Read Ebook: The History of the Medical Department of Transylvania University by Peter Robert Peter Johanna Editor

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 547 lines and 87081 words, and 11 pages

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.

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.

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.

TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY.

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--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. 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. 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.

DOCTOR FREDERICK RIDGELY,

Of a well-known family in Maryland, 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.

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.

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.

In 1805, Doctor James Fishback, D. D., was made Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic in this department. 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, who came to Kentucky from Virginia in 1783.

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.

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.

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. 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, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 , 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."

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--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 , 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.

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.

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.

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.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet