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.
[Illustration: 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]
[Illustration: 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.