The History Of The Medical Department Of Transylvania University

Transylvania University

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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 a

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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 oc

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MEDICAL DEPARTMENT

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 main

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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 becam

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 "

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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 181

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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 Li

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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 pro

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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

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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 k

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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 Bathurs

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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. Doc

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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

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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 faithf

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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

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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

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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

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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 th

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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 originat

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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

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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 o

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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 hi

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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 A

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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 wh

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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....

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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 C

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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 begi

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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]...

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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

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SCHEDULE A

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

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SCHEDULE B

[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 follo

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Schedule of the Several Endowments of Transylvania University.

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

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