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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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

CONSTANTINE SAMUEL RAFINESQUE,

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 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, 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 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.

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.

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 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.

"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."

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

According to his own representations and the testimony of his friends, he was exceedingly methodical in his habits, dividing his time with rigorous system; but we may well feel a little skeptical as to his assertion that he "rarely slept more than four hours," and at one time but three hours and a half. His mental activity and labor, however, in his youth, must have been very great. Apart from his necessary studies and his active and constant participation in the discussions of the Medical Society, he delivered more public addresses, for the Society and on other occasions, "than all the other members of the institution united" , besides employing his pen in numerous ephemeral productions for the press.

In speaking of his early life in Philadelphia he says: "I was a young man for the scenes in which I had acted; proud and ambitious certainly, and probably not altogether untinctured with vanity.... In truth it is hardly to be denied that, for a time at least, I was somewhat spoiled on account of my attributes and performances, both mental and corporal.... No wonder, therefore, that I felt, or conceited I felt, a decided superiority to most medical pupils, as well as the ordinary cast of young physicians.... I certainly did both indulge and manifest it to the extent, at times, of giving serious offense." This was not the worst. His bold self-confidence and assertion having placed him in a position of antagonism toward his friend and preceptor, Doctor Rush, as well as toward other influential medical men of Philadelphia, defeated the great ambition of his life--that of occupying the chair of the Institutes of Medicine in the Medical College of the University of Pennsylvania.

When informed by Doctor Rush that although his friends spoke in flattering terms of "your talents, attainments, and powers in lecturing and instruction ... they are reluctant to recommend you to the Board of Trustees in the light of a professor," he indignantly declared that "if the door of the University of Pennsylvania was thus closed to him he would soon occupy a chair equally honorable with that of Doctor Rush in some other school." And he shortly thereafter was induced to push his fortunes in the great and growing West.

In short, Doctor Caldwell excelled in the brilliant discussion of speculative and theoretical subjects. The extent of his positive knowledge, as remarked by Doctor Yandell, was greater in superficial area than in depth; whilst in the terse and lucid exposition of definite facts, which characterized the instruction of Professor Dudley, the student felt he was acquiring knowledge which not only was real but was of practical utility.

The total number of students in the Medical School of Transylvania during the term of its existence was, as far as can now be ascertained, more than six thousand four hundred ; the total number of its medical graduates eighteen hundred and eighty-one . During the late civil war the commodious Medical Hall of Transylvania, built in 1839 by the munificence of the city of Lexington, and which had been seized by the United States Government for use as a United States General Hospital, was destroyed by fire while occupied for that purpose. But the medical library, apparatus and museum, etc., were mainly preserved, and are now in the custody of the Curators of Kentucky University, with which institution old Transylvania University was consolidated in 1865, "all the trusts and conditions" of her property being preserved in the Act of Consolidation.

The Medical Department may yet be resuscitated when in the course of events our city again becomes an eligible site for modern medical instruction, and when special means can be obtained properly to equip and re-establish it on a basis suited to the existing times.

This railroad, the "Lexington & Ohio," was begun in 1831 and completed as far as Frankfort--twenty-eight miles--in 1835. It was composed of stone sills laid side by side, with a dressed surface on the portion upon which the wheels were to run. The cars resembled an old pattern of street car and were drawn by horses.

"The procession first moved in a circle around the lawn where it was formed, at which time the bells in the various churches in town commenced a merry peal which continued till the procession reached the place where the ceremony was performed. The military escort then formed a hollow square, within which the whole civic procession was enclosed. Thousands of anxious and delighted spectators were on the outside, among whom we were gratified to see a large concourse of ladies, for whose accommodation the marshal had directed the adjacent market-house to be appropriated.

"Doctor Caldwell then delivered a highly interesting and appropriate address.

"A Federal salute was fired at sunrise, and seven guns when the first stone sill was laid, indicating the seven sections of the road under contract."

Doctor Caldwell spoke in polished and eloquent phrase of the advantages accruing to Lexington and the whole adjacent country from the establishment of this road. He prophesied also great benefit to Louisville therefrom.

We learn from the same old newspaper that Doctor Caldwell was announced to deliver a lecture, a few evenings later, at the first meeting of the "Lexington Lyceum," at the court house. The subject of the lecture was "The Moral and Incidental Influences of Railroads." "Ladies and strangers" were invited to attend.

Difficulties in the procurement of a sufficient supply of material for anatomical instruction, coupled with the demand for clinical teaching which was beginning to be urged by the profession, forced themselves on the attention of the Medical Faculty of Transylvania before the year 1836-37. But in that year a determined effort was made, engineered and led by Professor Caldwell, to remove the Medical College to Louisville, that city having been induced by the earnest and eloquent appeals of Caldwell to offer it a large bonus. But for the early withdrawal of Doctor Dudley from this promising scheme, toward which he was at first inclined--because mainly of his difficulties in the supply of anatomical material--it would have been successful. But Doctor Dudley finally declined to remove, much to the mortification of Doctor Caldwell, who, in his last valedictory to the graduates of 1837, indulged in a very bitter impersonal-personal tirade against deception and mendacity, aimed at Doctor Dudley--not saying openly to his colleague "thou art the man"--but hoping "the cap would fit him" and find its place. The Trustees of the University, of course, and influential citizens, violently opposed the proposed change. Doctor Caldwell was arraigned before the Board on charges preferred by Doctor Dudley, the principal of which was that he had been engaged in the enterprise of originating a rival medical college in Louisville while he was yet a professor in the Transylvania College and under oath to support it. Doctor Caldwell, disdaining to answer the summons of the Board, was, after a long and full investigation of the evidence, dismissed from his chair in Transylvania. The Medical Faculty was then dissolved and reorganized.

DOCTOR JOHN ESTEN COOKE

To destroy this many-headed hydra--while he would use cold water to reduce too great febrile excitement and even sometimes give antimonial wine--his main reliance was on blood-letting and cholagogue purgatives, as he believed it was by increasing the secretion of the liver and causing it to pour out consistent "black bile" that the venous congestion was to be relieved and the patient cured.

Doctor Yandell asserts in this memoir that in this "extraordinary practice, Doctor Cooke was not less successful in the treatment of cholera than his medical brethren in Lexington." But the fact was that none were very successful and that as many as fifty died in a day of a population of a little over six thousand. The writer recollects that Doctor Cooke only practiced in the earlier period of this famous epidemic, having been disabled by a fall in attempting, in his hurry to attend a professional call, to put on his coat while running down stairs.

In another case of cholera which occurred at this time, as the present writer was informed by the intelligent and truthful brother of the young lady patient of Doctor Cooke, these large tablespoonful doses passed through the bowels apparently unchanged, being discharged in lumps as large as pullets' eggs, without being even dissolved. This patient did not recover.

Calomel is well known to be practically insoluble in pure water at the common temperature. It is decomposed to a certain extent by the action of light, or by a moderate heat in the presence of water, and especially by the aid of acids of various kinds, and by certain salts such as alkaline and other soluble chlorides--especially potassium, sodium, and ammonium chlorides.

In all these cases of partial decomposition some of the mercurous chloride--the calomel--is changed into soluble mercuric chloride and metallic mercury. This decomposition is supposed to result from the action of the alkaline chlorides and the chloro-hydric and other acids of the gastric juice when calomel is taken into the stomach under ordinary circumstances. It is believed that the activity of the calomel depends mainly on the amount of this decomposition which takes place in the body.

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