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
[Illustration: Publisher's Symbol.]
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
JOHN P. MORTON & COMPANY
PRINTERS TO THE FILSON CLUB
1905
COPYRIGHTED BY
THE FILSON CLUB
and All Rights Reserved
1905
[Illustration: 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--Medical Hall 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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]
[Illustration: 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.