Dr. Lewis Jacob Frazee, author of a little volume of travels of
considerable charm, was born at Germantown, Kentucky, August 23, 1819.
He was prepared for college at the Maysville Academy, celebrated as
the school at which young U. S. Grant spent one year. He was graduated
from Georgetown College, Georgetown, Kentucky, in the class of 1837;
and four years later he graduated in the medical department of the
University of Louisville. On April 9, 1844, Dr. Frazee left Maysville,
Kentucky, for a long sojourn in Europe, spending most of his time in
Paris studying subjects then untaught in this country. He also visited
England and the continent before returning home. These travels Dr.
Frazee related in a book of nearly three hundred pages, entitled _The
Medical Student in Europe_ (Maysville, Kentucky, 1849), which is now
an exceedingly rare work. The style is natural and clear and exhibits
genuine literary flavor. He settled at Louisville in 1851. His only
other publication was _The Mineral Waters of Kentucky_ (Louisville,
1872), a brochure. Dr. Frazee took a keen interest in the Filson Club
of Louisville, and one of his finest papers was read before that
organization: _An Analysis of the Personal Narrative of James O.
Pattie_. He was sometime professor in the medical school of the
University of Louisville, and in the Kentucky School of Medicine; and
he edited _The Transylvania Medical Journal_ for several years. Old
age found the good doctor surrendering his practice and professorships
to establish the Louisville Dental Depot, designed to furnish the
local dentists with supplies. He died at Louisville, Kentucky, August
12, 1905, eleven days before his eighty-sixth birthday.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Courier-Journal_ (Louisville, Kentucky, August
13, 1905); letters from Dr. Thos. E. Pickett, the Maysville
historian, to the present writer.