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.
[Illustration: 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.
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.
[Illustration: DANIEL DRAKE, M. D.]
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.
[Illustration: 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.