting departments
of Botany and Chemistry, Doctor Charles Wilkins Short and Doctor Peter are known throughout the
scientific world. As teachers, the modest, almost shrinking manner, the seemingly acerb dignity, and
Addisonian style of the one and the lucid expositions and brilliant illustrations of the other, must be
remembered by all who ever listened to them." In 1850–53, Doctor Peter filled with distinction the chair
of Chemistry in the newly founded Kentucky School of Medicine at Louisville, since so successful. On
October 19, 1853, at the third meeting of the Kentucky Medical Society at Lexington, he proposed to
memorialize the legislature in regard to the establishment of a Geological Survey of Kentucky.
Accordingly, he prepared such a memorial (in connection with his "Report on the Relation of Forms of

Disease to the Geological Formation of a Region"), accompanied by a geological map, colored by
himself.[70] In consequence of this memorial, which was unanimously sanctioned by the several
agricultural societies of the State, the first Geological Survey of Kentucky—which was also the first
large State enterprise of the kind undertaken in the West—was begun in 1854, under the able and
experienced direction of Doctor David Dale Owen. While chemist to this survey, Doctor Peter
demonstrated what previously he had sturdily maintained and ably argued—that by soil analysis could
be determined the elements necessary to increase and preserve the fertility of soils.[71] He was probably
the first in America to apply quantitative and qualitative analysis in this manner—certainly the first to
apply it to any great extent. He proved by numerous analyses that chemical analysis as practiced by him
was capable of showing the deterioration of soils by long cultivation. He did this by comparing the
composition of the virgin soil with that of soil taken from a near-by old field.[72] The amount of
chemical work accomplished by Doctor Peter in the Kentucky Survey seems wellnigh impossible when
it is considered that at the same time he lectured daily six times a week in two colleges—never omitting
to prepare experiments in illustration of his subject. Some Eastern chemists were actually disposed to
dispute the facts. One of these asserted that "no chemist could make more than one soil analysis in less
than a month." Doctor Owen says in this regard: "Without a knowledge of the peculiar circumstances
under which the work was performed, the amount of Doctor Peter's chemical labor during the last six
years, as chemical assistant to the Survey of Kentucky, might appear incredible, for he has, in fact,
performed a greater number of reliable, detailed, practically useful analyses of soils than any living
chemist"[73]—which comes with authority, for Doctor Owen, a man not given to exaggeration, was in
position to view the whole field, and as Director fully and faithfully informed himself as to what was
going on all over the world in matters relating to his department. Doctor Owen said no chemists in this
country had thought proper to turn their special attention to soil analysis, but that Doctor Peter, with the
help of only one assistant to do the more mechanical part of the work, had in six years of the survey
made one thousand, one hundred and twenty-six quantitative analyses, three hundred and seventy-five
of which were of soils in which, on an average, twelve different substances were determined. In addition
to this and the preparation of his own chemical report, Doctor Peter personally supervised the
publication of the four royal 8vo volumes of this Survey, reading and correcting all proof and adding an
obituary biographical sketch of his friend Doctor Owen, whose death, November 13, 1860, had
terminated the survey. Before arrangements could be made to continue this important public work the
Civil War intervened, putting a stop to all such beneficent pursuits. Doctor Peter unhesitatingly and
warmly upheld his adopted country against secession. Unable to take the field with his friend, Ethelbert
Dudley, he promptly fell into the ranks of Dudley's Home Guards, shoulder to shoulder with Benjamin
Gratz, Madison C. Johnson, David A. Sayre, and other such fellow-citizens.[74] He was appointed
Acting Assistant Surgeon in charge of Military Hospitals at Lexington, Kentucky, being most of the
time senior surgeon in charge, quickly bringing his hospitals to a high state of order and efficiency. It
was this gift of reducing to system, combined with untiring energy and diligence, which in his long life
tended to make all his work both rapid and successful. Thus he carried on simultaneously numbers of
analyses with immense saving of time, while other chemists went through each operation separately—
making his results almost beyond belief. When, after the war, the survey was resumed under Professor
N. S. Shaler, Doctor Peter prepared three chemical reports of his analytical work, 1873–78. A total of
four hundred and seventy-seven pages, containing eight hundred and seventy-one analyses.
In the survey continued under the late John R. Procter, he prepared six reports, five of which were
published, covering five hundred and eighty-eight pages, describing nine hundred and seventy-seven
analyses—a total of one thousand, eight hundred and forty-eight published analyses. The sixth report—
the ninth of the new survey—made to Procter, was not published for the lack of funds, and the
manuscript seems to have been lost. The analyses, of which there are about four hundred, will be
published, however, by the present able director of the newly resumed Geological Survey, Professor C.
J. Norwood, in as nearly the original form as can be restored from the records. Thus, with the one

assistant, Doctor Peter made for the new survey about two thousand, two hundred and fifty analyses.
Besides which, during his active life in Lexington, he had at all times considerable practice as
consulting and analytical chemist, making for individuals many analyses not included in the above. As a
toxicologist he had a high reputation, and his expert testimony usually carried the day in cases wherein
he was called. At the time of the First Kentucky Survey, under Doctor Owen, Doctor Peter had also
contributed to the second report of a Geological Reconnoissance of the Southern and Middle Counties
of Arkansas, made during the years 1859 and 1860, an octavo volume of four hundred and thirty-three
pages, in which he gives the history of two hundred and seventy-one chemical analyses made by
himself of soils, subsoils, under-clays, nitre-earths, etc., of Arkansas, with remarks in one hundred and
twenty-five pages of report. At the same time he made chemical analyses of thirty-three soils, subsoils,
etc., of the State of Indiana for the survey of that State begun by Doctor D. D. Owen and continued, on
Doctor Owen's death, by his brother, Colonel Richard Owen. It will be seen by reference to the
Kentucky Geological Reports that Doctor Peter was the first, or among the first, to point out the fact that
the lower Silurian limestones always contain a notable quantity of phosphates, and that this
circumstance in part accounts for the richness of our bluegrass soils[75]—facts which he brought to the
attention of the agricultural public as early as April, 1849, in the Albany Cultivator, of New York.
He was apparently the first to show that some of the upper layers of the Trenton limestone are
remarkably rich in phosphates, as shown by his analyses published in the reports cited.
In 1865, when in accordance with Honorable John B. Bowman's lofty educational plans Kentucky
University was removed to Lexington, was united with Transylvania, and included the State
Agricultural and Mechanical College, Doctor Peter occupied the chair of Chemistry and Experimental
Philosophy in the new University, lecturing daily in two colleges, having declined the Presidency of the
Agricultural and Mechanical College, which was offered him by Regent Bowman. At this period he
devoted his every energy of mind and body to assist in the upbuilding of what he fondly hoped would
be the great educational institution of the West and South; for the training especially of Kentucky's
youth of every rank and creed, and for the benefit of all men of all nations who sought knowledge.[76]
He accepted and accomplished, it was said at the time, the work of three average men. On the separation
of the State College from the Kentucky University, after a bitter sectarian controversy in which he
manfully defended the Transylvania trusts—little understood by some of the controversialists—he
remained with the State College at the head of the Chemical Department.[77]
In 1887, Doctor Peter was made Emeritus Professor of Chemistry in the State College. It would be of
interest to give a detailed account of Doctor Peter's writings, but this must of necessity be reserved for a
more extended biography. He was an easy, practical, and prolific writer on a large range of subjects.
Deeply interested in agriculture and horticulture, he prepared many able treatises for journals of these
branches. He experimented for himself in the culture of fruits and flowers—notably in grape-culture and
wine-making. In 1867–68, he assisted in editing the Farmer's Home Journal, a weekly published at
Lexington, Kentucky, and until its discontinuance—well in the seventies—he contributed many articles.
He was sole editor of the tenth volume of the Transylvania Journal of Medicine, and in the preceding
and following volumes published a number of contributions on medical and scientific themes. He took
an active part with his pen in the controversy which arose on the attempted removal to Louisville of the
Transylvania Medical School by some of the Transylvania professors and the establishment at
Louisville of the "Medical Institute" as a rival school.[78] Like Doctor B. W. Dudley, Doctor Peter, under
a misapprehension of the facts, was at first inclined to sanction the removal of the medical school to
Louisville, for he says in a "Narrative" of the controversy published in the Lexington Intelligencer, July
7, 1837: "I was in favor of the removal of the Transylvania Medical School when I believed it was to be
done with the consent of its legal guardians, and with the certainty of very liberal endowments, which
would increase its means of instruction; but when the bubble burst—when it was found that the name of
Transylvania, the oath of office—principle, in fact, were all to be sacrificed to the splendid scheme—I

drew back." And from listening to Doctor Caldwell's flattering offers of emoluments in Louisville—
even to the promise that Doctor Peter should have the superintendence of the erection of the chemical
laboratory—he joined Dudley in maintaining the Transylvania School at Lexington, vigorously
defending Dudley, and himself also, against the attacks of the Caldwell faction. In the midst of the
general hostility, Doctor Peter became antagonistic to his former friend, Doctor Yandell—indeed, bitter
was the strife on all hands. But in after years, when the better part of half a century had rolled between,
Doctor Peter, on the friendly advance of Doctor Yandell, forgot the vindictive feeling of the past and a
correspondence both pleasant and profitable sprung up between the two old men, which was maintained
until the death of Doctor Yandell. Doctor Yandell confessed that in the heat of contention he had said
much which afterward he fain would recall. And it is readily to be credited that others felt the same
when time was given for calm and dispassionate reflection.
Doctor Peter at all times wrote much on education, much on politics and the questions of the day.
Beside lectures to his classes, he gave by request many public lectures on various topics. Possessing no
especial gift of voice or enunciation, he was not an orator, though as a lecturer uniformly popular; never
dry, though full of information; sometimes humorous, but ever dignified. He never neglected, where
appropriate, to illustrate his subject with experiments, frequently new and always skillfully performed.
His rapidity and sureness of manipulation were nearly that of the prestidigitator, and were the boast and
admiration of his pupils. But with this complete mastery of science there was no corresponding lack of
business ability. More than once he was offered civic honors—vainly, however. Once he agreed to act as
City Councilman, but summarily resigned because the Council unjustly denied to respectable colored
citizens the right to establish a public school for negroes in Lexington—a refusal we can not understand
to-day. He was ever ready to give time, labor, and money to public education and improvement; ready
instantly to take up his pen on all questions affecting the welfare of the community in which he lived,
regardless of applause, yet valuing the approval of the wise and good. His modesty was inherent. He
utterly abhorred ostentation. Yet no citizen was better known, or could more surely rely upon the love
and respect of his fellows—respect secured by thorough truthfulness and honesty of purpose—the
"courage of his convictions" which never left him. He retained his activity of mind and body, his
youthful appearance, his cheerfulness of spirit, up to a very short time before his death, which took
place at "Winton," eight miles from Lexington, in the eighty-ninth year of his age, April 26, 1894. He
had, as he had often wished, "worn out rather than rusted out."
Perhaps the words of his colleague of more than twenty years make the best summary of his life and
character: "Intense devotion to physical science and work of the laboratory, purity of speech and
modesty of manner, fidelity to all duties, domestic, professional, and civic, fidelity to settled convictions
and principles; above all, his long and illustrious career in educating so many thousands of the young,
and in setting before them a model so worthy of their imitation and remembrance; these were the traits,
this was the service that crowned his busy life of nearly ninety years with honor, admiration, and
renown."

Professor James Conquest Cross, M. D.

Born in the vicinity of Lexington, Kentucky, was early distinguished for superior natural energy and
mental ability. He was a graduate of Transylvania and most ambitious to take place as member of its
Faculty. Appointed to the chair of Institutes of Medicine in 1837, having been called from the Medical
College of Ohio, at Cincinnati, where he held a professorship, he occupied the position in Lexington
until 1843–44, and died a few years thereafter. He was Dean of the Medical Faculty in 1838.

Doctor Cross contributed several papers to the medical journals, but wrote no large work. He was
distinguished for readiness and brilliancy rather than for solidity. His strong ambition and self-
confidence, with his considerable abilities and extensive reading, gave promise of a most distinguished
career, which unhappily a certain want of mental ballast measurably prevented.[79]

Doctor John Eberle[80]

Was a native of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and was a little over fifty years of age at the time of
his decease. Born and educated among the Germans of Lancaster, he retained the peculiar accent and
idiom of that people to the day of his death, as also their habits of industry and perseverance in favorite
pursuits. At an early period of his history, Doctor Eberle was deeply involved in politics and for some
time conducted a German political paper. Prior to his removal to Philadelphia, which occurred about the
year 1818, he published several interesting papers in the New York Medical Repository and other
journals. Shortly after his settlement in Philadelphia, he became the editor of the American Medical
Recorder, known throughout the country as one of our ablest periodicals. In 1822, his work on
Therapeutics and Materia Medica first appeared, after having encountered many obstacles that for a
time seemed to preclude its publication. The author assured the writer of this notice that he failed in all
his attempts to procure a publisher, who would give him anything for the copyright, until the person
who finally became its proprietor offered two hundred and fifty dollars for the work. Being the first
book of the author, he accepted the offer in the hope of being more successful in his subsequent
undertakings.
In 1824, on the establishment of Jefferson Medical College, Doctor Eberle constituted one of its
Faculty, and continued in the school until his removal to Cincinnati in 1831. While in Jefferson he
taught the Theory and Practice, Materia Medica, and Obstetrics at different periods, and was also
engaged as editor of the American Medical Review, a journal devoted especially to the interests of that
school. While in the Jefferson Faculty he published the first edition of his work on Practice, which, it is
well known, has passed through several editions, and unlike its predecessor yielded a handsome
compensation to its author.
In 1831, Doctor Eberle was invited (in connection with Doctors Thomas D. Mitchell and George
McClellan) by Doctor Drake, to unite in the formation of a new medical school at Cincinnati. In the
winter of 1831–32, the deceased gave his first course of lectures in the West as Professor of Materia
Medica and Medical Botany in the Medical College of Ohio, in which school he remained until the fall
of 1837, when he became connected with the Medical Department of Transylvania. While in Cincinnati,
he prepared his work on the Diseases of Children, for which the publishers gave him a fair
compensation, and it is understood that he was engaged a year ago in getting ready for the press A
System of Midwifery. That he was importuned by his publishers in Ohio to prepare such a work is
known to the writer of this notice.
In addition to the publications of Doctor Eberle above named, there were others of less magnitude.
Among these we name a small work of a botanical character, for young students; and it may be noticed
here that botany was a favorite study with the deceased.
Doctor Eberle was not fond of the practice of his profession, or he might have become rich in its
pursuit. He was devoted especially to books, and as a journalist he has not perhaps been equaled in the
United States of America. In his deportment he was plain, unassuming, unostentatious; and his whole

aspect was indicative of one who had long been a companion of the midnight lamp. Few there are in our
profession whose labors have given them such extensive celebrity as fell to the lot of Professor Eberle.
His Practice of Physic is in almost every medical library in the West, and has been noticed with high
commendation by foreign journalists. His death has left a chasm in the profession, and especially in the
school of the West, that is greatly lamented.

Doctor Eberle died at Lexington, Kentucky, February 2, 1838, while filling the chair of the Theory and
Practice of Medicine.

Professor Thomas Duche Mitchell, M. D.,

Was appointed from the Medical College of Ohio to the chair of Chemistry and Pharmacy in the
Medical Department of Transylvania in 1837. He was transferred to that of Materia Medica and Medical
Botany in the following year, Doctor Peter having been called to the chair of Chemistry, etc.
In consequence of the death of Professor John Eberle early in the session of 1837–38, Doctor Mitchell
was required to fill both this and his own chair during the session, an arduous duty which he performed
faithfully and to the satisfaction of all parties.[81]
With equal ability and success he performed a similar double duty to the full satisfaction of his classes
in the winter of 1844–45, when, in consequence of the death of Professor William H. Richardson, the
chair of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children became vacant. He was appointed to that chair.
He was also Dean of the Faculty in the Transylvania School from 1839 to 1846.
Doctor Mitchell was born in Philadelphia in 1791, in which city for three generations his ancestors
resided. He died in the same city May 13, 1865, in his seventy-fourth year, having heroically performed
his duties as Professor almost up to the time of his death, although he was a constant sufferer from
painful neuralgic disease of the stomach, at times almost unendurable. His early education was in
Quaker schools, the best in those times in that city, and in the University of Pennsylvania. After a year
spent in a drug store and chemical laboratory he became office pupil of the late Doctor Parrish, and,
after attendance on three full courses of medical lectures in the Medical Department of the University,
he graduated in medicine. His thesis "On Acidification and Combustion" was published in the Memoirs
of the Columbian Medical Society. His mind and pen always in active operation, he published papers in
Coxe's Medical Museum, New York Medical Repository, Duane's Portfolio, and other periodicals.
Early in 1812, he was appointed Professor of Vegetable and Animal Physiology in Saint John's Lutheran
College, and, in the following year, as Lazaretto Physician, which office he held for three years. In
1819, he published a duodecimo volume on Medical Chemistry. From 1822 to 1831, he was actively
engaged in medical practice at Frankford, near Philadelphia. In 1826, he founded a Total Abstinence
Temperance Society, to the tenets of which he rigidly adhered during the whole of his life, deprecating
the use of alcohol, even in the preparation of the tinctures of the apothecary. He was also a strict
Presbyterian. In 1826, the honorary degree of A. M. was conferred on him by the Trustees of Princeton
College, New Jersey.

In the winter of 1830–31, he was called to the chair of Chemistry in the Miami University, and in the
following summer to the same chair in the Medical College of Ohio, at Cincinnati, which was soon
thereafter amalgamated with the Miami School, where he remained until called to the same chair in the
Medical Department of Transylvania University in 1837. He was transferred, as before mentioned, in
the following year to the chair of Materia Medica, Doctor Peter having been called to that of Chemistry,
etc. Here Doctor Mitchell continued until the end of the session of 1848–49.
In the summer of 1847, the Philadelphia College of Medicine held its first session, and Doctor Mitchell
filled in it the chair of Theory and Practice, Obstetrics, and Medical Jurisprudence. In March, 1849,
resigning his chair in the Transylvania School, he joined himself with the Philadelphia College with a
view to a permanent connection.
Declining tempting offers from medical schools in Missouri and Tennessee, he, in 1852, resigned his
chair in Philadelphia and accepted that of Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Kentucky School of
Medicine at Louisville. He performed the duties of that professorship to the satisfaction of all parties
until 1854, when he resigned on account of ill health and returned to his native city. Recovering, in a
measure, his health, he was chosen, without any movement on his part, to fill the chair of Materia
Medica and General Therapeutics in Jefferson Medical School of Philadelphia. This chair he occupied
up to the year of his death.
Doctor Mitchell was an able and indefatigable writer and author. Without recurring to his earlier
writings, he published in 1832 an octavo volume of five hundred and fifty-three pages, On Chemical
Philosophy, on the basis of The Elements of Chemistry, by Doctor Reid, of Edinburgh. In the same year
he produced his Hints to Students, and acted as co-editor of the Western Medical Gazette with
Professors Eberle and Staughton; contributed papers to the New York Repository, Philadelphia Museum,
Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery, Western Medical Recorder, Western Lancet, American
Medical Recorder, American Review, North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Transylvania
Medical Journal,[82] New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, Esculapian Register, etc.
In 1850, he published an octavo volume of seven hundred and fifty pages On Materia Medica, also an
edition of Eberle on the Diseases of Children, to which he added notes and a sequel of some two
hundred pages. He also wrote a volume of six hundred pages On the Fevers of the United States, which
he did not publish.
Doctor Mitchell was a clear and impressive lecturer, a most industrious student even in his latter days, a
learned, classical, and scientific scholar and a most rigidly upright and conscientious gentleman.[83]

James Mills Bush, M. D.,

A native of Kentucky,[84] born in Frankfort May, 1808, graduated as A. B. in Centre College, Danville,
Kentucky, and began the study of medicine and surgery in the office of the celebrated Doctor Alban
Goldsmith, Louisville, Kentucky. He removed to Lexington in 1830–31, to attend the medical lectures
in Transylvania University, and to become a private pupil of its renowned surgeon, Professor Benjamin
W. Dudley. To Doctor Dudley he became personally attached by sentiments of affection and esteem,
which were warmly returned by his eminent preceptor; so that, when young Bush received the honor of
the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1833, Doctor Dudley immediately appointed him his demonstrator
and prosector in Anatomy and Surgery, to which branches of medical science and art Doctor Bush was
ardently devoted.

This responsible office he filled with eminent ability and success until 1837, when he was officially
made Adjunct Professor of Anatomy and Surgery to his distinguished colleague and friend, Doctor
Dudley. He occupied this honorable position to the great satisfaction of all concerned until the year
1844, when he became the Professor of Anatomy, Doctor Dudley retaining the chair of Surgery. In the
chair of Anatomy he continued until the dissolution of the Transylvania Medical School in 1857.
In the meanwhile this school, in 1850, had been changed from a winter to a summer school; Doctor
Bush, with some of his colleagues and some physicians of Louisville, having thought proper to establish
the Kentucky School of Medicine[85] in Louisville as a winter school. In this latter college Doctor Bush
remained for three sessions—giving thus two full courses of lectures per annum—when he and his
Lexington colleagues, resigning from the Louisville school, returned to that of Lexington, re-
establishing a winter session.[86]
Doctor Bush was ever a most conscientious and ardent laborer in his profession, and, during the lifetime
of his preceptor, Doctor Dudley, was his constant associate and assistant as well in the medical school as
in his medical and surgical practice. On the retirement of that distinguished surgeon and professor, his
mantle fell upon Doctor Bush. In the language of his friend, the late Doctor Lewis Rogers, in 1873:
"When Doctor Dudley retired from teaching, Doctor Bush was appointed to the vacant chair. When
Doctor Dudley retired from the field of his brilliant achievements as a surgeon Doctor Bush had the rare
courage to take possession of it. No higher tribute can be paid to him than to say that he has since held
possession without a successful rival."

DOCTOR JAMES M. BUSH.
From a Photograph by Mullen.

Most ably and successfully did he thus maintain himself as one fit to follow in the footsteps of our great
surgeon. His sterling qualities as a man, his most kind and endearing manners as a physician, his great
skill and experience in anatomy and surgery, which had been as well the pleasure as the devoted labor of

his life; his remarkable accuracy of eye, the more acute because of congenital myopia, his delicacy of
hand and unswerving nerve in the use of instruments in the most difficult operations, endeared him to
his patients and won the respect and admiration of his medical brethren.
Doctor Bush was a lucid and impressive teacher of his peculiar branch of medical art and science, and
always attached his pupils strongly to him as an honored preceptor and friend.
During his active lifetime, spent chiefly in acquiring and putting in practice the rare professional skill
which distinguished him, he gave but little time to the use of his pen. Hence he left no large book as the
record of his experience. His principal writings were published, in 1837, in the tenth volume of the
Transylvania Journal of Medicine, and these were written for that journal on the solicitation of the
present writer, who edited that volume. They consist of:
1. A short report of a case of epilepsy, produced in a negro girl by blows of the windlass of a well on the
parietal bone, which was entirely and speedily cured under the preliminary treatment by Doctor Dudley
of mercurial purgatives and low diet, preparatory to the use of the trephine, which, as is well known,
had been used with great success by Doctor Dudley in such cases.
2. Report of a case of insidious inflammation of the pia mater, complicated with pleuritis—with the
autopsy.
3. A more extended paper, entitled "Remarks on Mechanical Pressure Applied by Means of the
Bandage; Illustrated by a Variety of Cases." In which the mode of application and modus operandi are
most clearly given, and illustrated by many interesting cases, mostly from the surgical practice of
Doctor Dudley.
4. "Dissection of an Idiot's Brain." The subject—a female twenty-five years of age—had been born
idiotic, blind, deaf, and dumb; the head was very small, and the brain on dissection was found to weigh
only twenty ounces, and to have large serous cavities in the coronal portions of the cerebral
hemispheres. The anatomy of the eyes was perfect, but there was no nervous connection between the
optic nerve and the thalami nervorum opticorum.
5. A short notice of three operations of lithotomy, performed on May 31, 1837, by Doctor Dudley, with
his assistance.
6. "Interesting Autopsy." On the body of a negro man who had been the subject of sudden falling fits,
and was under treatment for disease of the chest. The autopsy disclosed hypertrophy of the right side of
the heart, and a most remarkable course and lengthening of the colon.
7. "Observations on the Operation of Lithotomy, Illustrated by Cases from the Practice of Professor B.
W. Dudley." An extensive and lucid description of the method of operation and the remarkably
successful experience of Doctor Dudley in this part of his practice, giving report of one hundred and
fifty-two successful cases up to that time.
In addition, the Doctor contributed an occasional bibliographical review or notice. And these seem to be
the whole of his published professional writings.
Doctor Bush was married, in 1835, to Miss Charlotte James, of Chillicothe. Of their three children the
eldest, Benjamin Dudley, was a young man of remarkable promise as a surgeon and physician when he
was cut off, an event which cast a gloom over the remaining days of the life of his father. Few young
men of his age had ever attained such proficiency or developed such sterling qualities.[87]
The death of Doctor Bush, which took place on February 14, 1875, was followed by general and
unusual manifestations of respect and regret, not only on the part of the members of the profession, but

by the people of the city at large. Few citizens were more extensively known, loved, and honored in life
or followed to the grave by a greater concourse of mourning friends.

Nathan Ryno Smith, M. D.,

Was called from his residence in Baltimore, Maryland, to the chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine
in Transylvania in the year 1838. He resigned the chair and returned to that city in 1840, having
delivered three annual courses of lectures here. He was succeeded in this chair by Doctor Elisha
Bartlett.
Doctor Smith was born May 21, 1797, in the town of Cornish, New Hampshire, where his father,
Nathan Smith—afterward Professor of Physic and Surgery in Yale College—had been for ten years in
the practice of his profession. In a brief sketch of his father, Doctor Smith unconsciously drew the
outlines of his own character. "In the practice of surgery," he said, "Professor Smith displayed an
original and inventive mind. His friends claim for him the establishment of scientific principles and the
invention of resources in practice which will stand as lasting monuments of a mind fertile in expedients
and unshackled by the dogmas of the schools." The father, at the age of twenty-four, after an early life
of industry and adventure in the then new country, had been so impressed and attracted by witnessing a
surgical operation that he at once devoted himself to surgery and medicine, and with such ardor and
success that for forty years succeeding he was a distinguished member and teacher in his profession.
The son, with much the same natural bent of mind, after receiving his early education at Dartmouth and
graduating at Yale in 1817—spending a year and a half in Virginia as a classical tutor—began the study
of medicine in Yale, where his father was Professor of Physic and Surgery. He there received the degree
of Doctor of Medicine, in 1823. He began practice in Burlington, Vermont, in 1824. In 1825, he was
appointed Professor of Surgery and Anatomy in the University of Vermont, the Medical Department of
which was organized principally by his exertions, aided by his father.
In the winter of 1825–26, he attended the medical lectures in the University of Pennsylvania, with a
view to improvement in his profession and in the art of teaching in it. While there he was invited by the
late celebrated surgeon, George McClellan—to whom he had become favorably known—to take the
chair of Anatomy in the new Jefferson Medical College, which McClellan and other members of the
profession were engaged in organizing. This situation he occupied with success for two years, leaving it
then to accept the chair of Anatomy in the School of Medicine of the University of Maryland in
Baltimore, which had been vacated by Professor Granville Sharpe Pattison, in 1827. In Baltimore he
soon acquired an extensive medical and surgical practice. On the death of Professor John B. Davidge he
was transferred to the chair of Surgery. In the language of his biographer and colleague, Samuel C.
Chew, M. D.: "In Baltimore he found a congenial home and when, at the age of fourscore, he was laid to
rest among us, his name had been for a whole lifetime a household word throughout our State."
When, in 1838, he accepted the inducement offered him by the Medical Faculty of Transylvania
University to occupy the chair of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in their college at Lexington,
Kentucky,[88] during the four months of the winter course of lectures, he did not abandon his residence
in Baltimore, but at the close of each session returned to his professional work in that city. It was there
especially, as a professor and practitioner of surgery, that his life-work was done.
Doctor Smith was a man of remarkable mental activity, "acuteness of perception and extraordinary
power of adaptation to circumstances as they might arise, promptness of action and untiring industry....

And yet with his great gifts there was about him a remarkable simplicity of character and a transparent
ingenuousness which was as incapable of affectation as of falsehood."
His forte was Surgery, yet his lectures here on the Theory and Practice of Medicine were exceedingly
clear and instructive. One little peculiarity of his may be noticed. He never lectured without a small
whalebone rod or pointer. Without this in his hand he seemed to fear the loss of continuity of his ideas.
As remarked by his biographer, "his wand must always be at hand, for, like the magician's divining-rod,
it seemed to have some mystic connection with the exercise of his powers."
Early in his professional life he published his work on the Anatomy of the Arteries, and, in his later
days, his work on Fractures of the Lower Extremities. He was engaged in the preparation of a work on
surgery at the time of his death. His inventive genius, which was remarkable, was exhibited in several
improvements of the instruments and apparatus of surgery, especially in his lithotome. In the practice of
his son—Professor Alan P. Smith—in a series of fifty-two consecutive cases, without a single death, he
used his father's lithotome in all but six cases. This great success he attributed mainly to the instrument.
Another valuable improvement was his "anterior splint."
Doctor Smith died on the third of July, 1877, a few weeks after the completion of his eightieth year, full
of honors. "He has left behind him a record of a great surgeon, a brave and true citizen and
magnanimous gentleman."

Elisha Bartlett, M. D., Etc.

Born in Smithfield, Rhode Island, October 6, 1804. His parents, Otis and Waite Bartlett, were highly
respectable members of the "Society of Friends." Their son, whose early education was under the
auspices of this Society, possessed all the unostentatious virtues which characterized that sect. At the
"Friends' Institution" in New York, under the celebrated teacher, Jacob Willett, he obtained a highly
finished classical education. He subsequently attended medical lectures in Boston and Providence and
graduated as M. D. at Brown University, Providence, in 1826. Soon after graduation he spent a year
pursuing medical studies under distinguished professors in Paris, France, and in classical Italy.
In 1836, he was elected as the first mayor of the town of Lowell; was re-elected at the end of his first
term, and afterward, in 1840, was honored by election to the Legislature of Massachusetts. A statesman
and not a politician, he soon abandoned political life for the more congenial one of a medical teacher.
[89]
"In 1828, he was offered the chair of Anatomy in the Medical School at Woodstock, Vermont, which
honor he declined.
"In 1832, he was appointed to a Professorship in the Medical School at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, which
he held for several years. He also held a chair one year in the Medical Department of Dartmouth
College, and for one year in Baltimore.
"In 1841, he was called to the chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Medical Department of
Transylvania University, which he occupied for three years with ability and success."[90]

After a visit to Europe he again returned, in 1846,[91] to the Transylvania Medical College, teaching in
the same chair for another three years.

"He subsequently delivered a course of medical lectures in the Medical School at Louisville, giving also
summer lectures at Woodstock, Vermont, and other places—his instruction being highly appreciated by
his colleagues and most acceptable to his students.
"At length he was called to an important professorship in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of
New York. Here he continued for three years, when, compelled by failing health, he abandoned the
position to retire to his paternal acres in Smithfield—to die, after a long and lingering illness, on July
19, 1855."
His disease—partial paralysis of the lower extremities, with torturing neuralgia and finally softening of
the brain, the result of lead poisoning, caused—as he believed, and as he informed the writer—by the
use of water which had passed for a considerable distance through leaden pipes.
The beautiful and sterling traits of the character of Doctor Bartlett are most happily portrayed by the
distinguished medical professor and poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, in the Boston Medical and Surgical
Journal, August 16, 1855, from which we make a few extracts, viz:
"Hardly any American physician was more widely known to his countrymen, or more favorably
considered abroad, where his writings had carried his name. His personal graces were known to a less
extensive circle of admiring friends.... To them it is easy to recall his ever-welcome and gracious
presence. On his expanded forehead no one could fail to trace the impress of a large and calm
intelligence.... A man so full of life will rarely be found so gentle and quiet in all his ways.... The same
qualities which fitted him for a public speaker naturally gave him signal success as a teacher. Had he
possessed nothing but his clearness and eloquence of language and elocution, he could hardly have
failed to find a popular welcome.... He had a manner at once impressive and pleasing, a lucid order
which kept the attention and intelligence of the slowest hearer, and attractions of a personal character
always esteemed and beloved by students.... Yet few suspected him of giving utterance in rhythmical
shape to his thoughts or feelings. It was only when his failing limbs could bear him no longer, as
conscious existence slowly retreated from the palsied nerves, that he revealed himself freely in truest
and tenderest form of expression. We knew he was dying by slow degrees, and we heard from him from
time to time, or saw him always serene and always hopeful while hope could have a place in his earthly
future ... when to the friends he loved there came, as a farewell gift, ... a little book with a few songs in
it—songs with his whole warm heart in them—they knew that his hour was come, and their tears fell
fast as they read the loving thoughts that he had clothed in words of beauty and melody.
"Among the memorials of departed friendships we treasure the little book of 'songs,' entitled Simple
Settings in Verse for Six Portraits from Mr. Dickens' Gallery, Boston, 1855—his last present, as it was
his last production."

Doctor Lotan G. Watson,

Of North Carolina, filled the chair of Theory and Practice in Transylvania in the sessions of 1844 and
1845 only. He came highly recommended as a physician of extensive practice of not less than twenty
years. "A gentleman of undoubted talents. He has the reputation of bringing to his cases a great
affluence of resource and fertility of expedient, regulated by a judgment discriminative and safe. He
writes with facility and elegance, and converses with fluency, animation, and impressiveness. He thinks
clearly and communicates his ideas with facility and a corresponding clearness." Extract from letter of
Senator W. P. Mangum, of North Carolina.

Leonidas M. Lawson, M. D.,

Who filled the chair of General and Pathological Anatomy and Physiology in the Medical Department
of Transylvania University from 1843 to 1846, inclusive, was born in Nicholas County, Kentucky,
September 10, 1812. He had received his medical degree from this same department of Transylvania in
1837.
He was engaged in Cincinnati in private practice, giving clinical instruction in the hospital and editing
his recently established medical periodical, The Western Lancet—of which he was sole originator and
proprietor—when he was called to the newly established chair of General and Pathological Anatomy
and Physiology in the Transylvania Medical Department, in which he had graduated.
Here he taught with great success until called to the chair of Materia Medica and General Pathology in
the Ohio Medical College at Cincinnati in 1847. During the vacation months of 1845, he spent seven
months in a visit to Europe, and especially in clinical studies in Guy's Hospital, London, with great
advantage to himself.
Doctor Lawson continued to teach from this chair until the death of Professor J. P. Harrison, whom he
succeeded in that of the Principles and Practice of Medicine and Clinical Medicine, in the same college
in 1852. He was appointed Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Kentucky School of
Medicine in Louisville in 1854, but accepted a call to the same chair in the Medical College of Ohio,
Cincinnati, in 1857. He filled the chair of Clinical Medicine in the University of Louisiana, New
Orleans, in 1860, but returned in consequence of the Civil War to the Medical College of Ohio the
following year, in which college he remained until his death, January 21, 1864.
He founded the Western Lancet, and was its sole editor and proprietor from 1842 up to the time of his
decease. He also edited Hope's Morbid Anatomy, 1844, and published a treatise on the Practical
Treatment of Phthisis Pulmonalis in 1861.
Doctor Lawson was a lover of his profession and a most indefatigable worker and student. Remarkably
lucid and impressive in his oral teachings, and methodical in his laborious professional and editorial
occupations, he was a modest but self-possessed, undemonstrative gentleman of high probity and
personal merit. The world at large did not fully appreciate his value, or that of his labors.
His daughter, Miss Louisa Lawson, studied sculpture as a profession, and as an artist is well known.

Ethelbert Ludlow Dudley, M. D.,

Nephew of the late distinguished surgeon, Benjamin W. Dudley, was his private pupil for many years.
He graduated in the Medical Department of Transylvania University with distinguished honor in 1842,
after having attended three full courses of instruction in that department. His first course of medical
lectures was in the winter of 1838–39. It was the first session in which the present writer occupied the
chair of Chemistry and Pharmacy, and well he remembers the assiduous attention of his pupil; his
avidity in the acquisition of knowledge and his unusual ability to retain it. Distrusting yet his own
attainments and desirous of more thorough training before taking upon himself the responsible and
arduous offices of a practitioner, he, under the immediate charge of his uncle, then in active practice,

attended two other full courses of medical lectures (sessions 1842–43 and 1843–44) as resident
graduate. During this period he sometimes officiated as prosector to his distinguished kinsman.[92]

DOCTOR ETHELBERT L. DUDLEY.
From a Photograph.

Before the next following session, Doctor Ethelbert L. Dudley was appointed Demonstrator of Anatomy
in the place of Doctor James M. Bush, who had been promoted to the chair of Anatomy. This
responsible office he filled until called to the chair of General and Pathological Anatomy in 1847–48.
From the origin of this medical school Professor Benjamin W. Dudley had taught in the combined chair
of Anatomy and Surgery, blending the two in a manner most instructive and practical.[93] In 1837, he
accepted Doctor James M. Bush as adjunct to the combined professorship, and in 1844, Doctor Bush
having been appointed Professor of Anatomy, the elder Dudley restricted himself to the chair of the
Principles of Surgery.
In the summer of 1846, Doctor Ethelbert L. Dudley was appointed to deliver a course of lectures on
Comparative Anatomy. This duty he performed to the highest satisfaction of all concerned; and when,
almost at the beginning of the next regular session (1847–48), he was called to the chair of Anatomy
and Physiology, he successfully encountered the great labor of preparing and delivering a new course of
lectures on these subjects. At the same time he also discharged the arduous duties of Demonstrator of

Anatomy—duties more onerous in this school, in our small inland city, than in most other medical
colleges. No one in the whole school accomplished half the work which he mastered. No task seemed
too great for his young and ardent energies.
In 1849, he originated and took upon himself the sole charge as editor of the Transylvania Medical
Journal, a new series of the old Transylvania Journal of Medicine. He published three volumes in three
successive years, aided only occasionally by some of his colleagues. In the spring of 1850, he visited
Europe for professional improvement, making many friends; amongst the distinguished medical men of
England particularly. Immediately on his return from Europe, in the autumn of that year, the present
writer announced to him, in the city of New York, his appointment to the chair of Descriptive Anatomy
and Histology in the Kentucky School of Medicine. This was a new school which some of the
physicians of Louisville and professors of the Lexington school were about to establish in the former
city, to which place students of medicine from the South and West were beginning to flock, to the
neglect somewhat of the time-honored Transylvania school, in which it was proposed to continue
medical instruction in summer sessions.
This appointment he accepted, joining in the preliminary October course of lectures and aiding greatly
by his talents and energy in building up that institution. Transferred in the following year to the chair of
Surgery in the Transylvania summer school, on the retirement of his uncle from active professional life,
he continued to teach with distinguished ability in the position made illustrious by his predecessor, until
the close of the school shortly before the outbreak of our Civil War.
In the second year of the Kentucky School of Medicine, he was transferred to the chair of Surgical
Anatomy and Operative Surgery, and accordingly gave the surgical-clinical instruction in the Marine
Hospital of Louisville to the combined classes of the two medical schools of that city during the session
of 1851–52. A course which was a decided success for the young professor and surgeon, and which
helped to place him at once on the elevated position as a professional man and a gentleman which he
maintained to the day of his death and to which few men, of his age especially, ever are fortunate
enough to attain.[94]
After another successful session in this school he, with the other Transylvania professors, resigned and
returned permanently to Lexington, resuming his practice there and his duties in the renewed winter
sessions of the Transylvania Medical Department.
As a practitioner, especially of surgery, Doctor E. L. Dudley always commanded the highest respect and
admiration of his colleagues as well as the confidence and affections of his patients. Singularly unselfish
and always willing to devote himself fully to his profession, his patients and his friends, few men had
the power so quickly and so firmly to bind others to him with the ties of affection.
With nerves as of steel, clear eye, quick judgment and answering hand, combined with the kind feelings
of a woman and a fullness of professional knowledge rarely surpassed, his short career as a surgeon—all
too brief!—was yet a brilliant one. Had his life been spared to him the name of Dudley had achieved a
yet higher distinction in the annals of surgery.
At the outbreak of our Civil War, Doctor Dudley's loyal attachment to the nation and his love of country
caused him to take an active part against the rebellion. While the fate of Kentucky hung yet in the
balance of a professed neutrality, he was actively instrumental in organizing a battalion of "Home
Guards," of which he was at once appointed Commandant—an organization which greatly helped to
prevent the precipitation of our State into the war for secession.[95]
Obtaining authority to organize a regiment of volunteers for active service, of which he was Colonel,
preferring this active position to the less belligerent one of Medical Director which was proffered him,
he left Lexington with his command for the southern part of the State. There, exhausted by the

continued labors and exposures of his combined offices of colonel, surgeon and physician to his men
(which he would not commit to another), he fell a victim to typhoid fever on February 20, 1862, at the
age of forty-four. His remains, brought to Lexington, were received with public honors and were
followed to the cemetery by a long procession of sorrowing friends.

Samuel Annan, M. D.,

Was born at Philadelphia, Pa., in the year 1800—a descendant of Scotch ancestors. He graduated as M.
D. at the Edinburgh University in 1820. His thesis, entitled De Appoplexia Sanguinia, is in the library of
the Medical and Surgical Faculty of Maryland. He was licentiate of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty
of Maryland in 1822, being then ex-President of the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh.
From 1827 to 1834, he ably occupied the chair of Anatomy and Physiology in the Medical Department
of Washington University at Baltimore, Maryland. From 1838 to 1845, he was physician to the
Baltimore Alms-house. In 1846, he was called to the chair of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and
Children in the Medical Department of Transylvania University, a position which he occupied with
great ability until, in 1849, he was transferred to the chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine in the
same institution, in which he gave general satisfaction until 1854, when he resigned that position.
During the years 1853–57, he was Superintendent to the Insane Asylum at Hopkinsville, Kentucky. He
became surgeon to the Confederate States Army at the outbreak of our Civil War in 1861, maintaining
that position until 1864. In 1866, he was surgeon to the steamship "Carroll" of the Liverpool line, from
April to November. He died at Baltimore, January 19, 1868.
Doctor Annan was a person of great activity of mind and body, of high intelligence and probity of
character. In the course of his active life and practice in his profession he found time to contribute many
valuable articles to the medical journals, of which we quote the following, viz:
"Cases of Bronchotomy." Maryland Medical Recorder, Vol. VII, p. 42. 1823.
"On the Surgical Anatomy of Hernia." Ibid., Vol. III, p. 529. 1829.
"On Polypus Nasi." Ibid., No. 3, p. 655. 1830.
"On the Use of Wine in Fevers." Ibid., p. 279. 1831.
"Address to the Graduates of Washington University." 1834.
"New Views of Certain Dislocations." American Journal of Medical Science, Vol. XVIII, p. 376. 1836.
"On the Treatment of Prolapsus Ani." Ibid., p. 334. 1836.
"On Spinal Irritation and Inflammation." Ibid., Vol. XX, p. 85. 1837.
"On Cases in the Baltimore Alms-house." Ibid., Vol. XXII, p. 378. 1838.
"On Wind Contusions." American Medical Journal, Vol. II, pp. 3, 133, and 213. 1838.
"On Cases in the Baltimore Alms-house." Journal of Medical Science, Vol. XXIV, p. 316; and Journal of
Medical Science, Vol. XXV, p. 32. 1839.

"On Cases in the Baltimore Alms-house." Medical and Surgical Journal, pp. 322 and 338. 1840.
"Lecture at Opening of Kentucky School of Medicine." 1850.
"On Fracture of the Skull." American Medical Record, No. 3, Vol. II, p. 449.
"Case of Laceration of the Ileum from External Injury." American Journal of Medical Science, p. 287.
1838.
For most of the facts contained in this brief sketch of the active life of Doctor Annan we are indebted to
the kindness of Doctor Oscar J. Coskery, of Baltimore.
Note.—In 1850, Doctor Annan accepted the chair of Pathology and Practice of Medicine in the new
Kentucky School of Medicine in Louisville, which position he occupied for two years with great ability,
when he resigned to return to his native city.
In 1849, when Doctor Annan was transferred to the chair of Theory and Practice, the chair of Obstetrics
was filled by Doctor William M. Boling, of Montgomery, Alabama, for one session. Doctor Boling had
taught in the Memphis Medical School of Tennessee, and was "favorably known in the South as a good
practitioner, an able medical writer, and an excellent teacher."

Professor Henry M. Bullitt

Occupied the chair of Materia Medica and Medical Botany with ability during the session of 1849–50,
after which, with the aid of some of his Transylvania associates, he established the "Kentucky School of
Medicine," which still maintains a prosperous condition.
"Doctor Bullitt commenced the study of medicine at seventeen years of age, in the office of Doctor
Coleman Rogers, senior, of Louisville, entering the Medical Department of the University of
Pennsylvania as a pupil, and graduating with high honor in 1838. Returning to Louisville, he began the
practice of medicine in partnership with Doctor Joshua B. Flint, thus continuing for many years, their
office being the headquarters of the prominent physicians of this city.
"Doctor Bullitt passed the year 1845 in Europe, where he took advantage of every opportunity of
advancing in medical knowledge. He returned liberally equipped with the good fruits of his sojourn
abroad. In 1846, he was elected a professor in the St. Louis Medical College and lectured there in 1846–
47 and 1847–48. In 1849, he was elected to the chair of Materia Medica, etc., in Transylvania
University.... In 1850, he was mainly instrumental in the establishment of the Kentucky School of
Medicine in Louisville, aided by 'prominent members of the Faculty of Transylvania.'
"In 1866, he was elected to the chair of Theory and Practice in the University of Louisville, and, in
1867, was transferred to that of Physiology. In 1868, he established the Louisville Medical College,
with which he remained during the several years of his professional life, his increasing deafness greatly
marring his social and professional enjoyments.
"Doctor Bullitt was an able writer on professional subjects.... He held, successively, chairs in five
medical schools," in all with great ability.
"In 1866, he was elected Health Officer of the city of Louisville," which office he most ably filled....
"Doctor Bullitt was one of the ablest Health Officers the city ever possessed," and was author of many

papers of "great merit in numerous medical journals. His great affliction, deafness, was all that
prevented him from taking the foremost position among medical practitioners, teachers, and writers. But
he bore the misfortune with singular equanimity and fortitude."
Doctor Bullitt died on the seventh of January, 1880, after a number of weeks' confinement to his bed
with Bright's disease.

The greater part of this brief sketch of the life of Doctor Bullitt is copied from an able obituary notice
published in the Louisville Journal at the time of his death.

Henry Martyn Skillman, M. D.,

Youngest child of Thomas T. and Elizabeth Farrar Skillman, born September 4, 1824, at Lexington,
Kentucky, was educated in Transylvania University. He spent two or three years in the drug and
apothecary business in Lexington, and commenced the study of medicine and surgery in 1844,
graduating as Doctor of Medicine, etc., in 1847. He was appointed Demonstrator of Anatomy in the
Medical Department of Transylvania University in 1848. In 1851, he was appointed Professor of
General and Pathological Anatomy and Physiology, which position he occupied with skill and success
until the close of the Medical College in 1857. Since that time he has devoted himself to the duties of
his profession in medicine and surgery, being "one of the most skillful, successful, and accomplished
physicians in Kentucky," and "having inherited the admirable qualities of his parents, is one of the most
honorable and useful citizens of Lexington."[96]
Since the above was written, the gentle and busy life of this last surviving member of the Transylvania
Medical Faculty came suddenly to a close at his home in Lexington, March 21, 1902, at a quarter past
four o'clock in the afternoon, apparently without warning. Only two hours previously, handsome and
smiling and dignified as usual, he had visited a patient, and he expected in a few hours to resume his
professional rounds when the last summons came.

DOCTOR HENRY MARTYN SKILLMAN.
From a Photograph by Mullen.

It is hardly possible for a man to depart this life without leaving an enemy, but if Doctor Skillman, in his
fifty-four years of active professional life, had made even a few enemies they hesitated to declare
themselves. His own nature was to see good in others; their defects were not made prominent by him.
As he spoke no evil, so nothing but good was said of him. But with his amiable, benevolent,
compromising disposition there was no trace of weakness. Strict in professional etiquette, immovable in
principle, he repelled with gentle but irresistible firmness every effort to shake his integrity. The
loveliness of his character and personality is best portrayed in "Luke, the Beloved Physician," a tribute
paid, on his death, editorially in the Lexington Herald by Kentucky's favorite orator and statesman,
every word of which is as true as it is well-chosen and beautiful. Doctor Skillman held numerous offices
of trust; was elected, in 1869, President of Kentucky State Medical Society and, in 1889, the first
President of Lexington and Fayette County Medical Society, and was at the time of his death the oldest
practicing physician in Lexington, having seen that city grow from eight thousand to thirty thousand
inhabitants. It is claimed that he was the first physician to administer chloroform there. For two years
during the Civil War he was contract surgeon for the Government.
Doctor Skillman's father, Thomas T. Skillman, a native of New Jersey, came to Lexington in 1809, and
soon founded there the largest publishing house in the Mississippi Valley, the name of T. T. Skillman on

the title page of a work being a guarantee of its excellence and fitness for the family circle. In 1823, an
edition of several thousand copies of the entire Bible was published by Mr. Skillman from stereotype
plates sent from New York by the American Bible Society. He founded the Evangelical Recorder and
Western Review, afterward edited by Reverend John Breckinridge, the young and talented pastor of "the
McChord Church"; also the Western Luminary, in 1824, the first religious paper issued in the West.
Doctor Skillman married, October 30, 1851, Margaret, daughter of Matthew T. Scott, President of the
Northern Bank of Kentucky. Of their children only one is living, Henry Martyn Skillman, of the
Lexington Security Trust and Safety Vault Company.

Samuel M. Letcher, M. D.,

Of a prominent Kentucky family, also a graduate of the Medical Department of Transylvania University
who had won distinction in his profession in Lexington, was called to the chair of Professor of
Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children in that school in 1851, and performed the duties of that
chair with ability and success until the close of the Medical College in Lexington in 1857. During the
Civil War he was placed in charge of a United States General Hospital in Lexington, a position which he
held for some time, giving great satisfaction. He died February 1, 1863, in Lexington, Kentucky.

John Rowan Allen, M. D.,

Who was Superintendent of the Eastern Lunatic Asylum at Lexington,[97] Kentucky, and who first
introduced there the moral treatment of the insane instead of forcible means, was appointed Professor of
Materia Medica and Botany in 1851, and performed the duties of this chair with great ability until the
end of the session of 1855, when he resigned that position.

Doctor William Stout Chipley

Was born in Lexington, Kentucky, October 18, 1810, the only son of Reverend Stephen and Amelia
Stout Chipley, the forefathers of both of whom were pioneers of Lexington. Doctor Chipley was
graduated at Transylvania in 1832, with marked honor. Not a great while after his graduation he took
issue with Doctor Benjamin Dudley, the oldest and most renowned practitioner of the State—or indeed
of the whole country. Doctor Dudley had published a treatise upon the treatment of a special disease.
Doctor Chipley took an opposite view, expressing himself most boldly and brilliantly. His article was
published in an advanced medical journal and copied widely. Chipley received widespread encomiums.
Indeed, he came off with raised banner, and his colors have never since been furled. His success was
progressive this article exemplifying his determination when convinced he was right. Later he went to
Columbus, Georgia, feeling assured it was a fine opening for a young practitioner, and so it proved. He

was soon launched into an almost phenomenal practice, extending across the Chattahoochee River into
Alabama to the Indian nation, where his wonderful magnetism was felt to such a degree that he won the
confidence—even friendship—of these savages. He would be detained days at a time ministering to
them—a tribe, too, by no means regarded as friendly to the whites. In April, 1837, he married in
Columbus, Georgia, Elizabeth Fanning, niece and adopted daughter of Colonel James Fanning, of
Alamo fame. Doctor Chipley was at one time Mayor of Columbus, and made a brilliant reputation as an
executive officer. At the entreaties of his mother and father, who were quite advanced in age, he turned a
deaf ear to the opposition of his legion of friends in Columbus and returned to Lexington, Kentucky,
where it seemed a flourishing practice did but await him. He was a very successful Professor of
Transylvania in the chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine, from 1854 to 1857, inclusive. As a
lecturer he had a wonderful flow of language. The possessor of a perfect voice and delivery, he chained
the attention of all listeners. Often have I heard his patients say his sunshiny presence, his gentle,
sympathetic touch in the sick-room, dulled pain and was better than drugs. He was a brilliant and
forceful writer, the author of many medical works and the writer of numerous articles published in
medical journals of the highest note. One small book of his gave him much notoriety. Chief Justice
George Robertson, of Lexington, regarded it of such high worth that he gave fifteen hundred dollars to
have it published and placed as a healthful guide in certain schools for boys. It was in 1855 that he took
charge of the Eastern Kentucky Lunatic Asylum at Lexington. This proved a wide field for the
development of the most astonishing tact and management of individuals. The attendants greatly
admired him and yielded without question to his dictation. Gentle as a woman, adamantine after a
decision, never acting hastily, maturing a subject before deciding—these characteristics were shown on
all occasions where it pertained to the comfort of the poor creatures under his care. During his fifteen or
sixteen years of most successful management of this institution, he made many radical changes for the
amelioration of the condition of these unfortunates. Winter after winter he haunted the legislative halls
in behalf of the Asylum, spending his own personal means most lavishly to meet this end—presenting
one bill after another, which sooner or later were always honored. His enthusiasm and faithfulness
carried conviction with them. When he took charge of the Asylum he found it a conglomerate mass—
many from other States there—incurables, epileptics, idiots—all huddled together. He went carefully
over the records and proceeded to institute a thorough weeding. First he notified the governors of the
respective States to send for their own insane, giving them a stated time of grace, and telling them that if
the call was not honored he would send the patients to their doors by one of his own attendants, which
he did in several instances. This systematizing was a great step forward. The next thing he did was to
induce the State to erect an institution for idiots, believing there were few born who were not capable of
receiving some degree of cultivation. In time a home was built at Frankfort, the result proving his great
wisdom. It was a matter of wonderment to see these poor creatures developing from a driveling state of
nonentity into some capacity for the enjoyment of life, and even to a degree of usefulness. There were
but few incapable of being taught some employment which rendered their life more than a mere
existence, akin alone to the lower animals. To have succeeded in this was enough to mark any man's
life. His philanthropy never slept. Then, through his direct intervention, the Asylum at Anchorage for
incurables was erected; all these changes making room for those who stood a chance of being cured
instead of their being turned, for the lack of room, from the sheltering care which might restore them. I
think his influence was brought to bear upon the advisability of an institution for the deaf and dumb,
which culminated in the home made for them in Danville. I think it was in or about the year 1857 he
went to Europe, absolutely for the purpose of gaining an insight into better ways and means of the
treatment of the insane and the construction of the buildings which were their homes. Though there was
such an emptying of the old Eastern Kentucky Lunatic Asylum building, it soon became altogether
insufficient to meet the demands. Applications poured in, and soon, after a hard-fought battle, the
legislature made an appropriation to add to the old building, and promptly there was under construction
a building which, when finished, for comfort and in a sanitary way was unequaled. This, years after his
death, was destroyed by fire, and when rebuilt, I understand, was modeled after the old plan. He was his
own architect, his whole heart and being merged in a desire to have all as nearly perfect as possible,

developing thus a new talent. He always had in view a private asylum of his own. This purpose was
crystallized when it became apparent that politics would govern the State institutions, though in
opposition to all that was humane. He resigned December, 1869. He purchased "Duncannon," the
beautiful Duncan home near Lexington. The site selected, lumber on the place, all plans formulated,
having gained such advanced ideas from his long and successful experience he hoped to have an ideal
shelter for those who preferred private treatment. On December 9, 1871, at eleven o'clock at night, snow
on the ground, standing with his family and several whom even then he had under his charge around
him, after barely escaping with their lives, he saw the "Duncannon" mansion reduced to ashes. This
disaster crippled his efforts to the degree that he was forced to forego that which if carried through
would have proven a monument to his memory of no small magnitude. He then rented a house in
Lexington, where he had some patients under his charge, with a private attendant who had won many
laurels in this capacity. Doctor Chipley was frequently called upon, even in other States, to decide in the
courts as a specialist in insanity. He had a great number under his private treatment in their own homes,
of whom the world never knew. He had innumerable offers of positions, but none seemed to appeal to
him so much as one at College Hill, near Cincinnati, Ohio. He accepted this offer. His success here
proved a very decided one, redeeming the institution from great financial stress and opening up
astonishing possibilities. He had four sons—only one now living (1903)—and one daughter (the present
writer). He left many friends in Lexington who were ever beckoning him back, and to the last he hoped
to return where his heart was. But after only a few years of service at College Hill he contracted a cold
from which he never recovered. He died February 11, 1880. Invitations had been issued for a reunion in
honor of his aged mother, who was ninety-seven the day he died. A train was to be chartered and
Lexington friends were to come. He has left a memory of his gathered laurels and honored name more
precious than the gems of the universe.
Emily Chipley Jones.

Doctor James Morrison Bruce

Was a son[98] of John Bruce, a Scottish gentleman associated with Colonel James Morrison and
Benjamin Gratz in the manufacture of hemp at Lexington, Kentucky, and was born at that place in 1822.
After completing a collegiate education, he studied medicine with Doctor Benjamin W. Dudley, taking
the degree of M. D. in Transylvania in 1843. He then spent three years in France, studying in the
principal hospitals at Paris under the most eminent instructors. In 1846, he returned to Lexington to
begin the practice of his profession. He was elected to the chair of Demonstrator of Anatomy in
Transylvania Medical Department in 1850, continuing therein until the cessation of the school in 1857.
Doctor Bruce's intrinsic merit was fully appreciated by his colleagues, who had great affection for him,
but his excessively shrinking nature withheld him from taking the prominent position with the public to
which his ability and learning entitled him. In truth, his chief characteristic was his modest, amiable,
and retiring disposition. His specialty in medicine was eruptive disease. In the treatment of smallpox his
professional brethren conceded him the highest place. For many years he was continuously elected City
Physician, and holding this office he died, January 31, 1881, the sudden ending of his useful and kindly
life being largely due to the exposure he so constantly and bravely encountered in his visits to the
suffering poor during an unusually severe and trying winter. Says a fellow-physician,[99] "It was then
that the great and good qualities of our friend and co-laborer, Doctor Bruce, shone pre-eminently. It was
at a time when poverty and distress appealed to him that his great-heartedness, his forgetfulness of self,
and his proficient medical skill forced itself before that public attention from which at all other times it

timidly shrunk." Doctor Bruce married, in 1847, Miss Elizabeth Norton. Of his children Miss Elizabeth
Bruce and Mrs. Charlotte B. Davis, of Lexington, survive him.

Doctor Alexander Keith Marshall,

Born February 11, 1808, performed the duties of the chair of Materia Medica in 1856. He had received a
classical education from his father, the celebrated Doctor Louis Marshall, of "Buck Pond"; studied
medicine with Doctor Ephraim McDowell, and completed his medical course at Transylvania. He was a
handsome man, a forcible speaker, a prominent politician and Odd Fellow, and a member of Congress in
1855. He died at the home of his son, Louis, near Lexington, April, 28, 1884.[100]

Benjamin P. Drake, M. D.,

A graduate of Transylvania Medical Department in 1830, occupied the chair of Materia Medica in the
last year of the school in 1857.

During the last two years of the Medical Department of Transylvania University the Faculty were:
Ethelbert L. Dudley, Surgery.
James M. Bush, Anatomy.
William S. Chipley, Theory and Practice.
Samuel M. Letcher, Obstetrics, etc.
Henry M. Skillman, Physiology and Institutes of Medicine.
Alexander K. Marshall, Materia Medica and Botany, 1856.
Benjamin P. Drake, Materia Medica and Botany, 1857.
Robert Peter, Chemistry and Pharmacy; Dean.

TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY—MEDICAL HALL.
Built in 1839—Burned in 1863.

From 1850 until the end in 1857, the existence of the school seems to have been an heroic struggle
against fate. In spite of the fine Medical Hall, alluded to on the day of its dedication (November 2,
1840) by President Robert Davidson,[101] as "colossal in size and surpassing in architectural beauty," in
spite of liberal endowments and "costly and complete apparatus, superior to any in the valley of the
Mississippi, and not surpassed, if equaled, by any on the continent,"[102] the school languished.
Notwithstanding the efforts of zealous Trustees and generous citizens, notwithstanding the diligence of
an able Faculty, the classes steadily decreased from year to year until, in 1857, with only nine graduates,
the Faculty in despair disbanded, and the time-honored Medical Department of Transylvania University
was no more.
Two factors more than all else (except as before mentioned, the impossibility of securing sufficient
material for clinical instruction) had contributed to its demise—the retirement of Doctor Dudley in
1850, and the difficulty that existed in establishing the needed railroads throughout the State. The latter
cause had been operating unfavorably and with increasing effect almost ever since the introduction of
steam transportation.
Enlightened thinkers had early recognized and urged the vital importance of railroads for Kentucky, and
especially for Lexington and Transylvania, and had bravely advanced to conquer the difficulties of the
situation, but with only discouragement and pecuniary loss for many years. The peculiar topography of
the State, the constant alternation of hill and valley, the numerous streams, the hardness of the rock to be
penetrated, made the building of railways very expensive, and capital was wanting. The wealth of
Central Kentucky was in the soil, not in the purse, and without communication with the markets of the
world this wealth was unavailable. In this manner enterprise was checked and Lexington sank into an
apathetic state. It is true she had secured the distinction of having the first railroad in the West and the
second in the United States,[103] but for years it only led to Frankfort, an interior town but twenty-eight
miles distant. It was not until 1851 that it connected with Louisville.

Of Doctor Dudley's influence upon the medical school Doctor David W. Yandell truly says:[104] "The
history of the Medical Department of Transylvania University—its rise, its success, its decline, its

disappearance from the list of medical colleges—would practically cover Doctor Dudley's career, and
would form a most interesting chapter in the development of medical teaching in the Southwest. But it
must suffice me here to say that Doctor Dudley created the medical department of the institution and
directed its policy. Its students regarded him from the beginning as the foremost man in the Faculty.
That he had colleagues whose mental endowments were superior to his he himself at all times freely
admitted. He is said to have laid no claim to either oratorical power or professional erudition. He was
not a logician, he was not brilliant, and his deliverances were spiced with neither humor nor wit. And
yet, says one of his biographers, in ability to enchain the students' attention, to impress them with the
value of his instructions and his greatness as a teacher, he bore off the palm from all the gifted men who
at various periods taught at his side."
But although these two would appear to be the more obvious reasons for the decline of the Medical
Department of Transylvania, we can by no means ignore the injurious effect of rival medical colleges
growing up at points more accessible and more progressive than Lexington could possibly be without
rapid transit of some sort to make her own peculiar advantages available. Nor can we overlook the evil
consequences of the opposition systematically shown to the Transylvania Medical School by the faction
originating in the attempt to disorganize the institution in 1837.
However, in reviewing all these influences, the prosperity of Lexington to-day (1904), her rapid growth,
her increasing enterprise, her vigorous trade, the flourishing condition of her colleges and seminaries—
all of which has come to her since the completion of the railroads centering in her—abundantly prove
that this communication, above everything else, was her indispensable requirement.
While the medical school was closed in 1857, the Academical Department of Transylvania University
continued to be conducted at the Morrison College as a State Normal School,[105] under the Presidency
of the distinguished Doctor Lewis W. Green, D. D., but was soon to be disorganized, after only two
years of usefulness, on account of a supposed unconstitutionality. Thus Transylvania was again humbled
to a low estate in educational distinction. Lexington herself was suffering an era of banishment, as we
may say, for without proper railroad connections she was excluded from progress and rendered
inaccessible to both labor and capital. The financial prosperity of her citizens was not such as to warrant
the lavish hospitality formerly shown to strangers within her gates, and especially to the students in
Transylvania. The enterprising individuals who remained to her were not sufficient in numbers to dispel
by their most strenuous exertions the lethargy which had fallen upon the place.
Such was the state of affairs immediately preceding the Civil War. The immense Medical Hall had
reverted to the city and was deserted, save the laboratory in which was still being busily conducted the
chemical work of the first Geological Survey of Kentucky; and save perhaps one of the smaller rooms,
rented to a lodger. The survey had just received a sudden check in the death of the lamented Doctor
Owen when the war still further darkened the prospect, during which, as a matter of course, the
resumption of the survey was out of the question. The Morrison College was almost immediately
appropriated by the United States Government for a general hospital, and, some time after, the Medical
Hall, which as before mentioned was utterly destroyed by fire[106] during its occupation by the sick
soldiers. The conflagration originated, it appeared, from a defective flue of a temporary frame kitchen,
built adjoining.[107]
The corner-stone of this Medical Hall had been laid July 4, 1839; Robert Wickliffe, junior, the well-
beloved, making the address. It was dedicated November 2, 1840. Of Grecian architecture, massive and
without ornamentation, it contained three great lecture rooms, with ample provision for light and
ventilation. The amphitheatre was immediately below the cupola, being by this means lighted from
above. There were three other large apartments—for the library, the anatomical museum, and for other
medical teaching. Smaller rooms accommodated the laboratory, Faculty room, janitor's room, etc.
Besides which were long halls or galleries utilized for natural history collections, museums of zoology,

ornithology, geology, etc., as also for apparatus of divers sorts. The costly and complete chemical
apparatus was well displayed and conveniently arranged in the immense lecture room for that
department.

ABSOLOM DRIVER.
For many years Janitor at the Medical Hall of Transylvania University.

In the spacious lecture-room in the front of the building many fashionable and distinguished audiences
had assembled on various occasions, not only to hear the gifted incumbent professors in due discourse
of introductory or valedictory, but to be charmed with concerts by Ole Bull, Strakosch, Adelina Patti—
who sang there on her first tour in this country—and other celebrities of the period. There the learned
Guyot had instructed in geology; there unique "Tom Marshall" had uniquely delivered a unique course
of lectures on History. Over the rostrum hung the portrait of Doctor Samuel Brown—the first medical
professor. This lecture hall was lighted for evening assemblages, from the sides mostly, by "scounches,"
as they were called by the "ole Virginny" negro janitor. This factotum, "Absolom Driver," is unforgotten
by any whose path some time ran parallel with his. For many years the keeper of the Medical Hall, his
zeal and vigilance were unimpeachable, his dignified solemnity on state occasions unsurpassed.
Contemptuous of letters—except for doctors—and with unshakable prejudice against "book learnin' for
niggers," he was faithful in trusts with the matchless fidelity of the dog. "Bad boys"—the problem of
philosophers and ordinary folk in all ages—was one of easy solution by "Uncle Absolom" with a bent

nail at the end of a long pole. Charged upon with elan with this unprecedented weapon, accompanied by
an ominous war-cry, no truant could withstand, even though the artfully strewn broken bottles on the
high back fence had been successfully outflanked. "Robbers" had their everlasting antidote at hand in
the peculiarly uncanny, long, "one-barreled shotgun" with curious lock, which stood in the corner of the
Faculty room. Nobody ever heard it "go off," but the mystery of it was what appalled one. Happily
"Uncle Absolom's" death was nearly coeval with the closing of the medical school. To have witnessed
the burning of his sacred temple, the Medical Hall, after all his "keer," would have broken his heart
indeed.
And now, bidding adieu to the shades of the grand old Transylvania Medical Department, conjured from
the past by one now numbered with them, may the earnest wish be permitted with hope of realization,
that some other hand with cunning in such craft will unveil to us the portraits of that bygone throng of
brilliant men which constituted and which were the exponents of the honored Transylvania Law School.

APPENDIX

SCHEDULE A
Succession of the Medical Professors in the Medical Department
of Transylvania University, from 1799 to 1857, Inclusive.
Theory Materia
Institutes, Chemistry Demonstrator
and Medica,
Practice Obstretics,
Year. Surgery. Anatomy. Physiology, Botany, and of
of etc.
Medicine. etc. etc. Pharmacy. Anatomy.
Samuel Samuel Fred'ck Fred'ck Samuel
1799
Brown Brown Ridgely Ridgely Brown
James
1805
Fishback
B. W. B. W. James J.
1809
Dudley Dudley Overton Buchanan
W.H. James
1815 " " "
Richardson Blythe
Daniel
1817 " " " " "
Drake
1818 " " " " "
Saumel Chas. Chas.
1819 " " " "
Brown Caldwell Caldwell
1820 " " " " " " "
1821 " " " " " " "
1822 " " " " " " "
Daniel [B]
1823 " " " " " "
Drake
1824 " " " " " " [B] "
Daniel [B]
1825 " " " " "
Drake
C. W.
1826 " " " " "
Short
J. E.
1827 " " " " "
Cooke
1828 " " " " " "
1829 " " " " " "
1830 " " " " " "
[C]L. P.
1831 " " " " " "
Yandell
1832 " " " " " " [D] "
1833 " " " " " " [D] "
1834 " " " " " " [D] "
1835 " " " " " " [D] "
1836 " " " " " " [D] "
John T. D.
1837 " " J. C. Cross " "
Eberle Mitchell
[A] N. R. T. D. Robert
1838 " " " "
Smith Mitchell Peter
1839 [A] " " " " " " "
1840 [A] " " " " " " "
[A] Elisha
1841 " " " " " "
Bartlett

1842 [A] " " " " " " "
[A] L. M.
1843 " " " " " "
Lawson
J. M.
1844 " L. Watson " " " "
Bush
T. D.
1845 " " " " " "
Mitchell
Elisha Samuel
1846 " " " " "
Bartlett Annan
E. L.
1847 " " " " " "
Dudley
1848 " " " " " " "
Samuel W. M. H. M.
1849 " " " "
Annan Boling Bullitt
No
on of the
1850 winter l College.
Medica
sessi
E. L. J. M. Samuel H. M. S. M. J. R. Robert
1851 J. M. Bruce
Dudley Bush Annan Skillman Letcher Allen Peter
1852 " " " " " " " "
1853 " " " " " " " "
W. S.
1854 " " " " " " "
Chipley
1855 " " " " " " " "
A. K.
1856 " " " " " " "
Marshall
B. P.
1857 " " " " " " "
Drake

[A]J. M. Bush, adjunct.
[B]R. Best, adjunct.
[C]H. H. Eaton, adjunct.
[D]R. Peter, assistant.

SCHEDULE B
of the Medical Department of Transylvania
University
for Thirty-nine Years.
Year. Pupils. Graduates.
1817–18 20 1
1819–20 37 7
1820–21 93 14
1821–22 138 37
1822–23 171 51
1823–24 200 46
1824–25 234 56
1825–26 281 65
1826–27 190 53
1827–28 152 53
1828–29 206 40
1829–30 199 72
1830–31 210 54
1831–32 215 74
1832–33 222 69
1833–34 262 66
1834–35 259 83
1835–36 262 75
1836–37 242 78
1837–38 227 84
1838–39 211 51
1839–40 257 62
1840–41 254 64
1841–42 271 57
1842–43 204 60
1843–44 214 59
1844–45 156 38
1845–46 171 64

1846–47 205 68
1847–48 169 53
1848–49 120 49
1849–50 92 35
1850–[E]51 50 21
[F] 50 23
1851–52
[F] 51 19
1853
[F] 53 31
1854
[G] 38 29
1855
[H] 38 11
1855–56
[H] 32 9
1856–57
Totals 6,456 1,881

[E]Doctor Dudley resigned at
the end of this session.
[F]Spring and summer session.
[G]Summer and winter
session.
[H]Winter session.

Thus the records show that in thirty-nine years of the existence of the
Medical Department of Transylvania University it taught six thousand four
hundred and fifty-six pupils and conferred the degree of Doctor of Medicine
on one thousand eight hundred and eighty-one of that number. The late
Professor Thomas D. Mitchell, in speaking of its record, made the following
remark: "That for its vigorous prosperity and the rapid increase of its
classes, the medical school of Transylvania is without a parallel. Certainly
in the United States there is nothing comparable to it. This is the highest

eulogy the institution can receive. The most eloquent and forcible language
in praise of it would be spiritless and feeble contrasted with the power of
the foregoing figures."

Schedule of the Several Endowments of
Transylvania University.
of the Medical Department of Transylvania University
for Thirty-nine Years.
Conditions
Date of Under Which
they
Character of
Donation Donors. Donations or were Given.
Grants.
or
Grant.
8,000 acres For the purposes
escheated of a "Public
State of lands in School" or
1780
Virginia Kentucky, seminary of
value learning in
unknown Kentucky.
12,000 acres For the purposes
escheated of a "Public
State of lands in School" or
1783
Virginia Kentucky, seminary of
value learning in
unknown Kentucky.
For the purposes
of a "Public
Books, etc.,
School" or
1783 Individuals value not
seminary of
known
learning in
Kentucky.
"As an
Reverend Small library
1784 encouragement
John Todd and apparatus
to science."

One sixth
State of For the public
1787 surveyors' fees
Virginia school, etc.
in Kentucky
State of A lottery grant To establish the
1791
Virginia to raise money school.
Lot in For the
Transylvania
1792–3 Lexington (5 permanent site
Land Co.
acres) of the Seminary.
12,000 acres
of land, 6,000
acres to
State of Kentucky
1795–8
Kentucky Academy
and 6,000
acres to the
Seminary
$14,000 in Promotion of
Individuals in
money and science,
1794–5 various parts
books and learning, and
and States
apparatus virtue.
To build a
State of
1804 A lottery grant Medical
Kentucky
College.
Bonus of F. &
State of To aid the
1819 M. Bank,
Kentucky University.
$3,000
To Medical
State of $5,000 in
1820 College for
Kentucky paper
library, etc.
To Medical
City of $6,000 in
1820 College for
Lexington paper
library, etc.
1820 State of Half profits of To aid the
Kentucky Commercial University.
Bank, $20,000
in paper, 2
per cent on

auction sales
to law
library
To aid the
Citizens of
1822 $4,832 Medical
Lexington
Department.
To found a
Colonel
$20,000 in "Morrison"
1823 James
money professorship or
Morrison
library.
Colonel $50,000 To erect a
1823 James residuary "Morrison
Morrison estate College."
To build a
State of
1823 A lottery grant medical college
Kentucky
at Lexington.
To pay salaries
$3,000 per
Citizens and of President and
1827 to annum, the
city of professors
1829 city giving
Lexington of the
$500
University.
Insurance
policy for
Citizens and
1827 to $10,000 on the
city of
1829 burned
Lexington
University
edifice
W. C. C. To help build the
1830 $50
Claiborne above.
$70,000 to
build new On condition to
City of medical elect Trustees
1839
Lexington college, and send free
enlarge scholarships.
library, etc.
1839 Transylvania About $35,000 To endow
Institute Morrison

College, etc.
To purchase a lot
Citizens of for the site of the
1839 $3,000
Lexington Medical
College.
Residuary
debt on new
1839 to Medical
Medical
1850 professors
College in
lieu of rent
Support of
$12,000 per
State of Normal College
1855–6 annum for two
Kentucky in Transylvania
years
University.
Numerous old
His Britannic
1834 legal record
majesty
books

Many other persons, as Honorable Edward Everett, Mr. Swan, of France,
etc., have at various times made valuable contributions to the Library.

INDEX
* Before figures means that the reference is
to a foot-note on the pages indicated.
PAGE
Academical Department of
Transylvania in 1857 160
Account rendered of books, etc.,
purchased by Doctors Bush
and Peter *91
Act endowing Transylvania
University 1
Allen, Doctor John Rowan *147
Allen, Doctor John R., notice of 147
Allen, Doctor John R., in
Transylvania Medical School 147
Allen, Reverend R. T. P. *133
Anderson, Reverend W. H. *133
Anecdote of Doctor Samuel Brown 9
Anecdote of Doctor E. L. Dudley *137
Anecdote of Doctor John Esten
Cooke 75
Anecdote illustrating progress 9
Anecdote of Titian 47
Annan, Doctor Samuel *115
Biographical sketch of 138
At Baltimore Alms-house 138
At Hopkinsville Asylum 139
At Washington University 138
Born 138
Character of 139
Degree of M. D. 138
Honors conferred upon 138
In the Civil War 139

In Kentucky School of Medicine 141
Professor in Transylvania 138, 139
Resigns from Transylvania 139
Surgeon on steamship 139
Writings of 139, 140
Apparatus, purchase of by Doctors
Peter and Bush 90, 91
Appropriation for purchase of
apparatus 31
Attractive logic of Doctor Cooke 76
Avery, Charles 88
Ayres, David J., M. D. 29, 30
Bartlett, Doctor Elisha 57, 120, *132
Biographical sketch of 125
As a poet 129
At Baltimore 126
At Dartmouth 126
At Transylvania 126
At Woodstock Medical School 126
Beautiful character of 127, 128, 129
Born 125
Death of 128
Degree of M. D. 125
Early education of 125
Goes to the Legislature 125
In College of Physicians and
Surgeons, New York 127
In Medical School at Louisville 126
Letter of resignation *126
Mayor of Lowell 125
Poisoned by lead 127
Studies in Europe 125
Bartlett, Doctor John *115
Bartlett, Otis 125
Bartlett, Waite 125
Barry, Honorable William T. *35
Bascom, Reverend H. B. *132

Beginning of success of the Medical
Department 29
Best, Doctor Robert 40
Best, Doctor Robert, died *40
Biographical sketch of Doctor
Samuel Annan 138
Doctor Elisha Bartlett 125
Doctor Samuel Brown 6
Doctor J. M. Bruce 154
Doctor H. M. Bullitt 141
Doctor Joseph Buchanan 14
Doctor J. M. Bush 114
Doctor Charles Caldwell 47
Doctor W. S. Chipley 147
Doctor J. E. Cooke 64
Doctor James C. Cross 105
Doctor B. W. Dudley 15
Doctor E. L. Dudley 132
Doctor Daniel Drake 40
Doctor John Eberle 106
Doctor Leonidas Lawson 130
Doctor S. M. Letcher 146
Doctor A. K. Marshall 155
Doctor T. D. Mitchell 109
Doctor Robert Peter 88
Doctor William H. Richardson 33
Doctor Frederick Ridgely 10
Doctor Charles W. Short 78
Doctor H. M. Skillman 143
Doctor Nathan R. Smith 120
Doctor Lunsford P. Yandell 83
Bishop, Reverend Robert H. *35
Blane, Gilbert 8
Blythe, Reverend James 4, 7, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32,
35
Acting President of Transylvania
University 12

Appointed Professor of
Chemistry in Medical Department 12
Died 12
President of Kentucky Academy 4
Resigns 12
Bodley, Thomas *46
Boling, Doctor William M. 141
Boswell, Joseph 38
Botanic Garden Company,
stockholders 38
Bowman, Honorable John B. 99, 100, *100
Bradford, John 4, *46
Breckinridge, Lieutenant Ethelbert D. *137
Breckinridge, Reverend John 146
Breckinridge, Ensign J. Cabell *137
Breckinridge, General Joseph C. *137
Breckinridge, Doctor Robert J. *160
Brilliant era for Transylvania Medical
School 34
Brittan, Mr., case of 67
Bronston, Honorable C. J. *160
Brown, Honorable John 7
Brown, Reverend John 6
Brown, John Mason *7
Brown, Orlando 9
Brown, Doctor Preston 7
Brown, Doctor Samuel 4, 7, 26, 34, 35, 38, 43, 46,
57, 163
Biographical sketch of 6
Anecdote of 9
Born 6
Died 6
Introduces cow-pox 9
Imports books, etc., for
Transylvania 6
Personal appearance 8
Vaccination introduced by 4

Writings of 8
Bruce, Benjamin Gratz *154
Bruce, James M., biographical sketch
of 154
Character of 154, 155
Children of 155
Degree of M. D. 155
Demonstrator of Anatomy in
Transylvania 154
Education of 154
Parentage of 154
Studies in Europe 154
Bruce, Colonel Saunders D. *154
Bruce, William Wallace *154
Bull, Ole 163
Bullitt, Doctor Henry M. *115
Biographical sketch of 141
As Health Officer 143
As writer 142
Death of 143
Education of 141, 142
Establishes Kentucky School of
Medicine 141, 142
Goes to Europe 142
Founds Louisville Medical
College 142
In University of Louisville 142
In St. Louis Medical College 142
In Transylvania Medical School 141, 142
Bullock, Mrs. Waller O. *28
Buchanan, Doctor Joseph 13
In politics 14
Sketch of 14
Resigns 14
Burning of first University building 3
Burning of New Medical Hall 55, 161
Burning of Old Medical Hall 44

Bush, Benjamin Dudley 119
Bush, Doctor James M. 17, 63, 90, *91, 92, *115,
163
Biographical sketch of 114
As a teacher 117
Born 114
Character in his profession 116
Children of 119
Death of 119, 120
Degree of A. B. 114
Degree of M. D. 114
In Kentucky School of Medicine 115
Parentage of *114
Married 119
Opinion of Doctor Rogers on 116
Professor of Anatomy 17
Professor Adjunct in
Transylvania 115
Removed to Lexington 114
Writings of 117, 118, 119
Bush, Miss Nannie M. *119
Bush, Captain Thomas J. *119
Caldwell, Doctor Charles 7, 31, 34, 35, 38, 40, 43,
46, 57, 64, 81, *82, 83, 84,
86, 87, 102
Biographical sketch of 47
Address on the L. & O. R. R. 60
Address at Lexington Lyceum 60
Antagonizes Doctor Rush 50, 51
At University of Pennsylvania 50
Born 49
Compares Transylvania with
Philadelphia school 55
Dean of Faculty 53
Described by Doctor Gross *54
Died 49
Dismissed from Transylvania 62, 53

Early life in Philadelphia 51, 52
Effort to remove school to
Louisville 61, 62
Extracts from autobiography of 49, 50, 51, 52, 53
Induces Legislature to give
money 43
Mental activity of 51
Parentage of 49
Sets out for Europe 31
Yellow fever in Philadelphia 51
Caldwell, Thomas L. 38
Calomel, experience of Doctor Peter 69, 70
Experiment with, by Doctor
Peter 72, 73
Irregular action of 69
Mammoth dose of Doctor Cooke 73
Properties of 68, 69
Calvert, Doctor William Jeptha *123
Causes of the decline of the Medical
Department 57, 157
"Captain Neet's Rifle Guards" 58
Centenary of Lexington *3
Centennial Park 3
Ceremonies on laying the first "stone
sill" of L. & O. R. R. 58, 59, 60
Chapman, George T. *46
Chapman, Reverend Doctor 75
Chemical work of Doctor Peter 95, 96
Chew, Doctor Samuel C. 122
Chipley, Amelia Stout 147
Chipley, Doctor William S. 156
Biographical sketch of 147
Advocates Deaf and Dumb
Asylum 151
As a lecturer 149
As a specialist 153
As a writer 149

Asylum burnt 152
At College Hill 153
Burning of "Duncannon" 152
Death of 153
Establishes asylum at Anchorage 151
Goes to Columbus, Georgia 148
Goes to Europe 151
Graduates in Transylvania 147, 148
Marries 148
Mayor of Columbus 148, 149
Parentage of 147
Practices among Indians 148
Private asylum at Lexington 153
Professor in Transylvania 149
Purchases "Duncannon" 152
Return to Lexington 149
Takes charge of Lunatic Asylum 149
Takes issue with Doctor Dudley 148
Work for idiots 150, 151
Work for Lunatic Asylum 149, 150
Chipley, Reverend Stephen 147
Cholera of 1833 66, 67, *67, 73
Cholera of 1833, number of deaths *67
Churchill, Armistead 82
Churchill, Jane Henry 82
Churchill, Mary Henry 82
Citizens of Lexington subscribe to
Medical Department 42
Clifford, John D. 31
Coit, Reverend Thomas W. *83
Coleman, James B. 58
Coleman, Nicholas D. *35
Combs, General Leslie 58
Completion of Lexington & Ohio
Railroad 58
Consolidation of the Transylvania and
Kentucky Universities 56

Consolidation of the Transylvania
Seminary and Kentucky
Academy 5
Cooke, Doctor John Esten 15, 21, 40, 57
Biographical sketch of 64
As a lecturer 77
Cases from the practice of 66, 67, 68, 71
Character, by Doctor Yandell *78
Characteristic anecdote of 75
"Cooke's pills" 73, 74
Died 64, 65
In cholera of 1833 66, 67
In Louisville 77, 78
In Transylvania Medical School 64
Fame of 64
Logic of 76
Mammoth doses of calomel 73
Method of making antimonial
wine *65
Only fear of calomel 70, 71
Removed to Louisville 64
Removal from Virginia 64
Retired on pension 78
Sincerity of opinions 74, 75
Universal theory of disease 76
Use of calomel 65, 66
Writings of 64, 78
Cooper, Doctor Thomas 27
Cow-pox introduced 9
Criticism of Doctor Caldwell by
Doctor Yandell 48
Cross, Doctor James Conquest 106, *132
Biographical sketch of 105
Born 105
Character of 106
Dean of the Faculty 105
Dismissed from Transylvania 105

Made medical professor 63
Professor in Transylvania 105
Writings of 105
Daguerre's wonderful discovery 91
Dallam, Major William S. 90
Dallam, Frances Paca 90
Davidge, Professor John B. 122
Davidson, Reverend Robert 157
Decline of the Transylvania Medical
Department 157
Causes of 57
Dedication of Morrison College 90
Description of New Medical Hall 162, 163
Description of Old Medical Hall 44
Difficulty of travel in early times 31
Difficulty of procuring anatomical
material 61
Director, first, of Transylvania
Seminary 3
Donation of Reverend John Todd 2, 3
Donations of physicians of
Lexington, etc. 43
Douglass, William, case of 66
Driver, Absolom 163, 164
Drake, Doctor B. P. 156
Drake, Doctor Daniel 7, 15, 32, 38, 107
Biographical sketch of 40
Advice to young practitioners 42
Born 40
Died 42
Founds school in Cincinnati 41
Gross's description of *42, 54
In Louisville Medical Institute 41
In Medical College of Ohio 41
In Philadelphia 41
Professor in Transylvania 41
Resigns 33

Resigns from Transylvania 41
Writings of 41
Yandell's description of 42
Dudley, Ambrose 15
Dudley, Doctor Benjamin W. 7, 11, 13, 27, 29, 30, 32, 35,
*35, 38, 46, 53, 54, 57, 82,
*82, 91,
102, 114, 115, *115, 117,
118, 119, *132, *133, 156,
157, 158, 159
Biographical sketch of 15
Appointed Professor of Anatomy
and Physiology 13
As citizen 24
As medical practitioner 24
As surgeon 19
As a teacher 18
As a writer 21
Born 15
Character of 18
Contracts poison *26
Death of 18, *26
Duel with Richardson 25
Elected President pro tem. of
Transylvania University 21
Exemplification of character 24
Influence on Medical
Department 158, 159
First papers of 21
Last lectures of 17
Last productions of 23
Liberality of 25
Made Emeritus 17
Memoir of, by Yandell 23
Notice of two operations 20
Operations for lithotomy 19
Papers in Journal of Medicine 22

Preparation of patients 20
Receives degree of M. D. 16
Recollections of school of 1815 27
Removal of Medical Department
to Louisville 62
Removes to Lexington 15
Resigns 17
Roller bandage 20
Sensibility of 19
Studies in Europe 15, 16
Treatment for fungus cerebri 22
Use of hot water 21
Withdraws from practice 17
Dudley, Ethelbert L. 17, 21, 23, 96, *115
Biographical sketch of 132
As editor 134
As medical student 132
As practitioner 136
Death of 138
Degree of M. D. 132
Demonstrator of Anatomy 133
Endearing attributes of 136
Energy of 133, 134
In the Civil War 137
Incident of Civil War *137
In Kentucky School of Medicine 134, 135
Raises regiment 137
Resigns from Kentucky School
of Medicine 136
Teaches at Marine Hospital 135
Visits Europe 134
Dudley, Scott *137
Dudley, Reverend Thomas P. *26
Dudley, William A. 25
Duncan, General *110
Early advantages of Lexington 30
Eaton, Amos 84

Eaton, A. M., Hezekiah Hulbert 79, *79, 84, 89, *89
Character of 84
Death of 85
Eaton, General William *84
Eberle, Doctor John 109, *110, 113
Biographical sketch of 106
Appearance and character of 108
As practitioner 108
Botanical work of 108
Called to Transylvania 63
Death of 63, 109
Difficulties as author 106, 107
Early education and birth 106
Founds Medical School in
Cincinnati, Ohio 107
Professor in Jefferson Medical
College 107
Professor in Medical College of
Ohio 108
Professor in Transylvania
Medical Department 108
Writings of 106, 107, 108
Eclectic Institute 89, *89
Editors of Transylvania Journal of
Medicine 21
Effort to remove Medical School to
Louisville 61, 62
End of Transylvania Medical
Department 157
Epilepsy, cause of 21
Epilepsy, cure by Doctor Dudley 21, 22
Era of depression in Lexington 160, 161
Everett, Edward *46, 168
Faculty, first, of Kentucky School of
Medicine *115
Faculty of Transylvania University in
1821 *35

Faculty of Transylvania University
under the Methodists, 1842 *132
Fanning, Elizabeth 148
Fanning, Colonel James 148
Ficklin, Joseph 38
Final dispersion of Medical Faculty 157
First acting President of Transylvania
Seminary 2
First Faculty of Kentucky School of
Medicine *115
First Medical College in the
Mississippi Valley 5
First meeting of Trustees of
Transylvania University 5
First "Director" of Transylvania
Seminary 3
First effort to establish a Medical
College 5
First geological survey of Kentucky 94
First Grammar Master of
Transylvania Seminary 2
First lecture room of Medical
Department 29
First medical graduate 32
First medical lectures 29
First Medical Professors in
Transylvania University 6, 26
First newspaper in the West 4
First operation of lithotomy by
Doctor Dudley 20
First President of Transylvania
Seminary 4
First railroad in United States *158
First Rector of Christ Church 2
First site of Transylvania University *97
First University building burned 3
Fishback, Jacob 13

Fishback, Doctor James 16, 26, 46
Appointed Professor in Medical
Department 12
Character of 13
Death of 13
Legislator 13
Trustee in Transylvania *13
Writings of 13
Flint, Doctor Joshua B. *115, 142
Fry, Joshua 82
Garden, botanic 38
Garden, Thomas J. 30
Garrard, Governor 4
Geological survey of Kentucky begun 94
Geological survey resumed 98
Goldsmith, Doctor Alban 114
Government appropriation for rents
and destruction of Transylvania
University property *162
Graham, Doctor Christopher C. *17, 20, *27, 28, *133
Adventures as medical student *33
Reminiscences of 28
Gratz, Benjamin 3, 38, 46, 97, *109
Gratz, H. H. 3
Gratz Park 3
Green, Doctor Lewis W. 160
Griswold, Henry A. 79, *89, 93
Gross, Doctor S. D. *42, *54, *81
Guyot, Professor 163
Hall, Reverend Nathan H. 59, *106
Hall, Doctor William *76
Harkness, L. V. *34
Harper, J. 38
Harrison, Professor J. P. 130
Hesperian Society 89
Higgins, Richard 38

Holley, Doctor Horace 3, 34, *35, 38, 46, *46, 53,
97
Holmes, Doctor Oliver Wendell, on
Doctor Bartlett 127
Home Guard 96, 97, *97, 137
Hosack, Doctor 7
Humphreys, Charles 38, *46
Hunt's Artillery 58
Hunt, John W. 38, 46
Hunter, John 18
Huntingdon, Doctor, extracts from
address of 126
Influence of rival schools on
Transylvania Medical Department 159
Influence of Doctor Dudley on
Transylvania Medical Department 158, 159
Inoculation for smallpox 4
Great hazard in 4
Ill feeling between Doctors Dudley
and Richardson 32
Jackson, President 29
James, Miss Charlotte 119
Janitor of Medical Hall 163
Jenkins, John F. *35
Jenner, Doctor 9
Johnson, Honorable Madison C. 97, *97
Joint stock company to build first
Medical Hall 43
Journey to Philadelphia, difficulty of 31
Kemp, Reverend J. L. *133
Kentucky Academy 4, 12
Rivalry with Transylvania
Seminary 5
United with Transylvania
Seminary 5
Kentucky Gazette *4, 11, 19, 20, 26, 30
Kentucky School of Medicine 17, 134, 135

Kentucky School of Medicine as
winter school 115
Kentucky School of Medicine, first
Faculty of *115
Kentucky University controversy 100
Kentucky University removed to
Lexington 99
Kentucky University united with
Transylvania University 99, 100
Law College established 6
Lawrence, Mr. Byrem *94
Lawson, Doctor Leonidas,
biographical sketch of 130
As practitioner 131
Graduate in Transylvania 130
In Kentucky School of Medicine 131
In University of Louisiana 131
Practice in Cincinnati 130
Professor in Ohio Medical
College 130, 131
Professor in Transylvania 130
Writings of 130, 131
Lawson, Miss Louisa 131
Leavy, William 38, *46
Leavy, William A. 38
Letcher, Doctor Samuel M. 156
Biographical sketch of 146
Death of 147
In Civil War 147
Professor in Transylvania
Medical Department 146
Letter of Doctor Mitchell to
Benjamin Gratz 109, *110
Lexington & Ohio Railroad begun 58
Lexington & Ohio Railroad
completed 58
Lexington, early advantages of 30

Lexington endows Transylvania
University with $70,000 *56
Lexington, population of 57, 58
Lexington Reporter *43, 59
Light, George C. *46
Loan, city of Lexington to Medical
College 43
Location of Botanic Garden *39
Lofty aims of John B. Bowman *100
Lynch, Reverend Thomas H. *133
Mangum, Senator W. P. 129
Marshall, Doctor Alexander K.,
biographical sketch of 155
Education of 155
Death of 156
Marshall, Honorable Thomas A. *133
"Marshall, Tom" 163
Marshall, Doctor Louis 155
McCalla, John M. 38
McClellan, Doctor George 107, 121, 122
McCoun, Reverend B. H. *133
McCullough, John Lawson 32
McDowell, Doctor Ephraim 7, 155
McIlvaine, B. R. 38
Medical Class of 1815 29
Medical College established 5
Medical Department of Transylvania
University, Causes of decline 57, 157
Medical Department of Transylvania
University first instituted 5
Medical Faculty of Transylvania
University intermits winter
session in Lexington 17
Medical Faculty of Transylvania
University of 1815 27
Medical Faculty of Transylvania
University in 1856–57 156

Medical Hall, New, burned 55, 161
Medical Hall, Old, burned 44
Medical Hall deserted 161
Medical Hall taken for United States
Hospital 161
Medical Institute 102
Medical School of Transylvania
University as a summer school 115
Medical School of Transylvania
University in 1809 13
Megowan, Joseph *29
Memorial of Doctor Peter to
Legislature *94
Mercer, General 75
Merrick, Reverend Wright *133
Metcalfe, Governor 59
Michaux, F. A. 31
Mitchel, Reverend James 2
Mitchell, Doctor Thomas D. 21, 57, 63, 107, *133, 167
Biographical sketch of 109
As a lecturer 114, *114
At Frankford, Pa. 111
Born 110
Called to Transylvania 112
Dean of Faculty 110
Death of 110
Degree of A. M. 111
Degree of M. D. 109
Describes Medical School *63
Early education of 110
Fills two chairs 109, 110
Fortitude of 110
Founds total abstinence society 111
Lazaretto physician *109
Leaves Transylvania 112
Letter to Benjamin Gratz 109

Professor in Jefferson Medical
School 113
Professor in Kentucky School of
Medicine 112
Professor in Medical College of
Ohio 112
Professor in Philadelphia
College of Medicine 112
Professor in St. John's Lutheran
College 111
Professor in Transylvania
Medical Department 109
Resigns from Kentucky School
of Medicine 112
Writings of 111
Yellow fever *109
Moore, Reverend James 2
Appointed president of
Transylvania University 5
Restored to presidency of
Transylvania University 11
Morehead, Charles D. *35
"Morgan's Rifles" *97
Morrison College, dedication of 90
Taken for United States Hospital 161
Morrison, Colonel James 154
New Medical Hall burned 55, 161
Corner-stone laid 162
Dedicated 162
Description of 162, 163
Erected 44
Purchase of lot for *56
Reverts to city *56
Used as United States Hospital 55
Nicholas, Colonel George 6
Norwood, C. J. 98
Old Medical Hall burned 44

Corner-stone laid 44
Description of 44
Opposition to Transylvania Medical
Department 160
Organization of Medical Faculty in
1809 13
In 1817 32
Origin of Transylvania Seminary 2
Origin of Transylvania University 1
Owen, Doctor David Dale 94, 99, 161
Death of 96
Describes Doctor Peter's
laboratory *95
On Doctor Peter's chemical work 95
Owen, Colonel Richard 99
Overton, Doctor James 26, 27, 29, 30, 32
Education of *28
Professor of Materia Medica and
Botany 13
Removed from Lexington 28
Sketch of, by Mrs. Bullock *28
Palmer, James W. 38
Parrish, Doctor 111
Patti, Adelina 163
Pattison, Professor Granville Sharpe 122
Patton, Elizabeth 7
Paxton, W. M. *156
Peers, Reverend B. O. *83, 85, 89, *89
Pendleton, Major-General 59
Percy, Thomas G. 6
Permanent location of Transylvania
Seminary 3
Peter, Doctor Robert 21, 63, 79, 109, 112, *115,
*133, 156
Biographical sketch of 88
Ancestry 88

Analyses in new geological
survey 98
Analyses in survey of Arkansas 99
Analyses in survey of Indiana 99
Analyses of Trenton limestone 99
Antagonistic to Doctor Yandell 102, 103
Appearance of 104
As army surgeon 97
As botanist 93
As city councilman 104
As editor 101
As experimental chemist 103, 104
As lecturer 103
As practitioner 90
As teacher 93
As toxicologist 98
As writer 101
Assists Doctor Yandell 89
At Rensselaer School 89, *89
Attacked by Louisville
controversialists *102
Born 88
Brings first daguerreotype outfit
to Lexington 92
Comes to America 88
Comes to Lexington 89
Character, by a colleague 104
Character of his teachings 92
Cholera of 1833 90
Controversy on the removal of
the school to Louisville 101, 102
Dean of the Faculty 90
Degree of M. D. 90
Death of 104
Discovery of phosphates 99
Donates apparatus *90
Early education 88

Emeritus Professor 101
Examination of calculi 92
Experiments with gun-cotton,
etc. 92
Extracts from letters of 91
Herbarium 93
In agriculture and horticulture 101
In Arkansas geological survey 98, 99
Inaugurates the Kentucky
Geological Survey 94
In Civil War 96, 97
In the Eclectic Institute 89
In the Kentucky Geological
Survey 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99
Lectures at Pittsburg 89
Marries 90
Naturalized 88, 89
Professor in Kentucky
University 100
Professor in Kentucky School of
Medicine 93
Professor in Transylvania
Medical Department 90
Proves the importance of soil
analysis 94, 95
Purchases apparatus in Europe 90, 91
Reconciliation with Doctor
Yandell 103
Religious views 100, *101
Retires from medical practice 90
Unanimously elected to chair in
Morrison College 90
Views on Louisville controversy 102
Petre, Sir William 88
Population of Lexington, fluctuation
in 57, 58
Powell, Doctor Llewellyn *115

Preliminary preparation of patients by
Doctor Dudley 19, 20
Present prosperity of Lexington 160
Present whereabouts of medical
library and apparatus 56
Presbyterian patronage of
Transylvania Seminary 2
President of Kentucky Academy 4
Preston family, memoranda of *7
Preston, John 7
Preston, Margaret 7
Priestly, Doctor 4
Primitive daguerreotype apparatus 91, 92
Procter, John R. 97, 98
Purchase of lot for New Medical Hall *56
Qualifications of medical students of
1838 63
Rafinesque, Professor C. S. *35, 38
Biographical sketch of 35
Born 36
Botanic Garden 37
Comes to Lexington 36
His estimation of himself 35
Professor in Transylvania
University 36
Writings of 37
Railroads in Kentucky, difficulty in
obtaining 158
Railroads, effect on Lexington 61, 62
Railroad, first in the West 158
Ranck, G. W. *29
Rapid increase of classes 46
Remains of the medical library *56
Reid, Doctor, of Edinburgh 113
Reorganization of Medical Faculty in
1815 27
In 1817 27

In 1823 40
In 1837 63
Richardson, Doctor William H. 7, 16, 27, 32, 35, *35, 38,
63, 110, 132
Biographical sketch of 33
Character of 33, 34
Death of 33
Duel with Doctor Dudley 25
Home of 34
Ridgely, Doctor Frederick 15, 26, 82
Biographical sketch 10
As army surgeon 10
Born *10
Character of 10
Death of 11
First lectures 11
First professor in Transylvania
Medical Department 6
Made Professor in Transylvania
Medical Department 11
Robertson, Honorable George *133, 149
Roche, John P. *35, 38
Rogers, Doctor Coleman 27, 141
Rogers, Doctor Lewis 14, 33, 116
On Doctors Short and Peter 93
Roller bandage, use of by Dudley 20
Rush, Doctor 51, 52, 53, *110
Sayre, David A. 97, *97
Scott, Sir Walter *46
Second geological survey of
Kentucky 97
Shaler, Professor N. S. 97
Short, Doctor Charles W. 21, 40, 57, *79, 93
Biographical sketch of 78
As church member 82
As a lecturer 80, 81
As a teacher 93

Born 78
Character of 78, 79
Dean of Faculty 81
Death of 81
Description of, by Doctor Gross *81
Description of, by Professor
Miller *80
Early education of 82
Editor of Transylvania Journal
of Medicine 81
Emeritus Professor 81
His herbarium 79, 80
Honored by botanists 80
Influence on Kentucky Medical
Institute *81
Leaves Transylvania 81
Marries 82
Parentage of 81, 82
President pro tem. of
Transylvania *82
Professor in Medical Institute 81, *82
Professor in Transylvania 78
Received degree of M. D. 82
Two remarkable cases 80
Writings of 79, 80
Short, John Cleves 82
Short, Peyton 81
Skillman, Doctor Henry M. 156
Biographical sketch of 143
Character of 144, 145
Death of 144
Degree of M. D. 143, 144
Early education 143
In Civil War 145
Marries 146
Offices of trust 145
Professor in Transylvania 144

Skillman, Elizabeth Farrar 143
Skillman, Thomas T. 143
Sketch of 145, 146
Skipwith, Sir William, baronet 82
Slaughter, Gabriel 38
Smallpox, notice of inoculation for 4
Smith, Doctor Alan P. 124
Smith, Doctor Nathan R. 57
Biographical sketch of 120
As a lecturer 124
As a surgeon 124
As a teacher 124
At University of Pennsylvania 121, 122
Born 120
Called to Transylvania 120
Early education 121
Estimation in which he was held 122
Letter of resignation *122, *123
Letter of Transylvania Faculty *123
Mental gifts 123
Professor in Transylvania
Medical Department 122, 123
Professor in University of
Maryland 122
Professor in University of
Vermont 121
Resigned 120
Sketch of his father 120, 121
Writings and inventions 124
Smith, Thomas 38
Staughton, Professor 113
Stockholders of the Botanic Garden 38
Strakosch, Maurice 163
Students in Medical Department, total
number of 55
Superior apparatus of Transylvania
Medical Department 157

Superiority of library of Transylvania
Medical Department *91
Swan, Mr. 168
Symmes, John Cleves 82
Table of students, graduates of
Medical Department (1819–34) *55
"The Botanical Garden" of
Transylvania University 38
Theobalds, Doctor Samuel *147
Thomas, Doctor Philip *10
Thornbury, Doctor Philip *115
Titian, anecdote of 47
Todd, Reverend John 3
Todd, Doctor L. B. *136, 155
Total number of students in Medical
Department 55
Total number of graduates in Medical
Department 55
Toulmin, Mr. Harry, first President of
Transylvania University 4
Opposition to 4
Transylvania the best-endowed
medical school in America *122
Transylvania Faculty in 1842 *132
Transylvania Institute *56
Transylvania Journal of Medicine,
editors of 21
Transylvania Journal of Medicine,
first appearance of 21
Transylvania Land Company 3
Transylvania Medical Library *91
Transylvania Medical School in 1809 13
Transylvania merged into Kentucky
University 99, 100
Transylvania Seminary 2
First "Director" 3
First President 4

Presbyterian patronage of 2
Rivalry with Kentucky Academy 5
United with Kentucky Academy 5
Transylvania University 5
First meeting of Trustees of 5
Medical department established 5
Origin of 1
Tribute of thanks, 1817 30
Trotter, James *46
"Trotter's Warehouse" 29
Trustees of Transylvania University
in 1828 *46
Unparalleled growth of Transylvania
University Medical School 167
Vaccination introduced by Doctor
Brown 9
Wallace, Thomas 38
Warfield, Charles H. 30
Warfield, Doctor Elisha 13, 38, *46
Resigns 14
Warfield, Doctor Walter 11
Warner, Miss Harriot 47
Watson, Doctor Lotan G. *126
Sketch of 129
Character of 129
Professor in Transylvania
Medical Department 129
Welsh, Reverend James 11
Wickliffe, Robert, junior 162
Wilkins, Charles 38, *46
Willett, Jacob 125
Wilson, Mr. Isaac 2
Winter, Elisha I. *46
Wistar, Doctor Caspar 82
Woods, Reverend Alva, D. D. 21
Installed as President 46
Woolley, Honorable A. K. *133

Yandell, Doctor Lunsford P. 21, 23, 47, 48, 53, 57, 63,
64, 66, 77, 89, 90, 158
Biographical sketch of 83
As editor and writer 87
Called to Chemical Chair in
Transylvania 83
Character of 83
Character of Doctor Cooke, by *78
Criticises Doctor Caldwell 48
Death of 88
During Civil War 86
Early education 83
Forgives Doctor Caldwell 49
Goes to Memphis 86
Ordained Presbyterian minister 87
President of College Physicians
and Surgeons 87
President of Medical Society 87, 88
Professor in Medical Institute 85, 86
Professor in Transylvania 83
Removes to Louisville 85
Succeeds Doctor Caldwell 86
Resigns from Louisville school 86
Yandell, Doctor Wilson 83

Footnotes
[1] April 11, 1791. See Records of Transylvania University.
[2] Out lot No. 6.
[3] In honor of the Centenary of Lexington, celebrated April 2, 1879.
[4] An interesting notice of "Inoculation for Smallpox," in 1794, is to
be found in the files of the old Kentucky Gazette, a paper published by
John Bradford, in Lexington, August 11, 1787—the first newspaper
published west of the Alleghany mountains. This notice appeared in
that paper January 4, 1794, as follows: "On Thursday last the
inhabitants of this place began the inoculation of smallpox and have
agreed to continue until the fifteenth, after which they are determined
to cease. They have appointed a committee to draw up a remonstrance
to the court of Fayette County requesting that the order of that court
granting liberty to the inhabitants of said county to inoculate may be
rescinded, so far as respects the town of Lexington, after that date."
The Gazette for the first of February following has this significant
statement, illustrating the great hazard of this primitive operation, viz:
"That the smallpox had been very fatal within the three weeks past in
the town and vicinity under inoculation, that at least one out of fifteen
died who had been inoculated, and very few children had recovered."
Vaccination was introduced here by Professor Samuel Brown, M. D.,
at quite an early period, as we shall see further on.
[5] Lexington, January 8, 1799. (See Records of Transylvania
University, Volume 1.)
[6] December 11, 1799. (See Records of Transylvania University.)

[7] "Memoranda of the Preston Family," by John Mason Brown, Page
20.
[8] See "Memoranda of the Preston Family," Page 37, for his
descendants.
[9] Quoted from an introductory lecture to the winter course in the
Medical Department of Transylvania University, delivered by the
present writer (Doctor Robert Peter) November 5, 1854.
[10] Doctor Ridgely was born on Elkridge, Anne Arundel County,
Maryland, May 25, 1757, and studied medicine under Doctor Philip
Thomas, of almost unrivaled reputation. (Doctor C. W. Short.)
[11] Doctor James Fishback resigned as Trustee and qualified as
Medical Professor November 4, 1805. (See Records.)
[12] Jacob Fishback was a Trustee of Transylvania in 1801 and up to
1807. (See Records.)
[13] See Records of Transylvania University, 1809.
[14] An able biographical sketch of him by his son, Joseph Buchanan,
also celebrated, was published in Collins' History of Kentucky, first
edition.
[15] According to Doctor C. C. Graham he held that these two chairs
should be inseparable.
[16] Now the site of the golf links at the termination of North
Broadway.
[17] This was before the use of anesthetics in surgery, it must be
remembered.
[18] Did he not, in this preliminary preparation of his surgical patients,
unwittingly render them safe from the microbes of disease, thus
practically securing for them the benefits of more modern scientific
discovery?

[19] March 28, 1828, Doctor Dudley was elected President, pro tem.,
in the interval between the unanimous election of Reverend Alva
Woods, D. D., February 7, 1828, and his installation October 13, 1828.
[20] "He contracted poison in performing a surgical operation, from
which he suffered greatly and never recovered. He died suddenly after
about two hours of illness, at a quarter to one on Thursday morning,
January 20, 1870, of apoplexy. In his relations of son, husband, father,
master and friend it is believed he has left no better man." (Extract
from a short obituary by his brother, Reverend Thomas P. Dudley.)
[21] Doctor C. C. Graham says: "What few private students there were
in Lexington went from shop to shop (at that day so called) and got
three only, Dudley, Richardson, and eccentric Overton to give us a
talk." (Letter to Doctor Peter.)
[22] Since dead as more than a centenarian.
[23] His great niece, Mrs. Waller O. Bullock, in speaking of the
portrait of Doctor Overton, the only one extant, says: "It was done in
Philadelphia just as he was completing his medical course, and I think
it must have been soon after that he entered upon his work at
Transylvania. He took a post-graduate course at Paris, France, and was
considered one of the most brilliant men of his day. He had great
command of language and his conversation sparkled with wit and
humor, nor was he less happy with his pen. On one occasion the city
of Nashville offered a handsome prize for the best essay on some
disputed medical point; no one was barred; doctors of all ages entered
the lists, and Uncle James—though an old man—bore off the honors.
In cultivated elegant society he was at his best, and when
distinguished foreigners visited President Jackson at the Hermitage it
always devolved on Doctor Overton to do the agreeable, his command
of French peculiarly fitting him for this post. He early left Kentucky to
make his home in Tennessee, where he practiced his profession for
many years, dying at an advanced age."
[24] "When the first medical lectures were delivered in our city a room
was rented for the purpose on Main Street. At the time of the
reorganization in 1819 a commodious apartment in the upper story of

the large building (on Short Street) now occupied (1854) by the
Branch Bank of Kentucky, then as a tavern, was temporarily fitted up
as a lecture-room, and Doctor Dudley lectured in his own rooms back
of his office ... (on Mill Street, east side, a little above Church Street).
The rapid increase of the class soon induced Doctor Dudley to enlarge
his accommodation by the erection of a very commodious
amphitheatre, in which he lectured until 1839–40, when the new hall
was built (corner of Broadway and Second)." (Lecture of Doctor Peter
to Medical Department, November 6, 1854.)
[25] According to G. W. Ranck's History of Lexington.
[26] Doctor C. C. Graham relates, in reference to student life about
this time: "Dead bodies at that day were not articles of commerce, so
we, the students, had to disinter them; and we once had a battle, so
published in the newspapers, at the old Baptist graveyard—the Battle
of the Graveyard, so-called—when taking up the Irishman that caused
the duel (between Dudley and Richardson). We were taken prisoners
by an armed guard and hauled up to the court-house for trial, but there
was no law to make the dead private property, so the declaration of
Scripture that from dust we came and unto dust we must return let us
off by paying one cent damages for taking that much clay or soil. At
another time, near Nicholasville, we were pursued when making our
way to our horses hitched outside an orchard fence, and one ball of
several fired lodged in the subject, on my back." (Letter of Doctor
Graham.)
[27] It seems Doctor Drake had obtained an honorary degree for
Richardson.
[28] "Caneland," which now forms a beautiful portion of L. V.
Harkness' Walnut Hall Stock Farm, where the old house still stands,
with Richardson's name on the brass knocker of the front door.
[29] The full Faculty of Transylvania, published 1821, was: President,
Reverend Horace Holley, A. M., A. A. S.; Honorable William T. Barry,
LL. D., Professor of Law; Charles Caldwell, M. D., Dean, Professor of
the Institutes of Medicine and teacher of Materia Medica, with a
private class in Medical Jurisprudence; Samuel Brown, M. D., Theory

and Practice; Benjamin W. Dudley, M. D., Anatomy and Surgery;
William H. Richardson, M. D., Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and
Children; Reverend James Blythe, D. D., Professor of Chemistry;
Reverend Robert H. Bishop, A. M., Natural Philosophy, Geography,
Chronology, and History, giving with the President instruction in the
voluntary theological class; John Roche, A. M., Ancient Languages
and secretary of Faculty; John F. Jenkins, A. B., Professor of
Mathematics and Librarian; Constantine S. Rafinesque, Professor of
Natural History and Botany and teacher of the Modern Languages;
Nicholas D. Coleman, A. B., and Charles S. Morehead, A. B., tutors of
the Preparatory Department.
[30] For Rafinesque see Life of Rafinesque, by R. Ellsworth Call,
published by The Filson Club, 1895.
[31] We find the announcement in a local newspaper of November 19,
1819, that the inauguration of the medical professors and Professors
Rafinesque and Bradford took place "at the Episcopal Meeting House
on yesterday" with music, etc.
[32] "A fine lot of nine and three quarters acres belonging to Mr.
Joseph Megowan, at the rate of one hundred dollars in specie per acre,
with a small rent of two dollars and fifty cents per acre until paid."
[33] Doctor Best, a graduate of Transylvania Medical Department in
1826, died at Lexington, Kentucky, September, 1830, aged about
forty-five years.
[34] Of Doctor Drake, Doctor S. D. Gross says: "Emphatically a self-
made man, he possessed genius of a superior order and successfully
coped with his colleagues for the highest place in the school
(Transylvania). Of all the medical teachers I have ever known he was,
all things considered, one of the most able, captivating, and
impressive. There was an earnestness, a fiery zeal about him in the
lecture-room which encircled him, as it were, with a halo of glory."
(Autobiographical sketch of Doctor Short, Page 10.)
[35] Mostly from Collins' History of Kentucky, second edition.

[36] Lexington Reporter, March 5, 1821: "$17,000 are to be expended
in Europe this year for the Medical Department. Doctor Caldwell (the
agent) is already on his way. $5,000 only is the gift of the Legislature,
while $6,000 rest upon the responsibility of Lexington alone and
$6,000 upon that of six individuals in the town who have generously
stepped forward in this manner to anticipate the too cautious bounty of
the Legislature."
[37] The oration at the laying of the corner-stone was made by
William T. Barry. The Trustees of Transylvania at that time were John
Bradford, Thomas Bodley, Charles Humphreys, Benjamin Gratz,
Elisha Warfield, James Fishback, John W. Hunt, James Trotter, Elisha
I. Winter, George T. Chapman, William Leavy, Charles Wilkins, and
George C. Light.
[38] The same year, October 13, 1828: "The Board joined in a
procession to the Episcopal Church, where the Reverend Alva Woods,
D. D., was publicly installed as President of the Transylvania
University." One thousand copies of his inaugural address to be
printed for the Board.
[39] Edward Everett, in a letter of introduction to Sir Walter Scott
presented to Mr. Holley when intending to visit Europe, says of him:
"As a philosopher, a scholar, and a gentleman he has left no superior in
America."
[40] See Pages 405–7, Autobiography of Doctor Charles Caldwell.
[41] See Autobiography.
[42] He was Dean of the Faculty.
[43] It has been said that Doctor Caldwell was the first person of note
to take up the study of Phrenology in this country.
[44] Of Doctor Caldwell, Doctor Gross says: "A more majestic figure
on the rostrum could hardly be imagined. Tall and erect in person, with
a noble head and a piercing black eye, he was the beau ideal of an
elegant, entertaining, and accomplished lecturer. He was eloquent, but

too artificial, for he had cultivated elocution too much before the
mirror." (Autobiographical sketch of Doctor C. W. Short, Page 10.)
[45] Doctor Caldwell says (1834): "This institution has been in
operation fourteen years.... According to its record book its classes and
the degrees conferred by it have been as follows:
Number of Number of
Years. Pupils. Degrees.
1819–20 37 7
1820–1 93 13
1821–2 138 37
1822–3 171 51
1823–4 200 47
1824–5 234 57
1825–6 281 65
1826–7 190 53
1827–8 152 53
1828–9 206 40
1829–30 199 81
1830–1 210 52
1831–2 215 74
1832–3 222 69
1833–4 262
_____ ___
Total 2,810 699

"It is believed from this view of it that for its vigorous prosperity and
the rapid increase of its classes, the Medical School of Transylvania is
without a parallel. Certainly in the United States there is nothing
comparable to it. At the commencement of the present century, when
the Medical School of Philadelphia had been in operation about forty
years, it did not number more, we believe, than 200 pupils. It now
contains about 400—rumor says a few more. In thirty-three years,
then, that school has added about 200 to its classes, while in less than
half that time the school of Transylvania has formed a class of 262.
This is the highest eulogy the institution can receive." (Doctor
Caldwell to Lexington Medical Society, 1834, "On the Impolicy of
Multiplying Schools of Medicine.")
[46] At the time of the formation of the "Transylvania Institute"
(February 20, 1839), under articles of agreement between the city of
Lexington and the Trustees of Transylvania University (see Deed

Book No. 17, Page 42, office Fayette County Court), the city endowed
the University with seventy thousand dollars; forty-five thousand
dollars was to build a new medical hall and provide additional library
and apparatus for the same, five thousand dollars for the Law
Department, and twenty thousand dollars for Morrison College,
securing permanent scholarships in each college. In consequence of a
want of harmony in the Board of Trustees as to the location of the
proposed medical hall, the medical professors and their friends felt
obliged to purchase a lot (corner of Broadway and Second Street,
where Doctor Bush's residence was afterward built) at a cost of five
thousand dollars, although there was abundant space on the University
grounds. This lot, to purchase which citizens contributed three
thousand dollars of the five thousand, was given in trust to the
University—but, by an unauthorized clause in the deed of conveyance,
the lot and the medical hall erected on it at a cost of about thirty-five
thousand dollars reverted to the city about 1860. On this building,
which was burned during the Civil War, the medical professors also
paid out of their own incomes the surplus cost over thirty thousand
dollars which had been provided by the city. The medical professors
also each contributed annually to the medical library, etc., ten dollars.
[47] There remain of this library five thousand, six hundred and
eighty-four volumes; pamphlets and medical journals, seven hundred
and fifty-four; bound volumes of theses, one hundred and thirty-eight,
at Kentucky University.
[48] In the session following this disintegration of the school Doctor
Thomas D. Mitchell says, in his Historical Catalogue of the Medical
School, 1838: "Notwithstanding the great pecuniary embarrassments
of the country and the peculiar circumstances accompanying the late
disorganization, the number of pupils fell short but fifteen of the
previous session."
[49] Doctor Mitchell at this time says: "The entire course of lectures in
this school costs the sum of one hundred and five dollars. In addition
the matriculation fee, which entitles the pupil to use of the very
extensive library, is five dollars. The dissecting ticket is ten dollars,
and may be taken or omitted at pleasure." The qualifications for

candidates for the degree of Doctor of Medicine: "The persons
offering must be 21 years of age and must have been engaged in the
study of medicine during three years. Two full courses of lectures in a
chartered medical school (the last of which in this institution) are also
requisite. But persons who exhibit satisfactory proof of having been
engaged in reputable practice for the space of four years may be
candidates by attending one course of lectures, which must be in this
school. Each candidate is required to exhibit all his tickets to the Dean
before his name can be enrolled. The fee for graduation is $20." (See
Doctor Mitchell's Historical Catalogue, 1838.)
[50] This, with a strange prejudice against novelties, he recommended
to be made by putting an indefinite quantity of glass of antimony in a
bottle with wine, to digest for an uncertain period, adding more wine
as the contents were withdrawn for use.
[51] "From June 1 to August 1, 502 died." (Collins' History of
Kentucky.)
[52] The late William Hall, M. D., for a long time editor of Hall's
Journal of Health, of New York.
[53] Memoir, Page 21.
[54] Doctor L. P. Yandell, senior, says of Doctor Cooke in his
biography: "Dr. Cooke was one of the few men who might have been
safely trusted to write his autobiography. He would have reviewed his
career with a truthfulness, a modesty, a candor that would have exalted
his character in the eyes of men. His works will be read by the curious
for a long time to come, and will always be read with advantage by the
earnest student."
[55] Notices of Western Botany and Conchology, by Doctor C. W.
Short and H. H. Eaton, A. M., published in Transylvania Journal of
Medicine, 1831.
[56] Professor Henry Miller, of Louisville, says of Doctor Short: "As a
lecturer Dr. Short's style was chaste, concise, and classical, and his
manner always grave and dignified. His lectures were always carefully
and fully written and read in the lecture room with a good voice and

correct emphasis. He never made the least attempt at display nor set a
clap-trap in all his life."
[57] Doctor Gross says: "In stature Dr. Short was of medium height,
well proportioned, with light hair and complexion, blue eyes, and an
ample forehead. His features when lighted up by a smile were radiant
with goodness and beneficence. In manner he was graceful, calm, and
dignified; so much so that one coming into his presence for the first
time might have supposed him to be haughty and ascetic; such,
however, was not the case."
[58] Doctor David W. Yandell thus writes of Doctor Short as
connected with the Medical Institute of Louisville: "Dr. Short was a
most valuable officer. His high scientific attainment, the soundness of
his judgment, high dignity and urbanity of manner, his amiable temper
and blameless life added character and weight to the institution.
Botany was his favorite pursuit. He found the flora of this region
(Louisville) virgin and unknown, and so collected, arranged, and
classified it that his successors in this field have been able to change
nothing and to add but little to his work."
[59] We see in the records of the Trustees of Transylvania University
that on March 17, 1832, Doctor Short was elected President pro tem.
of Transylvania University "during the pleasure of the Board," but
there is no mention of his acceptance. The fact is, Professors Short,
Caldwell, and Dudley acted alternately as President pro tem. on public
occasions and in signing diplomas, etc., until a President could be
elected. The Reverend B. O. Peers was inaugurated President pro tem.,
1833, and the Reverend Thomas W. Coit, an eminent Episcopalian
divine from New England, was installed as President in 1835.
[60] The resignation of his predecessor, Doctor Blythe, took place
March 16, 1831. (See Records of Transylvania University.)
[61] One of his ancestors was General William Eaton, the hero of
Derne.
[62] In the chemical course of lectures the subject of Electricity was
given up to him entirely. He lectured on it as well as performed the

experiments.
[63] In the catalogue of the Rensselaer School, 1828, appears in the
list of undergraduates, "Robert Peter, Pittsburg, Pa., Lecturer on the
Experimental and Demonstrative Sciences, Druggist."
[64] This "Eclectic Institute" occupied the "colonial" residence on
Second Street, now forming a part of the Hagerman Female College.
Mr. Peers, H. A. Griswold, and H. H. Eaton were already associated.
[65] Doctor Mitchell says (1838): "Dr. Peter added to the Chemical
Department several powerful galvanic batteries and a fine collection of
apparatus recently procured from the East, making the laboratory more
complete than it ever has been before." (Historical Catalogue, 1838.)
[66] Of the books, apparatus, etc., purchased in Europe by Doctor
Peter we find the following account rendered on March 25, 1839:
"Books and plates, six thousand dollars; chemical apparatus, two
thousand five hundred dollars; preparations for anatomy and surgery,
one thousand five hundred dollars; models for obstetrics, five hundred
dollars; specimens for materia medica and therapeutics and drawing,
five hundred dollars. A total of eleven thousand dollars."
[67] "A very large addition was made to library, museum, and
apparatus by extensive purchases in Europe (selected by Dr. Bush and
myself), bringing the former collection up to 8,000 volumes and
making the latter equal, if not superior, to any in the United States."
(Introductory lecture of Doctor Peter to Medical Department, 1854.)
[68] See Western Lancet, Volume V, 1846.
[69] See Transylvania Journal of Medicine, Volumes VI and VII.
[70] The memorial was written entirely by Doctor Peter, the map was
mostly copied from one published about that time by a Mr. Byrem
Lawrence, who traveled and lectured on Geology in Kentucky and
who subsequently went to Arkansas and made observations on its
Geology, etc., and, as the writer believes, died there.
[71] See Kentucky Geological Survey, Volume I, N. S., Page 143.

[72] See Volume I, N. S., Page 143.
[73] Doctor Owen says: "The principal operating room in which Dr. P.
made his analyses is 15 feet square, the working and balance tables
stand within three feet of each other, and the furnace, sand, and water
baths three feet from the former, so that one or two steps suffice to
reach all important parts of the different operations in their various
stages of progression. The reagents constantly in use ... in a case
resting on the working table within arm's reach of the operator, and his
recording desk in a drawer of the same table." This laboratory was in
the north-west corner of the Medical Hall, corner of Broadway and
Second Street. Doctor Owen, zealous to defend Doctor Peter, explains
further that the latter was aided by a more than common physical as
well as mental aptitude. Doctor Peter took no part in this defense save
to extend to the skeptics an invitation to visit his laboratory and
examine his manner of working.
[74] I must acknowledge that the expression "shoulder to shoulder" is
a mere figure of speech as regards "Uncle Davy" Sayre, for he usually
attended the drills in a buggy in subservience to his gout, being
thereby rendered immune from the consequences suffered by his
dignified compatriots of sundry knots tied, by youthful humorists, in
the long grass of the classic "little college lot," the favorite drill
ground of the Home Guard, as it had been of Morgan's Rifles and
other military companies. This "college lot" was none other than the
original "out lot No. 6," the first seat of Transylvania, and was the
identical spot whereon had taught the immortal Holley. Madison C.
Johnson was "conspicuous" for his sky-blue blouse of fine material,
which stood forth in the ranks of common dark blue cotton, and must
have been a mark for the enemy had the celebrated battle for the arms
hereinafter mentioned ever taken place.
[75] See Kentucky Geological Survey, Volume IV, N. S., Pages 18, 65,
and 66; also Volume III, N. S., Page 391.
[76] Mr. Bowman says, in a letter to Doctor Peter, April 20, 1876: "If
my life is spared I will work on until by national and State aid, if not
denominational, I will lay broad and deep the foundations of a great,

free, liberal, unsectarian university for all classes and professions of
this people and abreast with the advanced curriculum of the best
institutions of our century."
[77] In the heat of contest Doctor Peter's adversaries did not hesitate to
call him an infidel and an atheist. It was the worst they could say, but
not strictly in conformity with the facts. He was not a church member.
He had been baptized in the Church of England, always kept a pew in
the Episcopal Church, and as a young man taught in the Episcopal
Sunday-school. The spectacle, in so many instances, of the
impediment to educational progress by narrowness and bigotry in
churches had given him an indifference—not disguised—to sectarian
religion. He never molested the religious tenets of others. He
constantly declared that education should be free to all men,
irrespective of creed.
[78] Antagonists in this controversy, powerless to assail him as a
scientist and teacher, characterized him as a person of low origin and
brutal manners. He ignored this attack, it being his custom never to
lean upon ancestors—to look forward rather than back, holding to the
homely but truly American saying that "every tub must stand on its
own bottom." But in truth he was of excellent English family and a
descendant of that powerful "Arundel" who in the days of the
Conquest was master of twenty-eight lordships. His manners passed
muster among old-fashioned Kentucky gentlemen.
[79] Doctor Cross was appointed to a chair in the Transylvania
Medical Faculty by the influence of Reverend Nathan H. Hall, a
trustee, and against the judgment of other members of the Board.
[80] From the Transylvania Journal of Medicine, Volume XI, 1838.
[81] Letter of Doctor Mitchell to Benjamin Gratz, February 7, 1838: "
... I graduated in 1812. In 1813 was appointed by the Governor of Pa.
to the office of Lazaretto Physician of the Port of Phila, which post I
held until 1816, when indisposition compelled me to resign. I then had
opportunity of becoming acquainted with the Southern fevers,
particularly the yellow fever of N. Orleans and the West Indies. For 17
years after I was actively engaged in practice, and may refer to

Eberle's Therapeutics for his opinion of me as a medical man, at a
time when I was not personally acquainted with him. The journals of
those times contain many medical papers furnished by me, as
examination will show. In 1831 my name was before the Trustees of
Jefferson Medical College for the chair of Materia Medica vacated by
the resignation of Dr. Eberle, and I would have been appointed, as I
have since been informed by Gen. Duncan, one of the Trustees, if I
had not agreed to join with Dr. Eberle a new faculty at Cincinnati. If
any object that a Prof'r of Chemistry can not make a good Prof'r of
Theory and Practice, I have only to refer to the case of the celebrated
Dr. Rush, who passed directly from Chemistry to Theory and Practice,
as the published records of the University of Penna. will show."
[82] He was sole editor of this journal in the latter years of its
existence.
[83] Doctor Mitchell was an exceedingly rapid speaker. With difficulty
could those unused to this peculiarity follow his swift flow of
language and ideas. But once accustomed, his pupils liked this better
than the more deliberate speech of other professors. He never failed to
impress upon students the importance of a not too hasty diagnosis, the
premonitory symptoms of widely differing diseases being nearly
identical; whereas treatment proper for one disease might result fatally
if applied to another.
[84] Doctor Bush's mother was Miss Palmer, sister of the wife of
Governor Adair. His grandparents, Philip and Mary Bush, came to
America from Germany and settled at Winchester, Virginia, 1750.
[85] The first Faculty of the Kentucky School of Medicine at
Louisville: Benjamin W. Dudley, M. D., Emeritus Professor of
Anatomy and Surgery; Robert Peter, M. D., Medical Chemistry and
Toxicology; Samuel Annan, M. D., Pathology and Practice of
Medicine; Joshua B. Flint, M. D., Principles and Practice of Surgery;
Ethelbert L. Dudley, M. D., Descriptive Anatomy and Histology;
Llewellyn Powell, Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children;
James M. Bush, M. D., Surgical Anatomy and Operative Surgery;

Henry M. Bullitt, Physiology and Materia Medica; Philip Thornbury,
M. D., and John Bartlett, M. D., Demonstrators of Anatomy.
[86] That this arrangement met with much opposition among citizens
of Lexington will be seen by a perusal of the Kentucky Statesman and
other Lexington newspapers of the day. A hand-bill was also issued
February 1, 1850, calling a "public meeting" in order to discuss more
"fairly" the various aspects of the question.
[87] Doctor Bush's other children are Captain Thomas J. Bush and
Miss Nannie M. Bush, of Lexington, Kentucky.
[88] Extract from Doctor Smith's letter of resignation, January 7,
1841: " ... By the influence of the reputation and efficient exertions of
the present Faculty and by the munificence of the citizens of
Lexington, the Medical Department of Transylvania is now placed
upon a foundation which renders its position perfectly secure. Its
friends may, without fear of contradiction, pronounce it to be
decidedly the best endowed medical school in America. Its patronage
and the emoluments of its chairs are second to those of but one, and
there are none to be associated with which I should consider it a higher
honor. Under these circumstances my resignation can not exercise the
least injurious influence upon its prosperity. The chair will
immediately command the services of some one whose labors will be
more efficient than mine. You will please, dear sir, convey to the
members of the Faculty assurance of my great respect and affectionate
consideration.
"Yours most truly, N. R. Smith."
Letter to Doctor Smith from the Faculty: "Dear Sir: The receipt of
your communication informing us that circumstances beyond your
control would oblige you to resign the chair of the Theory and Practice
of Medicine in the Medical Department of Transylvania University at
the end of the present session, renders some expression of sentiment
on our part both just and appropriate. Permit us, therefore, to assure
you that we receive the information of your intended resignation with
regret, and that nothing would have afforded us more gratification than
the certainty of your continuance among us as a fellow-citizen and

colleague. The intercourse which has existed between us for the three
years during which we have been associated has been of the most
harmonious and pleasant character, and the ability with which you
have performed the duties of your chair increases the reluctance with
which we give up the expectations of a longer co-operation with you
under the auspices of Transylvania University. With the most sincere
wishes for your continued increase in fame and prosperity, we remain
your friends and colleagues.
The Medical Faculty of Transylvania University.,
"Robert Peter, Dean."
(From History of Medical Department of Transylvania University and
its Faculty, by William Jeptha Calvert, M. D.)
[89] Extracts from Doctor Huntington's address to the Middlesex
North District Medical Society, 1856.
[90] Extract from the letter of resignation of Professor Bartlett,
Lowell, Massachusetts, April 5, 1844: "It is unnecessary for me to go
now into the considerations which lead me to this step any further than
to say that they are connected wholly with motives of a domestic
character and with the strong desire which I have long cherished and
expressed of being settled in one of the Eastern cities. The only pain
which the step costs me being occasioned by my separation from my
present colleagues which it involves, and the dissolution of the
professional and social relationship, to myself of the most amicable
and agreeable character."
[91] During the absence of Doctor Bartlett his chair was filled by
Doctor Lotan G. Watson, of North Carolina.
[92] In 1842 the Transylvania University had been placed under the
patronage of the Methodist Episcopal Church, with a Faculty as
follows: Reverend H. B. Bascom, D. D., Acting President and
Morrison Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy; Benjamin
W. Dudley, M. D., Professor of Anatomy and Surgery; James C. Cross,
M. D., Professor of Institutes and Medical Jurisprudence; Elisha
Bartlett, M. D., Professor of Theory and Practice; William H.

Richardson, M. D., Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women
and Children; Thomas D. Mitchell, M. D., Professor of Materia
Medica and Therapeutics; Robert Peter, M. D., Professor of Chemistry
and Pharmacy; James M. Bush, M. D., Adjunct Professor of Anatomy
and Surgery; Honorable George Robertson, LL. D., Professor of
Constitutional Law, Equity, and the Law of Comity; Honorable
Thomas A. Marshall, LL. D., Law of Pleading, Evidence, and
Contract; Honorable A. K. Woolley, LL. D., Professor of Elementary
Principles of Common Law, National and Commercial Law; Reverend
R. T. P. Allen, A. M., Professor of Mathematics, Natural Philosophy,
and Civil Engineering; Reverend B. H. McCoun, A. M., Professor of
Ancient Languages and Literature; Reverend W. H. Anderson, A. M.,
Professor of English Literature; Reverend J. L. Kemp, A. M., Adjunct
Professor of Mathematics, Preparatory Department; Reverend Thomas
H. Lynch, A. M., Adjunct Professor of Languages, Preparatory
Department; ——, Principal of the Junior Section of the Preparatory
Department.
N. B.—The Reverend Wright Merrick was appointed to the above
vacancy.
[93] Doctor C. C. Graham said that Doctor Dudley tenaciously held
that these two chairs should always be combined.
[94] Doctor L. B. Todd calls him "that knightly Bayard of Kentucky
Surgery."
[95] An incident well told by his son-in-law, General Joseph C.
Breckinridge, is characteristic of Dudley. When, during the Civil War,
a struggle was imminent between the secessionists and the Home
Guard for possession of a large shipment of arms and ammunition sent
into Kentucky by the United States Government for the arming of
Union soldiers and citizens, Dudley, fearing the Home Guard at
Lexington would be overpowered and the munitions captured on
arrival, sent as a trusty messenger to General Nelson, at Camp Dick
Robinson, to ask for troops—a midnight journey of twenty miles
through a hostile country—his only son, Scott Dudley, a youth
scarcely seventeen. He saddled the horse and armed the boy himself,

at dead of night, the better to insure secrecy, for in his own household
were foes. This mission was successful. (See speech of General Joseph
C. Breckinridge, United States Army, at the reunion of the Army of the
Cumberland, Chattanooga, October 10, 1900.) Ensign J. Cabell
Breckinridge, United States Navy, the first life lost on the threshold of
the Spanish War, and Lieutenant Ethelbert D. Breckinridge, seriously
wounded almost at the very instant that his General, the well-beloved
Lawton, fell beside him in the Philippines, were grandsons of Doctor
Dudley.
[96] Quoted from the Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky, etc., of
1878.
[97] We learn from old announcements, etc., that, as early as 1830, the
Medical Faculty of Transylvania University offered their services
gratuitously to the Eastern Kentucky Lunatic Asylum, through Samuel
Theobalds, M. D., and that, in 1845, Doctor John R. Allen was to
deliver clinical lectures to the medical class, at the Lunatic Asylum
every Saturday.
[98] Other sons were William Wallace, Benjamin Gratz, and Colonel
Saunders D. Bruce.
[99] Doctor L. B. Todd.
[100] See The Marshall Family, by W. M. Paxton, 1885.
[101] Address at Morrison College on being inaugurated President of
Transylvania University.
[102] Doctor Peter's introductory lecture to the Medical Class,
November, 1842.
[103] The first railroad was the Baltimore & Ohio, chartered March,
1827, but not completed to the Ohio until 1853—twenty-six years.
[104] Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky.
[105] "In 1856, the Trustees of Morrison College came to the
legislature of Kentucky and offered all the buildings, the library, the
apparatus, and grounds, which were valued at over two hundred

thousand dollars, if the State would take it and establish a Normal
School." ... Speech of Honorable C. J. Bronston on the Agricultural
and Mechanical College tax. The idea of a Normal School originated
with Doctor Robert J. Breckinridge several years before.
[106] May 22, 1863. Collins' History of Kentucky.
[107] From the report of the Treasurer of the University, 1871, it is
gathered that after long and persistent effort on his part while in
Washington there was secured from the Government the sum of
twenty-five thousand dollars "for the rents and damages to the medical
college and other Transylvania property during the war," nearly one
half of which was claimed and recovered from the University by the
city of Lexington on the plea that the Medical Hall had been
abandoned.

Transcriber's Note:

The footnotes have been moved to the end of the book with the
exception of the footnotes for tables.
Footnote 19: Added period after "tem" in "elected President, pro
tem".
Footnote 88: Added period after "prosperity" in "influence upon
its prosperity".
Pg 148 "His success was progressive this article exemplifying"
retained as printed.

Pg 173 Added comma after "117" in "Writings of 117".
Pg 173 Removed comma after "Charles," in "Caldwell, Doctor
Charles,".
Pg 174 Added comma after "51" in "autobiography of 49, 50,
51".
Pg 174 Added comma after "69" in "experience of Doctor
Peter 69 70".
Pg 177 Removed comma after "W," in "Dudley, Doctor Benjamin
W,".
Pg 180 Removed comma after "1842," in "University under the
Methodists, 1842,".
Pg 184 Removed comma after "instituted," in "Transylvania
University first instituted,".
Pg 186 Added comma after "94" in "Owen, Doctor David
Dale 94".
Pg 193 Added comma after "Winter" in "Winter Elisha I".
Pg 193 Removed comma after "P.," in "Yandell, Doctor Lunsford
P.,".
Otherwise, archaic and inconsistent spelling and hyphenation
retained.

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